He laid at the ground staring at the sky for a while, just taking it in. Tears leaked from his eyes. He’d never seen anything so beautiful.

  Staring at the nothingness of the abyss for so long had left a mark on him. In fact, it’d left a permanent mark on him…in him. A small part of his mana, separated from the rest, had been taken over by void energy. Before finally leaving, he’d practiced with it a bit, but not as much as he would have liked.

  But that was something he could test later. At the moment, he was just enjoying benign a live.

  Sure feels nice to not be atomized or whatever.

  Max looked around his new surroundings and breathed a sigh of relief. "Well, it doesn't look like we're in a hell world," he said. All the spirits in his soul mutely acknowledged his words. After all, over the months or years or decades—or however long it was that he'd been trapped in limbo—the very real possibility of trying to escape and just winding up in a hell world, or maybe even worse, had been bandied about. Although his spirits were not living, there were still places that even spirits did not want to go.

  It didn’t take him long to realize he was not on earth. Earth didn’t have trees like he was seeing.

  Once he was standing, Max began the painstaking task of properly stretching every single muscle group in his body. In addition to feeling amazing after being stuck for so long floating in nothingness, it also gave him time and clarity to think about his next steps. Of course, he had plenty of ideas, but most of them were dependent upon certain variables. Now that he found himself back in reality, he still had several options to choose from. Ultimately, the goal for all of his ideas now was the same: he needed to get back to Earth, and he needed to do so as quickly as possible.

  Finally, with the stretching done, Max lightly jumped up in the air and flexed his four-star mana body. Then he sent a small arc of power through his fingertips, arcing towards a large tree in the distance. The energy hit and sunk a couple of feet into the trunk, almost bursting out the other side. Not bad. This small flex of mana shouldn’t be possible until he had a five star mana body, but Max had been practicing and pushing the envelope of what was possible.

  Then Max did the same thing but added void energy to the attack. He was genuinely curious, not sure how any of his abilities would change with the addition. In the void, he'd only been able to practice against his spirits. He watched curiously as the same size arc of mana—a powerful and effective mana wave attack—sped at the tree. He was expecting it to go in a little bit deeper, maybe even penetrate the tree fully.

  However, he watched in shock and barely got a shield of mana up in time before the trunk exploded. Pieces of wooden shrapnel whizzed past him or were stopped by his shield. The tree ponderously started to tip over, even as another couple of trees behind it were demolished by the attack. "Holy shit," Max muttered as the huge tree he just accidentally cut down fell in the forest, making a racket and causing the ground to tremble like there'd been an earthquake.

  Lavinia appeared visually next to him and said, "I think we can pretty safely conclude now that the void energy has made you a lot stronger."

  Max slowly nodded. "Yes and no," he said.

  "What do you mean? Why no?"

  Max pointed at the tree and said, "For big monsters, or if I'm fighting a war, yes, this would be fantastic. But if it's one-on-one, and my enemy is close to me, or if I use too weak of an attack,or any other number of possibilities, it might do me in before my opponent. Like, imagine if I'd been standing right by that tree, for instance."

  Lavinia nodded. "I see what you mean. So like your other powers and abilities, it's another tool in the toolbox, right?"

  Max nodded. "Yeah, something like that. I mean, I'm not saying it doesn't make me more powerful. I'm just saying that it's not going to allow me to steamroll everything either. It’ll be situational"

  "Noted," said Lavinia, and she vanished.

  Max tapped his lip and finally decided that he couldn't properly decide what to do next until he figured out what sort of world this was. So he rose in the air at treetop level and began moving towards the sun. He didn't know which way this planet spun or how fast the sun moved, but it seemed like a pretty good way to stay relatively consistent, direction-wise, for a couple hours of flying. Old habits die hard, so he stayed to the treetops, preventing himself from being too juicy of a flying target.

  As he traveled, he suddenly saw a couple of monsters fighting below. Max grinned. After his time in the void, practically everything he saw was new and wondrous all over again. He dropped down nearby to watch the two creatures battle. One of them looked like a cross between a bear and a boar. It had a huge furry body, large tusks, and powerful claws on its paws. The other creature was like a cross between a beetle and a cougar, only huge. The two combatants circled each other, neither finding a good advantage.

  Out loud, he said, "The kite-shell primordial puma has really good defenses, and the tusked hexabear has really good offense. They're a poor match for each other."

  Lavinia appeared again and said, "Tusked hexabear and kite-shell primordial puma. So these things really are what I thought they were, aren't they?"

  Max nodded. "Yes. There's no mistaking them. This world must have some similarities with Albion."

  He looked around and pointed at the trees. "Also, I don't recognize all of these, but that tree, at least, is a pine tree I used to see on Albion all the time. I don't know the name of it because I never really gave a shit about trees, but I do recognize it. It's got that weird-shaped pine cone."

  Lavinia slowly said, "That's true. I think you're right."

  Around that time, the two fighting monsters suddenly turned and saw Max watching. One snorted and one roared, apparently, discovering a human nearby more offensive than whatever the other had done to provoke the fight.

  Both creatures charged at Max. He calmly joined two fingers together and quickly delivered two waves of energy, similar to the one that he used on the tree earlier.

  You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.

  Two explosions rocked the forest.

  Not only did both monsters die, but both also violently exploded, the tops of their heads disappearing into mist and bone fragments before the rest of their bodies were reduced to smoking pieces of fur and ropey entrails. Only Max's defensive mana screen kept him from being absolutely drenched in blood and viscera.

  "Wow," he said. "This void energy is really no joke."

  He stood among the smoky, vaporized blood, just taking in what he’d just wrought. Then he started wondering if he could layer other abilities and techniques on top of this new void energy, at least for a greater effect. The fact he could stack the energies was something he already knew for sure he could do after his many years of experimentation in limbo.

  Max felt almost giddy. Part of him almost just stopped what he was doing to start researching void energy, but common sense prevailed and he reminded himself that he had more important things to focus on.

  Not for the first time, he felt grateful to have had his spirits with him in limbo, or he might truly have come out insane.

  He took to the sky again, flying, wondering if this was an empty world or a game preserve or something like that.. He hadn't seen any civilization yet, but what he had seen was beautiful and actually made him a little nostalgic for his days on Albion.

  Finally, after what felt like an hour of flying, he spotted what looked like houses in the distance, all situated in some sort of small town in the middle of a plain. The…settlement… wasn't very large, but it was definitely bigger than what Max considered a village, and after putting mana into his eyeballs to see better, he could spot that the buildings themselves were not crude, thatched affairs like many humans would make in more primitive civilizations. In fact, he didn't even see stone roofs like he'd been accustomed to back in Albion. Instead, the buildings looked very similar to buildings on Earth, like shingles.

  When the trees thinned out in the forest, he dipped lower, hopefully preventing himself from being spotted. He slowed more, steadily flying towards the village. Then he sent a sub-vocal communication to all his spirits. Everybody be ready, just in case there's hostilities ahead. The spirits sent him back an acknowledgment, making it clear that they were just as riveted to what was happening as he was.

  As he got closer to the village, his eyebrows climbed into his hairline as two figures flew out towards him. At first, he couldn't believe his senses, but then finally acknowledged reality. "They're both Blade Sorcerers," he said quietly.

  Really? asked Lavinia in his mind.

  They have lovely bones, added Saliron unhelpfully. Just like you, Contractor, they have filled their bones to bursting with power.

  "Lovely," said Max.

  As he got closer, he used his mana to ping the other Blaze sorcerers, just like they just had him, and discovered that they were both four-star mana body Blade Sorcerers, technically both at his level. Of course, Max was a multi-Path, two-lifetimes Challenger and the Champion of a goddess. And now he had access to void energy.

  He had another twenty seconds or so before he'd meet the Challengers. After floating up again, no longer feeling a need to hide his abilities, he had a few moments to kill. Randomly, he pulled up some of his old, garbled information that he'd gotten access to upon being a Challenger that had never made sense. But when he did, he almost fell out of the air in shock.

  What is it? asked Lavinia, concerned.

  "We'll talk about it later," muttered Max, and he soon found himself hovering in place, regarding two hovering Blade Sorcerers. Max switched to the Quartet language instead of English and said, "Greetings. My name is Max. I'm not from around these parts, and I got turned around. Can you tell me what this place is?"

  The male Blade sorcerer, a thin man with average height and handsome features, shook his head. "I never went to the Quartet," he said, "so I don't understand you."

  Max nodded before replying, "Oh, okay, well, in that case, I just won't speak Quartet."

  Lavinia gasped at the same time that Max realized what had just happened. Then he said out loud, "Wait, you speak the language of Albion?"

  The male Blade Sorcerer gave him a strange look before giving the female Blade Sorcerer next to him a glance. He slowly said, "I certainly hope so."

  The female Blade sorcerer, a tall, dark-haired, dusky-skinned woman with a long sword on her hip, looked at Max like he was cracked in the head. "Did you get hit or something, or maybe run into some magic or a mana storm?"

  Immediately, Max shook his head. Then he asked the question that he was almost not brave enough to put into words, "Could you tell me what the name of this world is?"

  The bearded man looked at him levelly and said, "I don't know if this is a prank, but I can’t figure out how. I guess I'll play along. This is Albion."

  Lavinia gasped in his head again, and Max went quiet before slowly sinking to the ground. The two unfamiliar Blade Sorcerers exchanged a glance before they also floated downwards to join him.

  Max found a handy rock and sat on it, putting his head in his hands. Now that he thought about it more clearly, he could understand how opening a rift might have led to a place like this. The area that he came from and Lavinia, both of them have ties to this world.

  "Are you okay?" said the man.

  "I think I will be in a moment," said Max. "I just got kind of turned around. You know, it's been a hard day."

  The man nodded and said, "I'm sure we've all had some of those."

  As Max had his head bowed and the man didn't think Max would see, he made a pantomime drinking motion to the woman, who nodded. Max almost laughed. It was probably better for the moment that they thought he was a drunk than a world or dimensional traveler.

  "I'm Lycos," said the man, "and this is Shahira. You look physically like you're in pretty good shape, but it seems like you might need to take a load off. The town ahead is called Mulgreen. Shahira and I are both from Mulgreen, and we work as guards. There's an inn and quite a few restaurants. Maybe you should just come and get something to eat."

  Max's stomach rumbled, and he felt the hunger that only a man who had not eaten for decades, or maybe even centuries, could. He nodded and said, "I would love that, but I need to barter first, or go to a pawn shop. I don't have any money, but I do happen to have some curiosities from another dimension that somebody might want to buy."

  The two Blade Sorcerer guards shared another look, obviously convinced by this point that Max was crazy, but he was still a four-star Blaze sorcerer, and crazy Blade Sorcerers were definitely something to take seriously. So in a kind tone of voice, the woman said, "How about you come back with us, and we'll help you with a meal at one of the restaurants? Then maybe you can see some of our other friends too, and tell us your troubles."

  Max knew the real reason these two wanted him to meet their friends was for backup. That way if he truly went nuts and tried hurting or killing anyone, they'd have enough people on hand to subdue him or put him down without getting hurt themselves. Max didn’t have any reason to refuse, though, and nodded woodenly.

  He took to the air again and followed the two other Blade Sorcerers.

  For another couple of minutes, he followed his new guides to the town, Mulgreen, and as he got closer, he marveled at how different Albion had become over the last few centuries. In some ways, what he was seeing almost looked like modern Earth…crossed with the Quartet. The buildings were updated. There was evidence of new technology, but most of it was still magic-tech. Max opened himself to the mana in the world and almost started weeping at how overwhelmed he felt with nostalgia. It was like… a massive relief for his soul to finally feel the mana of Albion again.

  About twenty minutes later, when he was seated in a restaurant, and after making some more small talk, he finally was able to take his first bite of Albion cuisine again after hundreds of years. He couldn't stop the tears anymore and silently cried as he ate. Inside his head, Lavinia bawled, and all his other spirits stayed completely silent, giving Max and Lavinia the respect and space that they needed as they processed their powerful, confusing emotions.