Chapter 6

I continue to feel the pain, and I am on my knees. I cough up a thick wad of blood. I feel my skin tingling, and my body loses the fight against the void. I continue to cough. After another fit of coughing I cough up a wad of black blood. I need this. I have to have this power. My mind changes a small amount, I can tell. But I do not care. My skin pales a little bit and I stand, unsteadily.

Ding Your body rejected the void, but the void insisted. New trait gained: Voidforged.

What does it do?

Ding Voidforged: Your body has been enhanced by the power of the void. Your statistics have all increased by 5, but you feel that this will have unforeseen consequences in the future. Your body will continue to change, and the impact on your changing mind remains to be seen.

I hear a hiss from behind me as I stand once again. I wobble on my feet, this new power is strange. I feel different, much more powerful, but I also feel very wrong. Like something invasive has changed me. I turn around slowly to see what is behind me. My cat, Fluffy. A small feeling enters my mind. Is it love? No. This is a different feeling. A new feeling. Indifference. My cat shrinks a little under my gaze. Am I really so unrecognizable?

“Fluffy? Here kitty kitty.” I feel the difference in my voice. It is the same, but overlapped with an unnatural shake. My voice feels odd. My cat looks a little bit more frightened, but I see a look in her eyes that makes me so very sad. She is scared of me. How could she be afraid of me? “Fluffy?”

She dashed into another room, away from me. I do not pursue her. I see someone I do not recognize enter the room. They gawk at me, then run. This person, I do pursue. The hunt is invigorating. I pick the person up and swallow them whole. I feel my entire body quake as something changes. My skin tinks black, my veins bulging. Something in me changes once again.

Traits gained. Depravity, monstrosity, voidborn.

Oh ho ho, now this will be fun.

I flash forward. My mind is warping. Five years have passed, and I don’t remember them. I continue to indulge my new talents. My new righteous pleasure. I bring the void to others, and bring them under my command. I’m level 70 now, and only two have evaded me. Alexi and the sergeant. Walmart will soon fall. My army is not yet enough. I continue to think as I run after another candidate. He will become a soldier in my army, a commander. I will make him perfect. He will be my perfect soldier.

My maw changes into a sharp grin. I caught up with him. My new form towers over him, pure shadows exude from me. He does not fear.

“NOW!” He yells, his overconfidence clear.

I have no fear. I half expected something like this. I may not know his name, but I know the type of person he is. He is like me. He wants to better the world. He is misguided. From the surrounding forest many ranged weapons strike me. Bombs and explosives, magical blasts of fire. A salvo of bullets from a high caliber heavy machine gun. On top of all of it a net falls over me. I am not even slowed. I shrug all of the coming firepower. I pierce one of my long talons through him. I roar an inhuman roar. He has tried. That’s more than many others. He has evaded me for long enough. I extend tendrils into him, and have my soldiers begin to hunt and turn the surrounding people. I do not need them. I scan him with my mental scenes, thinking about the holy changes that I will make to his flawed form. He will be mine. He will be-

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My tendrils are cut apart by a sword as I am pushed back by another.

“You…” I say growling, “You should have stayed dead.”

The man in glowing white armor tries to push a sword into me. I caught it with one of my original limbs. My new form of darkness dissolves into me, forming into my dark armor. I must take him seriously. I gather the surrounding darkness, creating a dark void where it was.

“Jason. You don’t have to do this,” He says to me.

I smile at him, removing my helmet, then say, “To the contrary Alexi. I will save this world from those like you. I will bring my darkness to all. They will become one with me, and we will save this world together. I will have you join me. One way or another.”

He sees there and then I can not be reasoned with. That my darkness will fight his light. He raises his sword and says a word to his patron, and his sword is covered in light. He says something but I don’t listen. My candidate runs. I pull on magic to form a blade of pure darkness. Soon my soldiers will complete their mission and join me. We meet and our blades clash. I pull together my mana and form a pure arrow and strike him, but while I do he forms shields around me to reduce my mobility.

We fight. I frown. My soldiers are falling. I can reconstitute them later, but how are so many falling? I had a hundred thousand, but all of them in the surrounding miles are dying. Someone is destroying them.

“Jason, I am sorry this had to be done.”

He pulls out a strange gray gemstone, and crushes it in the palm of his hand. All the mana in the surrounding miles is sucked into the point. My mana, his mana, and all the mana in the area explodes in a single concentrated point. It is clear that neither of us can survive a blast of this caliber. I pull some of the mana from the point into a shield to block any amount of the explosion. It is pointless, the explosion just blasts through the shield. A large crater is one of the last things I see as the world darkens around me.

“Jason?” I hear his voice.

“How are we still alive?” I ask him. I can’t see, but I can still talk and hear him.

“Jason, we are both dying. I pulled our spirits out of our bodies. I want to talk before the end.”

“A pointless gesture, but shall indulge you.” I feel something strange that I haven’t felt since I signed the pact. I feel sadness and pain, I feel regret. I feel empathy for all those I have killed over the years.

“Why did you do it all?”

“I killed them to save them. They were… impure. The void must spread, it must save us all.” My voice is no longer genuine. I truly believed these words once, but my warped mind is beginning to return to the way it once was. Do I truly still believe this? Do I believe my own words?

“No. It wasn’t you. Or was it? Is your true self a violent murderer? Are you really what everyone says you are? Maybe it is time to let you leave to oblivion. To join with the void.”

“My mind… it changed. My true self may not believe, but I did truly believed those ideals once. The void gave everything I wanted. A way to gain power. I took it to an extreme, and it warped my mind. I regret all of it. I would change it if I could. I would go back. But it is time. I have gone too far, and we must end. For the safety of this world, and others.”

“Would you have reached this level of power without the void? Would you have gained this power without the slaughter? It’s an odd question, I know. The light granted me my power, I gained power from saving others.”

“No. I would have taken decades to become this powerful otherwise. You would not have either. What fools we are. Would you have become the chosen of the light if I did not become this?”

“I don’t know. It seems our time is at an end Jason. I am grateful I could talk to you. I wish we could have done everything differently.”

End of chapter