“You said you were going to run!” Guinevere snapped, slapping me before pulling me into an embrace that would have killed anyone at a lower rank. “Are you alright?”

“Yes,” I said, “and I have a better plan for getting out of the Void now.”

“You do?” Karnen asked. “If you’re thinking of trying that again, I’m pretty sure you won’t just have the one broken ability.”

“What’s he talking about?” Guinevere asked.

I quickly explained what had happened in the battle and how I’d managed to push my ability, Void Asura, further towards rank fifty.

“Do you think you can get it past rank fifty?” Guinevere asked me.

“No,” Ares interjected. “Karnen is right, currently that ability is being held together by threads of your soul. It needs weeks of recovery before you can even risk messing with it again.”

“But,” Voidra said, a mad intensity to her voice, “your other abilities aren’t. You could merge them with your ethereal and progress them.”

“The System said you had to upgrade one ability to rank fifty before you could go to another,” Guinevere objected.

“The System isn’t here,” Voidra said.

“That’s not entirely true,” I said. “I got System notifications for upgrading Void Asura.”

“It was probably just a byproduct of the celestria,” Voidra said.

“Probably is not encouraging,” Ares said. “But Voidra’s plan does have some merit. If you could upgrade one of your main abilities like Void-Dragon’s Armory or Black Rage…”

“Won’t he have to fight another of those things, though?” Guinevere asked. “I don’t like this plan of tracking down ancient void entities that can warp this place around them.”

“You may not have to track them down,” Ormias said, walking towards me with the rest of the souls.

None of them made direct eye contact with me, and there was sense of awe and fear that emanated from them.

“Why?” I asked, looking at this new behavior with apprehension.

“You burn like the sun,” Rejiah said. “I can feel the power draining off you. It feels like I’m slowly healing from just being around you.”

“Voidra explain this,” I said.

“They might be from your world, but they are just souls here,” Voidra said. “They feed off soul energy just like void entities do. You are producing that energy, you always have. It’s how I survived inside your soul without just consuming you. Now though, it’s like comparing the heat of a candle to that of a forest fire.”

“And just like a forest fire,” Karnen said, picking up on what Voidra was saying. “You’re going to be visible for leagues away in the Void.”

“There isn’t physical space here,” Voidra said. “It won’t be leagues, almost every single creature in the Void will now be aware of your presence; they don’t know what you are, but they will be aware of where you are.”

I could still feel the pull of other souls out there, calling out to me. And if anything, their call had only gotten stronger, as if I had a veil over my senses that had been removed.

“Then we need to get moving,” I said.

--

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Despite what Voidra had said, we were not beset by attackers. I walked for days, more and more lost souls joined the procession following me. Some I was led to, others I just came across either being fed upon or floating lost and afraid in the darkness. Some were my former vassals, many were old enemies, but not one rejected the aid I offered them. I suppose the person who had killed them was gone now; I wasn’t the Warlord anymore. But if that wasn’t who I was I didn’t know who I was.

“What’s the first thing you want to do when we get back?” Guinevere asked me.

“Eat something,” I said. “I haven’t tasted anything real in days.”

I’d tried to eat some rations but it was like Styrofoam in my mouth. The memory of taste just wasn’t strong enough for me to make it real here. There was no real need to eat so it wasn’t a problem, but if I was alone here, I could see myself quickly going insane from sensory deprivation.

“I want to go swimming,” Guinevere said. “Feel water against my skin and the let the sun dry it.”

We kept up conversations like that, our words and minds the only real things in this place. I could already feel my memories of reality start to fade and every sensation started to feel less real. I let out more ethereal to stabilize the Void and bring it more towards permanency, but it was only slowing what was happening.

More days passed as I gathered more souls, the energy I excreted slowly repairing their ravaged spirits. I didn’t feel comfortable with the reverence they treated me with. I’d seen it from Juruk, but he was a war crazed goblin and it had only made sense for him to revere me as some divine agent of slaughter. But most of these people had been my enemies and they now treated me as if I were…divine.

The more I felt their adulation, the less certain I was that I had ever wanted to be a god. Yes, I’d wanted to reach god rank, but I’d never thought about being worshiped. I’d barely ever used my army either, only gathering it as a byproduct of farming rank points. In the end they had been more liability than asset as I needed to exert so much effort to protect them. Now I was doing the same thing again, gathering others to follow me, but there were no rank points this time.

We’d been moving for weeks now; I couldn’t say how long but it had to be months at this point judging from the swell of Guinevere’s belly. I needed to get out of the Void but I’d yet to see another of the Ancients and they still hadn’t tracked me down.

Tens of thousands of souls followed after me as I moved, the tugs on my soul growing less and less. Some disappeared before I got to them and I could only assume those souls had been devoured, but there was nothing I could do for them. I just pressed forwards as I sought out more of the ancients.

“Stop,” Voidra said.

I froze, looking around.

“I think there is something to your right, but it’s a long way off,” she said.

I picked up my pace and started moving that way.

“Is it an ancient?” I asked.

“Not sure yet,” Voidra said. “It’s still so far away, I barely even noticed it.”

The darkness changed. I couldn’t tell what it was at first, but something stood out from the darkness until the ground ran into it. I pulled to a stop and ran my hands over it, looking up at the mountain. This was real stone, or as real as it got in the Void. I’d known that stuff like this could exist here, but this was beyond anything I’d ever expected to find.

The stone began to change as the ground I walked on began to creep up, lines of silver marbling the stone traveling up and revealing the extent of the mountain before me.

“Void-Dragon’s Armory,” I said.

I carved stairs up the mountain as I ascended the glassy black marble. Mounting the top, I stood at the zenith and looked out over the black abyss. The black and silver path I had created stretched miles wide and disappeared into the distance, and the rest of the Void was a total and complete darkness that had never even known the concept of light.

“Something is coming,” Voidra warned me.

I set Guinevere down.

“Where?” I asked.

“From above,” Voidra answered.

I looked up as mass of stars appeared from the endless night.

“Daughter,” a female voice spoke, its words a suffocating force against my soul.

“Hello mother,” Voidra said softly. “I’ve come home.”

“Why have you returned?”

“My host was banished into this realm,” Voidra said.

“Then you should have devoured him,” she said, her voice full of disapproval and anger.

“Why didn’t you give me a name?” Voidra asked her voice small and filled with a sense of loss I had never heard from her before.”

“What?” the ancient asked, confused.

“A name; why did you just throw me away without even giving me a name?” Voidra asked again, her voice becoming a little bolder.

“Because I did not think you would survive,” she responded, with no guilt or remorse in her voice.

“I thought so,” Voidra sighed.

“Now I must consume you and your host,” the ancient sighed. “You shouldn’t have returned, there wasn’t enough food for all of us, although I can see you have gathered up a great deal for yourself.”

“Enough,” I said. “Voidra, do you have anything else to say to your mother?”

“No,” Voidra sighed. “There would be no point; kill her.”