Chapter 203: Void Walker
The notification appeared and Lukas’ legs gave out beneath him.
He sank to both knees in the red sand, the burning barely registering anymore.
His eyes stayed on the words in front of him and he felt something release in his chest that he hadn’t realized he’d been holding for the entire journey.
Melody spun towards him immediately, her sword already in her hand. "What’s wrong? What happened?"
"The quest," he said. He looked up at her, and the expression on his face was one of pure joy. "It’s done."
Melody stared at him for half a second, before processing his words.
Then she dropped down and wrapped both arms around him, pulling him into a hug that nearly pulled him off his knees, laughing loudly.
Akira had already turned around at the sound of Melody’s voice, Karrakas also looking back beside her, both of them frowning at the sight of what was happening thirty meters behind them.
"What happened?" Akira called out.
Melody pulled back just enough to shout over her shoulder. "He finished it! The quest is complete!"
Akira’s eyes widened in surprise, then she too ran over.
She covered the distance between them fast, reached the two of them, and threw her arms around both of them at once, nearly taking all three of them to the sand.
Lukas laughed, the sound coming out louder than he’d intended.
Karrakas stood where he was and watched the three of them with a wide grin spreading across his face. He exhaled slowly, shaking his head.
He still couldn’t believe they’d actually pulled it off. If it was any other new Adepts... would they have been able to do it too?
He had no idea, but he knew that while a significant portion of the quest had been possible due to their luck, skill had also played a huge part.
Back to the three Valentine’s, Akira pulled back from the hug and straightened up, brushing sand from her knees. Melody did the same, both of them looking at Lukas with expectant expressions.
"So?" Melody said. "What did you get?"
"Yeah. Your new skills," Akira said. "What are they?"
Lukas shook his head slowly. "I don’t know yet."
"Take your time," Melody chuckled, realizing they hadn’t even given him the space or time to go through it himself.
They both turned towards Karrakas, giving Lukas the moment he needed.
Karrakas had already noticed what was going on, and the moment their attention shifted to him, he clapped his hands once. "Let’s camp here. All of us need rest, and I mean actual rest this time. The horizontal, eyes closed, full version."
Nobody argued. They simply began working on raising their tents.
Lukas stayed on his knees in the sand and turned his attention back to the notification still sitting in front of him.
[You have completed the class change quest!]
He focused on it, and the message shifted.
[Congratulations. Your Thief class has been changed to Void Walker.]
He pulled up his skill list and scrolled past the familiar names until he reached the three new entries at the bottom. He read the first one.
[Void Step: You can slip into the void between reality and nothingness for a brief moment, becoming completely undetectable by all physical and magical senses before reappearing at any chosen point within range.]
He read it again, his eyes wide.
’Is that... teleportation?!’
He sat there for a moment, thinking about it. It could be called teleportation, but this one was a bit different.
With this skill, Lukas would be able to disappear from one point and reappear at another, and remain completely undetectable during the transition. But his movement wasn’t instantaneous.
The only thing that mattered was that in the middle of a battle, the skill would be devastating.
He could vanish at the moment an opponent committed to an attack, reappear in their blindspot, and deal them a fatal blow. Or if he was losing a fight, vanish entirely to somewhere safer.
The only limitation to the skill was that he couldn’t bring anyone with him, but he could live with that.
His eyes moved to the second skill.
[Dimensional Slash: You can send a blade through the void and have it emerge from a completely different angle than the swing originated from.]
He stared at it.
With this skill, the direction of the cut would have nothing to do with the direction of the swing. A slash aimed at the left side could emerge from above. A thrust forward could come from behind.
The attack’s origin point and its destination existed independently of each other, separated by the void between them.
There was no way to predict it. There was no way to block it, because blocking required knowing where the cut was coming from, and with this skill, that information was simply unavailable to the opponent.
He almost laughed.
The only limitation was straightforward. It needed a physical weapon to work. That meant something like a sword or axe in his hand.
Skills like [Death Bolt] were pure energy, which meant they had no physical edge to send through.
He shook his head at himself, marvelling at his greed.
He was sitting in the middle of a desert after walking barefoot for twenty-four hours, and his first reaction to receiving two extraordinary skills was to immediately catalog their limitations.
With a smile, he moved to the third skill.
[Black Hole: You can tear open a massive rift above the battlefield and begin pulling the surrounding space into it, dragging every enemy towards the center with increasing force before collapsing the rift entirely in a catastrophic implosion that deals devastating damage to everything caught inside while leaving the Void Walker completely untouched.]
His jaw dropped.
His eyes were wide as he read it again, making sure he had actually seen the right thing.
He couldn’t help but imagine the scene. With him standing on a battlefield, a massive black hole, above it, everyone being dragged inside, and him standing in the middle with his hands behind his back.
He would be the eye of the storm. The tree standing in the middle of a typhoon.
He couldn’t help but laugh in exhilaration.
But he immediately understood the limitation of this skill without even having to test it out.
The rift would pull everything regardless of affiliation. It wouldn’t be able to distinguish between Akira, Melody, Karrakas, and an enemy.
If anyone he cared about was on that battlefield, then he couldn’t use it. This was a skill built for a specific situation. When he is alone, surrounded by numerous enemies.
He was climbing the Tower, and he was going to make enemies. So he was sure that one day, such a situation would eventually happen, and he’d get his chance to use the skill.
He closed the skill list and looked up.
The camp had taken shape around him while he’d been reading. Two tents stood in the sand, their openings flapping slightly in the breeze.
Melody was walking towards him, her boots leaving shallow prints in the red sand.
She stopped in front of him, a smile on her face.
"Your tent’s ready," she said. "Go and sleep. You deserve it."
