[Voidknight Ascension] Chapter 5: The Void

Lounging in his throne room, Apostos dangled one leg over the obsidian arm of his throne and pursed his lips behind his bone mask. “Well now, I didn’t expect that.”

Lifting a lazy finger, he traced a magical rune in the air and one of three view windows zoomed in on the nearly naked man in a hole.

That blade of his should have shattered, the shrapnel ripping him to pieces if he had been stupid enough to stay there. Instead, the blade seemed to resist the destruction just long enough for the silly little human to pull off his gambit.

Apostos gave the kid a respectable golf clap as he drove the blade into the [Shard Gorger] and the destruction was fully unleashed.

He didn’t escape unscathed. His already withering body was peppered with fragments of the blade, but the worst of the damage was dealt to the gorger.

Apostos wasn’t sure if he had seen anyone, not even the Divines, deal such a sound mortal blow to an A-Class Worldender before. And that was with his own interference, no less.

“Bravo, indeed,” he said to the empty throne room.

Though the kid didn’t know it, he had just made himself countless enemies. Provided he survived, of course.

Turning his attention to another view window, Apostos sat up and drummed his heels with glee at the gnashing of teeth he saw within.

The Triumvirate were pissed.

They had seen Islegard as an easy win. Another Shard they could devour and expand their strength. Instead, with a little help from yours truly, two Incarnates had managed to stall the [Shard Gorger].

“My, my, my, won’t these two actors be interesting additions to the play?” Apostos leaned forward, bringing the third view window closer.

The ninja, Raiko, flickered about like she was in a stop-motion film. Here one second, there the next, and always with those katanas that sliced waves of mana.

And that pobul of hers. Keymasters were exceptionally rare among the Lesser Shardrunes, even the Greater Shardrunes only possessed a handful of them.

Apostos tapped his chin thoughtfully. Had he made a mistake in destroying the [Shatterblade] instead of this woman’s weapon? That one blade had a phantasmal property.

Clearly, in the right hands, the great sealing blade was more trouble than it was worth to keep around… but this woman was worthy of keeping an eye on as well.

Now that the [Shard Gorger] was in its death throes, Apostos could lean back and enjoy the view once more. He hadn’t meant to halve the number of Incarnates coming into the Lesser Shardrune of Il’dran, but some things just didn’t work out the way you wanted them to.

You had to crack some eggs to make an omelet.

“Two Incarnates… now that would have been great fun. Ah well, sorry sport, you made one hell of a play. Too bad it didn’t work out!” Apostos raised a clawed gauntlet to shut Sam’s window as the Apocalypse mana devoured his very soul.

They called it “dissolution” as if giving it a fancy name was worth anything. What it really did was destroy everything, no reincarnation, no Reflections, no Echoes, no Incarnates. A thread well and truly snipped.

Such a shame.

Just as Apostos was closing the view window, something in it caught his eye. He flapped his hand wildly, opening the view window again and bringing it front-and-center.

What he saw made him clutch his sides and shake with laughter. How long had it been since he had been wrong about somebody?

***

I should be dead, Sam thought as he struggled to stay conscious. Much of his body had rotted away, impaled with pieces of shrapnel from the [Shatterblade], or otherwise straight-up missing.

Streams of mana consumed him, long-since overpowering Komachi’s bubble until it was forced to shrink around the tiny creature.

“I’m sorry Komachi,” Sam rasped. “But I think you’ll have to enjoy this next adventure for the both of us.”

Whatever his cat’s response was, Sam didn’t hear. He sank to what was left of his knees. With fatigue and agony warring within him, Sam used the last of his strength to toss her out of the hole so she could be free.

The invasive energy burrowed deeper within. Just close your eyes. The pain will be over, it said, but Sam was stubbornness incarnate. He couldn’t go down without a fight.

Islegard Ascension: 97%

With what nascent control of his mana he had picked up, Sam pushed with all of his might against the infection rotting him from within.

Barely aware of his actions, he thrashed like a cornered animal, pulled at threads of mana so incomprehensibly complex that even in his right mind, he would have been at a loss for what he had accomplished.

A thin, silken ripping sound echoed across the sky. An aurora of deep blues, greens, and purples swam far above him, and below his crumbling body, he felt the death rattle of the [Shard Gorger].

Reaching toward that beautiful sea of colors, Sam pulled at a thread of the Shard’s overpowering mana. It flew down on wings of light and froze him in that moment, half-dead, hand raised, alone.

***

It had only seemed a moment, but when Sam blinked again, he was no longer in that hole. He couldn’t see the Shard anywhere, and everything had a strange rippling effect, as if he was viewing the world through a stream of water.

Burning mana raged through Sam, surging out of control and pulling his attention back to his body. Unbidden, it poured out of his hands in silver and black flame, forming into the beginnings of a monster.

The monster, whatever this mana was, had a will of its own. All it wanted was to devour and destroy.

Meanwhile, a prison was slowly crystallizing around Sam and the monster, threatening to seal them both away.

Or perhaps the only thing that would be left, when the struggle was over, would be just one of them.

Sam struggled to harness the energy draining out of him and fueling this thing’s essence.

The more it took, the more its body materialized, and the more diminished Sam felt. Where most people would feel fear, Sam only felt white-hot anger.

After everything he went through, some new hellish thing was going to consume him and just walk out of here scot-free?

Fuck that.

Sam stopped struggling to contain the mana. It raged out of him, a torrent of silver-black flames forming into a sinuous dragon roughly the size of his own body.

Which just gave Sam more of a target to relentlessly punch.

It coiled around him like a snake, trying to crush him, but Sam slammed his fist into its newly formed eye.

The silver eye shattered like glass, bloodying Sam’s hand. But he was beyond caring about mortal woes. In his mind, he was already dead.

And what more could you do to a dead man?

The crystal prison shrank around the pair, crushing the air from Sam’s lungs, but also keeping the silver-black creature within his fists’ range.

Snarling with rage and denial, Sam found some of his strength returning with each savage hit he landed on the creature. Scales shattered, burning blood splattered against the inside of the shrinking prison. The more the creature grew, the more Sam hit it, and the more he recovered his lost strength.

Screaming, mostly in anger and a little bit of confusion, he battered the monster into oblivion.

You gain a new Attunement:

[Void Mana] (F-Class Apocalypse Gate) (★★★★ Legendary)

The crystal prison shattered, freeing Sam and launching him face first onto rocky ground. He painfully skidded across it on his front and slipped off the edge.

He reached out for anything to hold on to and grabbed hold of a dangling root.

Heart thundering in his chest, Sam took stock of his surroundings. His situation in general, really.

Below was a sea of swirling clouds, and above an aurora of prismatic colors. Whatever the root was clinging to was basically just a hunk of floating rock.

“Maybe the crystal prison was better?” he asked himself.

“No,” somebody unfamiliar answered him.

A paw thrust out over the edge. Familiar fat toe beans wriggled on a fluffy paw.

“You have got to be kidding me.”

“Komachi!” his cat said excitedly.

Expecting a house cat, however rotund, to possess not just the strength but the counterbalancing weight to pull a grown sized man up was mentally unsound.

Somehow, with her help, he pulled himself up onto solid ground. As solid as a floating rock could be, anyway.

Sam lay there, staring up at the swirling colors and trying to take stock.

He was alive, all ten toes and ten fingers accounted for. In fact, he felt… great. He felt an addictive impulse to get up and immediately hunt a monster.

The rush of mana and strength, the challenge of facing off against a threat that could not only push you to your limits, but very likely kill you, was… intoxicating.

Sam had never considered himself an adrenaline junkie, but now a great deal of things in his rather short and mediocre life made sense.

The allure of HEMA, the siren call of bigger and bigger waves to surf, and so much more, suddenly clicked.

All things considered, he had expected to die, and barring that, to end up like Anakin after he failed to claim the high ground.

Which, he realized, he was absolutely okay with.

It was better to try and fail than to never try at all. Dying in an attempt to save a world from some monsters was way better than stocking shelves at a big box retailer.

He would face death each and every day with a smile on his face if it meant he never had to go back to that life.

His fluffy golden British shorthair bounded up onto his chest and curled up. Just like she used to do as a kitten. Back when he’d feed her bits of tuna straight from the can as they watched TV in his tiny apartment.

Sam looked at her. “Komachi?”

“Yis?”

A thousand questions popped into his head, things like, “could you always talk?” or “are you the same Komachi that watched me drop my spam musubi on the beach and then still eat it?” and he very nearly asked, “why?” simply on general principles.

Instead, he focused on the most important question of all, and said, “Where are we?”

“The initialization nexus,” she said matter-of-factly.

“And… you know this, how?”

“That guy told me.” She pointed a paw at a not-so-distant crystal figure, dressed in a formal suit, waiting patiently by the random furnishings this platform had.

Sam followed her fluffy paw to the strange man standing nearby, his hands folded in a very… butlery way.

“Howzit,” Sam said in greeting. “What do you do here?” Sam called out to him without bothering to get up.

“I buttle, sir,” the man said with a voice drier than the Sahara.

“Could I get a sandwich?” Sam asked.

“No, sir.”

“Can I get some tuna?” Komachi asked.

“No, ma’am.”

“Wut good are ya?”

The crystalline butler quirked an eyebrow expertly. “You would not ask a perfectly tuned S-Class Oasis Engine to make your bed, would you?” He raised a white-gloved hand. “I can already see where this is going to go. Before you respond, realize I was asking rhetorically.”

“Bit of a dick, aren’t ya bud?” Sam said. Getting up slowly, he tucked Komachi under his arm like a football.

Beside a free-standing stone fireplace, that should’ve been attached to a wall or the like, was a plain wooden table with a single item atop it.

Surprise surprise, it was another crystal.

“This area’s purpose is to introduce you to, and prepare you for, the Lesser Shardrune Realm of Il’dran. Across these platforms, you will find what you require to start your journey.”

“Can I ask you questions, then?”

“Yes, sir.”

“…will you answer them?” Sam asked, not liking the tone.

“No, sir.”

Sam pinched the bridge of his nose and hissed under his breath, “Okole!”

“If sir will step this way,” the butler said, motioning to the table and the crystal upon it.

Sam looked at it, then wandered over to the crystalline prison he broke out of. Something about it called to him, and since the butler wasn’t going to be much use, he might as well indulge himself.

It only took Sam a moment to find what had called out to him. It was a tiny misshapen blue crystal fragment.

A piece of the [Shatterblade]?

Sam picked it up and, since he was somehow still wearing his board shorts, dropped it into his pocket while trying to be as nonchalant as possible in case the butler thought he was stealing.

After all, if what Raiko said was true, the weapon was technically his. But he wasn’t taking any chances. Masking what he was doing by picking up and setting down a few random bits of crystal, Sam eventually dusted off his hands and approached the table.