Exactly six hours later, the Dusk Jackal pulled up a hatchet mid-attack and smacked his lips in disappointment. “Ahoooooom. Well, I suppose that’s that. Unless you wish to continue the duel for another six hours…?”

A small movement shifted several large stones and sent them toppling. Randidly leveraged himself out of the rubble pile with Acri and spat out a mouthful of blood and spittle. His shoulders heaved as he tried to catch his breath. His body was covered by over a score of different wounds, some of which were deep enough to reveal the dull glint of his bones. Blood seeped outward and stained the broken stones beneath his feet.

“I believe stopping now is appropriate,” Randidly coughed while trying to sound mild. With an exaggerated sigh, the Dusk Jackal nodded and turned away, allowing Randidly to lean against Acri and hobble over toward the position where Helen was standing. His physical body was rapidly mending his wounds, but the sense of total exhaustion wouldn’t pass easily.

Randidly sat down on a bit of sundered stone next to Helen, who was very visibly enjoying his torment. She needed to use both hands across her face as a barricade in order to hide her shit-eating grin. Randidly’s lips twitched. Even as his near-limp tail rolled fitfully across the ground behind him, he looked over at her. “Satisfied?”

“Karma’s a bitch,” Helen revealed her wide grin. “But the way Seeker Dusk Jackal manipulates light with his image was rather inspiring. I could definitely stand to learn a few tricks from him…”

Randidly sighed and closed his eyes. Every part of him ached. As it turned out, Seeker Dusk Jackal’s image was a pretty effective counter against him. The Pinnacle Seeker’s image was designed to improve his speed, power, and reaction time as his bloodlust gradually accumulated. Randidly’s physical body was definitely powerful, but this ancient Pinnacle Seeker could even the playing field by steadily inflicting wounds on his body.

For Seeker Dusk Jackal, his body wreathed in the light of dusk was the entirety of his image.

The longer the duel had lasted, the more the Dusk Jackal spent time throwing back his head and laughing uproarious, while constantly muttering ‘blood… blood…!’. Very quickly, Randidly’s plans to use the duel as a chance to work off some of his stress had to be shelved; his understanding of his new body was pushed to the limits as the Pinnacle Seeker came after him with increasingly powerful attacks.

The first two hours were actually pretty enjoyable, but then the rust-colored stains within the shifted lighting reached some sort of watershed moment. The Dusk Jackal’s movements accelerated and that amorphous projection his hatchets could use to inflict wounds grew. At that time, Randidly was forced to activate all three of his images in combination to deal with the bloodthirsty offensive. Otherwise, he might really have been beaten to death.

And as it was, he had to rely on his incredibly powerful body to screen the worst of the Dusk Jackal’s blows.

But of course, not even three images merged into one were enough to rival the current wave of bloodthirst that the Dusk Jackal was riding. Perhaps at the start Randidly would have had an advantage, but he hadn’t expected this change. Two hours of taking the opponent lightly, two hours of desperately using most of his capability to slow his opponent’s accumulation of speed and power, finishing with two hours where Randidly dropped all pretense of fighting directly and relied on his powerful new legs and tail to dodge and delay the Dusk Jackal as long as possible.

Randidly hadn’t activated his Nether Core and Weight in order to empower his abilities during the fight, but even then, he didn’t believe that the Dusk Jackal had played all of his cards either. They had competed solely on images and physical power and Randidly had been steadily overmatched. He had to repeatedly push the limits of his mental energy to keep up with the storm-like flurry of hatchets.

Which left Randidly running only on fumes. Currently, his mind’s constant hum had slowed to total silence; he would need quite a bit of time to recover.

Approximately five minutes later, Randidly snapped back to wakefulness. Seeker Dusk Jackal was guffawing nearby, chatting with Claudette. The man’s jackal eyes were shining with obvious good cheer. The beastman looked as though he had just participated in a rejuvenating spa day, not spent several hours hacking off chunks of Randidly’s flesh.

And of course, Helen was still crouching next to Randidly and snickering with gleeful schadenfreude.

Randidly pressed his eyes closed again. There’s still a large gap between me and the truly powerful in the Nexus… my ability to survive against Elhume’s attack is due to somewhat special circumstances. But at the very least I now possess some ability to persist, even if I’m attacked by someone like Velio Dunn.

Plus… Now, finally, Randidly allowed himself a slow smile. I earned plenty of Skill Levels during the past six hours. There is nothing like getting beaten up to generate some extra PP… hum, maybe I should go through my available Paths and see if there is anything that will help me weave these Nether envelopes…

Humming to himself, Randidly stood. His limbs trembled a bit, but that was all due to mental exhaustion; a few minutes was enough for his powerful body to heal his wounds completely. Grateful for the Dusk Jackal for arranging the duel the way it was, Randidly forced himself to walk over toward the Pinnacle Seeker and Claudette.

Immediately, the Dusk Jackal noticed Randidly’s movements and made a beeline for him with a beaming smile on his face. The only problem was the fact that he had the head of a jackal, so the happy expression was ruined by the yellow teeth and the tongue lolling out the side of his mouth. “Seeker Ghosthound! You are welcome anytime. Most fighters, even Pinnacle Seekers, attempt to protect themselves from my image. But you… to meet it directly for so long... you! Mmmm, there truly is nothing like the sensation of blades cutting into flesh…”

The smile Randidly returned was brittle. If I could have avoided just absorbing your blows with my body, don’t you think I would have?!?

But all in all, his impression of the Dusk Jackal was rather positive. The beastman lived up to the image of a bloodthirsty being who possessed the head of a jackal, but the particular chivalry of Pinnacle Seekers did a lot mollify that impression.

The Dusk Jackal swaggered over and slapped Randidly several times on the back, earning a grimace from him each time. “Let me tell you, none of my disciples have your sort of fire in their chest! Too many have died under similar circumstances. Haaaah, truly, to be overwhelmingly powerful is a heavy burden…”

Randidly’s twitching intensified. Okay, maybe he’s just a happy idiot.

Very quickly, Randidly said a few more polite things to the Pinnacle Seeker and then extricated himself, claiming that he needed some time to rest. Or rather than claiming such a thing, Randidly was just honest that he was completely drained after the six-hour duel. Seeker Dusk Jackal lost some of his cheer at that admission but still allowed Randidly to go, after extracting a promise that Randidly would return for another spar after sharpening his images.

Helen returned to his Alpha Cosmos, finally ridding Randidly of the leering grin that had been floating behind him and delighting in his misery. So he walked alone with Claudette back to the portal, rubbing the bridge of his nose to head off a developing headache.

“...Randidly…” Claudette finally said, drawing Randidly out of his exhaustion. “I… was slightly dishonest earlier. Yes, Neshamah Rex reached out asking about you, but that wasn’t what I wanted to talk to you about. I’m just… well. It is rare that I need to ask another for help. So this is somewhat awkward for me.”

Randidly frowned at Claudette. The blonde woman bit her lip, truly looking much more vulnerable than he had ever seen her in the past.

After hesitating for a few seconds, Claudette spoke again. “Do you know anything about image refinement?”

Randidly considered that. “...I believe that is a term that I’ve heard before. That’s where you hire an outside force to go into your image and help improve it, right? When I arrived at the Nexus… it was one of the jobs that was mentioned to me. But I don’t really know anything about it. Why?”

“I’d like you to be the one to help refine my image,” Claudette said with a serious expression. Then she bowed at the waist. “Please.”

Randidly took a few more steps before he realized that Claudette didn’t intend on moving until she received an answer from him. The corner of his mouth turned downward; right now, after he was thoroughly beaten for six hours straight, this was certainly not the method most likely to win sympathy from him. But he forced his breath out through his teeth and rubbed the back of his neck. “I’ll think about it.”

“Truly? Thank you!” Claudette straightened with a beaming smile. Shrugging, Randidly turned away and resumed his walk to the teleporter. But rather than going with Claudette back to the Frost Matriarch’s home base, he asked her to thank the Frost Matriarch for her hospitality and used his Philosopher’s Key to open a portal back to Edraine’s base in the Nexus.

To Randidly’s surprise, Claudette didn’t attempt to stop him; she simply nodded and allowed him to leave without bringing up her request for his help with an image refinement again. For that, she earned back some lost points.

Back in the base of the cabal to bring down Elhume, Randidly could finally release a breath. He spoke briefly to Edraine, who confirmed that there was nothing pressing occurring at the moment, then retired to a side room to rest. When he awoke a few hours later with his mental energy restored, Randidly sought out Octavius Shrike and asked him about image refinement.

“The process is rather straightforward, even if it is incredibly labor-intensive.” The Overseer said, sticking his horn upward with a self-righteous air. “Certain Aether devices are used to expand the scale of an image; it transforms a small image to one that exists on the scale of a world. Then the Sculptor heads into that image world and seeks out areas that appear shabbier than the rest, or are comparatively weak and unrefined, and either destroys or adjusts the problem areas. Scaled up like that, most of an image’s flaws become obvious. Why? Do you already want another job? Many will be willing to assist in your Sculptor training, considering your success as the Head Drill Sergeant. I hear your Squad has performed admirably in the pursuit of the Nether-”

Randidly shook his head and the excitement in Ocatvius’s face turned into disappointment. Then Randidly asked. “I’m just curious. But isn’t the process… somewhat invasive? Having a foreign intelligence moving through your image… don’t they have to power to deeply damage your image foundations?”

Octavius nodded with a solemn expression. “It’s a risk. But… this is the Nexus. Everyone craves more power. Many are willing to accept the risks as they make their bid for dominance.”