Randidly barred his teeth at the visible portion of the meddlesome Nexus above him, but then forced himself to relax. The Grim Chimera rubbed its hands in anticipation as he refocused himself.

Ripping through these Paths had cost a lot of PP, but Randidly still had over thirteen thousand remaining. After hesitating for a bit, Randidly decided to gather a few more bags of spare fertilizer, to make sure the Grim Chimera could grow well.

Congratulations! You have completed the Body Refinement I Path! Your body is the basis of your entire strength; with it, you have the capability to directly endure the harsh environment that surrounds you. You limbs can channel the power of your images even more efficiently. You have chosen this simplistic Path, choosing to spend your time and energy betting on yourself.

Congratulations! Uncommon Metabolism +10!

...

Congratulations! You have completed the Body Refinement II Path! You are an individual who has habitually taken the time out of your day to sit and refine your body. The results speak for themselves: improvements are accumulating every day. And although you must walk eerie Paths to reach the particular environments where your body can be tempered, you do it willingly. In the darkness of the Wilderness, you continue to find Paths forward. Your tenacity is developing into quite a horrifying conviction.

Congratulations! Endurance +30! Health Regen +200!

...

Congratulations! You have completed the Body Refinement III Path! The precious resources required to improve your body are becoming increasingly scarce, but you haven’t waived in your zealous pursuit of improvement. You roam through the desolate sand dunes, claustrophobic forests, and the frigid coastline alike, seeking to find more methods to improve yourself. Now that you have gone beyond the limits of conventional wisdom, you must rely on your own experience to find a new truth.

Hopefully, that truth will be able to carry you to the Pinnacle.

Congratulations! Fidelity of the Ascendant Moirae and Focus +30! Health and Stamina +500! Congratulations! You have learned the Skill Body and Mind Symbiosis (A) Lvl 1!

Body and Mind Symbiosis (A): The connection between your body and mind has become increasingly strong, to the point that they benefit from each other. When one is healthy, the others run more efficiently. As long as your Health is above 50%, your mental stats receive a minuscule boost. As long as your Mana is above 50%, your physical stats receive a minuscule boost. As long as your Stamina is above 50%, your regenerations receive a small boost. Effects increase with Skill Level.

...

Congratulations! You have completed the Body Refinement IV Path! In front of you is a high and thick wall. Many have warned you of its existence, but your particular gifts have meant your wall is far out in the Wilderness. Yet now, here it is. As foretold.

As power accumulates in your body, it is increasingly difficult to improve on that power. After attempting a variety of methods, you have seen some minor results, but the speed of growth is incomparable to the past. You sense that what you need now is not accumulation, but a genuine transformation. Your foundation has reached its limits.

Congratulations! Primordial Nether Juju and Dreadful Alacrity +40!

...

Congratulations! You have completed the Body Refinement V Path! You have achieved an amazing accomplishment! You have pushed your physical body beyond its base Stats in so many ways; you have been able to completely transform your very state of existence. Accumulation from normal practice has ceased almost completely, but you did not let that stop you. Now, you are another tier of being entirely.

Congratulations! All Physical Stats +20! You have gained the Skill Domineering Impunity (L) Lvl 1!

Domineering Impunity (L): Your very existence has become so tenacious that you have an inexplicable ability to avoid and recover from lethal circumstances. User will drastically reduce one instance of overwhelming damage against them by a vast amount. There is a cooldown between uses. Damage reduced will increase with Skill Level. Cooldown slightly reduces with Skill Level.

After finishing the last in the sequence of Body Refinement Randidly released a long-held breath. His eyes swept sideways to the low hills and rolling plains around the Nether Pinion on which he stood. Then he smirked and decided to ignore the flies buzzing nearby and consider the rewards he had gained after going through so many Paths.

With the escalating costs of both the Image Cooperation and Body Refinement Paths, Randidly had reduced his remaining PP to 7125. Which was still an immense amount, but it was an amount he would keep in his pocket for now; it would be worth it to keep some PP stored away to rapidly finish almost any Path that he needed.

Randidly couldn’t help but raise his hand and flex his fingers. His bones creaked in protest from his vastly improved power and Randidly’s smile only widened. He began to laugh, raising his head and cackling. Anyone watching would think he was insane, but Randidly didn’t care. Even setting aside all the new Skills and evolved Stats, all the PP that Randidly spent had a very concrete impact on Randidly’s power: he had gained 4318 Stats in the past half hour.

Even split across twelve Stats, that was an average improvement of 359 per Stat. With a shit-eating grin on his face, Randidly looked at his new raw Stats.

Randidly Ghosthound

Class: Lord of the Baleful Wood (x5)

Level: 63 (19%)

Health(/R per hour): 13595/13595 (9627)

Mana(/R per hour): 12792/12792 (3163)

Stam(/R per min): 9475/9476 (3317)

Uncommon Metabolism (Un): 1335

Endurance: 1100

Primordial Nether Juju (M): 1485

Dreadful Alacrity (A): 1670

Grim Intuition (L): 1469

Reaction: 1450

Resistance: 1234

Willpower: 1852

Intelligence: 1278

Wisdom: 1080

Fidelity of the Ascendent Moirae (P): 2392

Focus: 1365

Nether Sphere

Fang of the Primeval Betrayal (Ru)

Weight: 411

Connections: 1,261,697,311

Scope: 12,609

Influence: 4009/???

“And as for the Skills I’ve gained…” Randidly’s grin became feral as he looked through his expanded Skill list after today’s festivities. Some of the abilities that he gained by blazing through so many Paths were extremely useful. The passive Skills, especially, could be developed to the point that they would provide quite a bit of benefit to Randidly.

But Randidly’s eyes were harsh and calculating as he examined his new Skills. There is a cost to increasing the potential of the Grim Chimera in this manner… if all the Skills I sacrifice to its hunger are mediocre, won’t there be only a mediocre effect? Only if the Skills are powerful will the result be worth taking the time to do this.

And as for the first sacrifice… heh. Nexus, did you really think I’d let you show me how to mix images? When you even admit that the Skill dampens the original Skill? I’ve already proven I can do this without your poisonous assistance.

Within Randidly’s Soulspace, the familiar form of the Grim Chimera appeared. Its two tails flicked back and forth, an ethereal tail at the top of his spine and a heavily armored tail at his waist both moving with two very different versions of sinuous grace. Black armor stretched downward into a belt and then reinforced the joints in the Grim Chimera’s legs. While his left arm was covered in dark grey armor, the right arm was ethereal. The Grim Chimera raised his head and chuckled, releasing tremors throughout the Soulspace. In the next instant, he vanished.

As the Grim Chimera reappeared, Randidly gritted his teeth and endured the reverberations as his new Skill Image Amalgamation was shattered into pieces. The Grim Chimera opened his mouth and began to feed. Even if he prepared for it, the Skill was still a part of him now; destroying it was somewhat painful.

But Randidly steeled himself and allowed the Grim Chimera to run wild.

Body and Mind Symbiosis, Domineering Impunity, Ancient Nether Fetish, Memory Erasure, Tempo of the Emerald Waltz… all of the high potential Skills that Randidly had obtained along with his boost of Stats were taken by the Grim Chimera in the brutal ‘feast’ inside Randidly’s Soulspace. Each loss planted a resounding ache in Randidly’s chest that was steadily growing, but he didn’t make a sound through the entire process.

Randidly could feel each image as a fistful of sizzling sparks of potential that the Grim Chimera gulped down. Individually, the Grim Chimera was more than powerful enough to snuff such sparks out. Yet as they steadily gathered inside of it… hissing and popping and jumping as they interacted with one another...

And when all the new Skills had their Aether structure shattered and incorporated by the Grim Chimera, the image began to prowl amongst the unused Skills that lurked in Randidly’s Soulspace. The pressure in his chest had grown, but not beyond acceptable levels. Even those Skills that were born of his Class weren’t safe. In the face of the Grim Chimera’s hunger, nothing was sacred.

Iron Skin, Counter, Spray Holy Sap, Reckoning of the Bleak Dawn, Farming, Acid Resistance, Sewing… the potential of each of these Skill itself was small. Maybe only a single spark in the whole of the Skill; most of them were common Skills, after all. And getting rid of the Skills with Levels required some return of the PP that Randidly earned, but it only amounted to a few hundred in all, even as he devoured almost twenty Skills.

In this manner, the bundle of sparks that the Grim Chimera was carrying began to change.

Randidly studied the Grim Chimera with narrowed eyes as he continued to endure the recoil from the widespread Skill destruction. If it was any of the other images, this method wouldn’t work. The Stillborn Phoenix’s maw is too wide to even notice the potential it consumes. Meanwhile, Yggdrasil’s energy is too focused on growth; it might sabotage itself by allowing strange images to fester within it.

But the Grim Chimera… the Grim Chimera is the balance between the forces of life and death. Its main goal is to survive.

So survive. And show me that you were worth this investment. Tsk, some of those new Skills were actually pretty interesting...

Randidly could feel it now, a ball of strange energy pulsing erratically in the belly of the Grim Chimera. With the addition of the common Skills, all that shattered and raw potential was nearing a boiling point. So Randidly’s image quivered and sank to the deepest parts of his psyche so it could digest the image bits it had consumed.

In the meantime, Randidly refocused on the world around him just as everything seemed to fall to pieces.

BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM!

RUUUUUMMMMMMMMMMMMBBBBBBBBBBBLLLLLLLLLLLLLLEEEEEE!

Faster even than he had anticipated, the Aether defenses in the sky snapped. Very quickly, the surrounding space fractured. Just as Randidly was mobilizing his non-Grim Chimera images to rise and protect the surrounding space, the Aether defenses that were shattered snapped back together in a new formation. Shimmering, geometric walls appeared around the surrounding space.

Randidly pursed his lips as he glanced around. Seems like Commandant Wick had a backup plan. He allowed the break to happen to relieve some pressure and then separated the shattered space into ‘rooms’, which will make the Aether protections more difficult to shatter… but it also makes movement dicey…

Randidly glanced around at the light being refracted through the strange walls. Honestly, it resembled being suddenly teleported to the inside of a crystal. The edges were foggy and slightly opaque, but Randidly could sense the thin flows of Aether and Nether intersecting in those walls, creating a bridge to another nearby space.

But right now, Randidly had other concerns. Because he could also sense that the way space was folded would severely hamper any sort of observational Aether mechanisms in the area. Which meant he could get some exercise without any watchers knowing the new state of his body.

Randidly grinned around toward the spot where the flies were currently buzzing. “Come on out.”

The first figure Randidly saw was a chubby and broad-shouldered man built like a barrel of butter. But behind him was the familiar and sour face of Lay’mel Tuuellethe. The whole group stunk of the Swacc Family. He could see the cruel violence in their eyes.

Randidly’s smile widened. The perfect guinea pigs.