Four hours of break on the frontlines of a battlefield was a long time, even when there was quite a bit of work Randidly had to do to repair the accumulated damage to his body. Explosive growth left most of the soft tissue in his body depleted. His cells were tiny little furnaces, taking in raw Aether and transforming it into chemical compounds to repair and replace the strained muscles and nerves. At the beginning of the break, Randidly put a lot of his focus into the details of what was happening, but rapidly he allowed his body to instinctively take over the process.

Part of the reason for the transition was that focusing didn’t make much difference for the general bruising and repair Randidly had to deal with, but also Randidly didn’t want to squander the chance to give his Willpower a break. In one way, Abiodun and Lady Iellaya’s perspective was the right one; the battle had just started. He would need energy moving forward. The small difference of directing the healing was a minor drain on his mental focus, but his recovery would be all the faster if he cut out every exertion.

Randidly didn’t intend to wait in his tent a single second longer than the order directed.

And the final reason for the release of control, and the reason that wary was wary of additional distractors was that Grim Intuition continued to feed him information on the state of the battlefield. There was a strong temptation to shut out the information flow, but Randidly forced himself to not look away. When he still had to endure this mental strain, it was all the more important to rid himself of others.

Needless to say, the Nether Gatekeepers' impressive descent to the battlefield struck a brutal blow against the Aether forces. Fortifications fractured and failed. When a dozen Nether Gatekeepers could move together, they plowed forward through the defensive entrenchment without any real resistance. Especially on the opposite flank from Lady Iellaya’s camp, Randidly witnessed hundreds of Aether soldiers being melted into grey goo before the Commanders of their camps were forced to show themselves and defend their soldiers.

Even then, the Commanders at several of the camps could do nothing but give up ground in a steady retreat. Even if they were individually strong, there were simply too many Nether Gatekeepers attack each camp. With raw superior numbers they surged forward, overwhelming the defenses and destabilizing the surrounding area.

With this amount of Nether Gatekeepers, the average Nether Beast behind them was almost superfluous. But the small skirmishes that involved only the footsoldiers on both sides were decided in largely the same manner; by a difference in manpower. The grand formation continued to siphon away ambient Nether and give a defensive boost to the Aether forces, but it wasn’t nearly enough.

Everything was happening too quickly. The moral that had slowly built itself up while Randidly fought that single Nether Gatekeeper was obliterated.

Of course, the one under the most strain initially was Abiodun himself, the one who had so casually relieved Randidly from his post. Yet as the enemies surged forward his image blossomed upward from his figure, creating the phantom of a collapsing and shadowy ruin over this corner of the battlefield. Bit by bit, the edges of this storied edifice fell away and smashed against the oncoming Nether Gatekeepers.

Even if there were twenty-four Nether Gatekeepers that were coming toward him, Abiodun’s positioning for his attacks was especially canny. It was clear that the Nether Gatekeepers could forcefully overpower the image that floated oppressively in front of Lady Iellaya’s camp, but it was equally clear they would pay a cost to do so. And Abiodun reminded them of that cost as frequently as he could.

That ancient city was incomparably solid. Which was why its gradual destruction had enough power to cow even the Nether Gatekeepers for a time. The steady collapses smashed into small bunches of the Nether Gatekeepers, constantly reminding them not to overestimate themselves and challenge him. The air rumbled with the passage of these disintegrating slabs of stone. So the Nether Gatekeepers satisfied themselves with small attacks for now, chipping away at the image’s power gradually.

Even if he uses it intelligently, the image is literally being destroyed as time passes… Randidly pressed his lips together as he examined what was occurring in front of the camp. Will the image lose its power once it has been completely destroyed…? If so, what Abiodun is doing right now-

But then Randidly shook his head with an emotion close to disgust. If Abiodun was truly sacrificing his future potential for current power, it would make a certain amount of sense. They were truly buying time for something. And obviously Abiodun would consider his strength a worthy trade if he could assist Lady Iellaya.

Lord Miln only made his presence note with small strikes to assist his subordinates, but the battle in front of the rocky outcropping of headquarters was the most chaotic of the battlefield. Randidly turned his attention there to search for the individual who looked so like him, but he wasn’t able to locate the doppelganger. It was clear that he wasn’t currently participating in the fighting, but the total lack of presence also seemed to mean that someone quite capable was screening him from Randidly’s perception.

Still, Randidly watched that portion of the battlefield with complicated eyes for several minutes as he studied two individuals who he recognized fighting: Nadia and Kailm, the parents of Illym. The two that had long struggled with the fact they had given birth to two daughters who shared one soul, meaning one of them would have to die. And then when one finally died, they had to endure the truth that the reunited soul had been too wounded to continue for any longer. In the end, they were childless.

Even though Illym had largely given up her consciousness in order to escape her constant guilt and grief, Ignition Essence trembled as Randidly considered the two.

Nadia was a blazing meteor of flame, wielding two crimson phoenixes like they were daggers against the Nether Gatekeepers. Although Randidly couldn’t make out Kailm’s figure, it was always apparent where he was; he stood at the center of a maelstrom of acrid smog, churning relentlessly and forcing the surround enemies backward.

That same deft manipulation of solid images that Randidly had encountered when they tested him became a sharp-edged weapon that they wielded against Nether Gatekeepers. Even if they were so constrained by the numbers of the opponents that they hadn’t been able to eliminate any single one, they waved their hands and brought smoke and fire crashing down through the air. Nether Gatekeepers were knocked away like bowling pins.

Of course, more surged forward to keep Illym’s loving parents from gaining an advantage. There were almost fifty Nether Gatekeepers moving toward the Aether headquarters. And when even Nadia and Kailm could not hold their own, Lord Miln would lift his hand and blast some Nether Gatekeepers backward. In this way, that battle entered into a strange cycle of stalemates.

Inevitably, there was one battlefield that Randidly’s attention wandered back to: Vualla’s fight. When the rest of the battlefield became too difficult to endure or predictable, his attention switched right back.

Vualla was struggling to hold her own against four Nether Gatekeepers. The other four powerful individuals in that camp met the other four Nether Gatekeepers heading for their position and were clearly being pushed back. Yet what could be done? Already, it was Vualla who bore the worst of the Nether horde’s fury.

It was especially worrying right at the beginning. It was clear that Vualla possessed the capability to have an edge over a single Nether Gatekeeper, but dealing with four attacks at once… her heavy metal gauntlets slid forward through each attack, neither too quick nor too slow. The raw aura of destruction that Vualla utilized blasted out from each of her strikes. But she simply couldn’t keep up with the hungry circling of four foes.

The destruction produced by her fists was pure and clear, but it wasn’t yet ready to bear all this weight.

There was a moment about twenty minutes into Randidly’s break where he fully intended to ignore Lady Iellaya’s orders and go to Vualla’s assistance. Yet the word trust made him take a single step toward the door out of his tent and hesitate.

Vualla was struggling, sure, but Randidly could never save her from every challenge in front of her too. And Randidly knew all too well how pissed Vualla would be if he tried to intervene. Yet even so...

So before he set out, Randidly examined his inner world to check his outflowing Aether. Because he was nervous and wondered whether this performance had to do with an unintended side-effect from him providing Aether to Vualla.

What he found was a huge river of Aether surging out toward Vualla. So much so that Randidly was briefly dumbstruck. Of course, it was quite small compared to the sea of Aether that both Helen and Alana took from Randidly, but it was only three-fourths the size of the Aether that Sam used. To see that Vualla’s Aether usage shot so sharply upward…

Was it just because that energy was being used to support her presence here in the current day…? It was so difficult to know which of Ileot’s statements were worth believing and which were absolute bullshit. That man had too much of an advantage over Randidly in regards to information and experience with Aether. But it wasn’t like there was enough time to research what was going on thoroughly with a Nether King trying to kill them all…

In the following twenty minutes, as he closely monitored the Aether going out and Vualla’s determined expression, Randidly slowly calmed down. Because a change was occurring in Vualla’s fighting style that slowly stabilized the situation.

If anything, her image of destruction was becoming fainter in her attacks. Yet each of her punches seemed so much sharper and more destructive as a base. Rather than trying to block or deflect Vualla’s attacks, Nether Gatekeepers now mostly jumped hastily out of the way to avoid conflicting with her. As the time between Nethers attacks grew longer due to this need to dodge, Vualla seized the initiative.

Yet Randidly couldn’t understand it and his inner paranoia slowly stirred to wakefulness; why were Vualla’s strikes becoming more powerful if her image was weakening?

Randidly’s Grim Intuition fixated on that one area of the battlefield and carefully filtered out everything else. Vualla gracefully stepped forward, throwing two sharp left jabs toward a Nether Beast. These blows were simple and quick, with barely a whiff of a destructive image attached to them. Yet they were almost blisteringly fast.

The Nether Gatekeeper 1 scrambled out of the way to avoid the jabs while Nether Gatekeeper 2 surged toward Vualla’s side with its claw raised. Spinning away, Vualla used the momentum from the twist to bring her arm around in a crushing hook toward Nether Gatekeeper 2’s jaw. It hastily pulled back, but Vualla stepped forward and turned her hook into a right straight that cracked the bones of its torso.

Which gave Nether Gatekeeper 1 and 3 enough of an opening to leap toward Vualla’s back. A long tongue and a huge paw both smashed toward Vualla. She turned immediately after completing her strikes against Nether Gatekeeper 1 and examined the oncoming attacks. Randidly could feel the emptiness around her, filled with the strange, immense weight she now wielded with her blows. Her eyes were dark and flinty, the azure color strangely muted.

The tongue Vualla dodged simply by tilting her head to the side, a movement so precise that even Randidly’s Grim Intuition was fuzzy on the distance by which she dodged the attack. In the same instant, Vualla threw a counter across the paw. The two attacks were both vicious, yet it was Nether Gatekeeper 3 that flinched away and pulled hastily back its arm to defend itself.

And it was at that moment that Randidly finally realized what the change in Vualla’s image was; the wild destruction she previously wielded was slowly being condensed down into the natural and organic movements of a punch. Quite like some individuals that Randidly had encountered on Tellus, it wasn’t a grand image that Vualla was relying on to grow more powerful.

She was simply refining her image of what a perfect punch was. It was exactly the same sort of heavy image that Skarch had created for herself, done on a much more potent scale.

Randidly had never slackened from his daily spear regimen that he learned from Shal, but he had steadily emphasized it less. The movements just had fallen by the wayside as he focused more and more time on refining his images and less on meticulously training the offensive shifts into his body. Part of that was how much more variability he could achieve with high Control without any training, but it had just seemed at the time that typical training became less valuable than image training.

Yet here Vualla was, using her prodigious knowledge of energy mechanics and her own body to create the perfect strike. It was abundantly clear that she had never slackened from her own analog training of her strikes. What she now refined was a strike that didn’t need to wish dearly for destruction in an image, because it was already so destructive on its own.

The change to her image was gradual, but now that Randidly was aware of it he could see it shift in real-time. Something was going on within Vualla. Some spark of inspiration had put her on a different path. Aether roared through the bond between them, rapidly solidifying the change within Vualla.

Even as her power spiked upward to the point that her four foes were being pressured, Randidly smiled in genuine pleasure despite his earlier misgivings; this was the woman who he wanted to partner with to destroy the System. This was the raw potential she possessed. Immersed in her impressive grace, Randidly slipped into a focused state where time passed relatively quickly.

Bit by bit, he continued to recover his mental power.

At about the two-hour mark of Randidly’s break, Randidly’s attention was finally dragged away as the sky above him darkened. As Abiodun began to struggle to hold back so many Nether Gatekeepers, he had lured the surrounding foes closer. They had begun to circle him like sneering sharks.

And now Lady Iellaya stepped forward to make them pay.