Chapter 2422 |
For a long moment, Randidly Ghosthound and Laplace stared at each other.
The Eternity seemed shocked, deaf to his words. Randidly ran a light mental finger over all the weapons he prepared, making sure each was in its place. This was it, all his preparation and growth, just for this moment.
Power existed within just attention. Randidly felt his own temporal reality unravel, just slightly, from the extended focus of the Eternity. Laplace seemed to maintain a constant aura around its body that pulsed with dangerous shape the significance had been hammered into for untold amounts of years. But while Laplace used that attention just to puff up its aura, Randidly fully uncorked the bottle holding all the vicious emotions of the dead riding on his cloak. Darkness, violence, and howling desperation distorted the air with its intoxicating presence.
Very few events could unite the bitter dead like the presence of an invader in their midst. They breathed out spite and settled, ready for the explosion.
The long and fat tail of Laplace twitched. Randidly’s left hand tightened as he leveled his spear. Both strained, their eyes still locked on one another. Image, the emotions of the dead, significance, Truth, vessel…
All had been prepared.
Randidly felt a grim pleasure as, even through the black expanse of those clock faces Laplace had for eyes, he could read the shock in the Eternity’s expression as he physically held it in place. He planted his left foot. He pivoted, power flowing through his waist as he unleashed his thrust.
The dead burst past him with a keening roar. An invader was in their midst, a foreign being that had bulldozed through all the restrictions of Pine’s corpse, seeking to destroy, devour, and manipulate the core of this land of death. Randidly nudged them slightly with his Synechdochence, layering the various specters upon one another until they became an endless torrent of caustic emotion. Despite the powerful shape aura of Laplace, they scythed forward without pause. His body had been reinforced beyond belief on his journey through the Nexus, but even he trembled as he channeled all this dangerous force.
Congratulations! Your Skill Erebus’ Baleful Waltz (P) has grown to Level 1123!
Even if only a rotten dreg lingered of a soul after their death, Randidly had scooped up all those dregs and erupted like a necrotic volcano. He rode the wave and attacked.
Congratulations! Your Skill Erebus’ Baleful Waltz (P) has grown to Level 1201!
Congratulations! Your Skill Ghosthound’s Cloak of a Thousand Lightless Horizons (GD) has grown to Level 1313!
Randidly’s spear made contact with the dense skin of the horrible serpent. The dead followed a split second later, all their accumulated rancor smashing directly against the significance of the Eternity.
Space tore and time stuttered as the two powers smashed against each other with all the subtlety of an avalanche. A few nearby pillars cracked and collapsed, the half-finished dolls upon them falling to the ground and shattering. The dead physically inundated Laplace and began to dig with their fingers, trying to find purchase in the Eternity’s grey body. Yet even with all this built-up momentum, they stopped just short of being able to wound this foreign monster. The dense barrier of its significance only began to waver— Randidly’s eyes flashed in recognition.
Not there yet, He hummed to himself, his body screaming from the reverberating feedback of his powerful thrust being stopped dead. But as he shifted his weight backward and reset himself, his three images all gathered together. Randidly nudged the prepped image back into place and attacked again.
However, Laplace recovered just as quickly from the first calamitous impact. Those handless clocks seemed to grow larger and larger on its sagging face. A piercing bolt of the Eternity’s power ripped through the intervening space, creating several whirlpool temporal distortions, and slammed into Randidly’s chest. His experiential time wrenched in several directions, almost scattered by the force of the smite.
Upon Laplace’s arrival, a glance had been enough to lock Randidly within the complex and poisonous currents of significance.
Gritting his teeth, Randidly felt his Nether Core rotate more quickly. With the stabilization from Pangu’s Asymptote, the force of the Eternity’s strike was dispersed; he endured the focused pulse of its accomplishments.
Randidly ripped his way through the lingering restrictions of time and unleashed another thrust, his three images now rising into a piercing crescendo. Genesis Opens a Thousand Doors and Baptizes All Comers. Nyx’s Successor Births Fate. Singularity Engulfs the Finite.
The World Tree rose behind Randidly’s back, and through its thick canopy, the faintest hint of the birth of a universe could be glimpsed. That pure light contained secrets and power that birthed all else. Riding on the back of a host of the dead, Randidly channeled pure and suffocating night through his weapon. And finally with the Songstress of Absence, the light of the first dawn and the darkness of utter night spun together to create a milky-edged singularity.
With all the emotional force he could muster, Randidly thrust Acri forward again. The dead screamed and joined the charge. He would never have as much potency as he did now, as the dead spent themselves. Rivers of translucent Nether crashed through his veins, giving power to the attack.
An even more powerful shockwave blasted outward. The reinforced ground of this workshop shuddered and splintered. The impact punched a hole through the fabric of time that made Randidly wince, considering his plans for his Penance. Yet when the combined attack of his images and Nether Core slammed against the calcified edge of significance surrounding an eternity, with the flood of the dead pressing him forward-
The harsh rind of Laplace parted. Acri’s tip met the inner substance of his foe. A flaw had emerged in the Shape.
Yet the wound also signaled the beginning of an unexpected counter-attack.
First, the radiating aura of its image state sizzled at Randidly’s skin. Then a horrible dissonance traveled through Acri’s shaft and reached Randidly’s right arm, the constant vicious pressure of an ‘Eternity’ given outlet. The sudden pressure left even Randidly horrified. The flesh of his hand popped like an overfilled balloon, filling the air with a bloody mist. His forearm fractured, with tendons and muscles of his upper arm snapping under the strain. Just from landing the attack, his right arm had been shredded.
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But the door opened both ways. Randidly’s three images, glazed in his translucent Nether savaged their way through the inner workings of an Eternity. Power rampaged through the barred inner workings of this State liberated from the dark sea. His lips pressed together, because of the intensity of the tension held within the Eternity’s body. The shape that held the Samsara in place had been given a flaw. Now, all the built-up and compressed temporal damage leaked out.
Eventually, Randidly suspected this damage would greatly weaken the Eternity. But he needed to endure the dangerous radiation. And from just a taste the amount of power depended on the time this Eternity had existed.
The first few waves were manageable, but the released pressure kept getting stronger. If Laplace had a heartbeat still, it shoved out waves of calcified time through the link between the two of them. The density of significance around the Eternity crushed the ground around them, squeezed the air away, constricted and quintupled the pressure in the surrounding space. Randidly’s legs trembled, even as his right arm struggled to heal through the constant strain.
Gritting his teeth, Randidly leaned into the thrust. Acri sank a little deeper into Laplace’s body. The Songstress of Absence, especially, went wild. She sang and sang, punching holes in the power radiating out from this form. Much of the time that Randidly absorbed flowed into that image, deepening the devouring power of the singularity she held in her voice.
But prolonged exposure made it obvious to Randidly that this would not work. The accumulation of an Eternity stretched wider and more monstrously than he had expected. All the manipulated time, all the resisted flow, those shapes had been impressed upon the Eternity in the same way years became rings in a tree trunk. The ancient monster now used all those outer rings as a blunt club in vicious retribution for the physical wound.
Randildy bit his lip as time hammered against him, more densely packed and overwhelming than he had ever felt. The first few bursts of discharge had punched holes in the temporal fabric around him, but this deluge completely shredded a large stretch of the fabric; their corner of the workshop had practically been isolated from the outside world. The two hung in this extended moment, run aground in the sea of time, with the workshop shattering and exploding around them.
This was always my choice. The light in Randidly’s eyes grew increasingly bright as he trembled but didn’t falter in the face of so much pressure. The true weight of an Eternity washed over him, but he did not allow his chin to drop. Randidly Ghosthound pushed in the face of adversity. His powerful vessel, the accumulation of all the power he had gained endured. I have taken responsibility for the temporal fabric of the Nexus and I will heal it all. No matter how much time you possess-
A blast of memory tremors leapt through Acri’s shaft and ravaged Randidly’s body. He let out a hissing breath but endured it as his shoulders popped and his legs swayed. His muscles were swollen and inflamed, flooded with blood from pulped veins. His Primordial Nether Juju gathered and flooded his strained muscles with borrowed power. With a great heave, with the gnashing teeth of the Dread Homunculus and the constant pressure of the dead, Acri sank another two inches into Laplace.
He reached into deeper rings of experienced time and his body began to break down.
Randidly’s stubbornness, and the bead of the same he had taken from Shal, grew even more adamant in the face of this suffering. The sensation of time vanished; without the fabric around him, it was difficult to feel how the situation truly developed. Randidly felt suspended in the moment of struggle, his muscles constantly rupturing and straining. He pushed and pushed.
A huge and oppressive wave of time settled across his arms and back. He rose to meet it, drawing on all the grand potential of his vessel-
Yet he was locked in the moment of strain. Every extended experience suffocated his hope that he could escape this. He pushed and nothing seemed to change. His muscles trembled and he squeezed out every drop of sweat and effort from his physical form, but all he seemed to accomplish was damaging his own body by fighting against a weight that greatly overmatched him.
Randidly almost laughed aloud as he felt the pressure increase again; the existence of an Eternity was ridiculous. He knew that Elhume and Fiero had somewhat faked their way to the Pinnacle, but the difference in accomplishment felt comical. His images slowed in their rampage and were forced back. The constant charge of the dead stalled out behind him. He could maintain a thin film of his superior Nether around his person, but he could no longer cut through the sheer weight of memories that the Eternity had experienced.
For all the dead Randidly now unleashed, Laplace had probably seen ten times more die and had never felt even a tremor. The density of his significance was impressive, but a sufficient quality could overmatch him with just the horrific power of memory. That was what it meant to be an Eternity.
“So this… is the extent of your power.” Randidly let out a self small laugh. He felt the memories grinding away at his vessel… and his vessel slowly being pushed back. The bend in his knees increased. His toes were pushed back, desperate for purchase on the ground The trembling in his legs grew worse and worse. His smile widened. “Well, I always figured a direct confrontation would be dumb… but can you blame a guy for trying?”
Those blank clock faces bored into Randidly, still not even seeming to acknowledge his words. Finally feeling his limits nearing, Randidly flicked his left hand and produced the Alchemist’s passport. Normally he wouldn’t be able to affect such a powerful creature, but the wound to the temporal fabric left spatial tears all around.
Just because Randidly wasn’t prepared to perform the grand finale of his three miracles didn’t mean he was above a few sleights of hand to warm the crowd up.
With a grunt, Randidly did two things simultaneously: activate his Fatepiece and rip Acri out of Laplace’s fat and grey flesh. The sense of relief he experienced while no longer needing to endure the echoes of Laplace’s manipulated time was so strong he couldn’t help but stagger backward. It was the equivalent of stepping off a tiny boat and forgetting the ground would no longer be undulating beneath you.
Laplace didn’t miss the opening as Randidly’s balance failed him— the massive creature whipped its tail sideways. Randidly barely was able to get Acri up in time to block, gritting his teeth through the splash of its horrible weight.
As Randidly staggered backward, Laplace turned away from this annoyance and pounced toward its original goal— the Eternity crashed face-first into one of the nearby storage shelves. Still leaking that horrible pressure, the metal warped and the other building materials directly imploded. The explosion set off a series of smaller collapses as debris were sent flying in every direction. After a long moment, the Eternity pressed itself up out of the wreckage and turned to glare at Randidly.
Randidly laughed, the air rippled softly behind him. With the Alchemist’s Passport, he had rotated the two around. Not only had he caught up to the Eternity, but now he stood between it and the last barrier before Pine.
Shal’s bead of stubbornness had brightened to the piercing beam of a lighthouse. Even now, even if its hopeless, we can still advance, Shal.
“My Grand Fate will be to harmonize three Truths,” Randidly proclaimed as he leveled Acri at the monster. “And my chosen Penance will be to heal all the wounds you’ve inflicted on the fabric of time-”
Laplace attacked, still unwilling to allow him the pleasure of some verbal banter. But also in that moment, Randidly felt a tremor from his Nether Core. One that felt… bad.
For whatever reason his Nether Core didn’t like the framing of his Penance. Which felt like a pretty late moment for this realization to suddenly manifest.
