‘That sounds good, I’m liking this so far.’

  “So I have some experience in negotiating with affinities already? Does that mean I’d actually do pretty good if I needed to redo my contract with Soul?”

  “Maybe better than I initially thought, but not innately better than Harum would’ve done. He was a Soul mage renowned across the entire world, and it took every scrap of his willpower to get the incredible deal he did. Many of the others got ok deals, better than their first ones, but admittedly only those who were already well-achieved used the spell, others holding off on it until their affinities were higher.

  “What you’re dealing with now isn’t quite the same as the contract you accepted before, and a battle of Rights isn’t always clean cut- one side can have a bigger advantage than the other. Take Perumah for example. She had a huge advantage because it was her name being decided, so the meager Rights she’d built up were empowered heavily. When battling for your Skills, I’d say you held an advantage, because it was you that both formed the Skills and leveled them up, earning dominion of them over time. Not to mention the fact that Wrath tried pulling it straight from your soul- something it shouldn’t have been able to do easily, and thus, granting you a massive advantage. Even so, I don’t think it fought you with all its might, as it truly did just want to see if you were the same person.

  “It’s a little hard to describe, but the better an argument an entity has for being involved in something, the more their Rights will be worth, carrying them further. It seems to me that the Void affinity has just enough of a claim on your Skill to connect with it, but the claim is so comically small that the System isn’t even entertaining it, flat out telling it to go away and potentially even cutting off whatever functionality the Skill had that involved Void.”

  “That… sounds kind of bad, doesn’t it? Because now my Skill is incomplete?”

  “Maybe, but it’s not a guarantee. The System might let Void help you use it, but if the Skill can function without Void, then it must’ve not been very integral in the first place.”

  ‘Great, another enigma. Does the Skill work? If it doesn’t, I have to get Void’s recognition. If it does, then it might still be broken. Or maybe not. Who the FREAK knows.’

  “I think I might face Void anyway. Clearly, it wants to talk to me about the Skill, so why not?”

  “Ah, I’m not sure how good of an idea that is. Even if Void doesn’t have that much of a claim to the Skill, it is still an affinity. If your Rights are lacking, it might even be able to force you into a deal- either one where you are given the Void affinity despite not being compatible with it, where you lose the Skill, or maybe even allow Void to form a schism in your being- very much not recommended. I’m not saying it would be the worst idea to face it, just because it would almost definitely net you another Achievement either from the System or Void itself, but if you do, be ready for a battle.”

  Dei nodded, he’d go into it with eyes wide open and ready to defend with his entire being. Perumah was able to face The Mother with pure willpower, Dei could too.

  Closing his eyes, he brought up the vision of his soul once more, finding the chosen Skill. Once more, he manifested his body in preparation to reach out in communication with Void, but he had to get in the right headspace first. If he was going to jump right into a battle for claim over his Skill, he had to psyche himself up.

  ‘It’s MY Skill, I formed and grew it. I not only fought the Void Beasts, but did so on their home territory. It was not a one to one fight either as I challenged countless at the same time, and still came out on top. It was my efforts, my willpower, my rage that kept the swarm at bay. Void holds no right to take it from me, yet even if they did, I am recognized by both Wrath and the System- No, that last clause leaves room for some doubt. Void holds no right to take it from me, even Wrath and the System have witnessed its hold over the Skill is pathetically weak to the point of it being functionally useless, cut off from what I want over the Skill.’

  More than just working on his argument, he fell into a defiant mindset. He would be standoffish until the situation was resolved. He wouldn’t let his guard down. He wasn’t meeting with Wrath or Kindness, a human affinity that might even want his best interests in mind. He was meeting with the Void affinity, a creator of schismed minds and apocalyptic Void Beasts. He would be ready to resist its hold, because failing to do so would either break him or kill him.

  Muscles tense, he reached out for the locket. His thought process for how he’d meet with Void was simple: instead of Void challenging him for control over the Skill, he would challenge Void for its share of the Skill, like trying to buy up shares of a stock. He and Wrath were the main “shareholders” of it, but Void still had a bit of money in the race.

  When he gripped the cracked gold locket this time and felt the tingling, he didn’t lean into the sensation. He pushed it back, forcing his own will into the locket itself. He felt foreign rage bubble through his body and knew that Wrath had involved itself now, but took a backseat in his mind. It didn’t feel like it was manifesting, merely being present for something it held a stake in and using him as a pseudo-avatar with which to watch the interaction. He could reject it, but Dei felt like it might improve his claim even further to have Wrath on his side.

  The static was successfully pushed back into the locket, and Dei flexed his will even further to push himself into the Skill, flushing out the parts of it he felt were not entirely his.

  The Void-filled fractures receded, but the darkness did not disappear. Instead, the locket bled a black ichor, the Void aspects quickly getting expelled into the open air of the memory he was currently within.

  It still felt like Dei was swimming in water, and this black ichor seemed to agree, floating around in the open for a moment, weightless.

  After all the ichor was drained from the locket though, it began to move and pull itself away from him, coalescing a slight distance away as the drops of Void began to morph and take shape.

  The darkness of the Void was no longer absolute black, but a shifting of a trillion experiences, a trillion states, and a trillion beasts. He felt like he could almost see countless things he was familiar with, but locking onto any one only further confused him as he could find no beginning or end to it.

  It felt like his mind should’ve melted with the sight, but he didn’t feel even the slightest pain from looking at this amalgam of all things, and knew it was the effect of his [Void Walker] Achievement helping him understand what he was looking at.

  A manifestation of a Void Beast.

  [Claim for Ownership made to Skill: [Pandora’s Box (Unleashed)] by Union: Dei Grrata]

  This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

  [Claim for Ownership made to Skill: [Pandora’s Box (Unleashed)] by Affinity: Void]

  [Ownership Contested between Dei Grrata And Void]

  He quickly glanced at his notifications to confirm, but it seemed he was permitted to challenge Void, just not the other way around.

  Another important fact was that this Skill was not being pulled taut, away from his soul- no, he could feel that he was pulling on Void, demanding it to meet him here. He now had a homefield advantage, as this battle would take place in his soul. A worrying thought of collateral came to mind, but he dismissed it as this was likely to be a metaphorical battle anyway if it came down to it.

  “Void, I take it?” Dei asked

  “Yes/No, merely a representation” he heard two voices at the same time, both taking up the same space in a moment and saying functionally the same thing in different ways.

  He could also tell that Void was imbuing its voice with meaning, in ways that affinities and higher beings seemed to enjoy doing, but his [Void Walker] Achievement let him simply blot out the unnecessary fluff, getting the direct meaning from it.

  Dei could tell that he’d have to suffer the double-words for the rest of the interaction though. Void had to talk using two opposing states to convey anything at all, which was annoying, but didn’t change the meaning.

  “I’ve challenged your claim over my Skill. I do not believe you have any right to it, so on what grounds do you think you stand?”

  He kept his words accusatory and standoffish, intent clear and not giving Void room to read between the lines. Dei was treating this like a meeting with a Fae. He’d never met one and didn’t know if they were real in this world, but if they were, he felt like they’d try to take advantage of double meanings. It had to be very clear where Void stood.

  “I hold right to the Skill because it cannot function without Void! You become one with the Void Beasts as well, an intangible being based around a soul. A body of no structure, a being of intent/It is MY Skill. You would never have earned it outside the Void. Only once you shed the mortal coil and left the idea of structure behind could you truly free yourself. If you existed in any other plane than Void, it would have failed. You would have died. Not only did I provide the perfect environment for your soul to exist in, I gave you purpose to fight and form the Skill in the form of Void Beasts. You would have ceased to exist in your journey across the Void as your mind fell asleep had you not fought to stay conscious.”

  Dei broke down both arguments in his head. The first claimed right because of the functionality of the Skill, which also gave him a hint into the Skills purpose- already, he’d gained something from this conversation.

  If what Void said was true, which he believed it was, the Skill transformed Dei into a being of pure intent, which explained why he was able to eviscerate the Void Beasts so thoroughly. They were beings of intent as well, so he raised himself into an even playing field, then started swinging with the one thing considered their absolute weakness: a desire to deal harm. His intense emotions translated into intense damage.

  The Void’s claim of functionality shed some light onto why it wasn’t actually necessary to function too. If Dei activated it without Void's hand in the process, it would almost definitely turn him into a being of magic rather than intent. Both intangible, and magic was probably something of a lateral move to pure intent. The Skill could easily keep its structure without Void.

  The second argument Void went with was about the rights of the Skill, if he was reading between the lines correctly. Void claimed that the Skill belonged to it because it allowed Dei the perfect environment to form it in the first place, implying that Dei would have completely failed if he were anywhere else. More than that, it implied that it’d known he’d succeed, which is why it sent the Void Beasts to attack him, so he could get in the right mindset to resist the enemy in front of him and engage his fight or flight response.

  This, too, didn’t exactly work for multiple reasons, similar to the reasons for functionality. Even if he wasn’t in Void, he probably could have created a similar Skill with slightly different functions, so Void wasn’t necessary in the Skills creation. Not only that, but there was no way Void had intentionally helped him.

  Addressing both arguments one after the other, Dei said “Even though you were partially responsible for the initial use of the Skill, your functions are only a bonus. I can use it without you, it will still work in a different yet similar way. As for if I would have failed in another plane of existence, I don’t think so. You claim that my consciousness continued to exist because you provided me enemies to fight, but not only were you not responsible for those enemies, and cannot take credit for their actions, but you’re wrong- I would have done the same thing, no matter which afterlife I’d ended up in. Even without Void Beasts, even without the Void, I would have persisted. It was never my panic that let me survive, it was the unsatisfying way in which I died. I’d just found out that everything I worked up to in life was for nothing, that I was a total failure. I refused to let that be my ending, and that resistance of death let me persist. No, you are not only unnecessary for the Skill to function, but you also cannot be credited for my success in returning back to life.”

  Void seemed to shift faster for a long time, and Dei managed to interpret it as frustration. The argument that Dei presented was probably the same argument the System used to shoo it away, and it was a valid argument. Void couldn’t work around it.

  Dei knew the moment he started his conversation with Void that their battle had begun. Dei chose the battlegrounds this time, and he felt more confident in his words than any metaphorical fight Void might’ve forced him into. Instead, he forced Void to talk it out with him, and if Void couldn’t present a logical argument for why it had a stake in the Skill, it would lose that stake.

  There was also something intriguing that Dei considered. If he was able to argue for why he should be allowed to use Void's portion of the Skill, wouldn’t he regain access to the Skills full functionality, even if Void didn’t want him to? If he proved that the Skill, the full Skill, was his by right, Void could only sit on the sidelines, kick and scream all it wanted and do nothing.

  But regaining full access to his Skill wasn’t the only thing he wanted from Void.

  In its silence, Dei felt its form slip. It was being forced to recognize its loss by all parties involved: him, the System, and Wrath.

  Before it could fully melt away though, Dei called out “But there is another matter which we might help each other on.”

  The dissipating form of Void paused and reformed itself, sensing a way to latch onto the situation once more. With the matter of his Skill resolved, Dei felt Wrath fade away too, no longer invested in their conversation.

  He was correct when he’d first assumed Wrath standing on his side would empower his argument, and felt himself weaken before the Void. The next part was the most dangerous, because he was now playing partially into Void's rules. He still had the home field advantage, as they were in his soul, but if Dei wasn’t careful about how he presented himself, Void would be able to get what it wanted, without his input.

  Dei had already considered what Void wanted, and what he wanted. All affinities wished to propagate their ideas and become more prevalent in the multiverse, and Dei might have a way to provide that. In return Dei wanted something else, something nobody else could give.

  A way back to Earth.

  Dei still felt it deep in his core. A white hot rage for what Taj and Emily did. When he died, he promised himself that he would not let his pitiful display be the last thing he did. Even after everything that’d happened in this world, his grudge, his first grudge, was an ache of dissatisfaction that never went away.

  To get to Avium, his new world, Dei had to cross the Void. To get back, he’d need to do so again. The only issue was how, exactly, he would pay Void for some help. Aloran was right, he couldn’t see himself feeling the same level of anger as he had last time, so his protection wouldn’t be guaranteed.

  Dei wasn’t sure if Void could literally help him cross the Void, but it was his only lead. A place to start.

  The only issue was how he would repay Void for the favor. To that end, he had a plan.