The two demon-kin didn’t react to his pulse, though he was sure they detected it. They were completely unchanged since the last time he’d seen them, looking like twin lizard-folk velociraptors with cones at the tips of their tails. Now that he could glimpse a bit into their souls, he saw they were somewhat hollow or direct, not much room for thinking.
Dei was assured by Clever that the fight would go well, and he informed Dei of some of their abilities.
“They can share damage with each other and I think you as well, umm they can stop your movements, but they move with however much force they stopped? Like, however much they slow you down, they accelerate themselves. It’s all a bit fuzzy, I think you do something with Void because the time because each timeline I make looks like four simultaneous ones, and they’re not cohesive.”
“Hm, well, thank you for the heads up. I wonder if it’s a Speed affinity? If there is one. Do they ever mess with your movements? Or anyone else's?”
“No, just you.”
“In that case, it’s probably something to do with the mark left on my soul. It ropes me in to their abilities in a way that isn’t usually available to them.”
“Who knows? All the timelines agree you win though.”
‘Well, that removes the suspense part I guess. An amazing quality.’
“So I’m finally going to do something with Void. Do you all help out some?”
Clever shook his head. “No, we sit on the sidelines, you beat them on your own.”
“In that case, I’d like you all to stay back. I don’t want to risk Fendrascora dropping from my body and becoming paralized. Sure, you’d be able to defend her, but it’s just an unnecessary risk. I’d like it if you all picked a part of the Great Stream nearby and sat it out. I can face the demon-kin alone, and call for help if needed.
* * *
The two demon-kin ignored him, up until he crossed the threshold of the semi-spherical room they sat in. He expected a monologue or something, but was disappointed when they just went straight to killing. Both heads snapped to him, both running forward with their claws out. He charged to meet them halfway.
Just as Clever had told him, he slowed to a stop instantly and felt something drain away. One of the demon-kin not only ground to a halt, but was thrown across the room to slam into the far side. The one still approaching slashed at his throat, and he took a moment to Identify it as he blocked the claws.
[Demon-Kin - Estimated level 200-240 by normal standards. 60-80 by yours.
Demon-Kin are parasitic to both the System and affinities, so they do not gain levels or experience from their kills. They drain power away from souls that unravel in specific circumstances near them, gaining their levels and Skills. This Demon-Kin is actually a single entity split in half, connected by the Pair affinity, and fights using the Momentum affinity]
Its strike was comically slow, and the translation to his own level intrigued him. Without the set structure of a Class, his Identify just did its best to estimate the creature's level, saying it was about as strong as he was around levels sixty to eighty.
He could end the fight immediately if he so desired, but understood instantly why Clever told him the fight out last several minutes- his Void affinity was acting up.
They’d formed a link between him and themselves, and that link was tangible enough for him to take advantage of. He was struggling to visualize himself crossing a distance in space, which limited his space-based Void teleportation. If he took advantage of the tracking mark though, it seemed to work as training wheels. Perhaps if he practiced teleporting to something attached to him in an intangible way, he would have better insight into doing it without the mark.
Dei pushed for his hand to move and intercept the claw but he was still under the effects of the other demon-kins momentum canceling. There seemed to be a hard limit for how much it could steel from his movements though, as it only seemed to decrease his speed by three forths, and he was still fast enough to block.
On the other side of the room, the demon-kin was, comically, pushed upwards through the stone, scoring a deep gash in it as the momentum it absorbed from Dei was evenly dispersed over its entire body- but still opening tears in its skin as his force pushed it one way, and hard rock pushed back.
Ignoring the enemy in front of him for a moment, he used some pre-prepared Void mana throughout his body. With Clevers warning that he was going to use it in the battle, he’d had it ready and used it now. First, as he believed it would be easiest, he tried swapping places with the demon-kin buried in the stone. It clearly had an active connection to him, which was how it absorbed his momentum. The one attacking wasn’t taking advantage of the connection, so it was probably more difficult.
So Dei fought, and delayed. His experiments might be damaging or lethal, so he didn’t want to hurt them too much, lest he not get to finish testing.
His attempts at closing the gap between him and the demon-kin bore fruit- but of the sour variety. He was getting more feedback from this attempt, something more to latch on to, and he realized that his attempts would never work if he didn’t change it. He was trying to merge two spots in space by closing the gap between them. While that might be possible, it wasn’t fit for teleportation, as there was already something on the other side blocking his way. He could get close to the enemies position within the spatial void, but that meant fuckall with the kind of magic he was using.
With Space magic, he’d be able to take baby steps by shifting just a little bit of space- but that meant nothing to Void. There was no measurement or rules in the Void, it either worked or it didn’t. Teleport a foot? Sure, but it will be equally as difficult as teleporting a billion lightyears away. Or just as easy, depending on how you saw it. A single instance of “Nothing” was just as nothingless as a hundred instances of “Nothing.”
So how to go about this? He couldn’t just push through the demon-kin with Void, and there was no way to go around, because the concept literally did not exist. It was like two people traveling along a narrow path towards each other. One had to go off the path, but that just meant being removed from reality entirely.
But… perhaps that’s how it was supposed to go? Dei remembered the time-based Void he’d entered. Maybe he utterly ceased to exist for that moment, allowing him to push the failed timeline backwards where he once was, place himself back in time, then push himself forwards to the reality he needed.
All he’d have to do was squeeze himself into the void between two points in space. It sounded hard, but with Void? Everything was equally difficult.
He got to work right away. He knew from his time-based attempt that it was absurdly cheap to teleport, only needing about five or six. Ten at the max. But he’d still play it safe with fifty.
The narrative has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.
Focusing on two points right at the tip of his finger, he urged it to open wide- and it worked. Two pieces of Void mana went into action, flying outside of his body. One went up, the other went down. They unzipped reality, leaving a jagget scar, floating in the air.
He was hopeful for a second, but the intuitive knowledge granted to him by the Void affinity, as per their deal, spoke up. The tear wouldn’t kill him, it actually wasn’t dangerous at all, but it was useless for some reason.
Trying to reach through, into the spatial void, he understood why as his hand harmlessly passed through, as though it were not there at all.
‘Oh, right. Forgot about that. Normal bodies cannot exist in the void and are rejected by it. Only specific variants, such as Wandering Soul Humans, can pass through. But I entered a time-based void, ay-okay? Maybe because my body still continued to exist, even without time, but it needs space to exist? Hmm… yea, without space, I’d become a conceptual being, like a Void Beast. And I’m not that.’
He felt a little silly. That was the entire reason he’d been confident with using Void to make it home in the first place- never entering the Void Plane itself was not only possible, it was required. It was not easy to exist in the Void, which is why so many people supposedly denied its very existence until Harum or whatever he did.
He sighed. He’d need to perpetually exist in two places at once, or find a way to swap. Linking himself with the other space simply stonewalled him. They both needed to swap places with each other instantly, that way, there was never any contact with the Void.
He sighed
‘I’m getting too complicated. I’ve already proven I can open a portal to the space-Void, what if I opened a portal to my destination without linking it directly to me, then dragged it across my body, taking me to the other side and displacing the space I’m going at with the space I am already.’
It sounded complicated in theory, but it was functionally the easies design he could come up with. Moving space out of the way in the opposing location, and puttin the space where he existed in the way.
It was dangerously close to the exact same experiment he’d tried before, but Dei saw it more as him walking uncomfortably close behind someone, rather than trying to push straight through them.
Testing out his theory, five pieces of mana were used. Two unzipped space directly on his skin, moving from right to left. Two unzipped space directly on the skin of his enemy, moving from their right to left as well, and one piece of mana served as a miniscule link between the two rifts.
Rapidly, it moved to follow his skin, flowing over him like a liquid and causing his arm to dissapear, replaced with the demon-kins limb, still connected to the demon-kin on the other side.
The issue he ran into was a pounding headache. The process should’ve been instantaneous, but the natural defenses of the demon-kin resisted all outside magic, and he was presented with the main drawback of Void: the cost may not be paid in mana, but Void loved its willpower.
His rapid mind was pushed to the limits as he tried to force the gateway to continue swapping the places of the designated space. It took hardly a second, but he was red in the face with exertion and his soul felt like it had just finished a hundred meter dash
But it worked!
[Skill Gained: Roving Gate]
[Roving Gate - Level 1 - Void affinity
If one were to ask a Void specialist to describe the affinity in a single word, ninety percent would say the same thing: Janky. When you approach the bounds of all natural physics, things tend to get a bit silly, and Roving Gate exemplifies that definition perfectly. The single most common Void Skill, it also teaches a lesson to all who first learn to master the Void. If you want to be a legend, learn Space. If you want it to work, Void will do.
Allows for the creation of Roving Gates, rifts in reality that slowly swap the place of two sections of fabric. You can’t jump through them, but they can jump through you.
Mana cost: 5 mana]
[Skill Leveled Up: Roving Gate (1) -> (7)]
He panted like a dog, but couldn’t stop himself from letting out a woop of success.
‘I did it! I have the spell to go back to Earth!’
The demon-kin closing in on him felt arbitrary after his achievement, but he decided he’d need the practice anyway. He didn’t want to sweat buckets and push himself halfway to exhaustion with each use, and he didn’t want to always swap places with a living creature. Those problems seems like they’d solve each other though, because the only reason it was so hard was because the demon-kin fought back against being subjected to the instant transportation.
He had what he wanted, so he decided to end the fight, but he’d do it without moving his legs. He’d teleport around, and strike to kill.
Focusing on the heavily injured one first, he saw that it was seconds from dropping. When he felt around with his Void mana, he noted that the connection between them was much weaker, so it hadn’t paired with him again. The two demon-kin likely saw the futility of trying to restrain him in any way, and went with a blitz strategy instead.
Activating his newest Skill, it was so much easier to designate the five Void mana in the correct spots that he almost didn’t activate it, as he couldn’t even feel it happen. When he realized it was all in place though, he pushed the [Roving Gate] over his own body, this time appearing in front of his enemy.
It was still easily his most strenuous Skill, but he didn’t burst a vessel trying to push through. He didn’t waste time launching a strike forward, punching clean through the chest of the already injured demon-kin. Briefly, he felt a pull on his momentum, but that ended when the monsters heart stopped.
Dodging quickly under a strike from the other, Dei was surprised it was alive at all. If the two creatures were actually just one split in half, it should’ve died when half its soul did. Identifying it again, he realized his mistake. They’d simply merged their processing, and now this one could think twice as fast.
Striking out, it jumped back and he teleported at it again, this time using MP rather than Void mana. It took half a second longer, but he appeared where he needed to and landed a glancing strike that knocked the demon-kin off balance.
‘I need to experiment slightly. I’m relying on the connection between me and the demon-kin, but I won’t always have a connection to something in the battlefield. Not unless I form one.’
The inspiration was taken from his Meditation Skill. He’d wondered for a long time what he gained from it devouring other Skills, as he believed it had to be a positive change. He lost out on evolutions, but his soul was more than happy to get merge weaker Skills into something better. He believed the benefit was in depth and complexity of the Skill, giving it more hidden synergies with other types of his Skills.
Meditation spoke of a link to all things, and he needed a tangible link now. With a thought, he began to Meditate on the perspective he shared with the point in space behind the demon-kin. It was an esoteric and unclear usage of the Skill, but was happy to find that Meditation was the right man for the job. In seconds, he had enough of a connection for Roving Gates to register that point as a potential destination, and he teleported one more time, right behind the demon-kin who hadn’t even been given the chance to fall all the way to the ground. He stomped down on its head right as the Skull touched the stone floor, splattering its brains and ending the fight.
[You have killed a Demon-Kin]
He was confused by the notification for all of one second, before realizing that it didn’t have levels or anything even adjacent. It was just a husk, so he shrugged. This at least proved one of his theories: EXP was an invisible form of energy that passed between creatures when you killed something. Demon-kin didn’t have EXP because they were barely living creatures, or something along those lines with them being all fucked up.
[Skill Leveled Up: Roving Gate (7) -> (20)]
[Profession Leveled Up: Pondering Sage (Level 36 -> (Level 37)]
[Stats Gained: +5 Spiritual]
Stretching his muscles after the fight, he began the trek back to Clever and friends. He’d killed the demon-kin, now it was time to meet whatever demon slayer had come for it originally.
