Randidly was rather surprised that he didn’t need to wait long inside the Web before the target of his image refinement arrived. Only after about ten minutes of meditating within the shaft, Claudette Beigon fluttered downward, riding on a board of ice. She settled next to his floating position on a long cable and nodded toward him.

But even through his current exhaustion, Randidly’s gaze sharpened as he saw how pale she was. “Claudette? Is something wrong? What happened? Did your father…?”

To Randidly’s surprise, she laughed at his concern. Her expression was helpless, with her lips parted several times without speaking any words. She could only shake her head and slap her cheeks to wake herself up. “I… I don’t know what to make of it. But when I was departing from the Estate… I saw the announcements; posters have been plastered up everywhere in the Nexus. Military High Command and NLC have issued a joint decree… Velio Dunn is a wanted man. They are offering a pure Nexus Citizenship Coin for any word that leads to his capture. Dead or alive.”

Randidly literally couldn’t wrap his head around the news. His head throbbed painfully. “...what?”

Claudette gave him a sympathetic smile. “The Swacc Family has now come out and said that the Unitarium revealed was due to Dunn’s plot, framing the Family for stealing from the Engraving Guild. Obviously, that’s polar bear shit, but… the big movers in the Nexus are all pursuing him with genuine force. They aren’t contradicting that story Do you think…”

Claudette gave him an uneasy look. Randidly’s skin prickled as his mind moved in the same direction. She didn’t need to finish her question for Randidly to understand; she wanted to ask whether the sudden pursuit of Velio Dunn had anything to do with them.

And honestly…

Randidly flexed his hands. I definitely could believe that our fight and the capabilities I showed during it were enough to attract the attention of the powers that be in the Nexus… the problem is the scope of the response… both orthodox factions…? … And that the entire Nexus government is solely targeting Velio. Did they find residue from my Nether RItual and assume he was responsible for it…? It seems foolish to assume that our fight didn’t somehow cause this… but is it possible that after I took that burden of that memory… Velio went out and did something unrelated to me…?

Either way, Randidly quickly snapped back to focus. At the very least, they weren’t outwardly targeting him. That was… a good sign. He offered Claudette a hand. “I’ll use my resources to investigate this. In the meantime, I’m still not at my best. Let’s just go ahead and enter time dilation so we have some time to recover and consider. And since you asked… it’s time to show you my Alpha Cosmos.”

For a brief moment, a hint of humor played across Claudette’s lips as she took Randidly’s offered hand. Her fingers were extremely cool against his. “You know, most men don’t rely on setups this elaborate to entice me to touch them. If nothing else, I applaud your industrious methods.”

Randidly chuckled dryly. “Please. Our relationship is strictly professional. Besides, if my… well. I have someone who would be very unhappy to hear you make those jokes. Anyway, you are going to feel a strange force teleporting you. Don’t resist it.”

Claudette tilted her head to the side and studied Randidly. “You…”

Congratulations! Your Skill (Domain) Crossroads of the Alpha Cosmos has grown to Level 301!

Before she could say more, Randidly pulled her to within his Alpha Cosmos and the blonde-haired woman vanished. Randidly patted his stomach and then burped. The physical action did nothing to rid him of the discomfort. Randidly could only make a face in the darkness of the shaft. Heh… I’m still so full from absorbing Tellus that even letting someone into the Alpha Cosmos gives me indigestion.

But at the same time… Randidly began to drift down through the air, allowing gravity and the flow of significance to pull him down toward the depths. The Stillborn Phoenix released a wave of concentrated emotions upward and began to ‘breathe’, absorbing the ambient emotions in the shaft. The wind ruffled Randidly’s longer hair. My Alpha Cosmos might be stuffed, but my Nether Core is certainly rebounding quickly.

Randidly’s Nether Core had stabilized while he was unconsciously recovering, but since he had woken up it had rapidly been releasing thick and silky Nether that flowed through his body and steadily reinforced his veins. His Influence had already reached 48,111; having more planets within his Alpha Cosmos greatly increased his ability to generate Influence, although nothing could compare to the speed of absorbing planets. At this rate, he would soon pass fifty thousand. But since he had already made it to this point without having time to get the Nether methods from Claudette, he vaguely intended for a hundred thousand to be his evolution point.

More Influence meant that there was more ‘volume’ to the Nether coursing through his core, deepening his foundation. As such, Randidly was shocked to find that a grey bubble was naturally forming within that powerful new maelstrom in his Nether Core. The accumulation was extremely slow; probably it would take a few weeks for a complete bubble to condense. In addition, Randidly sensed that his Nether would only generate one natural bubble at a time. But still, the improvement made the experience of fighting against Velio Dunn worth it.

Having those bubbles available was a powerful weapon. Especially since his increasingly powerful image physicalization meant that he was losing drops of liquid Aether as quickly as they formed.

...but now I need to pay back Nrorce for sacrificing his planet. Randidly’s brow furrowed. Everything has its costs.

While he continued to descend, he contacted Neveah to help Claudette find a comfortable spot within his Alpha Cosmos to train. Then he sent messages to Edraine and Octavius, telling them about his fight against Velio Dunn, the strange image remnant he had seen and affected, and now the announcement of the pursuit of the ancient dog of the Swacc Family. Those two had their fingers more closely on the pulse of the Nexus; they would try and ferret out what was happening much more easily than he could.

For a few seconds, Randidly considered sending a message to Commandant Wick about the situation, as he was his direct superior in Military High Command. But Randidly didn’t trust the bear-man at all. Directly revealing his capabilities was not something that he wanted. Even now, thinking of his image and the overtures that the Commandant had made toward him made his skin crawl.

Instead, he leaned forward and activated Hallucination of the Bloodless Heart to descend more quickly. The ambient Nether rapidly rose and the rush of significance began to accelerate the time he experienced. He blasted past the fifty percent Nether content layer and rushed through the zone filled with porcelain guards before they could swarm around him.

Only when he had descended and settled at his familiar perch above the Nether Gatekeepers did Randidly relax and decelerate. Eventually, he settled quite a bit nearer to the Nether Beings than usual, but he intended to keep the scope of his activities small. He released a long breath, adding two thin streams of steam to the murky darkness. His Nether Core swirled, giving him plenty of independence from the hungry mass of significance that waited below.

His mind quickly settled into a low activity state. His pulsed slowed. His powerful body might have healed, but Randidly’s mental blurriness was becoming a serious problem. With the help of some gentle pules from Yggdrasil, he gradually wiped away the strain that had accumulated in that brief fight. His mental acuity slowly returned.

He continued to slowly breathe, taking almost a full hour for both his inhale and exhale. The air circulated through his body in powerful waves. Energy and images spun together through him and reinforced each other. As his mind remained settled in that deep state, some subconscious part of Randidly moved through his three images and adjusted their peripheries until they were even more conducive to each other.

Occasionally, Randidly’s eyelids would twitch and his eyelashes would flutter. But ultimately, he stayed in that one position for another three days, allowing all of the exhaustion to pass through him and out of him. His muscles gradually relaxed. This time, he did not rush to wake.

So when his eyelids twitched for the final time and then his eyes opened to reveal emerald irises, his gaze was sharp and cutting. The force of his Willpower spread out through air, gripping the surroundings with such force that space began to distort. Some of the nearby Nether Gatekeepers paused in their own meditation and over at him with strange gazes.

But quickly, Randidly eased up his focus. Then he patted himself and did a mental check-up. His gaze steadily wandered until he looked rather helplessly at his left arm. His forearm was warped and a small portion of the elbow had been directly annihilated. The fight against Velio Dunn had ripped away a significant quantity of metal, and the parts that remained had been warped either by Velio or Randidly’s image. His fingers especially, were burned and stubby, from that last slash of his left hand to open up a path for his spear thrust. His ring finger was longer than his middle finger my a fair amount.

I’ll need to repair it… but I don’t really think that I’ve made much progress when it comes to forging a metal arm in the last few months… Randidly’s eyes glittered as he flexed the limb. Besides, right now it should be better to focus more fully on my images in preparation for Claudette’s image refining…

Randidly hummed to himself and stretched his back and arms. A brief scan of his Alpha Cosmos let him see that Claudette was safely occupied training with Neveah, which meant that he could focus on his own business for a while. Her messages indicated she was content. So Randidly closed his eyes once more and sank into his Soulspace.

Before he proceeded toward Yggdrasil, he paused and looked around at his Soulspace. He could see portions of his Skills and Class that still had minute flaws after withstanding that memory fragment of Elhume and Yystrix. However, what shocked Randidly was that there was also a whisper of wind that flowed through his completely isolated Soulspace. Due to his past experience with such strange internal occurrences, he was immediately vigilant. He spun, examining every corner of the shadowy and ethereal realm, but he was still not able to determine the source.

However, the more he listened, the more tortured Randidly’s expression became. He paused and floated over toward his Class and studied the minute flaws in it for several seconds. As he expected, as that mysterious wind brushed through his Soulspace, his Class steadily began to knit together. Compared to the rapid healing of the System, this recovery was closer to the way an injury would heal prior to the System’s arrival. But Randidly couldn’t help but grimace when he noticed the effect.

This… the only source could be the Aetherium that Nrorce gave me to help me recover. Randidly pressed a hand to his chest. That image that didn’t feel like an image… or that clear memory that felt like an imaginary scene… I thought it dissipated completely, but I suppose that wouldn’t make much sense; it was a fragment of a powerful image. It simply… became a part of me…

In a way, it was humbling to have this image be so far about his current level that he couldn’t locate its core. It simply seemed to have soaked into him in a subconscious way. And even worse, it was very clearly beneficial to him.

For now, Randidly could do nothing to pay back this favor; his Alpha Cosmos was genuinely full. Attempting to absorb Nrorce’s home planet would only backfire. But Randidly swore to himself that he would release a wave of Aether when he returned that would at least stabilize the situation before he could sit down and talk to Nrorce about it.

And now finally… Randidly approached his Yggdrasil image. Time to see whether I learned enough to really improve my images…