“Why are you grinning?” Kayle asked, even though he knew the answer. His longtime rival was not a complicated man.

Paolo’s expression, like his voice and movements, was practically booming on the small balcony of one of the Orchard’s finest hotels. “Ahaha! Well, isn’t this exciting? This… well, certainly, there is no honor in what we do now, but considering the circumstances… eheheh…”

“Don’t laugh like that.” Huang Shou brought his cane down in a brutal smack against Paolo’s back, but the man simply endured it with his shit-eating grin in place. Kayle shook his head slightly; you needed to hit Paolo harder than that in order to get through to him. He considered lighter strikes like that just displays of affection.

Then Huang Shou jabbed his cane at the papers on the desk small end table that he had previously directly Huang Li to drag out onto the balcony. The papers fluttered slightly from a small breeze. “Mrs. Hamilton sent over projections. Read them. Don’t think that now that the tournament is over, work has ceased. It is only beginning.”

Huang Li, Kayle, and even Paolo obeyed. For their next project, they had no chance unless they came armed with plentiful information.

*****

Over the next several days, Randidly practiced with weaving Nether, gave Tim some pointers on the Engraving to create floating islands, and spent some time refining his other images while the Grim Chimera recovered from that immense psychological impact. The process was slow at first, but the Grim Chimera’s natural inclination toward adaption meant that it quickly accelerated. Much of the raw sense of power had been beaten from the Grim Chimera in that brief contact with Elhume, but it had regained its almost uncanny cunning in exchange.

Not that Randidly needed the Grim Chimera to behave particularly intelligent most of the time, but it was one-third of the person he was gradually becoming. Keeping it in touch with caution was prudent, considering the dangers that waited in the Nexus. When the confidence was unfounded, it needed to be tempered.

Once the Grim Chimera had regained enough of its details to condense into a physical form, Randidly didn’t let that freshly shaken image settle; he continued to hammer it by taking it into the Dreamcatcher of the Long Night and fighting against Kaan Swacc. And during those fights, Randidly only used the Grim Chimera.

His physical power and capability in physical condensation of images had increased, but the largest gain from the fight, Randidly’s ability to use three images at once, was sealed. As such, the Grim Chimera quickly became involved in several long, drawn-out fights with Kaan Swacc. Which is the worst method to combat Kaan Swacc, who used those extended brawls to methodically suppressed the Grim Chimera’s abilities until it was beaten into submission.

Time and time again Randidly persisted until his vision was blurred from the creeping headache of using the Dreamcatcher of the Long Night, but he did not slow down. After being defeated by Kaan and then meditating for about twenty minutes in the real world, he would stand and shake himself off. Then he would open up the Dreamcatcher of the Long Night and throw himself right back into the fray.

After the fifth such attempt, an attempt that had only lasted three minutes before Kaan Swacc had suppressed Randidly and forced him out of the memory, the image of Yggdrasil pulsed slightly; it pointed out that the process Randidly was currently experiencing was very similar to the training of the Xyrt Brigade. Which meant that it carried with it the same risks that had made Randidly so furious when they had afflicted Vualla.

Randidly considered that, his chest rising and falling relatively quickly; thinking was also a chance to catch his breath. Truly, he was exhausted. And when he focused his Willpower on the current state of the Grim Chimera, what he found there was… lackluster. The last time the image had been this blurry and feeble was when Randidly had been forced as an image to the frontlines.

Otherwise, it had never been this bedraggled and feeble.

The body and face was wan and ethereal. Once more, the Grim Chimera was a featureless being, the details rubbed away. The only elements that were maintained with any clarity were the sharp edges of his talons and the point of the Grim Chimera’s bone spear. The rest had faded into a bitter shadow that hung in the air like a stench. Even the two tails of the Grim Chimera had vanished.

Ultimately, however, Randidly shook his head side to side at Yggdrasil’s objection. “You are right, this is dangerous. That’s the point. The Grim Chimera doesn’t respond to anything else. And compared to the Skill Levels that you two possess… the Grim Chimera has a much lower foundation. We need to force that upward. The faster, the better.”

The Stillborn Phoenix stirred, but all it felt was contempt for the weakness of others. It might have even sprung over to devour the Grim Chimera if Yggdrasil hadn’t always been careful to watch the selfish image’s movements. For its part, Yggdrasil pulsed again, urging Randidly once more.

Randidly waved his hand. “I stopped Vualla from going down this Path because of what her image was becoming. It was calcifying into a horrifying monster with no senses, only the capacity for destruction. But the Grim Chimera will grow, even in these circumstances. That is the type of image that it is. Trust me: I made it that way.”

Unwillingly, the part of Randidly that agreed with Yggdrasil relented. And so the Grim Chimera went once more into battle against Kaan Swacc. The unifying image of it was getting weaker as it continuously overexerted itself, but Randidly didn’t concern himself with that. Instead, his focus turned to the various Skills that made up the Descent of the Grim Chimera. If the common thread was lost, focus on the aspects.

Its two passive abilities were the first specific images to receive Randidly’s attention. Even if the whole of the image was weakening, that would eventually come back if the parts grew healthier. So in the next fight against Kaan Swacc, Randidly embodied both Chimeric Avoidance and Abomination’s Grim Vigor to the best of his abilities.

These were the Skills that generally drew the least amount of their potency from his image, so Randidly hadn’t spent much time refining the images related to them. They were, after all, entirely passive in their activation. But in that first fight against Kaan Swacc with that mindset, Randidly realized how much the Grim Chimera needed those two images when fighting alone.

Chimeric Avoidance was the signature Skill of the Grim Chimera, that allowed it to avoid just a little bit more that what should be physically possible. Every one of the Chimera’s movements could be streamlined because of that Path of variance that only it could walk. Attacks that should lay the Chimera out simply brushed against its hardened skin as it weaved closer.

Because the Skill’s effect bordered on impossibility, Randidly had just… vaguely influenced the direction of the image in the past. His attention had been spent elsewhere. But now, he felt the massive contractions running through the body of the physicalized Grim Chimera as he fought. His heartbeat was thunderous, his blood was scalding. While stepping sharply backward to avoid one of Kaan’s pyramids that shot down at his head, Randidly realized that the Grim Chimera wasn’t inherently special. It had no magical Skill that gave it access to isolated space in order to dodge.

The body of the Grim Chimera evolved on the fly. Its joints, bones, and muscles could expand and contract rather freely. The more Randidly examined himself, the more he realized that the bones of the Grim Chimera seemed to be lined with a cartilage/muscle hybrid that allowed his skeleton to contract. And as agonizing as the process was, the Grim Chimera knew it was worth it.

Survival first. Everything else was just a bonus.

Congratulations! Your Skill Chimeric Avoidance (L) has grown to Level 289!

Kaan used the resonance from one of his pyramids to suppress Randidly’s abilities and another to boost his own. Then he zipped forward, filled with the fiery assurance that Randidly Ghosthound was a Nether spy.

And how could the Grim Chimera withstand the strain of the constant expansion and contraction? Because it had a Skill that made him more myth than flesh.

Congratulations! Your Skill Abomination’s Grim Vigor (M) has grown to Level 335!

Steam radiated off of Randidly in waves as he spun sideways, breaking past the System limit and barely managing to use raw Nether Brawn and the dregs of the Grim Chimera to stand up against Kaan Swacc’s blitz. He moved with a violence that shredded his muscles because he had no other choice, and his body was steadily knit together again by the vigor that animated him.

In this Skill Randidly steadily invested more and more of his thoughts and insights as the frantic battle raged. The drive at the core of the Grim Chimera became almost an obsession because Randidly sensed that shifting this image would give him the insight to transform the Grim Chimera. What was the source of this monstrous vigor? As his arms were smashed and broken by Kaan’s attacks, Randidly’s attention was stretched to its limits. The length between moments because positively yawning.

Possibilities flitted and front of him and were banished just as quickly.

Randidly released a steaming breath. The muscles of his legs tensed as he prepared to roll to the side. In the genesis of the Grim Chimera were hidden many old images, but as Randidly dug deeper within himself looking for an answer, the image that emerged most cleanly was ash. The Chimera was a being of ash, surviving and persisting through a great cataclysm. The old world had been reduced to embers and scattered, leaving nothing remaining of the grand civilization of the past.

But not all of those embers had gone out. The wafting steam radiating outward from Randidly’s skin began to intensify. Randidly blinked. It was pretty simple, really. He had considered similar options in the past. Animating the core of the Grim Chimera was one of those few remaining embers of a destroyed world.

And just like that, the engine of the Grim Chimera became suffused with overwhelming heat. Which was not enough to prevent Randidly from being smashed into the ground and knocked out of the memory by Kaan Swacc only a few moments later.

While he recovered from the damage the Grim Chimera had sustained, Randidly lay on his back and looked up at the sky. Somehow, while Randidly had been training, even the clouds had fled from him. All that lay above him was a vast expanse of blue. The sky was so clear that it didn’t even seem to exist. It gathered his gaze and rewarded him with nothing but that eternal blue.

In his chest, there was a minor shift at the core of the Grim Chimera. Where there had previously only been emotions, now the molten ember of a destroyed world bound itself with those emotions. The ashy, capricious form of the Grim Chimera began to swirl and churn.

Considering how exhausted Randidly’s mental energy was even outside of the weakened image of the Grim Chimera, the change did not come with much fanfare. But like the slow trickle of water forcing its way out of a broken pipe, it portended larger shifts to come.

Randidly began to laugh as he observed the slow shift in his image, “See? It’s working.”

Yggdrasil shook its leaves in disbelief.