The Legend of Randidly Ghosthound

The tier two winds were vicious. A direct strike could cut through his skin, fat, and muscle to leave his bone bare. Randidly rapidly healed through those wounds, but the small impacts also threw off his steps that would allow him to avoid other strikes, resulting in an exhausting and brutal gauntlet of pummeling.

“Damnit,” Randidly struggled to set his feet and ducked under a few blasts of wind. “How the hell does this mountain control so much natural energy?!?”

Then, there was stillness. It was a prelude to the tier three version of the Grand Pattern to creak and descend with vicious intent. The flurry of attacks tore away all pretense of dodge, then struck at Randidly’s restricted images, then blasted through the meager natural energy he had managed to tempt to his side. Then it began a long and vicious argument with his body and Stats, demanding a tribute of flesh-

Time blurred-

Everything hurt. Yet if he stopped moving, even for a second, he would die. When the bludgeoning of force and pain became too much, his consciousness had to cede control to his raw instincts, sharpened from ten years struggling within the Nexus-

Drip.

Drip. Drip Drip.

His tensed muscles buzzed with pain. The combination of the anticipation and dripping finally woke him to his surroundings. Randidly stood frozen, waiting in a timeless shard of readiness. When the next attacks came, he would be prepared. He had to be. The force of these attacks was enough to threaten him, even through his enormous Stats-

Drip.

A dizzying wave of pain spread from Randidly’s temple, ignited by the unexpected noise. His fuzzy mind pushed the horrid throbbing back, desperate to keep focused. His experience over the past… well, indiscernible period had taught him that he couldn’t afford to spread his attention. Like a statue, he stood there and waited for the next wind blades to ravage the area. Dread seeped through his pained body as lessons carved into his flesh came back with perfect clarity.

The third tier of the Grand Pattern descended not only with Wind Blades but also with vicious force spikes that rained from the sky-

Drip. Drip.

Randidly’s face twitched at the incessant noise, which immediately morphed into a wince as the small movement worsened his headache. Randidly began to work at his eyelids, which appeared to be glued shut with dried blood. Eventually, he pried open an eye and blinked at the gloomy ambiance of the surroundings.

His vision was fuzzy. The surroundings were inscrutable. But even through his pain and weariness fogged mind, he sensed that the danger had passed. The storm above him slowly receded, leaving him wounded but alive. He tried to shift his position and his joints groaned in protest. After a moment of unavoidable leaning, Randidly simply collapsed onto the unforgiving ground.

He coughed weakly and was surprised when blood dribbled out of his mouth. Groaning, he rolled onto his back, careful not to roll off the thin trail along the edge of the mountain. The last thing he needed was to tumble into a gorge in this condition. He reached out for his images, finding them wan and exhausted, even though they could only operate within him on the mountain. His self-awareness found the turbid Nether rotating listlessly through his body.

Jesus, basically all of me is wrecked. Randidly winced. What the hell happened…?

Congratulations! Your Skill Absolute Timing (Ru) has grown to Level 228!

The Skill activation informed him that he had been essentially unconscious for four hours during the worst of the descent of the Grand Pattern, forced to rely on instinct and desperate activation of his Skills in order to survive. The Grey Creature and the Stillborn Phoenix seemed to be limp shadows of themselves, from constant usage of the future-related Skills.

I was so close to death and I didn’t even know it. It came so quickly. Randidly felt the urge to laugh bubbling up in his chest. More blood dribbled between his lips, but he could feel his body knitting itself back together. But the feeling he got from the healing was somewhat unwilling. Obviously, he had been constantly regenerating his flesh nonstop for the past four hours. Even Randidly’s monstrous body had a limit.

Meanwhile, Yggdrasil-

Randidly paused, sensing something was different about Yggdrasil. Its presence in his chest was dim, but not out of weakness. Randidly reached out again, finding that he couldn’t sense his World Tree image. There seemed to be a screen present that kept him from communicating efficiently. Are you alright?

He felt a pulse of meaning from the distant image, directing him to the notifications he had ignored in his focused state. He scrolled through the Skill Level increases and the warnings of low Health, Mana, and Stamina from the System. Randidly felt a secondary chill seeing the warnings. The third tier of the Grand Pattern above this mountain had descended so suddenly that he hadn’t even really been aware of the danger until he had been forced to his limit.

It would have certainly been ironic if I ended up dying alone on this mountain. Without being able to rely on external images with my Skills, have I become soft? Randidly mouth was dry, but he blinked and focused on the sky. Luckily, it seemed that the Grand Pattern entered into some sort of intermission. Wind blade danced merrily in the distance above him, but it was clear that after the abrupt descent, it now pulled back.

Or considering the strange nascent attention he felt, was the pause purposeful, to give him time to recover?

Essentially, the area where Randidly now rested was only harassed by tier zero. Even in his wounded state, his body could handle those sort of strikes without any assist-

“Sulfur!” Randidly gasped and sat up. His body groaned in protest, but likely most of the physical damage had been repaired while Randidly had been blearily frozen, waiting for more dangerous attacks to fall on his head. He looked down at his left arm and saw that most of the armored Soul Plant had been blown away. The limb basically extended into a swollen black and grey elbow, and even that portion was covered in deep cracks.

Randidly frantically reached out mentally to connect with his living armor, and finally relaxed when he felt the spark of life at the core of Sulfur. Currently, it was rapidly churning as it tried to cope with the vast amounts of kinetic energy it absorbed, but even Randidly felt somewhat awed to feel the brilliant and endless power Sulfur seemed to contain.

Looks like I was worried for nothing. Alright, back to these damn notifications, Randidly laughed again as he saw more Skill Levels for Dodge and his physical passives from when he was moving unconsciously, but there was no humor in it. Because why would Yggdrasil be so distant-

Then he found the notifications he had been looking for.

Danger! Your Health has fallen below 10%! Please-

Your Skillset Yggdrasil, the Universe that was First a Tree is experiencing great duress! Warning, continued exposure is extremely dangerous. However, due to its latent potential, your image wishes to evolve! Powerful synchronicity detected!

Due to its integral role within your person, evolution is restricted. Do you wish to allow the evolution? Y/N

Randidly’s expression turned sour. The System would have allowed me to die rather than experience the image evolution? I suppose it’s because of the influence Yggdrasil has on my Class… the Nexus doesn’t want you to casually toss affect your class. Miserly as usual.

But then he grinned because an evolution for Yggdrasil was something he had anticipated for a long time. He clicked yes.

Congratulations! Your Skillset is beginning to grow! Due to the special characteristics of your Skillset, the growth will be done in stages. Please continue to accumulate energy and potential within your Skillset to move through the different stages. The more energy is gathered, the greater the result! Please see your Village Spirit for details.

You have achieved the first stage! Your Skill Yyrwood Body of Yggdrasil (L) has evolved into the Marred Yet Reliable Foundation of Yggdrasil (T)! Skill Levels will be maintained.

Marred Yet Reliable Foundation of Yggdrasil (T): After a millennium of stubborn growth and being jostled by chaotic storms, the Yyrwood trunk of Yggdrasil has been worn and scarred. However, the living record of all things runs through that same pitted bark. No matter how much force is applied, the rippling fabric of eternity dwells below the surface and is not easily altered. Until time and space collapse, the trunk will endure. Vastly increases physical defense. Vastly increases the effectiveness of regeneration. Your body can efficiently serve as a medium to channel other energies. Efficacy of all aspects increases modestly with Skill Level.

Randidly’s eyes glittered as he looked through the Skill description. Before he even finished moving through it, he felt all the muscles in his body flex as one as the shift occurred. His body stiffened and the lingering wounds ached in protest. But as the pressure running through Randidly’s body increased, all those pains popped and vanished like soap bubbles.

After ten seconds, his body gradually began to relax, leaving his body swimming in comfortable warmth. Randidly shook his head; he remained exhausted, but he had now completely recovered from the damage inflicted by the Grand Pattern. As his spare attention increased, he took another few seconds to scan his body. He looked down at his lower tail, half of which had been cut off during his unconscious struggles. Turns out that walking this dangerous path provided a lot of benefits. But that damned Grand Pattern had enough power to even damage my image physicalization. Is it an image, or- wait, what?

Randidly blinked down at his tail. He felt the change immediately, now that he witnessed it. The edges of his body wriggled and glittered. His attention flicked back to his newly earned Marred Yet Reliable Foundation of Yggdrasil: Your body can efficiently serve as a medium to channel other energies, huh?

Image physicalizations had always been an area of growth that had left Randidly rather unimpressed. He didn’t necessarily focus on them, but he had constantly refined his images in different ways. On the one hand it was clearly a power where images were used to reinforce the body. While most of the Nexus considered this to be a dead-end path, Randidly suspected that he would be able to benefit from following in the footsteps of Elhume and pushing his physical prowess to the limit.

On the other hand, his image physicalizations' performance had always been… lackluster. True, he experienced a defense boost for sure, with smaller benefits to his power and speed, but compared to what he could accomplish with his normal images, it was unimpressive. The growth in physical boosts had been extremely slow compared to the growth he experienced in the power of his images. Perhaps he would have even begun to pull back on his image physicalizations and focus more on the alternative, drops of liquid Aether, if he hadn’t been occupied improving his techniques, Engraving, and Nether Skills.

However, Randidly’s eyes glowed a bright neon green as he suddenly could see his previous mistakes when it came to image physicalizations.

In the past, he had essentially superimposed his images over his body. Now as he attempted to do that again and reinforce himself, his new ‘flesh’ was so conducive to energy that the image force slid within him and began to rotate. No longer were the image physicalizations layered on top of him, but they smoothly merged with his flesh and strengthened him.

“Did I just do it wrong the first time…? Or do you need a particular type of body for this,” Randidly chewed on his cheek as he watched the smooth flow of image physicalizations through him.

As images steadily rose and dwelled within his flesh, his Nether Core groaned and began to spin more rapidly to rival 5h3 3n34ty. Randidly looked down at his rapidly healing right arm in wonder. Even more than the physical aspects of this, I suspect the image physicalizations can act as an amplifier for my images now. Just like my body conducts the physicalizations, the physicalizations conduct the images. Will I be able to manifest a bit more of my images while on this dangerous mountain?

The rising sound of the wind pulled Randidly gaze upward. He couldn’t resist a chuckle. “Unfortunately, looks like I won’t get much of a break.”

Tsk-ing, Randidly examined his surroundings. He remained on the slope of the mountain, the force of the Grand Pattern had scarred the stone. It looked like the area had experienced a carpet bombing. Craters and meter-deep gouges crisscrossed in a visible pattern. But of course, his eyes went to the more dangerous threat: huge, ten-meter-deep holes from the force spikes left Randidly barring his teeth.

He had almost passed entirely through the first tier; he apparently had kept moving even while unconscious. Randidly pressed his lips together. He had been able to endure when the second tier of this Grand Pattern had fallen, but if the alignment happened again and he had to face the third tier in his current state-

Randidly looked upward at the churning grey clouds above him. Then he looked behind him, at the smashed stone shards and debris that was all that remained of the path that he had taken to get here.

He offered the watching curiosity in the core of the Grand Pattern storm a wicked smile. “I suppose the only way to go is up. Let’s see if I can improve more quickly than you can kill me.”

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