The Legend of Randidly Ghosthound

“No… this is horrible. A pathetic attempt.”

“Keh, a shape like this? Try again, there is no Path forward for you like this.”

“You… were you even listening to me? This is bad as well. From what I can tell, not a single portion is salvageable.”

“Haaah. Friendship isn’t enough to cover up your lack of talent. Has this been a joke this whole time? Do you have any other images?”

“I’m saying this as your friend— give up on the thought of your image reaching the Pinnacle. These past efforts could barely even be considered a coherent endeavor. Even a genius such as I am without any helpful advice when I witness your eclectic foundation.”

Devick’s face had settled into a constant state of twitching. She gnawed off a sizable chunk of her cheek Even if you keep saying you are my friend, it’s becoming difficult to believe you if all you do is vomit trash onto me! What does a bunny know about the Pinnacle anyway?!?

The past fifteen minutes had started with quite a lot of hope; although the strange, shapeshifting bunny was alternatively prickling and haughty, it had still agreed to help her refine her image. It seemed genuinely willing to help. Plus, Devick was at the height of the Nexus, in a location where pushing an image to the Pinnacle was the easiest and most natural thing in the world. Just by being here, she felt Malice growing in cruelty and power.

What could go wrong?

Well, first off, Devick rapidly realized that whatever remnant bit of the first Pinnacle event this bunny was, it truly had never interacted with people before. She had her suspicions about whether it could manifest its own image, but its Aether was at least dense. In terms of communications skills… Compared to her dazzling charisma, the bunny was a long fart in a shallow pool. It spoke only harsh and condescending words, even though Devick could feel she improved every second in this place.

Second of all, the bunny itself was very distracting. Not only did it constantly hop around her, but its form continued to change as time passed. From the cute red-furred bunny, it had rapidly grown over the course of Devick’s attempts into a bunny as large as a hog. Its fat ears became extremely droopy. In addition, its fur had darkened to black and a curling horn grew out of his head.

Then, just as Devick finally had a bit of inspiration and Malice stretched its bane hand out to grasp a new tier of power, the bunny popped like an overfilled balloon. The noise and image fluctuations in the conducive environment snapped her back to the present. All those new insights evaporated at the shock.

Where there had been a bunny, there was now a handspan-tall girl in a white lace bridal dress. She frowned at Devick, seeming unwilling to even acknowledge her obnoxious transformation. “Have you given up? Perhaps abandoning this foolish hope is also a good thing. Continuing like this… haah… You’ll only break both of our hearts.”

You… I wish you would have just died from being overfilled with hot air. Devick bit the inside of her cheek to keep from snapping out some harsh words. Blood had become a constant taste on her tongue.

Because the true aggravating quality of this transforming remnant… was that it was right; she wasn’t moving any closer to the Pinnacle.

After the first couple of harsh comments, Devick had been unwilling to believe. So she forcefully used the surrounding space to its fullest and expanded those image directions as far as they could go. But the result… even Devick, who could admit in her heart she possessed a little bit of bias toward her own superiority, rapidly realized she had made a mistake. These sorts of images would not help her. Her Aether was tempered, but the shape remained flawed.

The bunny/former lizard/current small girl used harsh and insulting language, but she wasn’t wrong.

Over the past minute, the small girl had grown to be about the size of a carrot she shook her tiny head as she watched Devick trying to stumble back across those insights into her bane hand, which might have been a step in the right direction. “Language is insufficient to convey the depth of your deficiencies. Ah, even my divine friendship teaching skill is restricted by reality!”

Devick’s jaw clenched. She felt a tremor running through Malice as the image shed the extraneous details she had been trying to add to it for power. This bitch, if she says one more thing, I’ll twist her tiny head until it pops off…!

“Oh? That… wasn’t horrible.” The tiny girl blinked, looking at Devick. She used her tiny legs to walk over and pinched the skin on Devick’s shin. Although her fingers were extremely minute, her physical strength was quite high; the twisting squeeze hurt.

Devick swiped her hand but the small girl hopped up and dashed up her arm, a wide smile on her face. “Ah, perhaps this whole time I’ve been too supportive. Your anger is very pure. Hum, hum, to think, the impediment was my own kindness! I’ve been too generous with my first friend. How about this: stuff that rotten left hand down your own throat and suffocate, you talentless mortal. You are wasting my time.”

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Devick seethed with wrath as she prepared to smash the girl into like a mosquito. Definitely, she would definitely stomp this tiny girl into meat paste.

*****

The vast interior seethed with ragged significance. Some flows caught on Randidly’s body, but his power allowed him to tear forward. He climbed and climbed, desperate to catch up with Laplace, the Fickle Crossroads of Time.

His speed left halos of mist in his wake, thunderous ripples spreading out to mark his passage. Without losing any speed, he slammed into the next impediment.

The seventh barrier within Pine’s body stretched as Randidly charged into it. The dense and compacted significance condensed into a shroud of darkness as he struggled forward. Rather than breaking, there were portions of the barrier that withstood the overwhelming momentum of his images and significance, stretching and clinging to his body.

Whatever he had shed to become simply a legend, it was not enough for this seventh barrier. Randidly had been given some sense of it due to the lengthening train of dead behind him, but there existed a horrible craving within the space of Pine.

The remnants of the barrier that clung to Randidly felt cold, dark, and suffocating. However, the intensity of these sensations had been heightened to the point that they became reality. Not a single ray of light could pass through the shroud of darkness. The seventh barrier represented a borderline in density; the closer he proceeded to Pine’s core, the more time and compression all the negativity had experienced. At this point, it had developed to the point it could smother even a living individual who had possessed the power of Commandant Wick in his life.

This is not yet my limit, Randidly reached up, grabbed the stretched tendons of the barrier that wrapped around his shoulders, and ripped his way through.

“Almost there,” Ezekiel whispered. Waiting beyond the seventh barrier was a dense mass of temporal distortions that spun like a flock of unsupervised buzzsaws. Randidly’s Nether Core hummed as his Second Authority manifested again. He waved his arm and the Dread Homunculus cackled.

Patterns tumbled through existence as Randidly gathered himself. As he moved, the dead following him moved too. They carried projection of his Hollow Needle in a dozen directions. They pierced through the temporal distortions and wove sense back into the fabric of time. They spread and swarmed like locusts, the spreading patterns having sunk deeply enough into their behavior that they no longer needed to be in tight formation.

Of course, the corresponding mental toll had continued to climb. Yet as Randidly advanced toward the maelstrom of light above, he had mobilized his Truths. He held the truth passed to him by Nyx gently, while his other three possibilities waxed and waned, trying out different styles. But despite their nascent forms, in the face of mental effort, his Truths remained firm-- he had more than enough attention to handle this.

“Boy,” After remaining silent for most of the assent, Commandant Wick spoke up. “I will not bother to compliment you, but let me give you one little hint. Of all the choices you have made since gaining the lion’s share of your power-”

At this point, Ezekiel once more released a string of keening notes. Randidly felt a constriction through his temples just listening to the noise, but the Commandant ignored it and continued. “-your greatest wisdom was not to slay Devick. Obviously squashing such a cockroach would have taken an incredible amount of effort… but what you are about to see is a secret that we have long kept. If her final insanity had arrived here… even I would feel fear at the result.”

“Wick! We don’t have time for this.” Ezekiel snapped.

“Would he not see anyway? Preparing him now time will be saved as he need not react. Laplace… is not the only Eternity that has forced its way into the Nexus, boy. Just the first one was much more willing to negotiate.”

With that strange announcement, Randidly slammed into the eighth barrier of Pine. Like the seventh before it, this barrier had developed resilience. Its thick strands wrapped around Randidly to impede him. The earlier barriers were easily traversable because he had already given up his body. Yet these later barriers had more to do with his worldly desires. To carry these thoughts deeper would be a great burden. The barrier would not let him proceed easily.

There would have been a time, perhaps only a few days ago, that this barrier would have been nigh impassible to him.

With three kernels of truth burning in his chest and a growing amount of Penance accumulations, Randidly didn’t care. When the barrier refused him entry, his eyes flashed. His Alchemist’s Passport resonated with his sharp movement. No doors will bar my passage. Dread Homunculus! The Wrathful Calamity Rends.

His claws forced open the barrier and the dead roared their approval at this savagery. Randidly charged forward… and found himself in an entirely different space. The vast, misty realm of darkness vanished. Even jagged flows of significance calmed. Suddenly, Randidly found himself standing in a vast building.

To his right, an empty coffee mug sat on a table. Randidly’s brow knitted together as he tried to rationalize what he was seeing.

From the wooden benches covered in tools, the near-infinite shelves stretching up toward the ceiling, and the half-finished dolls lying around… he seemed to be in a cross between a workshop and a warehouse.

Randidly’s heartbeat quickened as he sensed the incredible significance coursing through this stable place; his momentum stalled out somewhat as he considered the environment. Rather than rampaging freely, all that torn Nether had been channeled into establishing and strengthening this strange space. Looking around, he realized that the energy of this place felt somewhat familiar.

Then, in his Soulspace, he felt a quiver of recognition. His other gifted Momento, Pangu’s Asymptote, released a faint quiver of acknowledgment.

Randidlly’s mind went blank. He might have completely caused all the built-up efforts of his Erebus’s Baleful Waltz if Commandant Wick hadn’t appeared at his elbow and given him a sour look. “We cannot waste time here. Move, boy.”

After a moment to blink and adjust, Randidly stepped forward. The moment of stalling had hurt his patterns running through the specters of the dead, but they quickly regained their vigor as he dragged them back up to speed. Besides, the way forward was quite clear: opposite Randidly’s entrance point, several worktables had been smashed to pieces and a few of the tall metal shelves had holes drilled directly through the middle.

Because the significance in this place had been used to stabilize these manifestations, Laplace had needed to break his way forward toward Pine’s core.

Randidly accelerated forward, even as his thoughts remained uneasy. The deeper I go, the more secrets I’m crashing into. Just what is Pangu’s game? What sort of negotiations did this other Eternity enter into, that such a deep area could be converted into a workship…?

Most importantly, what the hell has been manufactured here…?