Chapter 1206: True Void Steps: Kissing Consort

The Void changed before the System could finish.

Phei felt Darkness in the reality throughout the lounge and the entire villa deepen, although none of the shadows actually stretched farther across the surfaces casting them. Instead, the shadow beneath the couch, the narrow darkness below the table, the black strip gathered behind the curtains and even the faint shadow beneath Phei’s own feet suddenly possessed depths that no simple absence of light should have contained.

True Void Senseplunged into them immediately.

Phei’s breath caught.

Every shadow remained physically separate, yet viewed from within the Void, each possessed another side. They were not literally connected, nor had distance disappeared between them, but the Void regarded that distance very differently from ordinary reality.

What Phei’s eyes called darkness, True Void Sense now recognized as potential entrances, exits and pathways he could bend and use to his whim.

Phei stood as a notification unfolded before him.

[True Void Steps:Host may enter and traverse shadows, darkness, spatial hollows and the Void itself. Any accessible shadow or region of darkness within your perception will serve as an entrance or destination, allowing Host to disappear completely from one location and emerge instantly from another without crossing the intervening physical distance.]

Phei’s eyebrows climbed; every shadow and darkness within his perception!

Now he understood that connection from before between his Void with the Shadows and Darkness!

Now that was an upgrade.

The description continued before he could properly enjoy it.

[Ordinary physical barriers do not obstruct True Void Steps. Host may briefly remain within the Void while selecting another accessible exit and perform rapid successive Steps so long as sufficient Void essence and perceptual clarity remain...host can also choose whether existing physical momentum is erased, preserved or redirected upon emergence.]

Phei reread that final line.

His Lv.1 Void Steps had automatically erased momentum whenever he entered the Void, which had already been useful enough to save him from falls or violent impacts. True Void Steps now gave him control over the result. If someone hurled him through the air, he could erase the force completely, preserve it through the Step or redirect that same momentum somewhere else upon emergence.

Phei’s smile became dangerous.

That could become filthy in combat.

The final portion of the description appeared.

[Weaker spatial restraints that previously obstructed Void Steps may now be traversed where accessible Void pathways remain. Powerful Domains, divine spatial restrictions, highly stabilized space and superior spatial or Void abilities may still obstruct or distort Host’s passage.]

True Void Steps had become enormously stronger without suddenly deciding that every powerful seal in existence was decorative.

Phei looked around the lounge, and True Void Sense immediately merged the synergy between both evolutions. He no longer needed to hunt clumsily for spatial hollows or guess whether an exit remained viable. He knew where the hollows were, which shadows he wanted to come through or which regions of darkness could become exits and the exact distance to every available pathway inside his range.

And all of it took an instant to perceive!

True Void Sense revealed everything, and True Void Steps allowed him to use any shadow, darkness and the Void itself to his whim.

His gaze lifted toward Consort.

She remained floating above him within her concealment, still unaware of exactly how thoroughly his perception now surrounded her.

Phei grinned. "Hey, you~"

Consort’s eyes widened.

That should have been impossible:

Phei disappeared before she could decide otherwise.

His body did not fold awkwardly this time, nor did some strange distortion crush his figure inward. The shadow beneath his feet simply deepened as blackness climbed along the edge of his silhouette and swallowed him so cleanly that one moment Phei occupied the lounge and the next there was nothing there at all.

Consort’s hand immediately moved toward her sword.

Inside the Void, Phei watched the reaction through True Void Sense.

That might have been the strangest discovery yet.

He no longer stood anywhere inside the physical world, but he could still perceive it perfectly through the Void surrounding it:

For several seconds he remained within that impossible layer, where there was no recognizable floor beneath his feet, no ordinary gravity tugging his body downward and no direction that behaved exactly as physical space expected, while every usable shadow and darkness in reality within his perception waited inside his perception like a dark doorway.

Phei selected one:

A narrow shadow cast by an architectural beam almost a hundred meters away thickened, and he stepped from it without stumbling or losing his balance, already oriented exactly toward Consort.

Before his feet had any reason to settle, he chose another and disappeared into the darkness beneath an overhead structure.

Consort turned sharply.

Phei emerged much higher this time, his body horizontal to the ground as gravity immediately reached for him. He allowed himself to fall for a fraction of a second before activating True Void Steps again, deliberately preserving the downward momentum this time. Another shadow opened elsewhere across the upper structure, and Phei burst from it with the force redirected sideways, shooting through open air before a third patch of darkness swallowed him almost immediately.

His laughter drifted through the lounge while Consort’s eyes moved from shadow to shadow, unable to predict which one would return him but she somehow was able to follow him despite how quick he was.

He was able to void-step seven times in a single second:

Phei’s old Void traces she had used to see him otherwise better could not help her though:

True Void Sense detected the first disturbance forming behind his movement, and Phei brushed his awareness across it while still travelling. The surrounding Void settled immediately, wiping the footprint away before he used another Step and erased that one too.

By the tenth succession, Phei understood just how vicious the combination had become.

A sufficiently skilled spatial expert might witness him disappear and perhaps even recognize that he had entered the Void, but if Phei closed his residual tracks behind himself, there would be no convenient trail remaining to explain where he had gone.

Three more successive movements carried him toward Consort until the final shadow beside her rippled.

Her sword sheathed her sword back by barely an inch before Phei stepped from the darkness at her side.

Consort let him appear before her knowing what his intentions were than anything else.

For several seconds he remained suspended in the air beside her despite there being no physical surface beneath his feet. True Void Sense made the reason clear enough that he did not mistake it for ordinary flight. His emergence was only partly complete, his position still resting partly within the Void while the physical portion of him remained outside, allowing that deeper layer to support him briefly before ordinary gravity could reclaim full authority.

Phei looked beneath his feet, found absolutely nothing there, then glanced at Consort with a grin: "Oh, isn’t that disgusting?"

Consort merely stared at him.

Phei laughed and wrapped both arms around her before she could decide whether surprise, murder or dignity deserved priority. Her shorter body fit neatly against him, her kimono brushing his clothes while the sheathed sword at her side bumped lightly against his hip.

Phei immediately noticed something else.

True Void Steps did not reject her.

The moment he pulled Consort completely against himself, the pathway beneath his perception changed. The Void-Ice essence demanded by the technique rose noticeably, and the route felt heavier now that another living existence had been added to his passage, yet there was no refusal and no indication that moving her was impossible.

Interesting.

Apparently True Void Steps did not object to company.

Phei selected the lounge floor through True Void Sense, and the darkness beneath them opened.

Both vanished.

Consort experienced no rushing wind, falling sensation or ordinary movement and Void released them below, with Phei emerging perfectly upright on the floor while Consort remained firmly held short in his arms.

He looked down at her, then briefly glanced around as though checking whether reality had misplaced any pieces during the trip. A pleased little grin appeared when everything seemed to have arrived intact.

"Huh. So I can do that too."

Consort opened her mouth, presumably to demand an explanation, complain about being kidnapped through literal darkness, or perhaps remind him that she possessed a sword and had recently considered using it on him.

Phei did not give her the opportunity.

He bent his head and kissed her.

Her eyes widened at once, surprise holding her completely still for a heartbeat while one hand remained caught against his chest. The kiss was soft and warm — not rushed, not hungry yet, just the slow, deliberate press of his mouth over hers, his sinking through her lips until the complaint she had been forming died somewhere behind them.

For a second she did not even breathe.

The first shock faded, her lashes lowered.

The kiss deepening by the smallest degree — enough for her to feel the warmth of him, the shape of his lower lip, the quiet demand hidden inside something that still looked gentle. A sound almost left her. Almost but her breath caught between them, her lips left faintly parted and already warmer than they had been a moment before.

Her sword remained forgotten at her side.

Phei drew back just enough for amusement to touch his eyes as he looked down at the shorter woman still held comfortably against him.

He had one hundred thousand EXP remaining after massacring more than six hundred thousand in less time than most people spent deciding what to order for dinner.

His dignity had suffered several injuries during the earlier training, his once-comfortable EXP fortune had been reduced to something almost financially responsible, and he had somehow ended the entire experiment holding a beautiful Immortal while every shadow within a hundred meters had become a potential doorway and the Void itself had become another way for him to perceive the world.

Apparently, going back to being poor had been an excellent financial decision.