Randidly’s eyes were glazed as he moved from the West Field to the North Field, passing the bear enclosure in the process. He moved like a zombie, barely even noticing the intervening space as his legs carried him forward. He set his prodigious subconscious to scanning for weeds and bugs within the field while most of his Willpower concerned itself with the act of ‘polishing’ up the Nether Array beneath the farm.

Congratulations! Your Skill Right Hand of the Nether Polymath has grown to Level 101!

Congratulations! Your Skill Left Hand of the Nether Oracle has grown to Level 344!

…

Congratulations! Your Skill Right Hand of the Nether Polymath has grown to Level 189!

Randidly’s fingers were deadly weapons, flicking out and accurately crushing even the smallest bug or beetle that was nibbling on Nrorce’s delicious plants. He moved blindly, guided by his instincts and a viciously minded Grim Intuition. The rapid acceleration he utilized soon brought the Engravings on his gloves to the point that they were sizzling, but Randidly didn’t even notice. Most of his attention was below, steadily stirring the Nether into motion and smoothing out its flowing currents.

At one point, Randidly paused and stopped himself, right as his hand was about to crush a bug. ...no, butterflies and bees are probably okay. Do these plants utilize pollen to spread…? Haaah, I should have asked for more details…

Randidly wrote a small addendum to the instructions for his subconscious then gratefully turned away from the task. His body lumbered forward, his tail naturally unwinding itself and flicking back and forth in his distraction. To the insects, he was a Calamity the likes of which they had never seen before. Any mooching insect in the vicinity of the fields was rapidly sought out and crushed mercilessly.

When he had done several circuits of the North Field and found no more transgressing insects, Randidly blindly allowed his legs to guide him South. Because he was bored, his tail started flicking side to side, experimenting with some of the insights into Nether that his mind was considering. Subconsciously, he started sketching out Nether flows behind him with his tail.

Congratulations! Your Skill Left Hand of the Nether Oracle (M) has grown to Level 352!

Congratulations! Your Skill Right Hand of the Nether Polymath (M) has grown to Level 244!

Unlike the creation of his own Nether Array, enhancing this tattered Nether Array beneath the farm proved to be much more difficult. Because the inherent balance of this Nether Array was much less sturdy; it had simply occurred, it hadn’t been designed. So his early attempts to improve it had only destabilized the array further, causing Randidly to panic and rapidly reinforce it.

Which only made it more brittle, so Randidly scaled back his attempts and crossed his fingers as he examined the result. But then he worried that he had weakened the overall effect, so he gradually began to try and strengthen the Nether Array once more…

The process of searching for flaws and desperately trying to stabilize the Nether Array after he caused it to fail rapidly pushed up the Skill of Right Hand of the Nether Polymath and also earned him a few for his Left Hand. Both Skills gleefully informed him that he was playing with fire by doing this. The positive outcomes and the negative ones were mixed together. The result was often random, despite Randidly’s understanding of how Nether should work.

And he really couldn’t figure out what he was doing wrong. The shape was just… too different from what he had done before.

Randidly arrived at the South field and once more began his mostly blind insect extermination. As most of his awareness worried at keeping everything beneath the ground steady, he realized that he had completely remade the Nether Array. Using the same original shape, after two dozen haphazard attempts. But he examined it with pride when he saw how the movement of Nether in the area had definitely increased.

So Nether could be used like this as well… Randidly paused in tinkering with the Nether beneath him and closed his eyes. His body robotically continued its bloody work as he did so. Thin trails of steam were floating upward from his superheated gloves. Somehow, the thinnest and strained portion of the previous array was the most structurally robust…

I suppose it’s a lot like people. Sometimes, necessity is more determinative than arrangement… not in spite of the hardships, but because of it, that tiny thread of significance grows strong…

Humming to himself, Randidly began to loosen the structure of his Nether Arrays. Instead of covering for the previous array's weakness, he now embraced its strengths and stripped away many of the ancillary connections he added for stability. He knew he would soon try and incorporate a world into his Alpha Cosmos and it perhaps wasn’t the best time to experiment, but he was caught up in his acute sensation of the Nether around him. Something simply felt… right about how he was moving.

Because Randidly realized that the way he shaped Nether Rituals should be based upon who he was. And perhaps he wasn’t quite sure who that person was… but he had to admit that while he definitely took his time in preparing to deal with a problem, his solutions were often pretty aggressive and bold. So where his previous Nether Arrays had been built up like a house, with a foundation and then the function rooms arranged on top, he made a change.

This time… Randidly made a circus tent, with strong, solid polls with the high trapeze draped between them. There was risk. He felt it, even as he made the new arrangement of the Nether Arrays. There were a few points that were exceedingly weak; a proper assault by someone who understood the arrangement could easily crumple it to nothing.

Congratulations! Your Skill Precise Nether Ritual (L) has grown to Level 367!

…

Congratulations! Your Skill Precise Nether Ritual (L) has grown to Level 370!

It should be fine here. I doubt anyone is going to assault this farm… Randidly continued to his methodical massacre of everything non-butterfly and bee crawling through the field. The fingers of his gloves were covered in gore, but those insects' guts were just as quickly baked into charred crisps by the heat rolling off of his gloves. His tail swam lazily through the air, leaving a hanging trail of Nether for several seconds. But for the Alpha Comos… huh. Yet at the same time… as long as my body is fine...

Randidly made one final adjustment to the Nether Array beneath the farm, finally setting it up in the inspired style that combined its previous shape and Randidly’s understanding of himself. Then he obliterated the remaining safeguards. Rapidly, the currents of Nether changed and began to accumulate within those thinnest and most fragile strands of Nether. He could sense the subtle vibrations released by those slender strands was rapidly intensifying. Soon, the energy began to vibrate at such a quick frequency that the Nether Ritual began to sing.

Congratulations! Your Skill Nether Sensation (L) has grown to Level 344!

The cacophony of Nether was so demanding that Randidly finally stopped his physical body. The undulating movements of his tail began anxious as he crouched down and pressed his right hand against the ground. He could sense that the Nether Ritual was about to snap. Randidly could see no way for the arrangement to endure this intensity of energy that was coursing through it.

And yet, Randidly was still and solemn, as he looked down unseeingly into the energy flowing within the ground. ...I suppose that’s why I called the half-step of Nether a ‘Penance’. This is an act… done with faith.

So despite how fragile everything seemed, Randidly held himself back and just watched. He tried to trust his gut.

The central pillar of the Nether Ritual was vibrating like a flicked guitar string, sending ripples through the entire construction. Then it began to fray, small piece of energy splintering off and radiating outward as some sort of natural significance by-product. The process was interesting, but Randidly felt a flash of regret that he had held himself back a second prior.

And yet-

When the snap Randidly had been dreading finally came, it was not the snap he had expected. Instead of the whole support structure collapsing, all that pressurized Nether finally forced itself through that central pillar. A dense squirt of Nether pushed its way downward, rapidly circulating through the preprepared flows. By the time that Nether had gone all the way through the Nether Array and reached its original position at the top, the pressure had dropped to the point where the flow as constant, but manageable.

Gradually, the tremors in the Nether Array ceased.

Randidly sat back on his heels in wonder. I mean… I did this, but… I almost did it on a whim… to think that it actually…

When he studied the phenomenon more closely, Randidly realized that Nether possessed a quality similar to drag as it rubbed up against itself. Two types of Nether, one flowing, one still, would stick to each other. So even though the pressurized Nether flow circulating through the array and then came together in a massive gush through the central pillar, with enough force to blast it outward… the movement of the Nether became the greatest source of support.

“To think that there’s still so much more to learn about Nether…” Randidly shook his head in wonder. Then he became even more tempted by Claudette’s offer. As long as she could provide him with information about Neshamah and the Engraving Guild and the way they used Nether… Randidly had no doubt that he would continue to improve his mastery at a rapid pace.

Randidly idly reached up to scratch his chin as he considered the problem of refining someone else's image, but he wrinkled his nose and stopped himself. He looked in horror at the gloves on his hands. For whatever reason, the melted corpses of thousands of bugs covered his fingers. There was an extremely strange smell wafting off of them, and the metal braces with the Engravings were so heated that the leather seemed to be bubbling a little bit.

Randidly chuckled. “Okay, better move slowly for a while and let these cool off…”

So Randidly sat on the ground and meditated for a bit, his mind traveling through his images. If he planned on helping Claudette, he might as well make sure he did a damn good job.

A good enough job that she could finally force her father to acknowledge her.

*****

“Did you feel that?”

Claudette looked up from the cutting board in front of her. “Huh? Feel what?”

“Like… a shift in energy. Like something profound just came into alignment. Maybe there was a little bit of an earthquake, too.” Nrorce hopped off his stool and hobbled to the window. He peered out the glass, but the window was only barely above the ground, because of the depth of the building, which meant that the goblin couldn’t see much beyond a screen of grass.

“...isn’t that a good thing?” Claudette asked slowly. She had arrived quite peeved at the situation, but the process of cutting up herbs actually was quite fulfilling. Time cooled her temper. So she once more had the poise to smile.

“Ehh…” Nrorce shook his head vehemently. “Unexpected blessings are a sign of future calamities. Such a hassle…”