Sitting on her bed, book back to the nightstand, Amanda held the gloss black orb. It reflected so little light her eyes had trouble discerning its depth. It looked, at first glance, like a flat circle of pure black.

"What do I need to do?" She asked Robert.

"I don't know. I see no energy flow. Try to eat it."

She bit on the sphere. It might as well be made out of metal or diamond. Next, Amanda tried to look at it in the Netherecho. The orb had an ominous aura of destruction. But she couldn't start the absorption.

"It's not working!" She whined, letting her frustration out in her voice. A false hope was worse than the stagnating despair.

"Maybe we need to do it in the void," Robert suggested. "We should wait a few hours so we have at least a month to absorb it.

He knew they were on the right path because Serendipity hadn't reacted to the bad news. His Luck tempering technique developed whenever misfortune befell on him. Raising Amanda's hopes only to have her slapped in the face by fate surely counted as such.

Amanda went to sleep, unwilling to wait, and let her conscious mind fester in worry and disillusionment. When she woke up, Robert guided her to the liminal void.

There, the treasure in her hand immediately reacted. The crystallized Void Ether started to rapidly evaporate and surround her, disintegrating the upper layers of her skin. Robert quickly reacted by placing a hand on her back and healing the damage. But, as the Void Ether seeped deeper inside her body, it interacted with her worse than but in a similar way to the Void tempering baths Robert did. Her body was slowly disintegrating as the Void Ether crossed it to reach her soul.

The pain Amanda felt couldn't be mitigated by Deaden Nerves. She screamed. Robert used his own body and telekinesis to hold her and the orb in place. He kept healing her but it wasn't enough. Damien woke up and screamed alongside Amanda. The pain originated not from the body but from the soul.

"Amanda, use your healing spell!" Robert shouted. Green essence wrapped around her shouldering the burden of keeping her alive.

They spent days locked in that seesaw of disintegration and regeneration. The orb shed layer after layer of crystallized Void Ether forever altering Amanda's soul. She had to stop healing because she had both run out of essence and reached her limit of accumulated dross essence.

Robert had to drag her along and dive into the deep void to gather Void wisps to supplement his essence intake. iRobert regularly cast Purge Essence to clear his body of the dross essence, while his main consciousness focused on healing Amanda.

Everything seemed to be fine.

Robert felt something stir even deeper into the void. The energy the sphere was emitting drew the attention of one of the entities Mickey warned him to never interact with. He tried to pull Amanda into a shallower depth but the orb was stuck. Amanda grabbed to it for dear life. His Prescience and Danger Sense were screaming at him that he should get the fuck away from there.

"Amanda, drop the orb!" He shouted.

She didn't react. Amanda only screamed in pain as the orb's energy kept seeping into her soul and wrecked everything in between. Her body, to be clear.

The veil opened. Something humans were never meant to see climbed up from the eldritch depths of the void.

"Amanda, let go! We need to run!" Robert pleaded. Serendipity was ticking up like a stock exchange index during a major IPO. Unavoidable misfortune was coming their way.

She was unresponsive. Robert had no other option. He tried yanking her hand off of the orb but it was stuck. Even with Unholy Vigor boosting his strength, he felt he could crush Amanda's wrist but not peel her hand off of the orb.

In the corner of his vision, he saw tentacles of purple and black. Eyes blinked on the entire surface of the tentacles and mouths of all types and sizes gnashed with immortal hunger. The geometry was non-Euclidean and his mind was stressed just from looking at it with the corner of his sight. His Thought Shield cracked all over his Mind Palace. His Prescience became a blaring siren, further attempting to push him to the brink. The visions he saw, the future he predicted, it all culminated into a single decision.

Robert severed Amanda's hand. Free from physical contact with the orb, he pulled her up and back to the upper layers of the void. Moments or an eternity later, he felt it.

A mass of tentacles and mouths and eyes and fractal existence the size of five Earths chomped down on the spot they were at. The entity swallowed the treasure whole and consumed it.

The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.

It would've been them if he hadn't taken that drastic measure. He stopped in the true void, as far away from the entity as he could. But the eldritch being was interested only in the treasure, not them. He doubted he could get away otherwise.

Amanda wheezed. She cried, a high-pitched scream born of frustration, pain, and despair. The chance to remove the parasite, one of the rarest affinity treasures, was lost because of one careless decision.

Hindsight was perfect vision, Robert chided himself. He needed the extra essence. Letting Amanda die to absorb the treasure was throwing away the baby with the bathwater.

Nothing they could do there. He had no idea that a Void treasure would be so dangerous. He was so eager to get it to Amanda that he didn't consider the consequences. And now, the problem had only gotten worse.

He used Meticulous Regeneration to bring her body to a perfect state again. But her mind and soul were another story. The failed absorption might have increased her aptitude for the Void affinity but it was useless. When was he going to find another treasure such as that? It might be the only one in existence. Past tense. Now it was candy in the mouth of some elder god.

Amanda stared at her rebuilt hand. She started to weep. Robert held tight to her. He felt the pull of his talent signaling his mandatory stay in the void had ended.

But what could he do? How to evict Damien now? Even so, his plan was so far-fetched he had no idea if it would work.

He needed to know. Amanda needed the Void affinity for it to work but it was the best chance of removing Damien. Robert closed his eyes and let them drift through the true void, going by feeling as to where they needed to go. He felt himself approaching Earth. He opened his eyes and found that his intuition told him he was at the right place.

*

*

Robert knew where he could find a way to give Amanda the Void affinity. An Arch only had four methods of obtaining a new affinity. With an extremely low chance, they could develop a new affinity upon ascending a star. The odds were minimal the more affinities one already had. They could use an affinity treasure. They could assimilate a Unique Prime Vestige like he did with Blossom. Or they could capture a Unique spirit.

The former three were an impossibility. The fourth, not so much. Turns out Robert always knew of a place where he could find unique void spirits.

The Cult of the Lidless Pail. Gwen's former home, the religion she founded. From what he pieced together from the grimoire and what Mickey said, Gwen created the cult because she wanted to bring her beloved cartoons to life. They took over the animation studio they used to work in and converted it into a massive ritual circle using an ink machine. The ritual was successful. They created Mickey, Minnie, and several other cartoons.

But after Gwen entered the Void Gates of Nirvana, the cult became greedy. These cartoons were power incarnate. They preyed upon the innocent creatures, enslaving them. Only Mickey had escaped. And now, the cultists would have their reckoning.

Robert dropped an unresponsive Amanda home and gave Veronica precise instructions on how to act when she recovered her senses. He left a note and departed.

*

*

Florida.

Robert found his first roadblock when he tried to infiltrate the cult base through the liminal void. A barrier of Void Ether, supported by an enchantment carved in the walls, sealed the entire underground complex. He tried to get through it but it was completely sealed-off. The feeling he had was the same as in the Inheritance Dungeon. The cult had sealed their complex, keeping it away from the void. He suspected this enchantment was to stop Mickey from entering and harassing them.

He moved to the entrance of the complex and worked making Satellite Cores until he had to return to reality.

The entrance to the underground complex was a sturdy metal door with runic inscriptions in the heart of the old animation studio. Pappardelle recognized most of the work and was sure Robert could barge in if needed. The inscriptions blocked his senses past the door.

The guard was startled at his sudden appearance. "Who goes there?" The young man asked.

Robert could see the guy was a one-star Arch. "The void beckons," Robert said.

The guard leaned forward. "I'm sorry if I don't recognize you, brother."

"I've been gone for a hundred years and I didn't have this appearance back then. So you don't need to worry if you don't recognize me. But now, It's time I return home," Robert said. "Make way, or summon your elders."

"You are bullshitting me," the guard said. "You aren't a hundred years old, and you are just a weak two-star."

"Would it hurt you to call one of your elders to check the story? I'll be here if they deem I'm trespassing, then I'll be on my way. But what if I have the right to come in here and you are blocking me. Can you weigh how screwed you'll be in each situation?"

"Nah, fuck you and get the fuck off. You said it yourself, you're trespassing. This is private property."

"Your loss, buddy," Robert vaporized the door behind the guard with a Zoltraak beam. He activated his buffs.

The guard summoned a sword from his ring. Robert moved almost three times faster than a baseline two-star Arch and dragged the guard to the true void, where he offered the guard to the Void. He was pretty sure that as a cultist, there could be no worthier death.

With the door gone, he returned to reality and walked inside. He felt his connection to the void snap. He wondered how they managed it. An artificial way to cut a section of space from the void. He was very curious. But once he crossed over, his heart stopped beating. The Void Heart no longer could draw essence from the Void Gates of Nirvana.

He started mapping the complex with his spatial senses and locating people with Sense Life. The tunnel had an elevator shaft going into the depths and a metal mesh staircase winding around the square hole of the elevator. Robert jumped down the shaft, catching his fall with a combination of telekinesis and walls of Force. He landed on top of the elevator car and used a Void Punch to open a hole in the safety wire mesh. He jumped to the stairs and finished going down the normal way.

At the bottom of the elevator, he sensed two people, a man and a woman sitting inside a guard station.

"The void beckons," he greeted them.

"Stop where you are!" The male guard shouted. "Identify yourself!"