Chapter 2426
Note to self, an Eternity shouldn’t be underestimated, Randidly’s eyes blazed as he dug his teeth into his lip to focus. Fat drops of blood splashed onto the ground from the hole in his ribcage. He felt the pressure in his chest as his heart was tugged out of its resting place. Meanwhile, the rampant heat from Yggdrasil and the Songstress of Absence had become an inferno.
Each individual activity required so much of his focus that he could barely manage them all. Images, emotion, Nether Core, concepts regarding his Grand Fate and Penance… Laplace hadn’t missed that vulnerability. And what was the most galling about the whole situation was that he had been bested by this shit.
Meanwhile, his two images being delayed right before the Pinnacle were incensed; they demanded the capability to reach the Pinnacle and deal with this sudden threat. Randidly quieted their complaints, ignoring the pain. His hands snapped up and grasped the tongue that had taken him by surprise. He squeezed, intending to tear his way through the thick strands of muscle. Sticky saliva oozed up between his fingers. Even more dangerously, the touch once more exposed him to the horrible pulses of time. His muscles vibrated with the powerful resonance, beginning to tear underneath the strain.
Damnit, damnit, damnit! Randidly’s eyes blazed. His whole body shuddered. For the first time since he had remained his Stat anchors, he felt directly overmatched. He considered his options. Setting aside the problem with condensing a Penance, his Nether Core continued to purify and produce vast quantities of significance. If he corralled that and cut through the tongue-
Randidly’s thoughts might have been scattered by the wound, but his images did not lose track of their roles. Yggdrasil and the Songstress endured and shredded the temporal waves, as per their preference, while the Dread Homunculus stepped up again and threw its body forward to buy more time. Its hip bone was pulped by the impact. But despite its best efforts, the four final tomes were now only a short distance away from upsetting the equilibrium of those images.
And still, Randidly had a tongue wrapped around his heart.
The Dread Homunculus ignored its wounds and forced itself back to a standing position. If nothing else, its stubbornness kept pulling it back to its feet. That and the beacon-bright spark of emotion taken from Shal animated it, despite the damage it had suffered. The light wrapped around the image’s shoulders and urged it forward.
The tongue unleashed a temporal distortion through Randidly’s hand and then pulled.
Randidly’s gut reaction was to dig in his heels. Every muscle in his body quivered, ready to resist this foreign invasion to his last drop of blood. A deep, instinctual part of him growled in the face of these threats. He considered each individual problem, dissecting the methods he could use to smash apart his opposition.