The Legend of Randidly Ghosthound

Don Beigon sat in his study, his fingers idly tapping along the armrest of his bamboo wheelchair. A few routine documents sat in front of him, requiring his signature. His eyes scanned through line by line. Despite the mundane nature of the business agreements contained within them, he took the time to read every single line of each.

He paid such attention partially to avoid being fleeced, even though his Skills had already given him an accurate picture of who was coming out on top of who through the agreement. But also because the defined terms and rigid relationships were oddly calming. Reading contracts always put him in a good mood.

As much as he admired soft power, it was not a jurisdiction that could support itself alone. The thin ties of favors and debts could only be strung up between more rigid structures of influence. So each contract he perused felt like a brick being laid in his foundation.

But his senses began to tingle, pulling his attention away. A connection of his became abruptly very, very important. The Don set down his papers on the desk and began to frown; due to the dense network of connections he maintained, he could quite trace the origin. He could only sense the general direction.

He wheeled himself around and went to the window. He peered out into the manicured gardens outside of his study, his eyes digging through to whatever troublemaking individual had caused this. Then he huffed and waved a hand, unleashing a blast of force that destroyed his wall and leveled the pesky gardens screening his sight line.

Bits of wood fell down around him in the aftermatch, but he had carved himself an unobstructed view outside. Then he stretched his hand up and pinched at the sky. The complex Engraving barrier he had made to protect the Beigon Estate parted. The calm sky opened up and revealed the glittering nebula above the Nexus. Don adjusted his viewpoint through the layers of Nexus Citizenship, until he could see the massive drill hanging in the sky above them all.

There was a knock at the door behind him. “Don Beigon, the preparations to bring the charges have been completed. We can have them formally delivered at any time.”

Abruptly, the Don realized who had suddenly produced this strange inkling: Randidly Ghosthound.

The connection between them hummed, almost gleeful. The remaining debt the Don owed the boy felt rather smug.

Don Beigon narrowed his eyes, trying to figure out why he would get such a strong but vague premonition at the moment. What could the Ghosthound have done? The connections didn’t give him much actual predictive power, but he could sense enough to know the kid had really gone into the Sonara.

Another knock came at the door from Fellador. “Don, was there something wrong with the East garden-”

“Quiet,” Don Beigon hissed. His eyes were locked on the hanging drill. That the Ghosthound was in the Sonara wasn’t any sort of surprise. But why-

The Don’s eyes widened. There is only one logical explanation. Well, two, technically, considering how stupidly capable and wildly incautious the boy is. Either he’s going to somehow activate the Sonara’s original purpose, launching the attack down the Shaft… or he’s going to destabilize and destroy the Sonara.

Either way, this fucker is going to inject more chaos into the Nexus. A lot of very pivotal moments will be approaching.

“Change of plan, Fellador,” Don Beigon said aloud. “Put the charges on hold for now. Instead, we need to prepare to take advantage of the chaos. This kid is going to flip the fucking board on all of us. When those old monsters who have been hiding away in there need to skitter out or risk being squashed-”

The Don paused. “Ah, also, please invite Claudette to a luncheon. It’s time we had a chat about what it means to have a Foundation.”

*****

Randidly stepped through golden barrier to the next layer and felt… almost nothing. Most of the pain and crunchy grinding against his psyche had vanished. He arrived on the next stretch of featureless ground without any difficult. He supposed that with all the dangerous radiation was now concentrated elsewhere, the process of transferring layers wasn’t so difficult at all.

He decided not to worry overmuch about what that might mean, long term.

Randidly’s eyes glittered. Besides, Xershi would have a field day with the welcoming party assembled for the group waiting in the next layer. No sooner had he stepped through the barrier than the porcelain dolls rushed for him, their arms wildly whipping around to bludgeon him into the ground. Considering this layer also had pulses of red light, Randidly didn’t hold back.

At this point, a more serious alarm didn’t seem possible. Better to move quickly, just in case Elhume himself might show up.

Sulfur hummed with pleasure as it met the first porcelain doll and cratered its torso. Randidly’s punch had enough force that even after its body collapsed, the arms shattered and disintegrated from residual high-frequency vibrations. Randidly’s emerald eyes blazed as he gathered up all of that dispersed kinetic force and wove it together as he twisted into a heel kick at the next few that sought to simply overwhelm him with numbers.

All that energy exploded from the kick that transformed into the vague image of a spear that then stretched and lashed back and forth like a ten meter long tongue, scything through all of the puppets around him. They cracked and came to pieces as they cartwheeled, helpless in front of his attack.

Congratulations! Your Skill Dragon Queen’s Sinister Tongue (T) has grown to Level 715!

…

Congratulations! Your Skill Dragon Queen’s Sinister Tongue (T) has grown to Level 740!

With a little bit of breathing room, Randidly’s gaze swept back and forth to measure how much genuine threat the alarm posed. More and more puppets were stacking on top of each other, folding intp larger, five piece puppets that merged together like miniature voltrons. Immediately, these larger versions began to glow with a huge amount of channeled energy, as some synergistic effect multiplied whatever battery power drove the automatons.

They moved so quickly their bodies blurred, rushing to surround him.

Randidly cackled without much humor at their resistance, pulling back his leg, a whirling torrent of force dragged along with the movement. He kicked again, holding nothing back. Dreadful Alacrity and Primordial Nether Juju surged with all their accumulated Stats. The kinetic force he manipulated struggled to keep up with this body, so his leg kick distorted space and the resulting explosion chased after the brutal edge of the kick like a rapid flock of desperate fans, trying to catch whatever superstar on which they fixated.

The puppets in their path could only be trampled.

Congratulations! Your Skill Cutting Tides of Amenonuhoko (T) has grown to Level 960

…

Congratulations! Your Skill Dragon Queen’s Sinister Tongue (T) has grown to Level 757!

The porcelain dolls in the surrounding hundred meters snapped and crumpled, with all the structural integrity of plastic grocery bags before a stiff wind. The voltron forms fared slightly better, only fracturing bust still also crumpling, yet able to push themselves back up on unsteady legs after the worst of the force had finished ravaging them.

Randidly tentatively allowed the Stillborn Phoenix to manifest in the area, but immediately the ground glittered with Engravings intent on trapping him within a sleeping world. Shaking his head, he began gathering more kinetic energy around him.

Seemed like the old fashioned way would work best.

Two things happened simultaneously just as Randidly took a step forward and clenched his fist. First, he felt some of his kinetic energy annihilated. His head snapped to the left where he saw a massive, weirdly spindly hand tapping and slithering toward him, keeping itself low to the ground. The palm was almost non-existent, but five powerful digits as thick as tree trunks flexed. The movements were weirdly spider-like as it skittered forward, keeping itself hidden behind some injured porcelain dolls despite its massive fingers.

Randidly’s skin tingled; he sensed two others creeping closer to him from other directions, but only because of his Acute Nether Nose. They were uncannily good at hiding their presence.

Secondly, Xershi erupted from the golden portal, his massive image of a liger already raising its head and roaring. Randidly could visibly see how much Xershi’s image had improved since they had first met, at the bottom of the Sonara just over two weeks ago, in the details of the Liger’s teeth and the whirling gears of its servo-reinforced joints. Apparently their meeting with Duulys Ambar had been transformative. Yet at the same time, Randidly frowned at the display. “Xershi the Engraving-”

“You can rip me out, right? I can’t hold back any longer!” Xershi howled, throwing himself at the still staggered, voltron forms of the porcelain dolls. With the weaknesses that Randidly’s previous kinetic attack had inflicted, he literally shredded them with several sharp blows. He pounced and their still-twitching limbs tumbled in his wake.

All the while, the Engravings began beneath his feet became increasingly animated. As Pullas passed through to join Randidly, a cylindrical area had formed around Xershi and the army of porcelain dolls that was only too happy to entertain him. He ignored the restriction and ran rampant his foes, his fists splintering their bodies and sending tiny bits of hardened material skittering across the ground.

The barrier around him became blinding, finalizing the total isolation within its confines. Then it began to tighten and round off at the top. Yet even with a huge chunk taken out of the opposing forces, the other three wouldn’t have an easy time. Randidly felt sweat trickling down his back, keeping a very close eye on the three creepy hands that pressed themselves to the ground amongst the teeming waves of dolls.

Fiona came through and coughed. She looked at the tightening barrier and shook her head. “He really just…?”

“Yup.” Randidly grunted. “Alright, hands on my back. Time to spring him out.”

As the two women touched him, the hand rushing from the front reared up, its undulating fingers spreading wide to reveal the tiny palm. Revelation energy glittered in Randidly’s eye as he felt the sudden threat and jerked sideways.

A beam of sizzling and caustic Nether smashed into his shoulder and sent him staggering. The impact was less physical and more existential, making his Nether Core stutter slightly. For a few seconds, Randidly’s arm hissed and spat out strange grey particles. However, his own flows of Nether quickly destroyed this flawed energy and his shoulder healed. He clicked his tongue, quickly falling into that same resonance between Fatepieces that he felt before. That power… its the same sort of Aether twisted into resembling Nether from the bone charm. On a much, much smaller scale.

Because his awareness spread wide, Randidly felt the other two weird hands moving to surround him. However, they released pulses of that same twisted energy, but at each other. He was so thrown by the targeting that when he realized what they were doing, it was already too late.

These fucked up hands connected their non-Nether Nether and created a pseudo-Nether Ritual. They made a dangerous and malicious wish. In a flickering moment, Randidly, Pullas, and Fiona had the space around them wrenched and inverted. Fiona shuddered and Pullas collapsed directly to her knees, her eyelids fluttering.

The twisted energy continued to try and turn them inside out. Gritting his teeth, Randidly grabbed Fiona’s hand and put an arm around Pullas’s waist to pluck her off the ground. Even as he moved, Randidly felt the space around him becoming gelatinous and cloying. The twisted energy the hands used created a weird bond between one molecule of air and the next, so that moving one required him to move them all.

Primordial Nether Juju gurgled in Randidly’s body. The air congealed to restrain him and he rolled his shoulders with quite a bit of energy to spare. Steam began to waft off his body. The surrounding layer trembled with the raw physical force he unleashed.

However, Randidly could see that he didn’t have time to rip his way out; as the hands continued to wrench and twist at the fabric of their spatial forms, Pullas began to quietly vomit blood that dribbled onto his bare toes. His Fatepieces manifested in front of his body. He stepped forward, pushing directly to the second layer. Space began to bend and stretch, then rip as he dipped his toe into the entropy layer-

-and he rebounded again, dizzy and with an aching forehead. Randidly cracked his jaw, having just used his skull as a break. This time he had controlled their speed, so they reached the end of the layer without as much raw force. Fiona was coughing, PUllas seemed to have passed out.

“Xershi,” Fiona wheezed. “He-”

“Yea, you stay here with Pullas.” Randidly raised his Alchemist’s Passport. His head began to ache from the rapid spatial calculations. “I’ll be right back.”

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