Arthur flew backwards through the portal as something like magma washed over his Atlas armor. The armor he had just repaired melted away. He had damage reduction to Fire at four stages but even so he could feel his body cooking as the hair along it burned away. The scarlet bands of electricity Mordred used wracked his body then it all cut out and he was drifting through the air in an endless black expanse.
Arthur choked as he dragged in a breath through the hole of his halfway destroyed mech suit and no air met his lungs instead a poisonous miasma greeted his lungs.
Golden power inside his body shivered as it was touched by the raw nature of the Void. The two powers fought but Arthur only had a fraction of divinity in him and it wasn’t enough. He screamed as the power of the gods and the powers of the Void used his body as their battle ground. It wouldn’t even matter which side won.
The Celestria in your body has become corrupted, new substance found…. processing…. new energy source designated as Entropia it will result in your destruction in approximately 20 seconds.
There was nothing he could do.
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Arthur wracked his mind for something anything he could do to save himself. He tried a teleportation ability, but he couldn’t even tell if he had moved locations within the Void and it hadn’t brought him out of this hell.
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With one final cry he felt the cells of his flesh dissolve leaving behind only a skeleton of with crawling lines of golden and red energy flowing across them resting in his armor. The Atlas armor sagged and lay still, out of the darkness a voidling approached sniffing at the air as it approached the alien mass of matter within the void.
Placing its hands on the edge of the molten opening into the armor it peered inside. The massive hand of the Atlas armor closed around the voiding and squeezed the energy of the voidling absorbed into the mech suit.
The eyes of the Atlas armor burned with inner fire, a sound like a shuddering deep intake of breath passed through the armor.
Machine Heart activated, body and soul bound to armor...
The warring energy crept over Arthur’s armor as it destroyed and rebuilt him in equal parts. The molten and slagged parts of his armor began to rebuild themselves the glossy metal returning to its lustrous sheen hiding the golden skeleton within it.
You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.
“What has happened?” Arthur asked looking over the energy suffusing the metal shell housing his soul.
You have completed a hidden objective and earned a title. Objective: Come back from the dead with an ability.
Reward: Title, Death Knight
*Death Knight: A warrior of bone and metal your flesh is gone but the spirit that drove it continues. You are immune to Lethal wounds your entire armor must be destroyed before you will die final death.
“No!” Arthur growled his armor amplifying the sound to a roar.
The sound carried but didn’t echo back the Void swallowing it as if it had never existed. Wings extended from the back of the Atlas armor as Arthur flew but there was nowhere to go he couldn’t open a portal with heretical magic to get back home and had no such ability that would bring him back. The gods couldn’t see him here the very poison that had killed them blocked them from gaining true access to the Void, he wasn’t some wayward soul to be brought back to their divine realm.
“System, how do I get out of here?” Arthur asked.
There was no answer.
“How?!” he shouted again knowing he would get no answer.
Win the game.
Arthur blinked. The System had given not an answer, but it had been a response, it offered no helpful advice, and one could view it as also a statement or command. The fact the System had answered at all though meant it could hear him, he had gotten a title but…if he had access to the System, it meant the System wasn’t cut off from the material world. There had to be a permeant opening giving it access…Arthur’s thoughts continued to race the entire process which might have taken a mortal rank Gifted minutes to think through took him less than a second.
Avalon, the city Mordred had created here in the Void. Constant physical space in a non-physical realm that city would have a portal, what’s more Mordred would be there. Arthur scanned the horizon; he was utterly lost but there was only one star in the Void. The silver light of the star could only faintly be seen but it could be seen.
He moved towards it but after an hour couldn’t even tell if he’d made any progress. Arthur could tell he was being hunted. He turned raising Excalibur, the Voidlings skittered back to the edge of his vision, Arthur prepared a ranged attack than stopped. He was alone, Mordred had an army and would be at the heart of his power.
“Dominion,” Arthur said.
Whip and Chains (Repeatable): Conquer 2,560 monsters or humanoids by bringing them under your Dominion. Current Progress 618 out of 2560. When you complete this quest, you will gain 512 Rank Points, and the next quest will require double the amount to be completed but will award double the rank points.
The Voidling shrieked and hissed but it was bound to his will. To his surprise the creature began to twist and morph as the same red energy that was constantly running over his armor destroying and repairing it. Arthur wondered if the creature of the Void would be destroyed but the energy seemed to stabilize.
The voidling stood but Arthur wasn’t sure if he could call it a voidling anymore. Before the creature had been a being of hunger but with some minor intellect; now what stood was hunger alone the intellect replaced with what have been misconstrued as rage. This creature now existed only to devour and destroy for the purpose of devouring and destruction and no higher goal.
Scion of Entropy, Error- ?/Void-construct
“I need to get to that star,” Arthur said pointing to the light in the distance. “Take me to something that will help me reach there.”
The Scion of Entropy began to move its body gliding more than using its limbs. Arthur followed the creature. More Voidlings moved in and one by one the swarm of the scions began to grow. He found them feeding on a soul, he couldn’t recognize what race the soul had been reaching out he dominated the soul too wondering if it would even work. It did and another scion rose up.
Arthur wasn’t sure how long they had traveled but arrived at something physical. A black shard of rock that might have once been the core of some planet, crashed into the side of it was…a ship.
“This is it?” Arthur asked the scion he had been following with some scorn and anger in his voice. “This wreck is what you have been taking me too?”
The scion did not respond, Arthur wasn’t even sure if they were capable of speech. Arthur pushed aside his anger and examined the ship. It was not some sailing vessel, its means of propulsion resembled more of dwarven construction similar to the means of power for their mass-produced lesser Atlas armor. The ship was massive and would have been an awe-inspiring sight if it weren’t a derelict wreck.
“Fix it,” Arthur commanded unsure if the scions were even capable of such a task.
The scions spread out. They didn’t pick up debris or start to push the warped metal back in place instead they began to vibrate the red, black and gold energy making them up spreading and flowing across the ship. The metal began to scream and as it was dragged back into place. Arthur watched as damage and time itself were wound back and the ship dislodged from the mountainside. The heavy clang of his armor on the deck of the ship rang through the Void. The ship wasn’t done yet the scion seemed to have run out of energy and their heads drooped down as if they were recharging.
Arthur breathed out a sigh. He looked out to the distance there the light of the Void star still shone as a spec impossibly far away. Soon impossibly far would no longer separate them.