System Change

“Umm…” Alanah rubbed her chin in thought. “I’m not sure,” she finally said, after thinking for a few moments. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen a Void Beast so… passive. They are usually either very angrily rushing toward whoever is closest, or very angrily running away because of their instincts telling them to flee.” The woman walked up to the beast, then, with her pointer finger, poked it on the back of its head, which was hanging toward the ground. Still, the beast made no attempt to move at all or any other reaction to Alanah. “That was… unexpected.”

“You’re telling me,” Derek replied with a frown. With the beast being one of the stronger ones, but still not quite there in the intelligence or sentience department, Derek thought of an idea—especially since it seemed the beast was completely checked out. “Do you mind if I keep this one?” he asked Alanah, since it was her idea to gather a few of the beasts. He had originally planned on waiting for when he and Avery went hunting to do what he was thinking, but since the beast was right there…

“Go ahead,” Alanah said, poking the beast once again, this time with more of a shove. The beast made to fall, but somehow righted itself before it did so. “So… it still has some reflexes and instincts…” Alanah muttered, then took her eyes off the beast and moved them back to Derek. With a shrug, she said, “You summoned it. You… well… you disabled it. So, it’s yours,” she explained.

Derek took a small step toward her and the beast that she was standing beside. He cracked his knuckles and prepared to use a skill.

“Wait one moment,” Alanah muttered, stopping Derek before he could go any further. “Can you do anything else with the beast? Can you control it?”

“I can’t,” Derek said with a shake of his head. “But not for the lack of trying. I thought, and still think, that at some point, I will be able to do something with them. I don’t know if it will be full control like you are able to do with your Deathsworn. I can feel… something in the back of my mind when I focus my aura on the beast, but I just can’t quite do anything with it… other than, apparently… disable the beast completely. But I’m not sure if that is part of the feeling or just because of how strong my aura has gotten. I also wonder if I’ll be able to do the same with even stronger ones, or if this beast is my current limit.”

“Well, with the way the beast reacted, I think there is a good chance that you will be able to do much more, and to much stronger beasts,” Alanah replied. “Even if it is only a reaction to your current aura, I think there is still quite the gap between most Void Beasts and the current you… Now, what exactly are you planning to do right now, anyway?”

“Oh, well… you see,” Derek began speaking, but also reached out and activated his Time Prison skill at the same time, ripping the space open, then opening the door leading to the lobby as he did. “As you know, it seems that no matter what I do, unless I cover something or someone in a sort of void casing, they are pretty much destroyed when going inside the tunnel I create to travel with—at least when it comes to organic things. The same is true for when I put things inside my Time Prison and try to travel with them. I have yet to think of a way to keep them preserved inside the prison while I travel on the outside… at least for the most part.”

“I see,” Alanah said as she listened to Derek. “So then…”

“Well… it’s mostly just curiosity, but I want to see if a regular Void Beast is able to stay alive like both me and Silvi are when we are inside that part of the void. I’m not sure what I will be able to do with the information I end up with, but, if nothing else, it will satisfy my curiosity, and perhaps even make it easier to level my Time Prison skill because I’ll at least be able to keep a Void Beast inside without dying… if it works.”Derek’s current plan, if he needed to move everyone all at the same time, was very dependent on how large of a pot and lid Silvi could create with her Void Creation skill. If Derek could combine her transport pots with his Time Prison, then it would make things even better. He could—probably—use his skill to make it where Silvi wouldn’t need to keep her skill active for as long as he had to travel.

No skills were able to grow when inside his Time Prison once the door was shut, but his companion should at least still be able to shield the others with her skill while inside. Hopefully, after their latest round of upgrades to their stats, the young bunny would be able to use Void Creation at an even higher level than before. However, the two of them still have a good amount of room left to grow stronger and enhance their current abilities, so even if his companion couldn’t yet, he suspected that she would be able to in the future.

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

Though he still wasn’t sure about how the time difference would work once he entered the ‘deeper’ part of the void created by Void Travel. And that is where his plan to toss a Void Beast inside came in. That, and, as he told Alanah, he hoped that maintaining a Void Beast or two inside his Time Prison would help him level it up since he very well couldn’t keep normal system users or beasts inside without them dying.

With the door to the prison open, Derek stepped forward, reached up, and placed his hands on the shoulders of the Void Beast. He half expected it to break out of its stunned gaze and attack, but it didn’t move so much as a finger, with Derek standing right in front of it. With a shrug, he squeezed lightly on the shoulders, getting a good grip, then lifted.

Surprisingly, the beast wasn’t completely dead weight. As he lifted the creature, it at least kept its body straight and stiff—which explained why it was able to keep from falling when Alanah tried to push it over. It didn’t matter much to Derek, as he would have been able to carry the Void Beast either way with his strength. It was just an interesting thing that he took note of.

With a few steps, Derek reached the opening to his prison with the Void Beast in hand. Continuing to move forward, Derek stepped through the Time Prison opening and carried the beast deep inside. Once they were far enough in, he sat the beast down and turned around, walking back outside.

“Let’s see what happens now,” he said as he closed the door and pulled the space back together, dismissing his skill in the process.

“What are you thinking?” Alanah asked.

“I’m thinking, or rather, hoping, that it will break out of whatever state it is currently in once it has been separated from me and any remaining aura it may have felt.

“Oh,” Alanah said with a nod.

“That should be long enough,” Derek said, then reached forward and reactivated his skill. He opened the door, and the light from outside shined in. The Void Beast was no longer in the center of the lobby where he had left it. Instead, he saw it rushing forward from the side. Just as it stepped over the threshold of the prison to the outside, Derek balled up his fist, loaded it up with a bit of void energy, and struck it in its abdomen.

The beast let out a shriek as it stumbled backwards, back into the prison. With a quick nod, Derek slammed the door shut and deactivated his skill—closing the tear in the space once again.

“Well… that’s… good?” Derek said, not knowing exactly what it meant that the beast had broken out of its comatose state.

“Looks like they need to continuously be in your presence to keep whatever effect caused the beast to go dormant, active,” Alanah replied. “If nothing else, it shows that whatever it is you did wasn’t able to disable the beast for good. Take that information however you will…”

“That’s what I was thinking,” Derek said. “I guess you could say that my void-laced aura is kind of like a crowd control skill specifically made for Void Beasts. It should make farming them all the easier, at least.”

“Maybe…” Alanah replied.

“Why maybe?” Derek asked.

“We don’t know if your new, enhanced aura only works on Void Beasts,” she explained. “Like I said, when I was hit with your projected aura—even though it wasn’t aimed at me—I felt it, and I mean REALLY felt it. It wasn’t enough to hinder or affect my movements, but if you were to hit a normal person or beast with the same strength as that Void Beast with it… say… Stella, you may have ended up with the same results.”

“I guess that’s true,” Derek let out an exacerbated sigh. “Looks like it’s just another thing I’ll have to look into. I’ll add it onto the ever-growing list of things I don’t know.”

“And that list will keep growing bigger and bigger,” Alanah replied with a nod. “Just look at me,” she continued. “I thought I was finished with my own growth, yet still had dozens or more questions I was never able to answer in my life. Then, I reached the second requirement, got an answer to one of my questions, then had to add even more questions to my list of ‘things I don’t know.’ It seems that if you don’t have a growing list like that, you have either given up, don’t care, or are completely daft.”

“Or you have made it all the way to the top and have had them all answered,” Derek chimed in.

“Yeah… okay,” Alanah rolled her eyes.

“It’s something for you to aim for now that you know that this…” Derek motioned to their surrounding with both his arms sticking out. “… isn’t the end of everything. Hell, it quite possibly could just be the beginning.”

“Oh, more questions,” Alanah said with a light chuckle. “Just what I was looking forward to.”

“Of course!” Derek replied. “Now, shall we get back to work?”

“Let’s do it.”

After that, Derek activated Void Call again, surprisingly leveling up the skill to level five from level four in the process. I guess I was already pretty close to gaining that level, he thought as he watched the beam of void energy dissipate into the sky. Soon enough, another Void Beast came knocking. This time, the Void Beast that was summoned was not a particularly strong one. So, Derek answered the knock by jumping into the sky and helping out.

He ripped pieces of the shattered sky out and let them fall and disappear. Finally, he was able to make out some of the Void Beast inside. Instead of waiting and removing more and more of the sky with the beast, he reached inside and grabbed the creature with all of his strength, then he pulled. He ripped the beast out of the void and tossed it down—directly at Alanah.

With barely a movement, Alanah held up her rapier and the beast’s head was impaled directly onto the blade. Like that, the beast was dead and already stored inside Alanah’s storage ring. Derek raised his eyebrow in question, but Alanah only shrugged.

“It wasn’t strong enough to be worth any extra effort,” Alanah said as Derek came down, allowing the sky to heal itself again. “Can you go again?” she asked.

“Of course,” Derek replied. “It used to be a very taxing skill to use, now… it’s not.”

“Good,” Alanah said. “How about summoning multiple at a time?”

“Why not?”