Randidly’s Nether spun together in complex patterns. The energies joined together without any waste. His spear blazed with significance as he raised it. When he thrust the weapon upward toward the Monarch of Karma, he flashed a grin of triumph; as the dense energy expanded, it also corroded the world state image just slightly.

Congratulations! Your Skill Yearnings of the Nether Heir (P) has grown to Level 1183!

Congratulations! Your Skill Erebus’s Baleful Waltz (P) has grown to Level 1079!

The spear blast impacted the descending sword. A split second later, the impact blasted back to him. The skyisland’s Engravings flickered and Randidly’s joints ached. His smile stretched so far it seemed painful, yet he couldn’t deny the raw joy he felt in these clashes. But now that he had Devick’s agreement, he admitted he couldn’t just let the Monarch of Karma continue to build up momentum.

Every second he wasted was a slight increase in the chance that she wouldn’t be able to endure the forces at play before she struck.

Randidly shifted his grip on Acri. He wove four streams of Nether together through the spear, preparing to create an even more overwhelming pattern with the thrust. The kinetic storm he had gathered roared in approval as it sensed that his intention had finally shifted. Randidly spoke over his shoulder. “After the third strike… that’s when you will have your chance. Be—”

Randidly paused. He almost said be careful. But that couldn’t capture what he wanted from Devick. And he didn’t want caution to be her dominant emotion. He needed the wildness he had seen from her at her height. He met her eyes. “-be overwhelming. At that moment, every eye will be on you.”

Almost in a trance, she nodded. Around her body, that crimson cloak of Malice glittered with intensity, responding to his request with might. Devick might be weak at the moment, but her image possessed an aspect that Randidly couldn’t rival: the trait of infectiousness. In the present, she used it associated with her madness and bindings. But with the changes that Randidly had caused, he believed she would find a new shape for her prodigious talent.

Above, the burning sword of light began to fall. It now possessed a slender, crystalline core that hurt to examine for too long. Waves of crackling discharge heated the surrounding air to the point that it became plasma, leading to the faint existence of a true flame wrapped around this massive hunk of Aether. It seemed the Monarch of Karma had come to the same conclusion. They now moved decisively to break the other.

Let’s check your resolve, you bastard. Randidly showed his teeth.

Like a billion times before in his life, Randidly thrust his spear.

What made this thrust different were the layers that went into it, layers he had spent his life discovering and mastering and refining and mixing. Yggdrasil gifted resiliency, the Dread Homunculus imparted raw intensity, and the Songstress of Absence crooned a song of annihilation. His emotional sea responded to his desires, flooding the thrust with all of the searing intensity he had absorbed from the Alpha Cosmos. His physical body withstood the rushing destruction of all these forces, pouring them into a honed thrust. More and more physical force poured through his muscles and joints, runoff energy from the kinetic storm he wielded.

Acri provided the peerless tip.

The bow on top of the attack was the Nether, four corkscrewing flows of energy forming the core. Two rushed upward, two downward. Along the friction points of these interlocking flows, a monstrously dense significance gleamed.

Randidly thrust—

Congratulations! Your Skill Yearnings of the Nether Heir (P) has grown to Level 1190!

Congratulations! Your Skill Nyx’s Successor Births Fate (GD) has grown to Level 1080!

The world tore. His Skyisland flickered again, this time from the eruption of oblivion he unleashed. An inky black river expanded into a deluge of force and smashed into the sword of light. Aether and Nether grappled with one another in the sky. Even through the cataclysmic impacts, Randidly saw Mae Myrna’s eyes widening in shock.

“You…” She trembled as she glared down at Randidly. Her hands tightened into fists. But she had given up control of her image and could only watch.

The sky cracked and then broke to pieces. The Nether overran Aether in an upward avalanche of darkness. The sword of light’s edges corroded, most of its light dimming. The dense significance couldn’t destroy the core, but it pushed the sword back up to its starting position, completely invalidating the attack from the Monarch of Karma.

The world around Yggdrasil quivered and tightened: Mae’s world-state image had spread and it hated that deserving a victory hadn’t been enough to quell him. It imposed additional restrictions, but they were light in comparison to the power of his body. Randidly licked his lips. Maybe it will only take two strikes.

He twisted the spear and settled back down into a base stance. The domineering river of Nether vanished like it had been a ghost. His toes dug into the dirt. He added a fifth and sixth stream of Nether to the core formation of the thrust. The angle of their spiral tightened. His Nether Core whirred, generating more and more energy to fuel the attack. He sensed Devick moving up into a hunched squat in preparation for the opening he would create.

For Randidly’s second thrust, he didn’t just thrust once. The Dread Homunculus shivered and conjured a thousand variations of the thrust, haunted thralls stuck in Tartarus imitating the attack. All these spear thrusts Randidly understood in an instant. He layered them into a pyramid of force, an explosion of force also containing his images, his body, his physical storm, his emotional intensity.

The second thrust was even more overwhelming than the first, but Randidly didn’t miss the changes in the Monarch’s sword as it swung to meet him.

Congratulations! Your Skill Conviction of the Celestial Cataclysm (T) has grown to Level 1075!

…

Congratulations! Your Skill Erebus’s Baleful Waltz (P) has grown to Level 1092!

Congratulations! Your Skill Yearnings of the Nether Heir has grown to Level 1194!

The corruption had been annihilated in waves of Aether that also enriched the energy at the edge of the sword. Most of it was liquid Aether now, although the core area possessed less crystalized Aether in order to fuel the change.

The power of Randidly’s second thrust had almost doubled as he increased the complexity of the core Nether Array and also layered the attacks together. Yet upon impact, Randidly only managed to accomplish the exact same result. The energies above the fight seethed, endlessly churned and smote. The Monarch’s brilliant sword was completely repelled. Its exterior was corroded into the grey slop that resulted from antagonistic Aether and Nether grinding against one another.

A much more impressive feat, considering how pure the Aether of his foe had become after a single purifying blast, but Randidly wasn’t satisfied with this. He spun Acri once, the weapon dancing across his palm. He felt the tension in Devick’s shoulders. His emerald eyes blazed as he settled on his plan. “This time-”

The surrounding area began to shake. The flow of both time and space turned chaotic, so reality seemed on the verge of shredding itself to pieces. Within a split second, Randidly’s head began to ache and his vision turned blurry. He stood frozen, trying to understand the shift. Above, the Monarch of Karma ignored the disturbance and unleashed another burst of energy to purify his sword further. Now, his weapon had become skinny; a solid crystal base wore a cloak of liquid Aether.

Randidly’s face scrunched together. Is this the effect of the world-state image reaching deep enough? Then-

He shivered, suddenly realizing what had happened. Why he felt the effect and the Monarch of Karma ignored it. It wasn’t the surrounding space and time, exactly, that had become unmoored, it was that suddenly the memory began to rip and tear. His Grim Intuition cut downward. He couldn’t quite parse apart the details due to all the interference, but one fact was clear.

Where there had once been an immense weight, there was now just absence. Deganawidah had died.

Randidly wondered if he had fulfilled the grand purpose that had kept him alive for so long.

In the next shard of time, Randidly’s Nether Core exploded with all of its built-up reserves, seeping out into the memory. The reverberations calmed to a manageable point; although Deganawidah no longer supported the memory, his significance had long nourished and strengthened the foundation. As such, Randidly could continue to manifest his full might.

However, 95% of his Nether was now consumed to make sure Randidly’s mind wouldn’t get overly strained.

No, it should have been like this, to begin with, Randidly’s skin tingled as he quickly settled into his stance and thrust. Lowanna said it correctly: Nether is a burden. Therefore let all the extra energy fall away—

Instead of overwhelming streams of forceful Nether he had wielded previously, Randidly drew out nine threads of Nether. These were the purest he could manage, Nether Weight forged and hammered and flattened and rolled and compacted until they were the gleaming essence of darkness, threads that could have been woven into his Cloak of Utter Night and not weakened its defensive abilities.

Nine threads spiraled together. The core he created was so solid that Randidly completely depleted the storm of kinetic force around him, pouring all that potency into the attack. A thin spear of oblivion shot upward toward the Monarch of Karma’s Sword.

Congratulations! Your Skill Yearnings of the Nether Heir (P) has grown to Level 1199!

Congratulations! Your Skill From the Chaotic Sea, Abrupt Reverberation (T) has grown to Level 932!

Completing the movement, Randidly found his surroundings oddly still. Not even a breath of wind remained on the skyisland.

“Shit… shit… shit…!” Devick hopped up as soon as Randidly thrust, before the two attacks met in the sky, and landed on Acri’s shaft. She kicked off and began to dash up the stretching attack, showing complete faith in Randidly’s words, despite her swearing.

Randidly watched her assent with glittering eyes. The roots that Yggdrasil had routed through the image around her body still moved with her. His three images drifted up and settled across her body, preparing to join with her strike to give it teeth.

A grand artist drew a singular black line, rising toward the climax.

Spear and sword met in the sky. The memory tore under the impact. A yawning gulf opened and destructive radiation blasted out in every direction-

Randidly gritted his teeth and raised a hand. 4% of his Nether Core shifted into motion. The First Authority, Seize.

His Nether Core whined under the strain, but the Authority activated. Randidly grabbed the edges of the tear and slammed them back into place, stabilizing the memory. If the way he dispersed the dangerous energy ripples was directly toward the Monarch of Karma, well— that was his prerogative. The canopy of the World Tree rustled and the energy behaved meekly before him.

Congratulations! Your Skill the First Tree Suffers Only Fealty (P) has grown to Level 1009!

Congratulations! Your Skill Gospel within the Seething Torrent (P) has grown to Level 1025!

Spear and sword met for the third time, part deux, as proper reality was strengthened to the point it could host such an impact. A low note of strain rumbled down across the skyland, buzzing through Randidly’s marrow. With the additional strain of the universe radiation, the crystalized Aether core of the sword snapped.

Devick bounded up along the spear thrust. The victory of Randidly’s attack was so overwhelming that most of the resulting blast shot up into the sky, but still she wobbled. Her crimson energy flashed, but she did not fall. And as the Monarch of Karma stumbled backward, she bounced off the black shaft and cavorted back and forth through the air.

She arrived in front of Mae Myrna, clearly hyperventilating.

“In what world could you have touched me, girl?” Mae gestured. The world rose in support of this claim. It prepared to smash down the challenger with impunity. Devick did not deserve to be able to bridge the gap.

Randidly’s Fateset stirred. Randidly’s images followed.

A crimson hare condensed around Devick’s body as she raised a hand to slash. Yggdrasil became the hare’s muscles and veins. The Dread Homunculus became her sharpened claws. The Songstress of Absence became her Hungry Eyes as Malice looked upon her next meal.

“None but this one,” Devick replied. As she slashed, her infectious crimson energy blend out into the surrounding space.