Helen looked sharply up as the door to her cabin opened. Although the intruder had made himself known, Helen wasn’t in the mood to be entertaining visitors. “Oh? Naffur, you brought me some more fresh meat to cook? Not interested. After seeing Randidly… I want some time to test some things about myself out. That pinnacle… I know I can reach it.”

Even though the beautiful smile Helen released seemed to drip blood, Naffur still took a step into Helen’s cabin and gave a small bow. “No fresh meat this time. Just someone requested that I introduce them to you. Also no pressure from above, so fielding her request is entirely up to you. No need to pull any punches.”

After that, Naffur gestured for the figure behind him to take the stage, gave another short bow, and removed himself from Helen’s cabin. Which left Helen’s sharp brown eyes to slowly tear apart the facade on the other individual. With remarkable poise, the woman walked a few steps forward with her chin raised and submitted herself to Helen’s exacting examination. Which Helen purposefully dragged out to last ten minutes.

The woman waited in silence without fidgeting. The door remained open behind her, letting a small breeze into the cabin.

At about the twenty-minute mark, Helen ceased dawdling and tilted her head to the side. “Even outside of the Order Ducis and Kharon, people should seek someone like me out for only one reason. You desire strength and want to take the long Path. But so do I. If you are unable to provide a suitable challenge… if I cannot grow at the same time… Like I said earlier, I am not interested in fresh meat.

Sydney inclined her head briskly. “I won’t disappoint you. I think you will find me suitably seasoned.”

Helen grinned and reached for her spear. “No use wasting any more time then. Let’s have a little bit of a warm-up spar.”

*****

Randidly supposed he could have taken in Rose Calloway as a hostage for the moment, but he could picture Tatiana’s face when he showed up with even more strange requests for her and decided against it. There wouldn’t be many benefits to the action, anyway.

In addition, felt a strange sense of pity when he looked at the woman. Almost subconsciously, his Nether had spread out as he searched for the hints of Yystrix’s image and the powerful image of blood that had drawn him to that location. His desire to find information pulled at everything he was connected to through Nether. That included Rose. Honestly, he was probably lucky the first person to experience it was as strong as Rose was.

Randidly didn’t want to know what would have happened if he pulled with Nether like that on a normal person.

Still, he didn’t come away empty-handed. Now he knew the culprits who robbed Yystrix’s grave of her memories. But he was left wondering whether the knowledge that Ace was responsible for the missing memories changed anything.

Honestly, it’s something of a relief, Randidly reflected as he spun slowly to look around his island, his eyes passing over the desolate land covered in the clinging silver of the moonlight spirits. The devil I know is better than the one I don’t. And at the very least, I can be sure that Ace will be planning some sort of confrontation…

Which was a good thing for two reasons. One, because it meant the same individual held the Lifeblood Essence on which Straud and the Winged Serpent collaborated and Yystrix’s memories. When Randidly dealt with one, he would deal with the other. And as for the second reason… because the same individual held both of those powerful forces, they chaotically interfered with each other in a way that even Randidly found quite annoying to track. He couldn’t imagine how painful it would be to try and balance out the ideologies of those two items.

Those powers appeared to function like night and day, Randidly learned in his brief attempt to catch Ace. Randidly had followed the scent of the memories out to that ridge but his opponent then used the Lifeblood Essence to somehow teleport away. The two energies that Randidly discovered had been fizzing and eating away at each other only a split second after Ace had departed. That interaction would take Randidly time to parse apart and track. Time that Randidly could better spend elsewhere.

For example, Randidly could use his time in a more efficient manner by quickly reigning in his ability to use Nether. Because after so wildly exploding with Nether in the brief fight against Aegiant, Randidly had subconsciously allowed his Nether to spread around him after returning to the real world. And this was different from the suppressive influence Randidly had utilized in the past; rather than enlarging his bubble and relying on the ambient energy, this method spread out his core, directly connecting him to the surrounding space.

Outside of the Dreamcatcher of the Long Night, Randidly could use this method to establish a basic connection with surrounding people and obtain information and influence over them. Which, he had thought would be a useful tool.

From Rose’s grave expression during their brief talk, Randidly reevaluated his usage somewhat. As someone who was deeply distrustful of charisma centered Skills, he held an aversion to using those Skills himself if it somehow compelled the recipient against their will. And it was clear to Randidly that their brief connection exerted a strong sort of pressure on Rose.

Randidly grimaced and sat down in a cross-legged position. But even beyond that… there’s another problem.

Congratulations! Your Skill Nether Sensation (L) has grown to Level 166!

Even now in the space immediately around Randidly’s skin, there were slight visual distortions in the air. Without even meaning to, Randidly had enlarged the area within himself that was dedicated to the spinning Nether Nebula. His core had swollen to almost double its previous size. Which meant that the thin crack that the System allowed for Nether was being constantly forced open in the area pressed up against Randidly’s body.

That was how potent the Nether Nebula was becoming.

Of course, there was an obvious benefit to this; it was akin to moving into a larger and more well-built home. Randidly’s Nether continued to refine itself into a thicker and more powerful form with the extra space. But he was leery in having such an obvious tell about his ability to utilize Nether. Some might mistake it for just a rather peculiar image, but the truly powerful people, and those who spent time on the front lines, would likely recognize it immediately as Nether.

Considering Nether was supposed to be Randidly’s hidden trump card, it needed to be addressed.

Shrinking his Nether Nebula down to its previous size was obviously the most simplistic answer, but that would be difficult and sacrifice some of Randidly’s newfound power. Instead, Randidly sat in a meditative position and attempted to control his Nether much more skillfully than that.

Randidly’s larger Nebula now produced an aura of Nether, that couldn’t be avoided. But Randidly’s thought was to use his prodigious Control to flatten that aura into something akin to a disk that would be able to slip out through the thin Nether crack in the System without constantly disturbing it. He could inject energy into that disk if he needed to explode with the full force of his Nether, but in its base state, it would provide Randidly with only a weak amount of connection in an area around his person.

So he steadily began to work.

Congratulations! Your Skill Nether Sensation (L) has grown to Level 167!

…

Congratulations! Your Skill Nether Sensation (L) has grown to Level 174!

And the work was extremely difficult.

Sweat dripped down Randidly’s brow as he furiously struggled to marshall the uncooperative Nether and press it into a thin disk. The problem was that Nether had an annoying tendency to congregate naturally. But Randidly was truly one who rose to his power by relying on his Control. Bit by bit, he forcefully imposed his Willpower on his Nether. There were bulges and distortions, but Randidly systematically pressed everything down until it could spread through the crack in the System without disturbing anything. A perfect disc was gradually achieved.

Congratulations! Your Skill Nether Sensation (L) has grown to Level 175!

...and once the Nether was in that state, Randidly tied up almost all of his mental energy keeping it there. Chuckling darkly to himself, Randidly released his tight reins on the energy and it rapidly spun back to be an ambient cloud around his body. But he did send a message to Neveah, outlining the problem and asking for some help designing an array based in Aether that could be used to add structure to the Nether.

In the meantime, Randidly cracked his neck and then pulled out his Philosopher’s Key. With a twist, he arrived on the roof of Kharon’s Town Hall and proceeded down to Tatiana’s office.

To Randidly’s surprise, he actually found her in that room, bereft of Wolfram and the assistance of his fellow extremely large ogre secretaries. Tatiana held up a finger for Randidly to wait while she quickly signed several papers and then tossed them into the mail chute at the corner of her office. The papers were whisked away to the workroom below, where they would be copied and distributed to the recipients.

Randidly thought it was strange that Kharon had instituted a mail delivery system, but Tatiana had cheerily replied that ever since learning about calligraphy, the ogres took great pride in sending handwritten letters. It was obviously slower than sending a message, but a lot of people seemed to enjoy the act of writing.

When she finally turned around to address Randidly, Tatiana paused. Pursing her lips, she scanned him from head to toe. “There’s something… different about you. I can’t quite put my finger on it…”

“I’m working on it,” Randidly said with a sigh. At least this proves that Rose’s reaction was indicative of a problem.

“It’s not necessarily a bad thing,” Tatiana rubbed her chin. “You just… feel immense. In a way that’s difficult to understand…”

“True, there are some benefits to it,” Randidly admitted. “But to a certain type of person within the Nexus… this effect will be recognized for what it is rather quickly. And I want to keep my Nether as a secret for as long as possible.”

To that, Tatiana nodded. Then she glanced over toward another stack of papers on her desk. “If you came down here, I assume it’s for business? If you have free time, there have been seven requests for meetings that I’ve put on hold for at least today.”

“The meetings can probably wait.” Randidly rolled his shoulders. Neveah just then sent him a reply and he quickly scanned her proposed plan and nodded in satisfaction. This will work. Then his attention focused back on Tatiana. “Schedule three of the most important for after dinner tonight and I’ll see to them. But for now… I want to make preparations for Kharon to move. Head for Vye’s current position.”