The sli continued its innocent approach until it was only a single step away.
Then, in a heartbeat, it changed.
It burst open like a living maw, expanding instantly to twice Void’s size.
Jagged, shadowy teeth ford along the edges as it lunged forward to swallow him whole.
Void had already vanished.
He reappeared smoothly behind the creature, a faint smile tugging at his lips.
The sli whipped around with unnatural speed and repeated the attack, mouth gaping wide once more.
"You really are a bold one," Void chuckled, dodging again with effortless grace.
He summoned ropes of thick, crimson blood from his own veins, whipping them forward to bind the creature.
The mont the blood made contact, however, the sli simply absorbed it.
The dark mass shuddered in pleasure, its aura rising subtly as it grew stronger.
"Huh?" Void muttered, genuinely stunned.
A dark, icy aura began to leak from the sli, cold enough to frost the surrounding stone.
"Now’s not the ti for a fight," Void said calmly, already deciding on a better use for the creature.
"You’re still going to be useful. But until then... make use of this."
He severed his entire right arm at the shoulder with a clean, painless cut.
Fresh blood sprayed briefly before the wound sealed itself.
He tossed the severed limb toward the sli without hesitation.
The creature’s maw opened wide, devouring the arm in one greedy gulp.
A loud, satisfied burp echoed through the chamber as it settled back down, looking content.
It even turned away, preparing for a nap.
"Nope," Void muttered, regenerating the arm instantly.
"I need you properly fed for an entire month."
He cut off the newly grown arm and threw it as well.
Then he did it again.
And again.
Five more tis in total, each severed limb vanishing into the sli’s endless hunger.
By the end, the creature had grown sluggish, its dark body swollen and heavy, barely able to wiggle across the floor.
With a satisfied smile, Void turned and left the chamber, sealing the door behind him.
He made his way back to the sanctuary without another word.
The motion had been set.
All that remained was for the stage to be prepared.
----
Aaron stepped into the Infinitum Tower with the sa casual confidence he carried everywhere else.
The mont he crossed the threshold, the first floor unfolded before him , a vast, rocky wasteland dotted with a thousand snarling goblins.
They scattered across the broken terrain like a living plague, crude weapons raised and ugly voices echoing in a chaotic roar.
Aaron didn’t even break stride.
With a single, lazy snap of his fingers, nightfire and shadow erupted outward in a silent storm.
Every goblin vanished in the sa heartbeat, reduced to drifting ash before their screams could fully form.
The tower offered him a worthless F-rank item as reward.
He rejected it without a second glance.
The second floor mirrored the first , another quick, one-shot clear.
So did the third and fourth.
Each level fell faster than the last, barely registering as a warm-up.
The fifth floor finally changed things.
Deadly traps sprang from every direction: blades of living shadow, pits that swallowed light itself, and conceptual snares ant to unravel the mind.
Aaron simply activated his mystic eyes.
The traps beca laughably obvious, their chanisms laid bare like open books.
He strolled through them untouched, a faint smirk playing on his lips.
By the tenth floor, the challenges grew more interesting.
He faced a C-rank version of himself, a hybrid-bloodline Aaron, eyes glowing with stolen power.
The fight was almost insulting.
Aaron stripped away his own hybrid bloodline for the fun of it, then created a deliberately weak clone just to toy with the doppelganger.
A few mocking exchanges later, the enemy version crumbled.
The twentieth floor brought an S-rank Aaron.
The thirtieth summoned a God-rank version ard only with bloodline abilities.
The fortieth escalated again, this one wielding a Primordial Ti bloodline on top of everything else.
Aaron never spent more than a minute on any of them.
Floor after floor blurred past in a satisfying rhythm of power and dominance.
Then ca the two-hundredth floor.
Here he faced a universal-rank version of himself, an immortal Aaron who refused to stay down.
The battle stretched beyond two minutes for the first ti.
Even with the tower suppressing the enemy’s immortality, killing sothing that stubborn took real effort.
Aaron worked around it with cold precision, mixing shadow manipulation and nightfire until the doppelganger finally shattered.
He kept climbing.
On the four-hundredth floor, the tower finally forced him to take things seriously.
The enemy that materialized was an exact mirror of his current strength, every ability, every drop of Nightfla power, every fragnt of chaos physique replicated perfectly.
"Well, to be fair," Aaron said with a grin, cracking his knuckles, "I’ve always wanted to fight myself. Don’t disappoint ."
The doppelganger offered no reply.
It simply raised a hand and created a thousand clones in an instant.
Each clone carried a different bloodline, their auras flaring with distinct, deadly colors.
"Well, fuck," Aaron muttered, eyes widening in genuine appreciation.
"At least you don’t hold back like I do."
The clones surged forward in a coordinated wave.
The first one appeared directly in front of him, blood bullets ripping through the air like crimson teors.
Aaron dodged smoothly, only to et the crushing blow of a werewolf-variant clone leaping from his blind spot.
He summoned a Black Sphere, intending to sever the incoming claws.
Before he could strike, a chain of dark magic whipped around his wrist, yanking his arm back.
"Tch."
Aaron pulled with raw strength, dragging the dark-witch variant straight toward him.
He opened his mouth and unleashed hellflas, incinerating the werewolf clone in a roaring pillar of black fire.
"You shouldn’t have done that," he said, smiling as his mystic eyes caught the space-variant clone swapping positions with the burning witch.
Aaron prepared his own space ability to counter, predicting the swap perfectly.
But the space clone changed tactics at the last instant.
It created an isolated pocket of space around Aaron and detonated itself like a living bomb.
Every remaining clone moved in perfect sync, converging on the explosion point and launching a storm of attacks at the exact sa mont.
"Okay," Aaron muttered, voice laced with reluctant respect as the world around him turned into pure chaos.
"I might have underestimated myself."
He had already frozen ti inside the isolated space the instant the clone exploded.
Then, using the brief shadow cast by the blast itself, he slipped through with his shadow-variant ability, weakening the isolated barrier just enough for escape.
But the doppelganger had mystic eyes too.
It spotted the exact mont and location of his exit.
Aaron reappeared outside the blast, breathing steady, yet already sensing the next wave closing in.
"Now I feel like the pawn," he muttered, sighing in quiet depression.
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