Chapter 6: 06: A Gift?
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The notification that had frozen at the edge of Sekht’s vision finally settled into place, crisp and impossible to ignore.
[Ding! System notification- Void Lord John. The God of Void has given you a gift.]
Sekht stared at the words until his eyes started to sting.
"A gift," he repeated, voice flat with disbelief. "From a god."
He looked around the ruined throne room as if the answer might be hiding behind a broken spear or under Benimaru’s corpse. The torches still crackled. The air still slled like smoke and blood. Nothing about this place suggested blessings.
His mind ran through every god’s na he had ever heard.
Millions of gods lived in Null. So were ancient enough to be spoken of like weather. So were petty and ruled tiny territories the size of a village. So had cults that spanned entire domains. So were so violent that their nas were only whispered, because saying them aloud felt like inviting lightning into the room.
Sekht knew many legends.
He knew none personally.
He definitely did not know a god well enough to receive a gift.
Last ti he rembered his father was a rchant in Null. A human. Ordinary by Null standards, which ant only mildly suicidal. He bought and sold goods across domains. He negotiated with monsters who considered eating him a reasonable counteroffer. He survived by being clever and by never pretending to be brave.
Sekht had grown up surrounded by trade talk, not divine favors.
So why would a God look at him and decide to give him sothing?
His head throbbed with questions.
Ba - dum
Ba - dum
His heartbeat had finally returned to a normal rhythm, but his mind refused to be normal.
In Null, gods did not hand out gifts for fun.
They handed out gifts like hooks.
Or chains.
Or invitations to wars you did not want.
Sekht licked his lips, tasting old blood again. He felt suddenly cold despite the torchlight.
Void Lord John.
Even the na carried weight.
The God of Void was one of the stronger gods in Null, not just because of power, but because of reputation. His legends spread like wildfire across domains. He was known as cold, not in emotionless cruelty, but in controlled finality.
He protected his own people.
He erased enemies.
There was a story every rchant knew. A story told in low voices at night when the roads were dangerous and the campfires were small.
Once, the Void God destroyed an entire city where another god lived. Not just the god. Not just the god’s guards. Not just the god’s family.
Everything.
Buildings.
Temples.
Followers.
Even the ones who begged.
The city was wiped so clean it beca a warning carved into the land.
None were left alive.
Sekht swallowed hard.
And that god... gave
a gift.
He felt his skin prickle.
His father had never ntioned a connection to any god. His father barely ntioned family at all. Sekht did not even know who his mother was. His father always said the sa thing when asked.
Gone.
Do not ask.
We survive.
Sekht’s fists tightened.
He stared at the notification again, and sothing inside him twisted with an uncomfortable thought.
"What if this is not a gift.
What if this is a claim?"
His mind drifted, as minds often did in Null, to the history of how things had beco this way.
Gods had existed in Null for ages beyond counting. Over ti, boredom had beco their most dangerous enemy. A bored god was a storm looking for a city to land on.
So they brought entertainnt.
They dragged mortals from universes below. They lured monsters. They collected followers like toys. They built armies, empires, cults, and arenas. They watched people fight, love, betray, and die, because endless life made simple joys rot quickly.
They mated with mortals.
They birthed half-gods.
Half-gods mated.
Their descendants beca weaker, or sotis stranger, spreading across domains like branches of a tree nobody could cut down. After billions of years, "mortal" in Null did not an powerless.
It only ant not a god yet.
The mortals of Null were different from the mortals of lower universes.
They were born with chaos energy. Not pure. Not refined. But it existed in them from birth like blood existed in their veins.
A mortal in Null could train and climb.
And if they reached one hundred percent purity, the world itself would acknowledge them.
Godhood would beco possible.
Sekht’s status window flashed in his mory.
[Purity: five percent.]
He almost laughed.
"Five percent.
I am so far from godhood that even the idea sounds like a joke.
So why is a god looking at ?
Why now?"
He turned his head slightly toward Benimaru’s corpse, then away again. The half-god’s body lay where it fell, huge and heavy, as if it was still occupying space out of spite.
Sekht’s voice ca out low and tense.
"System," he said. "Why did the Void God give
a gift?"
The system answered without hesitation, calm as always.
[System notification- Void Lord John possesses an Abyss-Class Artifact. He has sent a gift to aid host growth and stabilize awakened artifact frawork. Void Lord John has high expectations for the host.
Projected Outco: Host becos god and ets him in the Gods’ Hall.]
Sekht froze.
His eyes widened.
"Abyss-class," he repeated slowly, as if the words were too heavy to fit in his mouth. "He has one too."
The idea alone shook him more than the massacre around him.
Abyss-class artifacts were a myth.
Or they had been.
Now one had awakened inside his own body.
And now the system claid that the Void God had one as well. There might be more.
A god.
With an abyss artifact.
That ant the legends were not legends.
They were the shallow surface of sothing deeper.
Sekht’s mind raced.
"Is it a system too?
Is it like mine?
Is that why he knows?
Is that why he can send
a gift like this?"
He waited for the system to answer the question that ford in his thoughts.
It did not.
Instead, the system responded the way it always did when it decided information was not for him yet.
By moving forward.
[System notification: Gift Detected. Presenting gift details.]
Sekht’s vision shimred.
A second window unfolded beneath the first, made of pale light edged with faint black, like ink floating in water.
[Gift: Void Land
Origin: Void Lord John.
Type: Spatial Domain Fragnt.
Function: Storage and Containnt. Compatibility: System Integration Available.]
Sekht’s brows lifted.
"Void land," he whispered.
A land in void.
A space that did not belong to normal space.
A pocket domain.
A storage realm.
Sothing rchants would kill for.
Sothing gods would shrug at.
The system continued, layering information with clinical precision.
[System notification: Void Land can store objects. Void Land can store living beings. Void Land can function as a ho for summons.
Integration Option: Bind to Blood System.]
Sekht’s heart beat faster.
Ba - dum
A storage.
A ho.
A safe place.
In Null, safe places were rarer than rcy.
Then the next line appeared.
[Condition: Host can remain within bound Void Land for only 10 minutes.
Cause: Host chaos energy insufficient. Ti limit increases as host chaos energy increases.
Note: Other living beings stored inside Void Land are not affected by the host limit.]
Sekht’s expression twisted.
"Only ten minutes," he muttered. "So it is not a ho for
yet."
He frowned harder.
"Why does the condition apply to
but not to other living things?"
The system responded imdiately.
[System notification- If Void Land is bound to the Blood System, it becos a system function. Host access becos universal from any location. Host presence inside a bound domain drains chaos energy rapidly due to insufficient capacity. Non-host entities are stored, not linked. Drain does not apply.]
Sekht stared at the text.
Then another line appeared.
[Alternative: If Void Land is not bound. The host may enter without system drain limitation.
However: Access requires physical location and anchor placent. Void Land cannot be summoned remotely. Storage cannot be accessed from anywhere.]
Sekht’s jaw tightened.
"So I must choose.
A powerful remote storage and summon ho, but I cannot live inside it for long.
Or a domain I can use normally, but only if I travel to it, anchor it, and stay near it."
In Null, travel was a nightmare unless you were a god. Even crossing a jungle could take years. Not because the jungle was big, but because it was alive, hostile, and full of things that liked to hide ti itself in their roots.
Sekht breathed out slowly.
The decision was made itself.
"I do not need to live there," he whispered. "I need a tool. I need a safe pocket. I need a place for the bat. I need loot storage. I need options."
He glanced at the pocket of his coat where the tiny blood bat slept. It was warm against his chest, like a ridiculous little secret.
He thought of the future.
He could store supplies.
He could store weapons.
He could hide treasures.
He could imprison enemies.
He could build a ho for summons.
He could move through Null without dragging his entire life behind him like a broken cart.
Sekht looked at the system window.
"I choose to bind it," he said.
[Ding! System notification- Binding confird. Initiating integration.]
The air around Sekht felt different. Not heavier, not lighter. More connected, as if invisible threads had just been tied between his soul and sothing far away and dark.
A faint ripple passed through his awareness, like stepping into shallow water.
Whummm!
[System notification- Void Land: Bound.
Function unlocked: Void Storage.
Access command: Void Land.]
Sekht blinked.
It felt too simple.
He thought the command cautiously.
Void Land.
The world tilted for half a heartbeat.
Then a sensation opened inside his mind, like a door swinging inward.
He did not fully enter. He only sensed it.
A space.
Cold.
Silent.
Endless black ground under endless darker sky.
A land that was not a land.
A void that had shape.
Sekht exhaled.
"It is real," he murmured.
He needed to test it. Not with sothing small. Not with a pebble.
He turned his head toward the largest object in the room.
Benimaru’s body.
If it could store that, it could store almost anything he would carry for a long ti.
Sekht stepped forward and placed his palm against Benimaru’s arm. The half-god’s skin was tough, thick, still carrying faint residual chaos energy like a corpse refusing to cool.
Sekht pushed a thread of chaos energy into the contact and thought of the command.
Store.
There was a brief pause, like the world considering whether it wanted to allow this.
Then the body vanished.
Whooomp!
Not with light.
Not with fire.
It simply folded inward and disappeared, as if reality had been edited and Benimaru had been cut out of the scene.
Sekht jerked back slightly, eyes widening.
He stared at the empty space where the half-god had been.
Then he exhaled, slow.
A smile flickered on his face for the first ti since waking in chains.
Not joy.
Not relief.
A thin, sharp smile that said he had gained sothing dangerous.
"Good," he whispered.
He turned, scanning the ruined throne room one last ti.
The orcs were gone.
The leader was gone.
Only broken stone and scattered weapons remained.
Sekht’s chest tightened again.
He needed answers.
He needed to know where he was.
He needed to know how long it had been.
He needed to understand why the Void God was watching him.
And he needed to move before another orc patrol or worse decided to investigate why their leader’s throne room had gone silent.
Sekht adjusted his torn coat, feeling the sleeping bat in his pocket shift slightly.
"Batbat..." the tiny creature mumbled in its sleep, then went quiet again.
Sekht snorted softly.
"Yeah," he muttered. "I feel the sa."
He stepped toward the door, but before he crossed the threshold, his mind snagged on an old mory like a hook catching cloth.
A flashback.
Not from minutes ago.
From years ago. Almost five years.
From when he was fifteen.
His father’s voice.
A rchant’s voice, calm and careful, the kind of voice that knew the price of speaking too honestly.
Sekht’s foot paused mid-step.
The torchlight blurred.
And the mory rushed toward him like a door opening in his mind.
(Note: Read the Void lords John journey to godhood below ?? ?? ??
I tagged the book.)
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