The Legend of Randidly Ghosthound

Chapter 2250

Randidly’s eyes widened, partially in pain, but also in shocked confusion.

At first, Randidly felt taken aback by her ‘Celestial Tears’ attack pattern. Considering all the advantages he had accumulated in his life, it didn’t seem like a winning strategy against him. She became a concentrated bolt of energy, teleported around in a small area to build up additional momentum, then began to slam herself into him with so much force it felt like he was being repeatedly body slammed.

Randidly gritted his teeth as the impacts began to add up. His bones ached and his jaw clenched, enduring the rapid barrage. He couldn’t even see, as her energy rose the brightness increased. Peach and fuschia and gold fuzzed his vision. And the technique seemed to be ramping up in frequency. During the first few seconds, she crashed into him a dozen times a second. By the fifth second, the number was closer to a hundred, even his physical endurance was overwhelmed by the constant pressure.

The special ability of Sulfur, Resistant to Force (U) has been activated!

Congratulations! Your Skill the Cloak of Utter Night (P) has grown to Level 988!

For quite a while, he maintained his bemusement as so many of his abilities and Skills invalidated concussive force. But the onslaught of attacks kept accelerating. The energy body slams didn’t seem to weaken Illia’s momentum at all, only strengthen it. His expression grew darker and darker as he remained in a defensive posture. His skin tingled, numb from the constant blows. He could no longer count how many times he had been hit by her.

He tried to shift his weight and prepare to break out, but rainbow-Illia twisted and struck him at the exact weak point of his center of gravity. Randidly almost stumbled but was able to forcefully control his body and settle back down. Like the opposite of a good masseuse, Illia seemed to be pounding tension into the depths of his body. An ache in the marrow of his bones steadily grew as he endured.

Congratulations! Your Skill the Cloak of Utter Night (P) has grown to Level 990!

With more concentration, the soft velvet of his Cloak condensed around his body. The image physicalization took the edge off of the pressure he felt, but her strategy seemed not to be to knock him out with one strong blow, but to wear him down with sheer numbers. She bounced around, ripping out of her patterns at unexpected angles, impacting him with dangerous amounts of force. His Nether senses could barely follow her movement, shrouded as she was by her unraveling patterns, but he could sense the reverberating diffusions of her Toosah softening the blows on her body.

So it will come down to endurance, Randidly observed. He pressed his lips together; his face locked into a vicious leer. So far… none have been able to rival me. But you certainly are an admirable foe, Illia. I wonder, how were you trained?

Congratulations! Your Skill the Cloak of Utter Night (P) has grown to Level 999!

His Cloak thickened, muffling the pounding. Even under attack, he could use this opportunity to refine his rather recently formed Dread Homunculus. As though sensing his increasing resistance, Illia accelerated. Then, all of a sudden, Randidly gasped and spat out a mouthful of blood.

His body sent out a dozen warnings from only a single one of her vicious impacts, and a second had arrived before his brain caught up with the threat. Long furrows had been clawed into his powerful flesh by a sudden shift in the patterns around Illia’s body. Those Toosah arrangements that diffused pressure and force suddenly flipped around, concentrating it. The power of her rainbow slam punched small holes through the Cloak of Utter Night and impacted him directly. Randidly pulled more energy to create dense Nether around him in defense, but her patterns melted the energy. Desperately, he pulled more from the surrounding environment to reinforce himself.

Congratulations! Your Skill the Cloak of Utter Night (P) has grown to Level 1002!

Congratulations! Your Skill The World Tree Sips from Every Realm (T) has grown to Level 996!

The flurry of violence after Illia shifted her Toosah to a glitteringly offensive arrangement shook Randidly. Just as he began to consider the possibility he couldn’t endure like this, the attack stopped. For a second he looked straight ahead, the brightness of Illia’s attacks leaving him blind in the lull that followed.

The wounds on his chest and side began to knit themselves closed.

Yet soon he refocused, finding Illia had collapsed in front of him. Her wings appeared dim, the glitter faded. The wound on her chest had been greatly widened, likely as she had endured a similar amount of feedback during the bodyslams with a much less reinforced physique. A cough wracked her body, shaking her and hunching her shoulders.

In the moment after the Celestial Tears failed, the Nether Kings unleashed their prepared blow. They might be much less capable than Illia, yet they at least had plenty of battle sense. An arrow of concentrated Nether shot forward, but without Illia’s patterns to protect them, Randidly glanced at it, dissected it mentally, then waved a hand to dismantle the efforts into their component parts.

Hunk chunks jettisoned from the main projectile and scraped across the ground, throwing up huge plumes of dirt.

He had never considered the details before, but Randidly felt glad his instincts had always urged him not to challenge the modern Nether King; for two Nether individuals, it was almost impossible to prevail against someone who had a deeper understanding of patterns than you.

Perhaps someday soon he’d be capable of reaching that point, but definitely not before traveling through the memory in the Upper Sonara.

He looked back at Illia. She glared at him defiantly, almost daring him to proclaim his victory. But Randidly kept his mouth shut, suddenly exhausted by the melee and from the violence he had committed today. He did feel quite a bit more confident, after the fight. For better or worse, he had honed his edge through conflict. The Stillborn Phoenix remained painful to utilize, but it had performed under these conditions.

They just looked at each other. At this point, words weren’t necessary. And Randidly saw the dead Nether Warriors around him and felt exhausted. He had extinguished those lives to send a message to the Nether forces, but they weighed on him. A few thousand more specters to join in the baleful waltz. But he didn't want to kill Illia and these Nether Kings, if he didn’t have to.

Illia’s eyes softened. Her shoulders trembled, perhaps sensing his intent to spare them. Randidly opened his mouth, but another voice cut across his own.

“Fatal Predation.”

Illia stiffened. A ghastly skeleton appeared behind her, an open maw that the dragonfly woman just had time to turn and face before the teeth crunched into her flesh. She screamed, for one lingering second, and then fell silent, the jaws chewing and consuming her.

More than the spectral jaws that aided the image, the worst part was the hooks beneath the surface, reaching into the depths of her body and pulling out all of her secret abilities and methods.

Fatia Cerulean, heavy and resplendent in blue flames, walked forward. His jaws clacked together. “Nether King Hungry Eye, I have arrived to pay back the favor you did for me, fighting Enmya on my doorstep. And let this be a lesson for those Nether imbeciles that think we will be easy prey; if you bring violence to our lands, we will make you pay.”

“Fatia,” Randidly ground his teeth as he looked at the opportunistic new arrival. His lips felt curiously dry. “Cerulean.”

His eyes fixated on the space above the raptor construct’s shoulder, where a new, fourth, little air distortion began to form. The bastard had swooped in and claimed the dragonfly woman as a trophy. Right in front of him.

The Nether Kings released a pulse of energy into the sky, sounding the retreat. The fighting in the other parts of the city ceased as the Nether army instantly responded. The different offenses pulled out and began to retreat. Next to Randidly, Fatia barked out an order and several mid-tier fighters dashed past, pursuing the retreating Nether forces.

Fatia Cerulean offered Randidly a short bow. Already, his energy began to transform as he incorporated this new prize into his body. “I appreciate your efforts as always, Hungry Eye. Please, allow me to take it from here.”

Randidly looked at Fatia with disgust. He had an overwhelming desire to strike, to rip this carrion being to pieces. The thought of Fatia stealing the lovely, mesmerizing rainbow wings of Illia and slapping them Frankenstein style onto his body made him want to vomit. All the secrets, all the quiet pride, the moxxy to challenge Randidly to a physical contest had been extinguished. And yet-

Randidly turned away without saying anything further. In the end, he had come here with the intention of assisting the Aetherlands in their war against the Nether. Not to create a counteroffensive, but to defend the lines between the two lands. And that was exactly what Fatia was doing.

The character of his allies left him bitter. But he knew now wasn’t the time to act on the feeling.

Randidly’s justice would come later.

As Fatia and his subordinates raced away to pick off wounded Nether Warriors like the mangy coyotes they were, Randidly looked up at the ominous Nether storms above Homewell. He reached out, his body still aching and small seeds of regret in his chest. He kept his touch as gentle as though he held a newborn as he unwound the patterns in the sky to create a new beginning.

Congratulations! Your Skill Gospel Within the Seething Torrent (P) has grown to Level 999!

When you became part of a movement bigger than yourself, sometimes you became hitched to unsavory individuals taking advantage of situations for their own ends. However, Randidly also knew his own behavior was the most important. So long as he kept his eyes focused forward and acted in a way he wouldn’t regret, he could keep his chin held high.

He didn’t dissipate the Nether storms, but wove them into something new. His Nether Core remained exhausted from his activation of his First Authority, but he possessed enough Nether to unleash a bit of the Fourth Authority, Animation Nova.

While the Nether forces retreated from around Homewell, Randidly knitted together a soft rain. The clouds shifted from the heavy black of unrefined iron to the soft grey of dirty wool. The heavy-bottomed masses of water vapor cracked open and began to mist down across the city as it nursed its wounds.

Randidly looked up at the sky, allowing the warm rain to hit his face. In the midst of a collapsed road through the slum, a small sapling twitched. Its roots found it in themselves to dig into the ground and spread. The ominous brownish tinge in its leaves began to recede. The sapling remained pressed against the ground, but that was fine.

After all, it wasn’t a sapling at all, but a vine. And it was more than happy to snake sideways through the complex and interesting terrain of the rubble.

Congratulations! Your Skill Gospel Within the Seething Torrent (P) has grown to Level 1000!

Congratulations! Pantheon intervention! You have achieved your 15th Mille in record time! In terms of total Mille’s achieved, you are now second within the whole of the Nexus! But please note: you have not yet created the definition for the term Ghasthund. Each Mille you achieve before creating the definition will increase the effect the term will have on existence.

As you advance along this Path, your ability to influence the underpinnings of existence grows. Should you reach 25 Mille’s before creating your definition, the term Ghasthund will be potent enough to generate a corresponding ‘Hierarchy’ for the Nexus. The Hierarchy of Ghasthund.

However, expanding the term's influence also makes it a broader foundation and more easily infiltrated. If you do not define the term soon, influence from the Alpha Cosmos will be unavoidable.