System Change

The next Void Beast to come out was slightly above average. It seemed to be on the verge of intelligence, but was still a monster through and through. Derek wasn’t entirely sure about the Adventurer Guild rankings, as the only Onyx Ranked Adventurer he’d fought was Shae, but he would put the Void Beast at lower Onyx or upper Platinum… solely based on Shae’s capabilities.

It was the strongest Void Beast he’d faced other than the intelligent one. Instead of quickly killing it with a void palm to the head, Derek opted to subdue it by hitting its non-vitals. After what happened in the dungeon, he had some questions that the Void Beast would allow him to solve.

After capturing the beast, Derek opened the Time Prison. While carrying the beast, he moved to an empty cell and tossed the creature in. Sentencing a Void Beast would be the ultimate test of the Time Prison.

First of all, the Void Beast was not a part of the system, or any system that he knew of. So, the test would allow him to know if all the functionality worked on enemies not of the Great System.

Second, if the Time Prison worked, he would be able to set the sentencing timer low so he could go back to the Golem Dungeon and try to release the beast there. If he could do so, then it would almost be like cheating. It would mean that he could take as many people into a dungeon as he could fit in the Time Prison, rendering the ‘max participants’ part of the dungeon useless.

Hell, if it worked, he may even be able to bring in participants who out level the dungeon. If that were the case, he would be able to bring in Shae or someone to run the dungeon for him while he sat back and enjoyed watching his Repetitive Dungeoneer Award go up.

Of course, he doubted the system would let anything like that happen. It already had precautions against Void Call, so he didn’t think it would overlook something as simple as bringing in another through Time Prison.

I wonder if the system would give me some reward for finding a bug. Derek shook his head. No… that’s doubtful. If anything, the stingy Great System would probably find a way to punish me for finding an exploit. Still, it didn’t mean he wouldn’t try. He would definitely try.

Derek set the timer on the dungeon cell low, so he would be able to speed it up and open in within a couple of days if he needed to. Then, he quickly checked on the other occupied cells. He changed the time on the cell that Clay Torith was occupying as well. It would be better if he ran the test with both a human of the system and a beast not of the system.

He would have much preferred to use Bones or Ogre for the test, but he had originally sentenced them to a year in prison. Even with his control of time, he could only drop the time to a couple of months. However, Clay was in for just 28 days and he’d already served almost two weeks worth, with the time distortion.

After making the arrangements, he walked out of his Time Prison and closed the rift behind him. Finally, he prepared himself and launched Void Call once again.

Derek got into a rhythm, farming Void Beasts. He took breaks between each beast so he could assess his surroundings to make sure he hadn’t drawn any attention to himself. The breaks used up a bit of his time, but they were necessary. After a day of farming, he finally took a rest.

He checked inside his Void Storage and smiled at his haul. He had two storage devices full of mana cores with a lot more in his Void Storage. Now, he had over thirty Void Beast bodies lying inside as well. In those encounters, three were like the small one he fought before. They should have the same vital qualities that the one before had. Alanah and Stella would go crazy.

Other than that, there was another with intelligence and awareness. It was actually a bit stronger than the one he fought before. Without his void, he couldn’t even leave a scratch on its skin. It was even able to take a full void covered fist to the back of the head and not die.

It was also faster than Derek, causing him to have to use Void Shift, coupled with Channel Void and Multi-Strike, to finish it off.

When it appeared, it looked almost scared of Derek. It could sense his control over the void. Derek, on the other hand, could see and feel the void running deep within the Void Beast. It was a weird sight to see. The beast didn’t try to talk, only run.

Derek, however, didn’t let it, and once it saw that he wasn’t hurting it with his physical attacks, it tried to fight back, leading to its demise. Derek still didn’t feel great about the possibility of consuming a creature that could be considered intelligent.

It made his skin crawl, but it was not only accepted, but generally coveted by those of the Great System. Maybe he would just choose to receive recipes created by the other Void Beasts. He shrugged and shut his storage. Next, he checked his notifications.

Congratulations

Void Call has reached level 4.

He nodded and moved on.

Congratulations! You have succeeded in slaying 25 creatures unknown to the Great System.

Award Updated

Derek raised his eyebrows and checked his Award.

Minor Slayer of the Unknown

You have slain 25 creatures unknown to the Great System. This is a rare feat only achieved by a few people. Not only are Unknown Entities strong, but it is rare to encounter one. You are awarded with the following:

2 Skill Points

40 Stat Points

3 Skill Upgrade Points

Slay more Unknown Entities to earn more rewards.

Derek smiled. He wasn’t expecting anything like that. In fact, he had almost forgotten about the Award. The extra skill points were whatever, the stat points were great, but the skill upgrade points were amazing. He’d been saving his four skill upgrade points for a long time because of how rare they seemed to be.

If he could upgrade the Award more by fighting Void Beasts, he could upgrade those pesky skills like Absolute Nullify and Void Call. Or, he could push some of the close skills to level twenty. How many Void Beasts would I have to kill to get to the next tier? If the second was 25, then the third may not come until I kill 100.

After receiving the points, he had a sudden desire to toss four points into Channel Void, but he held back. No, he would wait until his leveling slowed to a crawl or until he found himself in a situation that called for a quick upgrade. Otherwise, using the skill upgrade points would be wasteful, very wasteful.

Derek dismissed the notifications and prepared to go back to the dungeon. He still had a couple of tests and five more levels to gain before he was finished with his training. He turned back to where he came from and hopped into the air before taking off.

Soon, he arrived back at the dungeon and scanned the area. Seeing that there still wasn’t any signs of activity around the dungeon, he walked up to the orb and went inside.

Derek made short work of all the areas in the dungeon, storing the extra mana cores into his Void Storage in the process. With the cores and corpses, his Void Storage, which grew in size based on his own level and Intelligence, was beginning to fill up. He may actually have to use his Time Prison as a makeshift storage device, depending on how many more times he needed to run the dungeon before hitting level 175.

In the final area of the dungeon, Derek opened his Time Prison and went inside. He placed his hand on the door of the cell he stashed the Void Beast in and changed increased the speed at which it counted down. He had chosen the minimum sentence of one week earlier, but after changing the flow of time, there were only a few hours left.

He walked over to the cell that Clay was in and checked it. It would be a day and a half before he could come out.

Derek left the prison and continued running the dungeon.

While in the process of clearing the third area of the dungeon, a notification appeared to the side of his vision. Derek finished off the last golems and viewed the notification.

Cell #002 Alert:

Prisoner in cell #002 sentence approaching completion. Prisoner will be released in:

6min 27sec

Derek watched the timer countdown in his notification. He opened his Time Prison and waited.

Once the countdown hit 0, one of the cells on the left side swung open. The room was dark, but Derek could see in because of the light shining in from outside. The Void Beast rushed out of the cell and smashed into the cells on the opposite side of it. The ones that the humans were in.

Then, the beast saw the light and turned toward Derek. Derek took a fighting stance, readying himself to be attacked by the beast.

The Void Beast launched itself forward as Derek prepared for impact… but the impact never came. The beast slammed into an invisible wall where the door would have been if closed. The beast staggered back, and Derek walked inside.

He punched the beast, causing it to fall to its knees, then picked it up in a bear hug. He tried to walk back out, but couldn’t. The Void Beast was trapped inside.

Derek let go of the beast before leaving the Time Prison. He shut the door behind him and focused on completing the dungeon. When he got out, he would open the prison again.