Chapter 493: The Void!
The Void!
It was vast nothingness punctuated only by the distant glimmers of Star Seas, each one a bubble of existence floating in an ocean of aggressive absence.
Achilles actually began his journey by assimilating The Void before anything else, a decision that would have been considered suicidal by any being who understood what The Void truly was!
The process was terrifying in its wrongness.
Endless waves of nothingness rushed into him...not energy or matter but the active absence of both. It was like trying to drink emptiness, to digest negation, to make part of himself something that existed specifically as the antithesis of existence!
His form flickered between being and not-being as The Void fought against the very concept of being assimilated.
How does one absorb absence? How does one integrate nothingness into something? The paradox would have shattered a lesser consciousness, but Achilles had already proven that paradoxes were just puzzles he hadn’t solved yet.
Fuck ’em!
HUUM!
As the impossible assimilation progressed, his mind buzzed with wonder and possibility as he integrsted and assimilated the Void itself.
Information flowed into his consciousness...not learned but understood at a fundamental level:
[Existential Authority of The Void - First Echelon Achieved]
...!
The abilities materialized in his awareness like shadows learning they could cast light.
[Null Authority Manipulation]: The power to release bursts of void-like authorities that negated and erased other authorities. Not overpowering them, not blocking them, but convincing reality that they had never existed in the first place. When activated, waves of aggressive nothingness would emanate from you, unmaking powers, abilities, even concepts that dared oppose him. It is the ultimate counter...not because it was stronger, but because it made strength irrelevant by erasing the very idea that strength had been present.
[Existence Veiling]: The capability to become truly imperceptible, not through invisibility but through temporary non-existence. When activated, you would cease to occupy any definable space in reality’s awareness. Light would pass through where you weren’t, sound would ignore you non-presence, even gravity would forget to acknowledge you.You could walk through crowds that would unconsciously part without knowing why, leave no trace of your passage...no footprints, no disturbed air, no thermal signature. Existence would simply edit you out of its current narrative while you remained fully aware and capable of acting. It is perfect infiltration through the simple expedient of not being there to be detected. Nobody can detect you in the Null Scale of Existence if you choose to not be detected!
[Void Dominion]: Rulership over The Void itself, a concept that shouldn’t have been possible since The Void was specifically the absence of things to rule. Yet through assimilation, you have become part of that absence, gaining the ability to map its non-geography, to understand what lurked in the spaces between spaces. More terrifyingly, you can now summon Void Servants- entities born from nothingness that grew stronger the less there was around them. In normal space, they would be wisps. In The Void, they would be titans. They existed to traverse the impossible distances between Star Seas, to establish your dominion over nothing itself.
[Quasi-Nothing Physiology]: Your existence could now become half-nothing, a state that shouldn’t have been possible but was. When activated, any attack, any authority, any force directed at you would find that only 35% of its potential could actually affect you. The rest would simply pass through the parts of you that weren’t there, wasted on attacking absence. You could be simultaneously present enough to act but absent enough that most of what tried to harm you would fail to find purchase.
...!
Oh.
Oh!!!
Achilles examined these abilities with the calculated analysis of someone taking in weapons of conceptual destruction.
Each one was terrifying individually, but together they created synergies that transcended their separate powers.
He could veil himself from existence while manipulating the narrative through his Authority of Fables...becoming a story that wrote itself while being unobservable.
He could negate other authorities with Null manipulation while being largely immune to retaliation through his Quasi-Nothing Physiology. The combination with his existing Regulations created possibilities that shouldn’t exist...what happened when someone who could manipulate Quantum probability also didn’t entirely exist? What occurred when Spatial Tension was applied by someone who was half-nothing?
The Void wasn’t just another tool.
Ridiculously, it was another Existential Authority, joining Fables in his arsenal of fundamental forces. He had gained a new category of power!
"Void Dominion," he spoke aloud, and Rose watched with fascination as reality responded to his command.
The space around them...if space was even the right word in The Void, rippled with inverse light.
Forms began to coalesce from nothingness, taking shape from absence itself. The Void Servants emerged like nightmares learning they could dream.
They were magnificent in their wrongness. Some appeared as inverse shadows...bright gaps in the darkness that hurt to perceive directly.
Others manifested as geometric impossibilities, shapes that existed in negative space, visible only by what they displaced.
The strongest among them registered as Tier 6 on the Null Scale, though their power would grow exponentially the deeper into The Void they traveled.
Each one bowed to Achilles with movements that suggested reverence despite lacking conventional forms to express it with.
"Map The Void," he commanded, his voice carrying authority over absence itself.
"Establish my dominion over the nothing between Star Seas. Find what hides in spaces that don’t exist. Report what shouldn’t be there and other Star Seas."
HUUM!
They dispersed instantly, not traveling but simply ceasing to be present and beginning to be absent elsewhere.
They would spread through The Void like inverse light, cataloging the impossible geography of nothingness, claiming territory that didn’t exist in any meaningful sense except that now it was his.
Only after watching his new servants disappear into distances that couldn’t be measured did he turn to Rose, whose water form had been shifting through spectrums of amazement.
"Okay," he said with the casual confidence of someone who had just made nothing itself bow to his will. "We can proceed with the assassination. I now have... ninety percent confidence."
Rose’s emerald eyes sparkled with something between admiration and concern!