“Can you feel that? I’m getting the chills.” Randidly grinned as he spoke, completely invalidating his own words.

The sixth emotional attack was gathering below him. A veritable sea of grey eels of emotions mixed hypnotically in a slippery. On his level, a hulking mass of darkness was rumbling closer from the middle of the hollow spine. The emotional intensity it displaced could overwhelm the combined emotions of all three of his images. Yet Randidly couldn’t keep himself from laughing, his head raised confidently in the air. The noise echoed out in the murky darkness, a vivid counterpoint to the silence of the emotions.

As expected, the attacks had increased in intensity as time passed. The doppelganger was learning. The sense of danger had approached oppressive levels even faster than Randidly had expected. His eyes glowed as he looked downward. Then again, this thing is made of my flesh. Should I be proud it improved so quickly…? A real chip off the old block.

Again the Stillborn Phoenix keened softly in warning as its inhalation began to slow. Perhaps because it had rather constantly served as the frontline defenses in this inhospitable place, it now felt responsible for Randidly’s safety. But Randidly just waved his good arm. “Don’t worry. Today… today is special. Can’t you feel it in the air…?”

Randidly had resolved himself for today. The significance churning between himself and the doppelganger below wove together in thick, inscrutable currents.

The prolonged inaction had him panting for this fight. A month of sitting, watching the flows of Nether around him, incorporating emotions more fully into his images, and rather pointlessly earning Skill Levels saw Randidly greatly stabilize his Nether Nebula. At this point, he was halfway to completely recovering and his accumulation speed had doubled. The halfway mark took him a month to reach, but he would be completely recovered in a week. But also…

“How did you manage this, little me?” Randidly murmured as his eyes slide from the grey eels to the heavy, ominous shadows that were approaching from the central area of the hollow spine. Then he looked up. Above him, a spiky ball of emotions twitched and lazily spun. Randidly smiled widely up at that most unnerving threat. More than anything else, it reminded him of a deep-sea mine. Likely it wasn’t the main attack, but its constant approach would provide a larger and larger threat as the conflict continued.

“All these things are just emotions. Heh. To be outclassed by a shitty chunk of fat… frustrating.” Randidly continued to talk to himself. His lips twisted. He had continued to absorb emotional knowledge as he survived the previous attacks, but it wasn’t enough. Especially the fifth emotional attack… the doppelganger had reached a new plateau of power.

The Stillborn Phoenix faded as Randidly shook his head sorrowfully. His defenses had faded once more. His skin was exposed to the chaotic air. Randidly reached over and patted the wall next to him, almost fondly. “Well… this has been fun…”

An ominous rumble spread from the massive shadows that drifted closer to Randidly. They unfolded and twisted like massive stone rubix cubes. Soon some mechanism clicked into place and the chunks of emotion expanded into massive golems with hands large enough to squeeze Randidly until he popped. With a chorus of shrieks, the grey eels erupted upward. From the darkness below the primary grouping, three more such choruses emerged; wave after wave of these weaponized emotions had been prepared. It was a literal tide sweeping upward at Randidly.

Grim Intuition thrummed; these were all threats. The doppelganger was going all out to kill him. The imitation came to play.

“...but it has to end today,” Randidly breathed out and knocked his knuckles one last time against the bone wall. His grin widened. The corners of his emerald eyes crinkled. He looked over at his hand, ignoring the rush of emotions. “Am I really such a petty person…? This place is doing strange things to me. But I want what you have, little me. And today… I’m going to take it.”

His hand tightened into a fist. The golems had almost reached them. They stretched their wide hands toward him, the emotional severity of their constitution radiating out from them and applying an oppressive mental pressure. Right before they reached him, Randidly severed the emotional lifeline that had kept him tethered for the last month. He looked down toward darkness.

Weirdly, it seemed like the abyss beckoned, inviting him deeper.

Man is Proud, but the Chimera Takes.

Congratulations! Your Skill Man is Proud, But the Chimera Takes (L) has grown to Level 303!

As he accelerated downward, the Grim Chimera spread to cover his body. The golems grasping hands seized nothing. Randidly’s severed left arm condensed, becoming a massive gauntleted hand. Grey-black armor covered his upper body. Yggdrasil’s golden veins stretched through his person, pumping revitalizing energy through all of him.

Furious, those impotent golems smashed their hands against the bone wall and attempted to pursue. Powerful emotional ripples spread outward, but there was no chance that they could catch him.

The Nether content in the air rapidly increased. Randidly began to laugh wildly, enjoying the feeling of Nether and emotion parting in front of him. The grey eels froze for a second, surprised by Randidly’s response. By the time they twisted and began to swarm toward him, he had already reached their position. Randidly flexed the fingers of his right hand, which now ended in sharp points. His heartbeat was thunderous in his ears.

The Chimera Weeps, But Man Mourns.

Congratulations! Your Skill The Chimera Weeps, But Man Mourns (L) has grown to Level 251!

Randidly’s hand blurred into motion slicing and cutting back and forth to eviscerate all emotions in his Path. Within Randidly’s range, this Skill was unmatched in its indiscriminate slaughter. He activated the Skill over and over as he continued to pierce downward, buzzing through the middle part of the sea of emotional weapons like he was a meat grinder. The tumbling, spikey mine hummed in warning, while the large-handed golems roared their fury as Randidly opened up more distance between them.

But suddenly, Randidly slapped physically into an invisible barrier. His eyes widened. It didn’t stop him, but it slowed his descent immensely. There was a qualitative change at the line of 50% Nether content in the air. Suddenly it felt like he was swimming, rather than floating in the air. In addition, a wave of confusing information invaded Randidly’s senses. In a way very different way from Randidly’s experience with the Great Rift, this Nether was unified and resonating with everything within it.

Combined with Grim Intuition, Randidly was near blinded by the flood of information he was receiving. For a shard of time, he was stunned into inertia driven drifting. But just as quickly, a vicious sharpness returned to his gaze; Randidly had located his target.

In addition, as he had suspected, the drag from below almost doubled in strength. His Nether Nebula began rotating faster to steady his position.

Or maybe the sensation isn’t completely different… Randidly pursed his lips, his previous laughter forgotten as he angled himself for his new acceleration vector. In the Great Rift, I’ve felt something like this before… from those blue veins. But here, that phenomenon is everywhere…?

Randidly didn't give it much more thought; he didn’t have time to consider the situation deeply. With another smile tugging at the corners of his mouth, he glanced over his shoulder. He had perhaps annihilated 5% of this wave of grey eels as he forced his way through, with three more waves surging toward him at different angles. But the eels he had blitzed a path through were spinning around and head toward his back.

“This isn’t good enough,” Randidly muttered. He could escape, but he didn’t want to. Those golems were pretty intimidating, but these eels... The Implacable Price of Exodus.

In the darkness of the World Tree, a woman opened her eyes. Then she opened her mouth. Then, as the thousands of misshape hands that stretched from her back stalked forward, she began to scream.

Congratulations! Your Skill the Implacable Price of Exodus (M) has grown to Level 269!

Congratulations! Your Skill the Implacable Price of Exodus (M) has grown to Level 269!

Randidly turned away with disinterest as the invisible and bloodthirsty woman he had added to Yggdrasil shredded the eels that were foolish enough to approach him with malicious intent. Some she tore directly in half, others she seized and used as weapons to kill their fellows. There were also some that she rather carefully cut in half so she could peer into their inner workings. She mashed their immaterial hearts between her molars. For a few seconds, the all-consuming madness of Exodus reigned. It was a bloody and near-instant slaughter.

Leaving the shattered emotions in his wake, Randidly shot downward. The information he was receiving was confusing, but he was quickly developing the ability to interpret its signals.

As soon as he neared the target, the natural flow of significance between them quickened. Randidly barred his teeth and shot downward, reaching the depth of 59% of the air being Nether before he found his target. And what he found was… disturbing.

First, the chunk of flesh he had tossed away had grown more twisted than he had expected. Not to the size of a human adult, but perhaps to the specifications of a gangly preteen. It wore no clothes and was a farcical imitation of Randidly himself. It had a head and limbs, but those were purely decorative. There wasn’t even any skull, eyeballs, or teeth filling out the doppelgangers face. The head flapped emptily in the semi-liquid air, looking like a hollow mask made to resemble Randidly. The arms and legs were the same.

It was more floppy, flesh-colored rubber gloves than human.

Horrifyingly, the real features were carved onto the torso. Pure green orbs swiveled to fixate on Randidly. A gaping mouth filled with crooked teeth spasmed and pulsed. It quickly became clear that this creature was trying to say something to him.

Randidly could feel its emotions, too, as the thing’s expression continued to contort. It was shocked and panicked at his sudden appearance, but what truly destroyed any glee Randidly might have had for the confrontation was what he felt next. A shy hopefulness emerged in the doppelganger. In its frozen indecision, Randidly could feel slowly wondering whether Randidly had come down to save it.

It wondered whether he hadn’t meant to toss it aside.

Randidly closed his eyes as his right hand shot forward. As he gritted his teeth, he felt something crack in his jaw. This world… the burden of living here is sometimes too heavy to bear. I can’t believe I need to...Fuck.

Congratulations! Your Skill Pernicious Fang of the Shade (L) has grown to Level 299!

The doppelganger screamed like a pig with a broken spine. The brief flickers of hope were washed away by fear and pain as Randidly’s hand pierced forward. Although the thing was made from Randidly’s body, it had none of his accumulated significance or stats. The image physicalizations weren’t present. So this strange being was depressingly easy to slaughter. Significance spun around the two of them as Randidly crushed the dense bowling ball of matter at the doppelganger’s core. The screaming stopped.

Randidly didn’t open his eyes. He didn’t want to look at the empty hollows of the skin mask the thing had for a head. He didn’t want to see the blood he could feel dripping across his fingers, in case it was red like a human’s. He was more tired than he could remember being in a long time. In a strange, inexplicable way, Randidly had just killed an innocent child.

It had developed the ability to weaponize emotions and lash out at him, but still… it was a chunk of flesh he cast away-

No. It’s pointless to think about this further. The muscles of Randidly’s jaw clenched again, earning him another pop. He reached up with Tide of the Void and once more seized the extended emotions. Suddenly, he could feel the insistent pressure of the significance below dragging him downward. It was… more troublesome than he thought, but it was still manageable. He was at 61% Nether content. I know I’ve had to do terrible things to live… and sometimes, I’ve done terrible things without needing to. But that’s why I want to free us all from this hell…

I cannot stop now…

As Randidly gradually calmed his trembling emotions, the Grim Chimera went about the grisly task of gliding forward and devouring the doppelganger’s remains. Through the process, it absorbed a significant portion of the emotional capability from the queer body. Then the semi-independent image glanced over its shoulder at Randidly’s main body, still frozen in that moment that he killed the cast-off bit of flesh.

Very quietly, the Grim Chimera gathered together some of the remnant thoughts and emotions it also absorbed through devouring the significance between the two of them. Then it isolated those emotions and resolved itself to throw them into the Stillborn Phoenix when it had finished exhaling.

There was no need to expose the main body to some of these thoughts.

Despite his best efforts to deal with the strange emotional turmoil, Randidly remained frozen for quite some time. The doppelganger’s body had already been dealt with completely, but his outstretched hand remained curled into a claw. He held onto the emotions that flowed upward, preventing him from falling any deeper. He incorporated the significance he had gained into his Nether Nebula, finally evolving that half grey bubble fully into a bubble. He also tried and failed time and time again to keep his emotions even.

As the Grim Chimera watched Randidly uneasily, it was Yggdrasil that eventually awakened him from this fraught rigidity. It brushed a branch along his back to draw his attention then released a pulse of energy: there was something he had to see.

Gradually, Randidly opened his eyes. He looked at his frozen hand for a second and then sighed. The tension left him and he rolled his limbs to loosen himself up. Then he turned to see what Yggdrasil was indicating.

What he saw sent rumbles through his emotional state once more. Shallowly scratched against the wall were three rough-looking drawings. With a trembling hand, Randidly reached up and touched the childish pictures. He had witnessed how durable the spine was; how long had the doppelganger been down here, insistently carving, to make any sort of effect at all…?

Of course, it was obvious as Randidly examined the area that the doppelganger had relied on Nether, but it was still an impressive achievement. The first picture was of a twisted tree with sharp branches. The second picture was of a glowing sun. The third picture… was the perfect human body.

“As above… so below.” Randidly sighed to himself. Was the doppelganger trying to create its own versions of Randidly’s images…? Indeed, that was most of the advantage Randidly had against the emotional attacks. He traced his fingers across the messy pictures, his expression turned thoughtful. If the doppelganger had managed to replicate his images-

Then Randidly noticed that although it was still shallow, Nether was flowing through the images, even now. With wide eyes, he inspected every inch of the drawings. Then he could only release a humorless laugh and look down at his right hand. “...thank you.”

Congratulations! Your Skill Nether Sensation (L) has grown to Level 335!

Something clicked into place in his mind. Randidly smiled bitterly at the wall. This kid… left me the keys to making a Nether Class.

His shoulders sagged. A deep sigh escaped his lips. “I guess… I’ll need to find you somewhere nice. And then I’ll dig you a grave. Somewhere with plenty of sun and trees...”