"No!"
The Shadow Fiend’s scream tore through the void.
It had never imagined that the concealment it trusted above all else could be seen through so easily.
This human had too many abilities.
Buzz.
The Shadow Fiend’s body suddenly blurred, flickering like an old television losing its signal.
Then it vanished.
Not invisibility.
Not speed.
It had been erased from this world.
The beast king had slipped into the cracks of the void.
This was its Talent.
Within that gray white dimension, matter from the real world could no longer block its path. Folded space opened in every direction, allowing it to move through places that could never be crossed normally.
"Into the void?"
Joren looked over the empty stone forest.
He raised his right hand and drew one finger lightly through the air.
Rip.
Space opened like fabric beneath a blade.
A black fissure appeared before him, revealing a chaotic gray white world beyond.
[Void Walk].
Joren stepped through.
Color peeled away from reality behind him.
Black.
White.
Gray.
Nothing else remained.
This was the other side of the real world.
No light.
No sound.
No sense of direction.
The space around him twisted in every direction, filled with bizarre streaks and warped lines, like being thrown inside a washing machine spinning at impossible speed.
"Hah... hah..."
Far ahead, the Shadow Fiend struggled through the currents of the void.
Every movement drained what little Mental Force it had left, forcing it to resist the tearing pressure of spatial turbulence.
Escaping through the void was no easy thing even for the Shadow Fiend.
One mistake, and it might never find its way back to reality.
Only strange species born with shadow escape abilities dared travel like this.
Even a Rank Seven human expert would think twice before crossing the void with flesh and blood alone.
So what if that human named Joren was strong?
Could his blade cut into another dimension?
"Damn human..."
The Shadow Fiend endured the agony of spatial currents slicing across its body while curses churned through its mind.
If that human had not pushed it this far, it would never have chosen such a desperate escape.
It glanced back.
Then everything inside it seemed to seize.
Joren had followed.
The human with wings on his back was walking through the void behind it.
Each step made his figure flicker once.
There was no struggle in his movements.
No hesitation either.
He moved through the void with an ease that made the Shadow Fiend look like the intruder.
His control over this place seemed even greater than that of a creature born from shadow.
"Impossible!"
"Absolutely impossible!"
The Shadow Fiend broke.
Its body trembled and its speed surged again.
It did not dare stop.
It certainly did not dare fight.
One fled.
One followed.
The two figures raced through the twisted dimension without knowing how much time had passed.
Then the scenery ahead changed.
The gray white void took on a dark red stain.
An oppressive presence seeped through from somewhere in reality and spread into this dimension.
The Shadow Fiend stared at the crimson ahead.
It recognized where that color led.
For an instant, hesitation crossed its eyes.
Then Joren’s pressure grew closer behind it.
Back meant death.
Forward...
Maybe there was still a chance.
It gambled.
With a desperate shriek, the Shadow Fiend shut its eyes and threw itself into the strange red region.
The void should have been gray white.
Silent.
Chaotic.
Without color.
It was the reverse side of reality, a dimensional gap where even light became nothing more than lines.
Yet Joren was looking at red.
A violent scarlet stretched across the turbulent space ahead.
It did not resemble paint.
It looked like fresh arterial blood leaking into the void from some enormous living thing.
The Shadow Fiend plunged straight into it.
Like a stone dropped into a bottomless pool of blood, it vanished without even raising a ripple.
Then the red began to spread.
Gray white lines pulsed like veins.
The spatial currents around Joren thickened into something resembling blood.
A violent force of rejection crashed into him.
It felt almost biological.
Like an immune system discovering a foreign organism and trying to force it out.
The entire void seemed to scream against his presence.
Joren frowned.
Something was wrong.
[Void Walk] was failing.
His hand closed around [Heaven’s Sin].
He did not resist as the overwhelming force wrapped around his body.
The world flipped.
Weight vanished.
For one strange instant, it felt as though he were being dragged through a membrane that refused to let him pass.
Then it broke.
Splash.
Color rushed back.
Gravity seized him again.
Joren shifted once and landed steadily on hard ground.
His gaze stopped.
There was no blue sky.
No white clouds.
Above him hung a lead gray heaven, buried beneath layers of cloud so low and heavy that he could almost imagine reaching up and touching them.
Gray white mist covered everything around him.
It was not water vapor.
Joren extended one hand.
A thin strand of mist curled around his fingertips.
Tiny particles.
Fine as ash.
Perhaps bone ash.
Perhaps the dried spores of some unknown mold.
Visibility ended before a hundred meters.
Beyond that, towering black shapes could barely be seen through the fog.
They were not buildings made by any human civilization.
They twisted and leaned into one another, tangled together like enormous black serpents frozen in place.
The resulting silhouettes were wrong in ways that made the eye resist looking at them.
A faint vibration touched Joren’s eardrums.
Yet the sound was not traveling through the air.
It was entering his mind directly.
"Hehe... another one..."
"Praise... the great..."
Countless whispers crawled across the inside of his skull.
Like ten thousand flies trapped behind bone.
Like fingernails scraping endlessly across a blackboard.
An ordinary Rank Four Awakened Warrior might have collapsed from that alone, blood pouring from every opening before the brain could endure another second.
Joren only frowned.
Peak Rank Three Mental Force rose around his mind, barely enough to keep the whispers from sinking deeper.
He gave a low snort.
Then activated another Talent.
[Worldheart Awareness].
[Omniscient Field].
The gray mist opened before his perception.
No living presence.
Nothing.
Only chaos.
Even the feedback from a stone or a dead tree came back twisted, hostile, wrong.
This place was alive.
The entire space rejected outsiders.