The ambient temperature around Randidly Ghosthound continued to rise as he released his emotional limiters. His skin was constantly tingling, while his nerves sang with the near-constant searing pain that stabbed into him from the uncontrollable emotions. The flames of emotion dyed the surroundings a deep purple color to his senses. More and more buried feelings of dissatisfaction and fury bubbled up from the depths of his soul.

In a way, it was cathartic. In another, it was a descent toward madness.

The constant threats from the Nexus… the arrival of Kaan Swacc on Expira… now the movements of Velio Dunn, targeting him…

Neveah’s emotional wounds and the fact that his weakness had drawn her to the Nexus, despite her wishes…

The sacrificed worlds of the Fifth Cohort… the monsters of the Nexus...

His current circumstances… the innocent doppelganger he had killed...

Everything erupted from his body, staining the surrounding space. The sensation was oddly intoxicating, especially as more and more emotions gushed upward. He paused in his manipulation of the melting metal to just savor the flood of sensations. Gradually, he was coming to understand the powerful effect of the Visage of Obsession. There was no better word than ‘Obsession’ to describe the wild hunger in his soul right now. Those undeniable emotions became motivation that guided his hands with unerring conviction.

Randidly could feel the veins in his sightless eyes steadily popping as he stared state forward into the air in front of him. As his gaze grew increasingly bloodshot, his hand grew almost cruel in its determined refinement of the Black Gold. Meanwhile, the heat continued to rise, ripping out impurities from the metal that Randidly couldn’t even sense prior to reaching this heat. He could also feel the Nether Ritual straining underneath his newfound intensity, but to his malicious glee, the barrier strained but held.

His progress in manipulating Nether was currently sufficient.

Steam, molten metal, and flames flowed around Randidly. His Stillborn Phoenix raised its head and screamed its fury. He couldn’t witness the light bending around his face as the image manifested, but the power was enough to warp the very air. The emotions within the Nether Ritual began to sluggishly swirl as that power distorted the surroundings. Gravity gripped the space; once the purities were removed from the metal, Randidly began to shape and temper the material with the base force of celestial bodies.

Yet he couldn’t miss the way the Stillborn Phoenix’s form began to twist and warp as he maintained its phantom. The hyper-concentrated emotions led to shuddering changes within the image. From the depths of the depth-less singularity at the core of the Egg of Depression, Randidly could feel certain impossibilities yearning for manifestation. With small steps, those impossibilities became slightly more likely.

Yet those changes only increased his own power. The Stillborn Phoenix’s cries grew increasingly loud to Randidly’s ears, to the point that waves of imperceptible force traveled beyond the edge of the Nether Ritual. And in his chest, his of Nether Nebula began to spin even faster. The feeling of limitlessness that followed these changes was intoxicating.

Congratulations! Your Skill Hallucination of the Bloodless Heart (T) has grown to Level 301!

The small portion of Randidly that still maintained his rationality couldn’t deny that his current state was… strange. But while his body was seized with the delirious joy of obsession, that small observer could construct a theory as to his current situation.

Currently, Randidly felt… like his grasp could extend beyond the normal limitations of his mortal coil. He spread, like an amorphous cloud, outside of his body through emotion. The intensity of his concentration maintained his sharp Willpower through the experience, but the sensation was profoundly uncomfortable to the small shred of rationality remaining to him. Suddenly, he no longer seemed to be tied to a physical form. By the same token, he was no longer protected by the physical. That prospect filled him with a strange sense of urgency, worrying that his body would be consumed in whatever reaction now wracked him.

Soon, he would be a ghastly spirit, wandering around to prey on the living.

However, reflection proved those worries to be largely unfounded; he wasn’t close to becoming an undead. Instead, Randidly’s explosion of emotions was steadily pushing him toward internal balance. In the past, he had primarily relied on shape to govern his images. His time in the depths saw him gradually increasing his mastery of emotions, but it was always a secondary concern to his original methods. But at this moment, under the influence of obsession, he instead shifted to a state where emotion was the dominant trait of his Aether.

Shape could barely contain the intensity of emotions he had triggered.

He was emotionally unleashed, blazing with all of his hidden thoughts. By surging past that limitation now, he might even have the possibility of later bringing the two aspects of Aether into alignment in the future.

Still… not that any of that fucking matters right now… Randidly barred his teeth as his shoulders rose and fell with silent laughter. True to his earlier impression, he toed the line of madness as his emotions washed across his personality and body with all the unpredictability of the sea. But as he sensed the floating blobs of molten metal around him, his mouth twitched. Ugh… looks like I need a bit more metal though…

Randidly produced a dozen more bars of Black Gold from his interspatial ring. They tumbled slowly in the air as the temperature rapidly softened their edges. Under the heat released by his emotional flames and his pounding heart, it only took those ingots a few minutes to completely melt into the refinable form. Then he rapidly began cleansing these new additions to bolster his shrinking store of metal.

There were obviously costs to his current state. Even if he was obsessed to the point of seeking perfection from the result, the influence of the emotions made him slightly heavy-handed in his refinement. When he blasted away the weaknesses of the metal, he often annihilated quite a bit of the surrounding material.

Some part of him understood that proceeding more slowly would make the process more efficient. But he had plenty of material to spare.

His heart began to pound as his hand flicked side to side, guiding the molten metal through the air in front of him at higher and higher speeds. It flowed in a large figure eight, then spun off to the side and spiraled into a vortex from a twitch of his finger. The bulging and distorted forms of overly emotional Yggdrasil and Grim Chimera combed their power through the material, removing any weaknesses they found.

When finally the refinement process seemed unable to locate any flaws, he proceeded to the next step. With tight Control, Randidly began separating the large batch of satisfactory molten metal into smaller clumps. Soon, nearly two hundred beads of metal in varying sizes trembled in the air.

Randidly sneered and mobilized every ounce of force he could from his manipulation of gravity. Huge distortions smashed into the molten metal beads as he began to shape them. But before he fully committed to moving onto the next portion of the forging, his eyes flashed. His mouth opened and he unleashed a pure, screaming note that dwarfed even the Stillborn Phoenix at its most shrill.

Of course, the note created no noise. But the pressure coming from his emotions spiked upward. They spiraled together and resonated with that note until the majority of those emotional flames condensed into a tight stone in front of Randidly’s mouth. He drove every last drop of emotion in his body to that crystalized point. Then, as his expulsion of the emotions continued, the stone cracked.

BOOOOOOOM!

This produced a definite noise, bits of smote crystal smashing against Randidly’s face and chest and unleashing a wave of force that distorted the surrounding air. That wave ripped through the floating marbles of metal, tearing huge gashes in their form. Luckily, that wave of force passed harmlessly through the Nether Ritual. But as it escaped into the surrounding air, Randidly curiously noted that it seemed to frighten away any of the ambient emotions.

Tsk, so the secret to crystalizing Aether comes from emotion, huh…? How the hell did I even manage to do that…?

The Nether Beasts stirred to investigate the disturbance as Randidly fell from his emotional intensity, but they still weren’t able to peer through the Nether Ritual. For now, it seemed like he was proceeding as planned.

With renewed clarity in his movements, Randidly slowly blinked. Then he raised his right hand in front of him. Although his heart continued to pound and shake his body, the emotional flames dimmed across his body. The extended state of agony steadily eased. For now, he was spent.

Congratulations! Your Skill Hallucination of the Bloodless Heart (T) has grown to Level 301!

Congratulations! Your Skill Stigma of the Stillborn Phoenix (L) has grown to Level 306!

Gradually, Randidly’s breathing continued to fall toward normalcy as he continued his work on the metal limb. After the explosion of fury, his emotions receded like a tide, leaving him feeling somewhat numb. That tingling numbness didn’t detract from his conviction, however. His mental edge seemed to be all the sharper, fully revealed after the departure of his emotions.

His senses narrowed on the waiting beads of metal in front of him.

Whatever that emotional wave had been, it had baptized the remaining metal. As continued to shape the material into his arm, he could feel the physical form of the metal sometimes bend in unpredictable ways. The way the material folded spoke to an existence that perhaps had incorporated a bit of his Grim Chimera, allowing the material to somehow ‘avoid’ a portion of its mass. Whether that was a good or a bad thing, however...

Even with a diminished wildness in his heart, Randidly still smiled widely at the result. Somehow, I can tell that this result is exceedingly special…

Then his grin shrank somewhat as a more wry portion of his humor reared its head. At the very least… I will no longer need to weave these Nether Rituals and do Engravings with just one arm… fuck, but it’s been quite annoying to be so imbalanced like this…

Small physical deviations aside, the actual shaping was the quickness of the steps to creating an arm. In this iteration, Wendy had set aside the idea of scale mail at Randidly’s request; the pieces had simply become too small to contain the power of the Engraving he needed. Part of that was materials, but some of the individual scales had been wearing out prior to Velio Dunn’s devastating strike. The arm might have lasted enough year at that pace, but it was still disappointing to Randidly that there were already signs of failure.

The metal was shaped and tempered, then cooled to slowly settle into its new shape. Gradually, the sharp-edged components formed in front of him.

The new form had been inspired by his Grim Chimera image, but it wasn’t overly reliant on the image. Unlike the hollow options he created previously, this arm would literally be composed of both a refined inner limb and a thick layer of armor that would be wrapped around it. Randidly would need to help reshape Sulfur so he wasn’t taking the place of the limb, but that was probably for the best.

Sulfur simply wasn’t made for the delicate touch required by Randidly in his training or normal life.

Most of the tiny pieces in front of him were bits of the complicated hand; that was the portion with the most difficulty in assembly. Even so, Randidly rapidly spun the pieces together to create the final form. Like pieces of a puzzle guiding themselves into their natural place, Randidly observed with great satisfaction as his limb was completed.

It floated in front of him, the final result radiating a powerful emotional light.

With a nod, Randidly waved his hand; the arm and armor around it disassembled itself. The pieces spun outward and arranged themselves in front of Randidly. He raised his right hand and Mana rushed toward his fingers. It was time to Engrave.