Increasing the power of images didnÆt occur without a commiserate cost And for the first time in a long time Randidly was freed from that cost
When Randidly finally had the Crown sitting as he wanted a connection was established between this small manifestation of his emotions and his Crown The head of Ki Kunot screeched in agony for a second before it was squelched like a rotten grape Then the Grim Chimera began to roar its fabric ripped to shreds by the swirled doubts and fears that plagued the Crown
For several seconds Randidly let the image bear that weight It will hurt to the point of damaging the image But it needs to learn this lesson Just because I do not panic and flail does not mean I need these victories any less
Then Randidly took back his Crown do you understand now Nine thousand one hundred and six is only the most recent pile of bodies I have created They wonÆt shift my resolve Even if IÆm making a mistake I wonÆt know until I reach the end of my Path DonÆt get in my way
The Grim Chimera didnÆt have any strength remaining to reply It faded to nothing in the dark half light of RandidlyÆs soul to lick its wounds
Chapter 992
After eight months of being within the Dungeon almost all of the land area that was not the plateau was under RandidlyÆs control Or had been rather hastily stripped of resources and left barren Currently his Riders were chomping at the bit to be allowed onto the plateau but still Randidly hesitated There were a few things that he wanted to do before he exposed himself to the risk implied by those strange arrows
The most pleasant of which is spending all the PP IÆve earned Randidly frowned at his Status screen I wanted to wait so I could work on the Growth of Yggdrasil Path but it seems increasingly foolish to only have 348 Endurance Better to work on the Physique of the Grim Chimera and try to push that number upward Surviving is more important than ever Especially after
Randidly shook his head unwilling to be distracted by his run in with the being inside the enormous crystal
Over the past eight months Randidly had been focused on working on his metallurgy engraving images and spear Skills There were only a few Skills that gained quite a chunk of PP like Sigil of an Approaching Fate and Crossroads of the Alpha Cosmos but there were dozens of Skills that had gained somewhere between three and ten Skill Levels With RandidlyÆs amount of Skills that was more than enough
Therefore he had been able to gather 623 PP It wouldnÆt finish Physique of the Grim Chimera but it would get Randidly halfway to that goal And he hoped that would be enough spent PP that he would earn some Physical Defense related Stats
Even gaining Vitality as a reward for proceeding through it wouldnÆt be the worst thing in the world although that wasnÆt his goal It was with bated breath that Randidly began putting points into the Physique of the Grim Chimera Path
Thankfully twenty five PP earned him three Endurance and one Vitality When he spent all of his PP he had already improved his Endurance by 72 and his Vitality by 24 It wouldnÆt completely address his lagging physical Stats but it was definitely a start With about three and a half more months in his self imposed time limit Randidly could gather another chunk
And with that start to boosting his physical capabilities Randidly wanted to try something a little dangerous
RandidlyÆs focus for the past few months was Engravings Specifically more and more of RandidlyÆs attention went to having some progress in the Engravings that could Level And certainly Randidly was much closer to success than he had been previously His experience with Engraving let the uniformity of the Mana depth in each stroke stabilize
But Randidly quickly realized that was only half of the problem Randidly also hadnÆt been permeating his guiding image in the engraving evenly
Just like with the problem of Mana depth image needed to be as close to uniform as possible through the Engraving Basically for similar reasons So not only did the Engraver need to maintain a careful watch over how the actual engraving was proceeding but they also needed to enter a pseudo hypnotic state where a constant and even amount of the image was projected
Which would have been easy if the Engraving Randidly was making was a circle and not a complicated runic sigil
Although it was an aggravating realization Randidly felt somewhat foolish for not thinking about it before So he adjusted and tried to control his images After all so much time had been spent refining them while he was here His control had improved a lot in that time To the point he was relatively confident in maintaining a constant production of image while Engraving
Unfortunately production didnÆt matter as much as accumulation
Due to the nature of the Engraving there were portions of the design Randidly Engraved that were more line intensive than others Therefore images naturally accumulated there whereas relatively less dense portions had fewer images And those variances became weaknesses for the Engravings that could Level
As if that wasnÆt enough what ultimately stopped Randidly dead was the fact that his sense of images wasnÆt exact enough to determine how much more or less the portions of the Engraving possessed Sure he was very familiar with his own images but Randidly had been making up new images most times he made the Engravings to broaden his experience
Therefore he wasnÆt sensitive enough to determine anything more helpful than there is too much of the image here and not enough there In effect Randidly had become so soaked in his own images that he was rather numb to the passing images that he created for the Engraving
A single day spent experimenting produced so little results that Randidly gave up on accomplishing this goal the old fashioned way
Until he saw that he had unlocked a new Path Living Engraving I 0/500
If All Things Succumb Yet Time Whirls the Earth benefits from specificity will it make it much easier if I just imagine finishing the one Path Randidly wondered However he didnÆt want to try it immediately Even if what he wanted was to move to a specific Path Randidly still had the very focused goal of creating an Engraving that could Level on top of that
In addition there was one more thing that Randidly needed to verify before he made the attempt was using the Skill for the same goal easier over time Was there some sort of memory or familiarity with what he had done that would remain to make a second attempt easier
So Randidly experimented And finally Randidly discovered some good news When he attempted to accomplish the same thing a second or third time with that Skill the physical damage he had to endure dropped drastically After seven attempts using the Skill to make food Randidly barely felt any tiredness in the wake of creating whatever food he was making
Suddenly the quality of RandidlyÆs meals showed marked improvement Although he was a little worried about his real Cooking Level no longer improving his Skill Level for All Things Succumb Yet Time Whirls the Earth was even more important
So for the past few days Randidly was using All Things Succumb Yet Time Whirls the Earth to shift to a world where he had completed the Living Engraving I Path As his attempts became easier and easier Randidly also developed and slowly refined an image to use for a Levelable Engraving However today would be the first day that he finally created something
Randidly frowned down at his hands Although IÆm slowly starting to understand how it can be used that doesnÆt bring me any closer to knowing why it happens I might have gotten 70 more Endurance but what if part of the moving sideways to finish those other Paths takes that away Perhaps it would have been more reliable just to finish the LIving Engraving Path directly
but that wouldnÆt help me use this Skill for other things
Shaking his head Randidly quieted his thoughts After his surreal interaction with the Grim Chimera about a month ago both his images had really quieted and been more easy for him to manipulate Randidly had no real proof being isolated in the Dungeon but he sensed that he was coming up to a limit in terms of the detail he could add to his images in a short amount of time