Beneath Randidly’s feet, the skyisland’s complex Engraving did its necessary. The teeth of the mechanisms dug into existence, humming with potential. Once the grip was established, it would twist at the fabric of existence. When the pulse of time came at its regular intervals, the teeth released. The built-up tension meant that the time pulse vibrated at a high frequency.

As the wheels began to turn, the time in the memory began to weaken and become strange. Those compressions became time dilation on a large scale.

Not that what Randidly technically could accelerate the flow of time across an entire world. The only reason he could achieve this effect was due to the ‘construction’ of the memory. He could slip his Engraving underneath the framework and forcefully manipulate the supported environment. The only two inviolable islands within that churning whirlwind of time as the island on which he stood… and the battlefield of Aether and Nether, resisting the time pulses due to Deganawidah’s deep glacier of significance.

And he needed to execute this operation perfectly, because the sudden second option for witnessing the Pinnacle turned out to be a disappointment. Elhume had a lot of growing to do before he could even glimpse the Pinnacle.

Congratulations! Your Skill Hungry Eyes, Hollow Heart, Cadence of Tragedy (GD) has grown to Level 1025!

Randidly eyes followed Elhume and Fiero as the Songstress’s manifestation grew more powerful, drawing on the influence established by the World Tree. It was a strange feeling, finally becoming the individual who achieved image dominance in an area and could wield that advantage with impunity. Yggdrasil’s unique aspects meant this capability was even more effective than Randidly anticipated.

His images had been carved into existence with his will. The experience would bring him no closer to the Pinnacle, but it would teach Randidly what it felt like to stand atop the Nexus. Aether began to dig enough into existence that its own sort of significance could accumulate in its shadow.

While the Songstress continued her song, Elhume and Fiero exchanged a glance buzzing with meaning. Randidly’s lip curled to see them both so obviously plotting against him. Was this how it had felt, for all those powerful individuals that Randidly overcame? The weaker party had eyes that practically screamed ‘this is not yet my final form’—

“Should we develop a plan too?” Devick asked. Her shoulders rose and fell quickly a testament to how overstimulated she must be in this sort of battle.

To Randidly it might be disappointing, but that didn’t mean it couldn’t be deadly.

He shook his head at her suggestion that they make a plan. Honestly, he didn’t want to belabor this. He would pressure them a bit more, but he didn’t want to waste his attention if Elhume was still some distance from grasping the Pinnacle. After all, today had been too long a day to add extra work. “Those sorts of machinations are reserved for the desperate.”

The two ‘desperate’ individuals exploded into motion. This time, Fiero moved first, wielding his image. Randidly blinked in surprise as the Vulpine reached out and stole the Songstress of Absence from his control. The connection wasn’t necessarily cut, but the Patron of the Borrowed had briefly wrestled away control.

However, Randidly just smirked. Fiero let out a yelp and then froze as silence and stillness settled across his body. He could feel the monstrous body of the Singularity of the Inhospitable Depths swimming closer to her new host, curious about an individual brave enough to grasp her with his bare image. She crooned out a corrupting song, ripping his internal organs to pieces as he struggled to escape the suppression of her heartbeat.

Meanwhile, Elhume used the opening to stride purposefully forward. Randidly measured him. His image had sharpened with their previous few clashes. At the very least, he showed noticeable growth in his losses. Even with the air dominated by Yggdrasil, Elhume’s wrappings of void and oblivion managed to cut a path for his body. It was a powerful image.

It was a single image, before a trio and one of the most powerful Nether Cores in existence.

“I suppose you can just leave the planning to me. You go first, and I’ll follow up,” Devick gave Randidly a thumbs up.

Randidly’s lips twitched, but at the least she wasn’t being mopey. “You probably don’t even need to act.”

Devick pressed a hand to her chest, mock aghast. Her long and blood-soaked talons glittered. “Wherever else can I find such a fell battlefield to waltz with death? No, certainly I cannot miss this opportunity to participate in villainy-”

“IS THIS ALL A JOKE TO YOU?!” Elhume roared, his image gaining traction in the surrounding air. “You… all I want is to protect my son. And yet you continue to so flippantly endanger the Nexus. You… I will tear to you pieces, Nether King Hungry Eye.”

“What have you managed to accomplish?” Randidly folded his arms across his chest. He could also try to reason with Elhume, but the hollowness in his gaze, and the lack of response when he had mentioned Elhume’s betrayal of the Patron of the Deep, made such an attempt seem pointless. No, the madness and loneliness before him could only be suppressed with force.

Acri slithered back down his arms and settled around his waist. Randidly goaded his foe purposefully, even as the skyisland continued to focus his efforts. “Yes, I can understand your stated goal. But… have you taken even a step closer to accomplishing it? Constantly being as self-righteous as you can be doesn’t actually change the shit situation around you.”

For a moment, Elhume’s face went blank. Then rage curdled his features. His void fizzled, seeming to begin eating even into his own flesh as it boiled. “You… you—!”

“Sure, sure.” Randidly snorted. Then he raised his gaze, struck by a strange thought digression. So often, he had been on the other side of this confrontation, feeling weak and desperate while his foe raised his gaze to the sky and considered a grander matter. And Randidly had always found this to be a mistake he could use to his advantage; when a foe’s attention shifted from the fight in front of them to some future confrontation… that long-sighted individual would miss some details. Those details could accumulate to create an opportunity.

Yet now, standing underneath the massive, entrenched manifestation of the World Tree, Randidly Ghosthound looked toward the future. Because standing in the middle of his image, the effect he wielded simplified the flow of significance. Abruptly, he could glimpse the crossroads of events that would lead him in the direction he desired.

How will you stop me? Randidly wondered, speaking not to Elhume but to existence itself. His Fateset churned, gathering more and more momentum without an impediment in front of him. Around him, the temporal anomaly continued to accelerate. He barred his teeth. Or… will you just let me take a peek at the Pinnacle? Will the reproduction be an inferior product?

Elhume roared. At this point, all other communications available to him seemed insufficient. He clenched his hands into a fist. He threw a punch.

All the torn holes in his existence, likely given to him by a strange reliance on Fiero’s ability to ‘borrow’, lent his tantrum raw power.

He threw a punch that possessed so many overlapping layers of jagged void that it seemed to buzz through space like a metaphysical lawn mower. Randidly did not pull out Acri for a second time. He simply looked up at the brilliant emerald canopy hanging over his position and let his gaze grow hazy.

When Elhume punched, the ground below him erupted with roots. Randidly didn’t particularly attempt to empower them, but the oldest of the roots he possessed ripped out of the ground to wrap themselves around Elhume. Roots whose history stretched back to before they belonged to the World Tree, when they were Spearing Roots, or even Entangling Roots. Roots so rich and reinforced with significance that they could wrap around the jagged blades of the void and only be slightly chipped.

Roots Randidly had used to rise through the System and change the Nexus. Compared to these roots… the Elhume in the memory was lacking. The two images wrestled, using the whole of the distance between their physical bodies to measure their accomplishments.

Congratulations! Your Skill The First Tree Suffers Only Fealty (P) has grown to Level 1000!

Elhume’s advance ground to a halt, only inches away from Randidly’s face. The power of his punch was completely dispersed, his waist and arms wrapped in thick roots. He looked at Randidly with bulging eyes, naked hatred on his face. The Dread Homunculus replied to that look with an amused sneer.

He raised a hand and slashed at his bound foe, shattering the weaponized void he wielded. Elhume’s knuckled popped and disintegrated, the muscles of his forearm flayed from his flesh, the flows of Nether in Randidly’s strike scarring his opponent's flesh on hit.

Congratulations! Your Skill Wrathful Calamity Rends (T) has grown to Level 971!

…

Congratulations! Your Skill Wrathful Calamity Rends (T) has grown to Level 985!

The void shattered as all the emotional force contained with him exploded outward. He needed the power he could earn in this third impossible attempt, by fixing and evolving his Class. It became its own sort of overwhelming imperative that crushed the resistance in front of him.

With the addition of Yggdrasil's stationary force, it was barely a contest.

I can’t waste anymore time on you, Randidly’s expression darkened as Elhume spat out a globule of blood, took an unsteady step backward, but then appeared to be about to grit his teeth and endure the fallout. Fiero, foolishly, continued to grasp onto the Songstress of Absence, so Randidly once more relied on the Yggdrasil that had manifested so effectively.

The light of that golden sun faded. Dusk came to the skyisland and a grinning carrion rammed her hand through Elhume’s chest cavity. A split second later, Devick stabbed her talons through Elhume’s lower back, squeezing a gasp out of him.

But she only tsk’d. “A split second too late, huh? Ah, damnit…”

Randidly took a step forward and stood by Elhume’s side. He wavered for a second between throwing a more final strike, but opted instead to simply pinch his foe's shoulder with enough force to shatter his collarbone. In the end, he still possessed the possibility of reaching the Pinnacle.

“If you try to interfere again,” Randidly said. “I will kill you.”

Almost hoping that Elhume would return as a refined element ready to create a miracle, Randidly tossed his foe off the edge of a Skyisland. A sharpened root to Fiero’s chest knocked loose his grip on the Songstress and also sent his bloody form tumbling over the edge. Then Randidly could turn to the milky sky and activate his Engraving in earnest.

Let's tear apart the rest of this memory to find the miracle.