before the Phantom all other things break and scatter The path he walks is long and wide It is multifarious and insidious a small step to the side But once those people step upon it for whatever reason they have doomed themselves At that point although they may struggle
Roaring Randidly created a spear of Battle Intent and threw it at the Phantom Although it may have just been his imagination he thought the Spear Phantom smiled at him and then disappeared
The next thing he felt was a thin cold hand on his shoulder tapping lightly as if to take his attention Refusing to back down Randidly backed around and faced the Phantom finding it standing there its arms spread wide Its leather cloak was open flapping lightly by an ethereal wind revealing not the human torso Randidly had been expecting or even a skeleton’s body but a face a sleeping one
At first Randidly thought that the face was Shal’s but the longer he looked the more the subtle differences between them began to come to the surface This was was softer and warmer than Shal’s Although the nose was the same the cheekbones were less prominent and wider
Randidly was frozen suddenly very confused what he was looking at A face rather than a torso underneath the cloak Somehow it was incredibly disturbing This was still the image conjured by the Battle Intent right
The eyelids of the sleeping face trembled then blinked open its long beautiful eyelashes fluttering As the eyes opened Randidly continued to stare wondering whether the androgynous face was male or female
I’m
Now Randidly blinked because the face spoke its lips moving thickly clumsy and rusty from disuse
The eyes opened further and they were pure black and wet like spilled ink The Phantom continued to stand holding that cloak open his smile slowly fading away to a frown His eyes furrowed into an angry bunch
although they struggle it is too late For the very path they walk is their end As soon as the spectre of death tempted them into its realm they lives begin flickering like candles their blood seeming to drip out of their mouths and pool on the path behind them The path
I’m so hungry The weary chest face said and then it began to open its mouth and suck its inky eyes locking onto Randidly The Aether inside of him trembled as if some outside force acted on it causing Randidly to take a step backward instinctually
Immediately the Phantom itself let its arms drop its smile returned Its fingers grew and grow growing and surrounding Randidly forming a cage that began to press inwardly crush and bursting his organs leaving him
Gasping Randidly dropped the diary again For several seconds the very real Phantom pain remained his body feeling as though it had been annihilated But then it slowly passed likely blown out of him by his heavy breathing Shal sat there regardingly him coolly
That is quite enough for today I think He said simply reaching down and taking the diary Then he left Randidly there laying on the ground
After his breathing had calmed Randidly closed his eyes and tried to focus on remembered what happened That face that looked similar to Shal’s on the chest of the Phantom its inky black eyes the strange change in the Phantom the longer that Randidly looked at that face That face was even able to cause some effect on the Aether within him that Randidly struggled with at the best of times
And that hunger in its blank eyes
Randidly did now have a more concrete ideal about the Phantom’s embrace as a move although he wasn’t sure how it worked It was a skill that produced an overwhelming psychological effect and pressed your opponent backwards It turned the momentum of their fleeing against them becoming increasingly powerful the more that they attempted to dodge
But if someone did not flee or did not attack it was useless
However the face didn’t seem to fit into Randidly’s impression of the move It felt like that was a larger part of the image within the book and less to do with the actual skill Or perhaps even it was a spectre of whatever the 6th move of the Spear Phantom was
Either way this was far beyond the current Randidly For now he could only concentrate on the goals that would yield positive results So he stood and began to practice the Inevitable Phantom Arrives His strikes were slow and even but even though he hadn’t gleaned any true insights from his studying of the 5th move of the Spear Phantom his Battle Intent was increasingly strengthened by the exposure
The ticking grew louder His own temporal phantom became more definite and Randidly began to add more and more details Almost unbidden small memories of his mother floated to the surface As Randidly remembered how worn her clothes always were when she wasn’t going out the robe the phantom wore became threadbare and grey
He remembered how she smelled like honey and flowers just starting to rot and how she smiled almost as if she was apologizing with her eyes while her mouth was stretched wide And as these details began to accumulate in the image Randidly’s feelings about the image balloon outward in his heart
With Aether thundering in his ears a vicious icy flow Randidly’s rage and frustration that he had buried for years began to surface filling his image with potency
Randidly remembered how he had sat in his room in the dark for long hours afraid and confused by the long nights of laughter his mother had with strange men even on weekdays The way he would hide in his room while the men were there even as he grew hungrier and hungrier But he refused to allow himself to be dragged out and paraded out in front of them
He remembered the men and their callous hands and their patronizing smiles and their eyes all for his mother It igniting something hot and vicious inside of Randidly Helpless stuck torn by emotions dragged in 1000 directions
As Randidly focused more and more on that small boy his arms wrapped around his knees sitting in the dark the ticking grew louder and louder almost to a deafening degree With each tick the hours would slide past the child’s hunger would grow more desperate and gnawing But the laughter tinkling and light and low and dirty grew louder and louder a droning noise that began to rival the ticking
Abruptly Randidly became aware of the fact that he had been standing still and he thrust out with his spear not bothering to use Haste or Empower just thrusting forward with the spear And as he completed the motion now much quicker than it had been when he trained before he went into the prison there was no feedback no cracking of the air no vacuum created
There was just silence and a strange sensation in Randidly’s hand that his spear was as heavy as the world Randidly sighed letting the silence grow This was part of his image too the powerful silence that surrounded that boy in the darkness The ticking was scary in a way because it demonstrated the passing of time and the inevitability of resisting time But by the same token the silence was even more horrifying
Because in that silence time could twist and morph becoming an abomination that no longer obeyed objective rules but stretched to fill subjective spaces In that silence that darkness even a minute felt like an eternity
The Aether was howling within him now and he held that image in his mind for several minutes feeling as thin tendrils of Aether split off and flowed down into his skills strengthening them slowly
After a while the sensation ceased and Randidly checked his status screen
He had gained one Skill level in Spear Mastery 2 in Empower 1 in Body Control Freeze 3 in Engraving 2 in Rejection but then 7 in Battle Intent and 11 in the Inevitable Phantom Arrives
Randidly distributed the PP he earned netting 3 Resistance and Willpower but as he made to stand afterward his chest began to ache Grimacing Randidly sat back down and put his hand on the spot where his Soul Skill was whirling wildly inside of his chest This wasn’t nearly as bad as the previous incident but still It felt like the kind of heartburn that could kill you eating you from the inside out