Contrary to his positively contagious excitement at the beginning of his experiments, Randidly was quickly disappointed by the ability of these Nether Beasts to repeatedly evolve. He had sparred for almost ten minutes with the improved Nether Beast, allowing it to strike him with both its old limbs and its new one. And without a doubt, the new limb had a drastic increase in power compared to the original. But it was lacking quite a bit if it truly wanted to inflict a wound on Randidly.

In addition to testing its current capabilities, he continued to inflict non-fatal wounds on the Nether Beast to urge it to evolve further. But although it healed with slightly higher specs after each wound knitted back together, none of those changes came even close to the improvement of the first. Because of that, Randidly quickly tired the exercise and restrained both the monkey and the newt with the injured core.

It was much less enjoyable, but he began to approach his examination much more scientifically.

After studying their behavior for a few days, and then studying a four winged frog Nether Beast that wandered up a few days later, Randidly was able to confirm most of his findings about the Nether Beasts.

First, the cores that these Nether Beasts possessed were very different than the cores he had seen on the frontlines. While those he had encountered in the past were clearly just an imitation, these were true cores, acting as a physicalized object to hold the significance manifested by the Nether flows around these Beasts. In essence, Nether was at its most powerful when it was attached to a physical medium to generate intangible energies with its flows.

Which was why Randidly was so helpless when he had tried to weave together his Nether in the past. No matter how dense and thick his Nether became, it was never more than energy. What he needed was a physical object to serve as the core. The details of how to make a core still eluded him, but it confirmed that the doppelganger’s actions were correct.

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

To that end, Randidly identified two types of intangible energies that anchored Nether produced by those cores. The first he labeled Virtue. The Virtue produced by the core seemed to accumulate at a constant rate, although the amount of stored energy appeared to plateau at some predetermined amount for each Nether Beast. While all three were bound by Yggdrasil, the injured Newt stopped accumulating Virtue the most quickly. After that was the four-winged frog, and finally the monkey accumulated the most before slowing down.

This was basically the amount of charged power the anchored Nether had gathered. Meanwhile, when the usual Nether flows were interrupted, that Virtue would expend itself to produce the second type of energy: Stature.

That was why the arm of the monkey experienced such a transformation.

Stature was the equivalent of image physicalizations. The Stature condensed in the wounded arm after it healed and lingered through all of the subsequent days of testing. Honestly, the improvement seemed permanent. Considering that Nether was the energy of connection and memory, it made sense that it required external stimulus to mobilize the improvements. Which meant that ensuring a constant stream of stimulation for his Nether Class would be important...

Theoretically, Randidly determined that he could eventually make the monkey as powerful as him, should he give the monkey time to accumulate Virtue and then mortally wound it, over and over again. Unfortunately, the increase in power it experienced was relatively minor, compared to Randidly, so he shelved that idea.

He definitely didn’t want to stay here for that long.

But what was most fascinating to Randidly was that when a Nether Beast transferred its Virtue into Stature, it lost its ability to resist the horrible mass of significance below. Without Randidly seizing onto them with roots, they would have been pulled downward. Perhaps if they didn’t accumulate Virtue fast enough, they would have been ground to dust at the base of this shaft.

When Randidly had gathered all the information he could from them, he slaughtered the Nether Beasts and pulled out their broken cores to examine them. As eh had suspected, they weren’t just crystallized energy, but actual physical objects. Their mundane shapes were the most disturbing discovery of his investigation. The newt had a blade of grass at the core, which disintegrated to dust when Randidly fully destroyed its exterior. The monkey had the bones of an actual’s monkeys paw. The frog was centered around a hunk of hardened stone.

All three were covered with mysterious symbols. Unfortunately, the truth of Engraving was that these Nether Cores were based on a completely foreign understanding of runic symbols. As the energies around these actual objects gradually faded, Randidly couldn’t understand even a bit of what they represented. But he still forced himself to study them carefully. Even just seeing the shapes might inspire his own Engraving, so he made use of every second he could to absorb them.

Congratulations! Your Skill Architecture of the Primordial Ways (M) has grown to Level 312!

When the cores had turned completely inert, Randidly sighed and looked down into the depths below him. Despite the fact he was now aware of his overly aggressive mindset, he couldn’t help but feel some disappointment that stronger Nether Beasts hadn't wandered upward to investigate the disturbance from before. He felt quite a bit of temptation to head deeper and locate these more powerful Nether Beasts. His hand twitched at the thought of slaughtering more Nether Beasts. Plus, the difference between the Great Rift Nether Beasts and these was extremely stark.

If Randidly found a Nether Gatekeeper, would be able to beat it in a fight…? The prospect made his mouth water and his eyes sparkle. Plus, even if he inflicted a deadly wound on the Nether Gatekeeper, its Purity would become Stature, elevating it into an even more dangerous existence...

Yet he could only sigh and shake his head in regret. Not yet. Better to wait for that a bit.

Randidly brought Nether to his fingers and drifted closer to the wall. Time to start thinking about my own significance that I will anchor on a physical core…

*****

Lady Iellaya tilted her head to the side. “Is this… really necessary…?”

Edraine nodded forcefully, her mouth pressed into a thin line. “I had my suspicions when there was no corruption found in the Military High Command investigation, but after reading through the records… well, it’s definitely been quite an illuminating few days. I fear that we are missing something extremely large that is occurring right beneath our noses. Even more than our plan to steal Elhume’s body… if we can figure out this truth…”

Octavius Shrike, who was sitting in the corner of the study in front of a pile of open scrolls, stirred. He raised his horned head and blinked. Then he shook his head, a blank expression on his face. “So if things would have continued as they were… just like the previous Overseer, I would have been accused of corruption…? But why…?”

“Very likely,” Edraine stood up and stretched. Even though it was foolish, Lady Iellaya couldn’t help but be slightly taken aback by the smooth practice of the very human movement. Most of the time, Edraine sat at her desk like a statuesque goddess. To see her roll her neck like a normal person… was rather unexpected. But perhaps Lady Iellaya’s response was also a result of feeling Edraine’s image as she blasted Neveah’s nail down toward Randidly.

To make sure that the nail had reached its destination, Edraine hadn’t held back in the least. The horrifying orange light Lady Iellaya had felt across her skin… her hands tightened to fists just remembering it. Even though it was several hours ago, her body hadn’t forgotten the sensation. I still have much more growing to do.

“As for why…” Edraine shook her head. “Even I cannot gather the details just from these reports. But let me ask you something broadly about the Nexus; why do we have an Aether shortage?”

Lady Iellaya glanced at Octavius, who seemed bewildered by the question. The Overseer cleared his throat. “Well… because people use it? As more and more people have joined in the Nexus… we both need to provide more raw Aether to them so they can grow, and also we need to power the Nexus Ways and other amenities of the Nexus. The Nexus’ size has ballooned through the last three Cohorts. So what are you trying to say by asking that…?”

“I just want to point something out,” Edraine shrugged elegantly. She reached for her coat that hung on the back of her chair and slid her arms into the garment. “I agree with your first point… people without any exposure to Aether grow by gathering raw Aether and utilizing it directly, learning as they do so. But as for the second drain on our resources… isn’t that nonsense? I could take a pinch of any sort of Aether and refine it with my own image, to the point that most of the Nexus would be powered. In terms of efficiency at utilizing Aether, we have two individuals in the Nexus who have reached the Pinnacle; they can make the fake, real with their wills. Either could entirely eliminate the demand for refined Aether.”

“But it’s not like we can ask the most powerful people in the Nexus to work as power plants,” Lady Iellaya argued.

Edraine’s mouth twitched as she glanced over at her. “Well, that isn’t wrong. But there are plenty sufficiently talented individuals who are middling in terms of the Nexus hierarchy to eliminate the need for refined Aether completely. Which only leaves the demand for raw Aether as the driver of our ‘Aether shortages’.

“The Nexus earns raw Aether two ways: by passively controlling a larger area and gathering the energy over time and by breaking down the inefficiently refined Aether taken from failed planets. The second method causes quite a bit of energy loss… almost 30%, because the emotions held by those individuals persist, despite our best efforts. But the Nexus now covers an obscene amount of territory. The passive gathering of Aether should more than cover our needs. And also remember, the only reason the Nexus needs so much more raw Aether… is because it claimed that it did and subsequently expanded so rapidly. Normally, the Nexus shouldn’t have an Aether shortage at all.”

Octavius was clearly lost. “So…”

But Lady Iellaya’s eyes widened. “So… because this framing of the Overseers for corruption is a pattern… and clearly supported by someone highly placed in the Nexus… that Aether is being used for something else. But… they are siphoning off the raw Aether, not the refined version that is more valuable for those who already have powerful images. Why would they need the raw form? Basically only those weaklings without any of their own Aether and unable to purify it with their image would want raw Aether.”

Edraine gestured at Lady Iellaya with a finger as she walked to the door. “And that question is exactly why we must go visit the former Overseer. Because of how tightly guarded he is… I suspect he noticed something.”