For Randidly to achieve the effect that he was looking for, he needed one more push from the Path. That, combined with a very concentrated push from his image, should be enough to create the Skillset. The trick with these things was momentum and Aether. Aether he had in spades, so the Path was to build up that momentum.

So he brought up the Peerless Engraving Path and pushed all 1000 PP that he needed into it. Hopefully, this would be enough to provide a qualitative change to his Engraving Skill that would be the start. To Randidly’s delight, every 10 he would receive a Stat point, alternating between Focus and Control. Then the notification flashed up in front of him.

Congratulations! You have finished the Peerless Engraving Path! All roads lead to the Pinnacle, although each journey is unique in the Path that it takes to get there. As you seek a more perfect art with which to draw your message, the base truths of the world begin to reveal themselves to you naturally. Along your Path you have encountered many signs and landmarks. To see them is to see the language with which the grand creator shaped the continents. To see them is to find the footsteps of a god.

Never stop seeking the apex of meaning. That glowing truth will shine, even in the Nexus’s eyes.

Congratulations! Focus +100. Your Skill “Brushstroke Record (Ru)” is evolving! Synchronicity with other Skills detected. Calculating resonance…

Randidly’s eyes flashed emerald. In his chest, the image of the World Tree surged to the fore of his mind with a powerful. Now’s the time. No need to hold anything back.

Deep brown bark. A towering trunk that soared upward beyond the limits of the human eye. A palpable aura of life that seemed to invigorate the surroundings. Thousands of meandering branches stretching outward to form the bones of the awe-inspiring canopy that hung above them. Emerald leaves by the millions, thick and wide, casting dancing shadows below as breezes rustled through the auspices of the World Tree.

A miracle of images born from Randidly’s earliest moments. Of all the images that Randidly possessed, this had experienced the most refinements. More than anything else, this was the grand project that Randidly had dedicated himself to, one step at a time.

And now, the infinite variance of shapes, slowly spreading outward, devouring the available space across Yggdrasil. It created a luminous and potent image.

Even though Randidly knew it would attract attention, he did not back off pressing his Willpower to its limits to bring Yggdrasil to life in this moment. Randidly could feel the humming presence of his image hanging above Lady Iellaya’s camp. It would be more surprising if people didn’t react to its presence.

His Grim Intuition perked up as he felt both powerful warriors on the Aether side and the Nether forces focus upward to the image. Not all of them felt threatened by its presence, but he could sense their wariness.

No one knew what this was or why it had appeared. And some of Randidly’s intense focus seeped out into the wide branches of the World Tree. It sensed his determination and responded to it.

...Extremely high resonance detected! Your Skill Brushstroke Record has evolved into Architecture of the Primordial Ways (M)! The power in your Engravings has vastly increased! Your ability to create Engravings with other mediums has vastly increased! The Effect of Skill Levels has increased moderately!

Due to the evolution of your Skill, a powerful compatibility with your other Skills has been detected! Calculating…

As Randidly watched, he could feel the shapes that were scrawled across the bark of Yggdrasil grow deeper. Their light seemed to be suddenly emanating out of a fiery core at the heart of the World Tree. Their edges grew sharper, their lines more wild. In addition, the speed with which they accelerated up the trunk grew to be almost too quick to follow.

Randidly breathed in and then breathed out. Although he hadn’t consciously held anything back previously, he pushed even harder now to wring every drop of his effort out into activating his Skills. Every rut in the bark could be seen. For those in Lady Iellaya’s camp, as they looked up in wonder at the massive tree hanging above them, the felt the breeze that rustled the leaves on their skin.

Although Randidly didn’t mean to do it, he felt the Aether in his chest naturally whirling in a maelstrom of power. When Randidly’s Willpower wasn’t enough, he used raw power to bridge the gap.

So much power would not go unnoticed for long. The deep, golden roots of Yggdrasil dug steadily into the surrounding ground. Even if it was just an image, changes began to happen across the frontlines. It wasn’t because Randidly’s image was necessarily so overwhelming, but because it was uniquely suited for this task.

The constant visual cues on the frontlines dimmed. It happened gradually, but when people finally looked away from the World Tree the changes were quite stark. Against the looming threat of the Great Rift, the World Tree steadied the Aether in the surrounding area. It was a firm stake that held down the reality of the surrounding space. Almost unwillingly, Randidly’s lips parted and revealed his teeth.

More and more pressure slid onto his image. Which meant he needed more and more Aether to handle it. Yet now that the process was started, he refused to back down. If the world demanded that his who image take on this weight in order to create his Skillset, so be it. Randidly would not hesitate.

Perhaps Lord Miln and Ileot Swacc could use this to witness the edge of his power, but Randidly suspected they would miss the point. He hoped the image would mask the purity of the Aether that was moving beneath.

The branches of Yggdrasil would hold up the sky and the roots would hold fast to the ground. And everything in between would be governed by the Architecture of the Primordial Ways. It would be described in the Akashic Record that danced in the form of shapes across the vast trunk of the World Tree.

Each individual portion of Yggdrasil began to sing a note in the growing symphony of the image. The Golden Roots flexed deep in the ground, cycling energy through the area. The Glittering Leaves rustled easily, sending calming ripples through the surrounding area. Emerald Sap pumped steadily through the thoroughfares of Yggdrasil’s trunk with such a potent life force that some small plants began to grow in the surrounding badlands. The Yyrwood Flesh of the bark was rough and healthy even faced with the small corrosion that leaked downward from the looming Great Rift.

Both the disdainful pride of the Deific Mien and the pure wrath of the Cruel Indignation swirled above the World Tree like two playful fish. The Reign of the Eidolon Crucible, those phantasms that danced across the branches, stepped lightly over the ever expending Architecture of the Primordial Ways in an eternal dance of memories and ghosts.

All of the surrounding area stilled, bit by bit. Because everything here was within the Absolute Grasp of Yggdrasil.

“Hahhh….” Randidly released his breath again. The pressure continued to build from the outside as his Skill sigils absolutely churned through Aether in order to withstand it. Weirdly, time seemed to lose meaning. There was only the pressure. And under that pressure, Randidly seemed to have a tiny inkling of a plateau he was facing, one akin to what he felt when condensing a true Nether core.

Down this road there would be a qualitative change, if he could reach it. If he could generate enough pressure.

But a notification distracted him from this line of thinking.

Congratulations! Due to the sympathy between the Skills, the Pinnacle Skillset “Yggdrasil, the Universe that was First a Tree,” has been created! The Skills Architecture of the Primordial Ways (M), Glittering Leaves of Yggdrasil (L), The Golden Roots of Yggdrasil (L), the Emerald Sap of Yggdrasil (L), the Yyrwood Flesh of Yggdrasil (L), the Deific Mien of Yggdrasil (L), the Cruel Indignation of Yggdrasil (L), Reign of the Eidolon Crucible (L), and Absolute Grasp of Yggdrasil (T) have all been added to the Skillset! The effect of Skill Levels for each of the affected Skills is slightly increased!

The power of your related images grows!

Randidly held the image for one more second in the flimsy grip of his weakening mind. All of the small, gradual changes to the visual variation across the frontlines rapidly accelerated as the empowered images were given the chance to flare to live. Randidly was positively burning through Aether at this point, using it to strengthen the effect of his Skillset as the many Skills slowly snapped together.

Most of all, Randidly could sense that this wasn’t the limit of these Skills’ power. And the notification from the System hinted at the same with its rarity of his Skillset.

Pinnacle. A word that had a very special place in the vocabulary of the Nexus. A word that seemed to refer to the absolute.

Then Randidly’s clenched breath gushed out from his lips and he collapsed to his knees as the roaring image became too much to maintain. The Skill sigils in his chest were humming with the strain of containing the new amount of power that now flowed through them. Their effects became fuzzy without a tight grip and then slowly lost that roaring momentum to settle back down to normal.

Laughing, Randidly allowed himself to fall down on his back and just bask in the satisfaction of successfully merging all of the disparate Skills together. Achieving that moment of harmony hadn’t been as difficult as he had feared, but it had been exhausting. A quick check of Absolute Timing informed him that Randidly still had twelve hours remaining until the agreed-upon time for the Nether Prince.

Thank god. That will give me plenty of time to recover a bit before I spend the rest of the PP in order to upgrade the Skillset-

Yet just as Randidly was thinking that, he felt a tremor run through his subconscious. Very quickly, that tremor turned into a vast tiredness that began to encircle the edges of Randidly’s consciousness.

...seriously Eidolon Crucible?! Randidly thought furiously as his body accepted the exhaustion quite easily and began to still around him. Of all times, you choose now?!?!

Yet there was little that Randidly could do to fight against it now that it had arrived. The world was swallowed up by darkness and Randidly felt himself spirited away, very quickly arriving at a small hill below a mountain range. Below the hill was a grassland that seemed to stretch forever, a sea of waving grass and wildflowers.

Randidly’s first reaction to the sudden change was rage, but as he looked around, that emotion slowly seeped out of him. For all that it was an inconvenient timing, it was better that it occurred before the Nether Prince. There seemed to be a subconscious component involved in the timing because otherwise, it would be extremely dangerous. Falling so deeply asleep while he wasn’t safe was a quick way to die.

And honestly, based on his previous time, it would only last a few hours. The extra mental strength he could gain here would also be useful-

Randidly paused in his rationalizations as his gaze landed on a small monolith of stone that was sticking up out of the top of the hill. His eyes softened as he slowly walked up to the object and ran his fingers across the words. Although he had been told by Naffur about the situation, it was another thing entirely to see the gravestone himself. Even in image form, its simple lettering drew the eye.

Aldo Ghosthound

“When we pick the way we live our lives, we can’t complain about the deaths we find waiting for us at the end.”

“Is this a warning for me, I wonder…?” Randidly said softly. But then he shook his head. Because he agreed entirely with the sentiment on the gravestone. Through his experience in the System, Randidly had to learn very quickly how powerful the small connections that people made were. Each interaction became karma. Each memory became the fabric of an image. Endlessly forward, endlessly colliding with other lives and traveling in unexpected directions.

Endlessly being changed by the smallest of coincidences.

“Still…” Randidly grinned wolfishly up at the sky of this false place. Clouds began to slowly gather as the spirits of Kharon were transported to stand against Randidly. “It’s a big deal that this is the first time that you’ve pulled me into your image, isn’t it Kharon…?”

The clouds pulled tightly together as a low howl drifted up from the gathering winds. Soon they faded from white, to grey, and then finally to black. The spirits of Kharon became a twister that wound itself sinuously downward to the ground below the hill. Very quickly, the airspeed reached the point that Randidly could feel all of the air around him slowly stirring.

“If you think this will be enough,” Randidly said softly. “You have another thing coming.”