The constant state of half anxiety was slowly settling but for now those emotions were his frequent companion
Those thoughts would force Randidly to push himself even further testing the edges of his Willpower He endured he overcame he absorbed he accepted Time flowed past and Randidly tirelessly refined himself Soon these moments occurred much less frequently
The only real change that occurred in the last month originated from the mollusks After Randidly had given them a watch they became altogether obsessed with time and its keeping Now most well to do mollusks had figured out how to produce their own relatively primitive clockwork timepieces Several strutted around with a barely functioning watch attached to their shells as a strange display of status
The time pieces they produced were almost comically bad But they were working with bits of shell and small amounts of scrap metal that Randidly had donated to them so it wasnÆt strange that they were having difficulties creating something that would stand the test of time
The watch that Randidly had given them was hung from the leader molluskÆs house Which given the population boom after Randidly stopped forging for a few days had now become a rather towering building
At first Randidly had a headache as he considered expanding the pool even further but the mollusks turned out to be happy enough to do all the work themselves if Randidly gave them toolsÆ So Randidly took all the failed Levelable Engravings and any other scrap metal he possessed and made a large pile next to the molluskÆs pool
They dutifully crawled out would grab anything that they needed then pull it back into the pool at a painfully slow speed
Still Randidly wasnÆt there most of the time so he spared himself the torture of watching the relatively inept creatures struggling to move a chunk of burned metal that was often two times their size Rather casually Randidly went one night with Acri and cut the bracers down to more manageable sizes
What watching the queer mollusks did do was finally wake Randidly up to how strangely warped his sense of time was getting After all Randidly had initially been preparing for a Judgement that should descend upon him within a monthÆs time Yet he used the Dungeon to trade a few days into a year without much difficulty
As his sense of urgency slowly left him Randidly wondered why the System made such an invention as Dungeons
Of course most people couldnÆt have done what Randidly was doing Without their own personal supply of Aether they were exposing themselves to a huge risk by staying in a Dungeon longer than a month or two Randidly was already at double that limit With the dense Aether of the Dungeon most peopleÆs bodies would rely less and less on the Aether connection with the Village
Then when they left the Dungeon the weakened connection would be abruptly forced to handle an increased amount of Aether to support the individual That demand on the withered connection was the source of Aether Sickness and why most people had to carefully consider how much time they should remain in a Dungeon
Randidly didnÆt have this problem And it was with some amusement that he realized that if he had brought a group of people into the Dungeon with him his constant explosion of Aether would have exacerbated the problem of Aether Sickness immensely With the current density of Aether in the Dungeon perhaps normal individuals could only stay within the Dungeon for a week or two before their connection to the Village began to atrophy to a dangerous point
But Randidly quickly discovered a much more insidious and dangerous problem of the time dilation one that he couldnÆt avoid perspective shifts
After all Randidly had been driven to train because of two looming threats that would arrive in relatively short order He had also had to deal with the mental turmoil of being struck by a casual glance while some powerful being locked onto the scent of the Creature LyraÆs offer weighed heavily on his mind Those things reminded Randidly of his own inadequacy and mortality
Yet four months had passed and nothing bad had happened in this warped swirl of time Although Randidly still was doing a good job of maintaining his mental edge at the moment likely due to ShalÆs brutal training early in his System experience he could feel some part of himself relaxing
At least while he was in the Dungeon Randidly felt safe
It had taken Randidly this long to realize what the feeling was because he hadnÆt felt that way for so long But within the Dungeon as his Riders basically burned down the surrounding jungle for materials Randidly had no real sense of tension He was free to grow as he wished without external threat
What happens to a person when they realize they can simply slip into a Dungeon and immediately have the time and space to train to their way into solving any problem resolvable with time Randidly wondered It was a question he didnÆt really know how to answer
RandidlyÆs immediate instinct was to rush toward whatever secret lay in the direction indicated by those strange arrows he found in the mounds in order to introduce an element of danger to his existence here but he restrained himself Instead of returning to the constant state of near panicked reaction that Randidly had existed in for almost three years Randidly just observed himself for a week as his training continued Before he understood the effects he wouldnÆt act hastily
By this point his constant production of Aether had finally dislodged the many remnant pieces of Aether left by that beings observation Still Randidly didnÆt slack off his production of Aether It was extremely likely that the other being possessed a fineness of observation of Aether that Randidly couldnÆt duplicate Therefore he continued to throw out waves of Aether to dislodge even the smallest bit remaining
Carefully making notes of his own progress Randidly continued to train
In the mornings he would use his hands to carefully refine his personal forging process He added more pressure and heat straining the materials before empowering them with his GhosthoundÆs Touch Then when he was satisfied with his progress he would attempt to expand that method to his ten thousand root forging process There were obviously issues but Randidly found that so many perspectives on the process helped him further think of small adjustments to make for tomorrow
Because of that every day was a step forward
After that Randidly would practice spear Skills He would perform each of his basic Skills one hundred times without any target letting his high Level Skills rip through the open air During the performance Randidly would force his body to relax and truly experience the Skills in their entirety
Then he would perform each Skill one thousand times this time by simply relying on the image of each Skill for the action Slowly but surely his understanding and potency of his attacks climbed upward
Then Randidly would return to the room holding his increasingly impressive store of refined ingots and practice his World Tree image Randidly had no real proof of this but he believed that the constant submerging in the understanding and supportive image of Yggdrasil would slowly alter the metal for the better
In the evening Randidly would take a small break and cook himself a sumptuous meal His Cooking Skill had only improved to 97 over the past four months after constant use but Randidly felt rather pleased with his ability to prepare food
Looking at his Status screen Randidly shook his head sorrowfully A Skill Level under 100 is enough for me maybe I really am losing my competitive edge Shal would eat me alive
Once the meal was done Randidly checked on his area of influence within the jungle He made sure that the Riders werenÆt getting into trouble and the mollusks werenÆt running amok He also scanned with Aether looking for any sign of whatever might have placed those carefully engraved arrows