For the third time in only two hours, Randidly ended up at the base of the staircase leading up to the gates of the Beigon Estates. The ripples of spatial distortion around him steadily calmed back down after Don Beigon kicked him to the curb. He could only shake his head and click his tongue. But even if he was annoyed by this dramatic and manipulative family, Randidly couldn’t resist a smile.

In a way, he could understand how they could be so dramatic and brutally powerful and yet still be so popular; they were charming. At times, it was very easy to see the fun in the games they played.

Yet that was also the reason why the Beigons were so deadly.

Randidly turned away from the staircase and then paused. His lips twitched as he realized that the area behind him, which used to lead to a teleporter, was now replaced with a mirror image of what was in front of him: the tall stone staircase at the base of the mountain. Randidly looked back and forth, wondering how he had somehow been placed in this valley where the only option was to climb the stairs once more.

And walk right into whatever surprise you have planned for me at the gates…? No thank you, Don, Randidly produced his Philosopher’s Key and felt around for the essence of Nrorce’s farm in the air in front of him. The tip of the key moved slowly, feeling out the faint connections. There was definitely a shielding over this area so most typical methods of escape would be blocked, but Randidly’s Fatepiece was quite atypical.

Enough so that it had attracted the attention of the Nexus. It was the first and most general of the Fatepieces that Randidly had obtained.

After putting back on the Skill suppression gloves and passing through the white lightning corridor, Randidly was glad to find that Nrorce was only mid-preparation for the meal within his small cottage. The air inside smelled as tantalizingly delicious as always. The blue-skinned dwarf grunted and waved for Randidly to take a seat while he finished.

The meal was a bed of grits with stir-fried onions, peppers, and strips of pheasant breast dumped on top. Randidly hummed with pleasure as he ate and savored the raw spiciness produces by Nroce’s homegrown peppers.

Nrorce, as he always did, had accumulated another long list of menial tasks for Randidly before he wandered off, heading to the spice room. The toil on a farm could never stop, even with superhuman Strength. So Randidly slapped his cheeks and walked out into the warm sunshine of the day.

For a few seconds, he stood there and felt the real differences between this warmth and the strange, presumptuous heat of the Beigon Estate. The natural smells that formed the comfortable base of the experience here had been completely absent in that strained paradise in the mountains; that place was artifice, this was the dirty truth.

Randidly flexed his toes in the dirt path, savoring the feeling. Then he got to work.

Influence +41!

While his body toiled until the Engraving plates on the gloves were superheated and smoking, Randidly’s mind began making some calculations. Two months was the timeline that Claudette wanted for him to begin work on refining her image… and Randidly still had no idea how the process was supposed to go. He had sent a message to Octavius, but the Overseer of the Seventh Cohort confessed that his image was never powerful enough to warrant lavishly spending on having a specialist refine it; he was just as clueless as Randidly.

Still, there were several organizations in the Nexus that specialized in nurturing image refiners. Octavius assured Randidly that with his name and reputation due to the recent battles in the Fifth Cohort, they should be able to find a group that could assist him through the basics. And in the end, what were the more sophisticated methods but applications of the basics?

Randidly grimaced. But before I work on Claudette… I want to get my own transformation out of the way. Which means I need to accumulate a lot of Nether within my Nether Core and finally settle these debts by adding the Nemesai’s debts to the Alpha Cosmos… accumulating Influence more quickly is helping that process… but I don’t think I can avoid a few more trips into the shaft to allow some time to pass…

And after that, I’ll need to finally allow the Grim Chimera to complete its transformation…

Randidly sighed and shook his head. One of the reasons he lingered here on the farm in the sun was to distract himself from the Calamity that was approaching for Expira. The sunlight on his skin and the smell of growing things were soothing, keeping him from dwelling excessively. Yet in the murky darkness of the shaft…

The temptation to turn his focus inward...

“But I have to do it,” Randidly said to himself. And he meant it.

That night after dinner, Randidly told Nrorce that he would need to spend his nights outside of the farm dealing with some personal business. The goblin accepted the news with his usual stoicism while he carried the dishes to the kitchen. “Good. Give me time to inspect the Engraving without you skulking or loafing around. Something about it feels a bit off, you know? It’s just not the same as it used to be.”

Randidly hid the smile that was tugging at the corners of his mouth. Yea, because the warehouse used to be the bastard child of a cesspool and a fire hazard…

Once outside of the farm, Randidly used the Philosopher’s Key to portal down into the bottom portion of the Web. Then he accelerated downward, blasting past the porcelain guardians and sinking into the howling maw of significance that would devour anything that didn’t possess its own Nether Core. The Stillborn Phoenix gleefully opened itself up, releasing a wave of dense emotions that spread rapidly outward and infected the other emotional energy that flowed upward in a constant current.

Randidly frowned slightly as he observed his released emotions briefly. I suppose I need to be a bit careful about that if the Engraving Guild can use those released emotions to track me. They already know I’ve been here, but… I cannot release any around Nrorce’s farm, lest they find me there…

Ugh, will I need to reply to their offer of cooperation…? Well, at least it seems like the Swacc Family will be distracted in the short term..

When the Stillborn Phoenix was done exhaling, it began inhaling, indiscriminately swallowing emotions and Nether in an indulgence of its primordial hunger. Randidly drifted downward, gliding lightly on the force of his images. The air was becoming thicker and milky as the Nether content steadily rose upward. Still, that increased Nether content definitely stabilized Randidly’s Nether Core, which spun at a high frequency to refine more Nether for the production of large-scale arrays.

Soon, Randidly pushed past the 50% Nether threshold and arrived at the true depths of the shaft. The familiar, floating forms of the meditating Nether Gatekeepers drifted up and down below him as he decelerated and returned ot his usual spot. He even sensed a flicker of recognition from th Nether Gatekeepers and gratefully most of their antagonism had dispersed while he had been gone. He considered approaching and trying to communicate with them, but ultimately decided he had too many other requirements on his plate at the moment.

Then, as always, Randidly began to train.

He started with his newest Fatepiece, which was the most intense and immediate of the tasks available to him. Before he delved more deeply into Nether, he planned on thoroughly testing the limits of his body.

And honestly, perhaps Randidly was still slightly furious about feeling compelled by Don Beigon’s Skills. The pain and restriction of the Fatepiece was a direct foe that he could fight against.

Congratulations! Your Fatepiece the Hierarchy of Burden has grown to Level 14!

As Randidly opened up the sympathetic bond between himself and that glowing inverted pyramid, chains of crackling electricity exploded out of his body and wrapped around his limbs. A growl escaped his lips as the energy constricted around him; at this point, the electricity became so charged and attracted to its own polarity that it collapsed inward on itself just as a black hole would. The wrenching pull was domineering and capricious.

Randidly gritted his teeth and spread his twitching limbs wide. His heart accelerated. His blood rapidly heated, so he blew steam out of his nose in twin streams that curled outward into the shaft.

Congratulations! Your Skill Yyrwood Flesh of Yggdrasil (L) has grown to Level 373!

Congratulations! Your Skill Grit of the Ascendant Bane (T) has grown to Level 413!

Randidly could feel his straining muscles tearing themselves over and over, as the pulses of electricity caused the fibers to involuntarily contract. Of course, his Uncommon Metabolism roared through his body, repairing and remaking any wounds just as quickly as they could be formed.

But Randidly was very aware of how horrifying he was becoming. If one was able to view on a micro-level what was occurring across his body, they would find a sea of bloody muscles, parting and sewing itself together again at near-instantaneous speeds. His form was covered in a thousand tiny mouths, gasping open and then closing, only to reappear a few seconds later. He genuinely felt more like Helen’s Depths of Horror Domain than a person.

Yet he persevered as that horrifying force. Because he could feel the steady accumulation of power within his form as he forcefully resisted the electricity from the Hierarchy, savoring the genuine difficulty.

Congratulations! Your Skill Grit of the Ascendant Bane (T) has grown to Level 414!

Congratulations! Your Skill Chimeric Impunity (M) has grown to Level 403!

That last notification did earn a wince from Randidly. If this is the discomfort with four hundred Levels of Chimeric Impunity… and I’m only 14 Levels into this Fatepiece… exactly how powerful is this thing…?

Of course, he blessedly didn’t know the answers to those questions quite yet. And eventually, Randidly allowed his toil to ease, coming steadily back to his body with several deep breaths and finding himself submerged in a pool of sweat and steam that he had released.

Chuckling wryly about how badly he needed a bath, Randidly shifted his attention to Nether Arrays. His tail wiggled with pleasure and began to excitedly sketch out a new framework with which to experiment.

This time, he remembered to spread his Nether Arrays in the space of the shaft above him, so he wouldn’t needlessly earn the ire of the Nether Gatekeepers.