If the heart was the engine, then food was the of the body fuel. And with his three cooking fires and Acri’s timely assistance, Randidly made a feast of breaded snake chops with a red wine sauce, roasted asparagus and red peppers, honeyed sweet potatoes, and buttered biscuits.

And then afterward, Randidly lay on the ground, looked up at the sky, and burped. “Maybe… I shouldn’t have eaten that much…”

For that one meal, Randidly had eaten fully a fourth of the cooking supplies that he had gathered. Honestly, it was ridiculous that his stomach would even withstand the weight of the food he consumed. It felt like he had been chucking food into a hole for all that it seemed to be physically present in his body.

Yet the strangest part was that after the meal, Randidly felt great. Like he was truly energized for the first time in quite a while. Since becoming accustomed to subsisting directly on Aether, Randidly had largely avoided meals. Not because he didn’t want them, but perhaps because he felt that he was too busy to bother most of the time.

But he could clearly feel that despite the fact that the energy fueling his body should be interchangeable, it felt more valuable coming from food. Even as Randidly sensed himself digesting the food almost as fast as he could eat it, it became easier and easier to immerse himself in the power of the human body with a good meal.

This is how a human becomes powerful. Grinning to himself, Randidly looked up toward the vast azure sky. It reminded Randidly of Vualla’s hair, a light blue that made him think of endless possibilities. From his vantage point in the grasslands, the clouds above seemed distant and endless. There was an open beauty to this place that he was slightly sorry to be about to destroy.

“Stillborn Phoenix… I’ll leave the beginnings of this in your hands,” Randidly said softly. In his chest, the egg of darkness stirred. Light began to bend around Randidly as an event horizon formed around him. The Stillborn Phoenix gripped the surrounding world and pulled everything into its hungry maw. With his new image, Randidly felt his understanding of Nether slowly changing. His Nether nebula spun, faster and faster.

Because it wasn’t just that there was a core and a bubble to the substance of Nether. There was the density and then there was the event horizon, the point by which the influence of the core is too powerful for the surrounding anything to escape. He had thought that the core that Randidly had been focusing on in the past was the density, but he now realized that it had been the event horizon.

The image was the source of density, the bending edge of light the event horizon, and then the energy field around him formed the bubble.

But of course, he activated his Nether very slowly. He was exceedingly careful to keep his Aether Mines within his Soulspace, where they wouldn’t interact with the Nether and suddenly reveal his secret to the Special Investigator. Pushing them into the one space was slightly painful, but Randidly figured this process would be fraught anyway. The pain wouldn’t hinder him at all

In the grasslands, the area immediately around Randidly was quickly ripped up and devoured as his Stillborn Phoenix image manifested and grew stronger. Then the grass a little bit farther away was torn to shreds by the presence of the image. And then the grass beyond that withered and died as the egg sucked in light and energy.

Carefully, Randidly brought his black hole to sit directly within his heart. Although using the Aether Mines to stimulate his body would work, it was painful and distracting. What Randidly wanted to do instead was directly stimulate his heart to increase the pace of its beats without pulling a veil of pain over his eyes.

Releasing a breath, Randidly wrapped his body in the Revelation of the Atramentous Threshold. Black and purple energy flowed across his limbs, filled with emerald and orange motes of light. Before his eyes, every inch of his body was suddenly drawn in sharp definition. Each stalk fo the rustling tall grass even a hundred meters away was crystal clear to Randidly. Most importantly, this allowed him to carefully monitor the situation of his organs.

Despite his high Physical Defense Stats, Randidly didn’t want to take any chances with what was about to happen.

Congratulations! Your Skill Revelation of the Atramentous Threshold (T) has grown to Level 269!

With Hallucination of the Bloodless Heart, Randidly began using gravity to directly influence his own body. At first, the sensation was extremely strange, but his Control over the process was acute. He quickly localized the area that he needed to effect. Then, slowly, he began squeezing his own heart to increase his heart rate artificially.

Thump. Thump. Thump.

Almost subconsciously, Randidly brought his left hand up to press against his chest. The alien beats could be felt even through his metal fingers. He released a long breath, gradually upping the frequency of the gravity pulses. His Grim Intuition sank into his muscles and veins. His lungs expanded and contracted. He followed the rapid flow of blood through his body. His focus was so acute that even the constant buzz from the Aether Mines fell away. All that remained was the determination to chase that feeling of power he had briefly experienced.

Randidly released another breath. As his blood pressure increased, he didn’t necessarily feel any more powerful than normal. But he definitely felt a growing heat in his chest. Even moment the Stillborn Phoenix sat at the core of him, it devoured a little more of that heat. But as Randidly rolled his shoulders and felt his heart begin to accelerate, that heat continued to spring forth.

Thump-Thump. Thump-Thump. Thump-Thump.

Randidly barred his teeth at the ground. His heart was slowly accelerating, but Randidly didn’t want to make use of the spare time that he had to take this process slowly. Even if it was safer, Randidly was honestly tired of training. He was tired of going into his Dreamcatcher and losing badly in fights. He was ready to finally discover this physical power that, by rights, was already his. He simply couldn’t find the means to seize it.

The people of Earth treated Randidly like he had transcended humanity, but it felt like every day Randidly was reminded how mortal he was. And Randidly wanted to live up to the Earth’s expectations.

He would not stop pushing until he could finally suppress Kaan Swacc.

With his Aether Mines contained to his Soulspace, Nether had free reign to run wild in the rest of his body. It flowed rapidly through his torso, arms, and legs in a shadowy reflection of his blood. His body began to twitch. Randidly’s emerald eyes slowly darkened. “Just… a bit more…”

THUMP, THUMP, THUMP, THUMP, THUMP, THUMP, THUMP.

Congratulations! Your Skill Hallucination of the Bloodless Heart (T) has grown to Level 217!

His body shook with each beat of his heart. His blood was whipping through his veins once more. But most of all, what dominated Randidly’s consciousness was that vast heat that rose from the depths of his body. The fuel was burning. The engine was beginning to rev upward. Rather than needing to be careful with the Stillborn Phoenix, the heat in his body needed the egg of darkness present so Randidly would sear his brain into a steaming pile of much.

And despite his recent improvements to the image, the heat was overwhelming. Especially because that image had originally been heat-producing itself. His body was slowly turning red. When he released another breath, it came out as steam.

Randidly licked his rapidly drying lips. “Yea… it’s supposed to feel like this…” He was the inferno incarnate. The buzzing of the Aether Mines in his Soulspace and the shuddering fury of his muscles slowly morphed into one giant sense of resonance. Wind swirled around Randidly’s position, gradually forming a tornado as his steaming body heated the surrounding air and pushed it upward.

Crack!

THUMP-THUMP-THUMP-THUMP-THUMP-THUMP-THUMP

With steam flowing out of his nostrils, Randidly pressed his foot to the ground and launched himself forward. He traveled just at jog at first, although each of his strides covered several meters. But then Randidly continued to accelerate, his momentum steadily rising in time with the slamming beats of his heart. Soon the wind was howling past Randidly as he practically flew forward, feeling an uplifting sense of freedom in his supreme speed.

The grass became a green/brown/gold blur beneath his feet. Even the clouds that had previously seemed so distant started to slowly draw nearer as Randidly moved more quickly than any human had a right to. Each of his steps shattered the ground, destroying several meters of grassland in his passage. Nether and blood flowed in reverse of each other, drawing an intricate, natural diagram within his body.

“Just a bit more…” Randidly muttered. His veins were sticking out all along his body as they slowly grew accustomed to the new amount of blood they had to handle. Randidly could feel his body rapidly adjusting to his new demands, helped along by the deft touch of Yggdrasil and the stubbornness of the Grim Chimera. Under the internal pressure, some part of Randidly’s body was finally reaching for the power that he had access to.

He released another breath of steam. The Stillborn Phoenix hummed with the strain of containing the rampant heat running through his body. Feeling that he was close to the limit he had been trying to smash to pieces for the past month, Randidly pushed his Hallucination of the Bloodless Heart a little further.

Thumpthumpthumpthumpthumpthumpthumpthumpthump

His heartbeat became a constant thrum through Randidly’s body. And with a rising wave of heat pushing him forward, Randidly saw the limit.

Congratulations! Your Skill Revelation of the Atramentous Threshold (T) has grown to Level 270!

Gauze drifted around Randidly, with an airy ease that belied the speed at which he was traveling.

Time seemed to slow down even as he raced through the landscape around him. Randidly could feel each stream of superheated water vapor flowing out of his nose as he rushed forward. His foot touched the ground and pushed himself forward even before the dirt he impacted was finished collapsing beneath the force of his step. The wind whipped around him in a powerful slipstream.

And there, hanging in the air and outlined by the revelation energy, was the limit of what should be physically possible. It shimmered and billowed and absolutely surrounded every inch of him. Randidly’s eyes narrowed. It was spread ahead of him like a spectral cloth only a few meters away from Randidly’s body. That distance remained constant even as he rushed forward at the fastest speed that he could manage. It wasn’t anything quite so concrete as air resistance or him being able to see the speed of sound, however. No, this was very literally the limit of the human body that Randidly could see.

It was a subconscious limit. Or perhaps it was the image his subconscious held about what was possible.

Or at least, to Randidly, that was what it was. He lengthened his stride and pumped his legs. His steaming breaths came out more quickly. Everything from his neck down in his body was on fire. The sensation wasn’t painful, just all-consuming. Randidly’s physical body was slowly overwhelming the senses of his mind. The noises from the engine had largely ceased, compensating by releasing a blooming nova of heat.

He continued to pick up speed. Randidly gained ground on that strange spectral curtain in front of him. It looked like a foggy pane of glass, preventing Randidly, even with his Revelation of the Atramentous Threshold energy, from seeing beyond it. So Randidly gritted his teeth and pushed himself as hard as he could to catch up with the barrier.

Congratulations! Your Skill Monstrosity’s Appalling Physicality (A) has grown to Level 275!

Where the Stillborn Phoenix wasn’t quite enough to push him there, the Grim Chimera rose growling to the challenge. The muscles of his body flexed and contracted. Randidly lifted his left hand and reached forward toward the curtain. His fingers tightened on the air, closing just short of it.

“This strength… is MINE!” Randidly roared.

And then the taloned hand of the Grim Chimera reached forward and seized that amorphous substance and, for a brief instant, tore it asunder. Just as soon as the gap in the spectral curtain was made, it began to close. But Randidly had enough Nether Brawn to step forward in that brief opening.

BOOOM!

Randidly released a sonic boom as he briefly shot ahead, liberated from what should be physically possible. Space had cracked open and he used that to practically teleport forward. The air he passed through shuddered and was blasted apart by his passage. But as soon as he blinked in shock at the accomplishment, the human limitation caught back up to him and his almost uncontrollable speed and speed vanished.

Still huffing out steam, Randidly began to slow down. When he had come to a stop, he turned and looked behind him. Then he scratched his head; he honestly had no idea how much time he had just spent running. Hopefully, it wouldn’t always take him that long to work up to breaking through that limit.

But I got it. I felt that sensation. Randidly looked down at his hands. Now that he had seen the roadblock in front of him, he could distantly feel the limitations of the world draped over his body like a cloth, even now. It followed his every move, always resisting as he struggled to move beyond it. Now I just need to be able to reach that state more reliably…

“Which means more training,” Randidly said. But he was grinning as he said it, continuing to look down at his hands. They clenched into fists.