NOVEL NEXT 155. Once More Into the Void
Rhys charged into the void before he could think about it any longer. He burst out of the confines of his core into a by-now-familiar darkness and immediately stopped. There were things in the void that he didn't want to encounter—no, he didn't even want to risk drawing their attention too hard. Staying close to the comfort of his core meant he could beat a quick retreat from the void if that being decided to take interest in him, especially an aggressive interest.
The instant he entered the void, he knew he'd made the right decision. The words of the tome suddenly started slotting into place in his brain, and everything made more sense about… everything. The void. The world. Life in general.
Whoa, some distant part of Rhys noted, I need to be careful. As he uncovered the truths contained within the tome, the realizations he made were adjusting not just his perception of the void, but his perception of the whole world. But how could it not? The void was so much. It was everything. Or rather… it was a lack of everything. It was the place where things could be, and the place where things were not. The enormity of it laid before him, stretched bare to the horizon. He, here, on the edge of the void, was the least of it, seeing the least of what the void had to offer. The void called to him. Further, deeper. This shallow end wasn't enough to comprehend all the book had to offer. Just a little deeper, and he could understand everything. Entering the void had given him such a boost, so heading into the depths of the void would surely only continue to enhance his understanding. A little further. One more step into the darkness. It wasn't that dangerous. He was still close enough to retreat safely. Just a little more. A little more wouldn't hurt. He hadn't sensed that terrifying being at all. It wasn't close. He could make it a little further before anything took notice.
Rhys snapped back to reality as darkness closed in all around him. He spun around to find the spot of light that signified his core twinkling in the distance, far away from where he stood now. He shook his head, shaking off the remnant cry of the void, and raced back toward the light. It was like a siren's call, luring him deeper even now. He could ignore it easily enough when he was conscious, but the draw tugged at him, calling him deeper on an existential level. When he was lost in contemplation, it became irresistible. He hadn't even realized he was moving until he'd woken up, already almost as deep in the void as he'd ever gone.
He couldn't sense the being he'd sensed last time, but then, he was pulling his mana in tight, trying everything he could to avoid drawing attention to himself. The pile of trash and excess energy oozing out into the void from his core drew more attention than him, but… Rhys lifted his head and took it all in. From here, the trash, and his core, were nothing but a tiny pinprick of light in the void. Like a single star in the abyss of space. The void was so immense and so empty that he was infinitesimally tiny. Not even worth looking at. The being he'd sensed before could be right next to him, or billions of miles away, and it was all the same to the void. It had infinite size, and no size at all; it was a place where space didn't matter. Time barely seemed to. He didn't know if he'd been in here for the blink of an eye or a thousand years. Hopefully closer to the former than the latter, but in here, time flowed so strangely that he couldn't be sure.
Retreating to his star, he took a deep breath and settled in again. This time, though, he was ready for the siren's call, and resisted it passively. His comprehension on the void expanded and expanded, and he realized that his attempt to stick the void to something as though it was a material was misguided in the first place. The void wasn't something you could connect to something else. As an absence, it was naturally impossible to join to an object. No, he'd been thinking of it wrong. Too used to handling pieces of trash that were physical objects, and completely unused to handling trash in its concept form. As a void dimension outside of the regular confines of space, the void was more of a concept than an object. And when it came to connecting concepts to things, it was more important to imbue them than to join them. He didn't need to weave the void into the basket, he needed to imbue the basket with the void. Give it the void attribute, and make the basket more void-aligned so that the void and the basket resonated, and called out to one another. It was like activating Trash Intent, not using Trash Enchantment.
But that was no good. He couldn't activate Trash Intent on something on the other side of the world. He needed it to be more like Trash Enchantment, something with a one-time cost and a permanent effect, or else it was… not completely useless, but not useful, either. He could maintain one or two, maybe, at the most, maybe use them in combat to void people, but it would have the same limitations as any spell; someone strong enough would be able to fight back, or even outright block the spell, and he wasn't sure that voiding people was a good idea, either, when his core was connected to the void. Giving living people direct access to his core didn't sound like a great way to start off a fight.
No, I need something more permanent. Something that I can set and forget. Something I can cast a thousand times, something that other people can't enter but trash can, something passive with a low ongoing cost. He twisted his lips, pondering the void and his basket at once. The void wasn't opposed to permanence. The void itself was permanent. It was just that connecting the void and an object was something like connecting matter and antimatter. The basket was something, and the void was nothing. The basket wanted to exist. The void wanted it to nonexist. That was all. Except that 'that was all' wasn't an easy thing to hear when Rhys desperately wanted 'that was all' to not be the answer. There had to be a way. Something he could do to make the existence and nonexistence align.
A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.
In his mind, the image of the basket hovered. The concept of the void superimposed it, and Rhys's eyes widened. That's it! That's exactly it!
It was a basket. A basket had holes. Not all of the basket was 'existence.' Some of it was nonexistence. The concept of a basket itself had the concept of existence and nonexistence baked into it, as an object with gaps and filled places in it. He could fit the void into the holes, and anchor it to the basket where the basket had existence. The basket's existence could anchor the void in this world, into 'existence,' and in its 'nonexistence,' the void could lurk.
It makes teleporting troublesome, but the trash should be no problem. The nonexistence could suck in the trash into its gaps, and compress and break it down as it whisked it away. Absorbing trash that way was honestly more convenient, since the trash would get broken down on its way into his core, and he didn't have to worry about anything slipping in to his core through the trash cans without him willing it. Anything living would get sliced to bits by the basket's crosshatches long before it got anywhere near Rhys.
A brush on the boundaries of his mind startled Rhys out of his enlightenment. He scurried back into the light and out of the void, escaping the darkness and that strange being that lurked therein. He wasn't even sure the brush was the same being, or a being at all, or something that was close to him, but his lack of power in the void was frightening enough to send him rushing home. He'd gotten the basics of his comprehension down—enough to set up his void trash cans and start sucking all the Empire's garbage back to him as he distributed cans across the country—and that would have to be enough for now. As awesome as trash-can-based teleportation would be, he didn't think he could easily solve the diced-to-bits problem that was very much not a problem for trash, and he wasn't sure that the void was the way to do it, either. Somehow, he felt like there was some other comprehension that would unlock garbage-can based teleportation, something that could only happen after he'd normalized and distributed garbage cans. He could already feel the concept tickling at the back of his mind, just waiting to take full form, but just like he could feel the concept, he could feel its incompleteness. Its lack of shape. The energy and power that he would need, but didn't yet have.
His brief dive into the void had gained him an enlightenment, and he was eager to act on it. He hadn't gained two enlightenments, but then again, he was trash, not some world-shattering talent. One dive for one enlightenment was already impressive enough for him. Sure, he was disappointed that he hadn't gained the ability to teleport through trash cans, too, but he'd achieved his primary goal, so he couldn't be disappointed. Rhys rose out of his core and into the real world once more, finding his hands resting on the basket that would soon be his very first trash can. Recalling the sensation of the void, he ran his hands over it, feeling the trash it was built from, calling every element into his head. The shape of it, the way the elements wove together… the spaces where there was no basket. Those, he replaced with void. Not 'filled,' because void could not fill. But replaced. Took out the 'emptiness' that was there, and replaced it with a stronger emptiness, an emptiness so empty that it had a name of its own: the void. He closed his eyes as he did it, letting the sensation of the void and the trash in his hands guide his work more than his vision. When he finally replaced the final empty space with void, he opened his eyes.
The trash basket looked… Rhys tilted his head. It looked… normal, but not. He could still see through the holes and see the world on the other side. He'd been a bit worried that his garbage cans would have holes that allowed one to gaze into the infinite depths of the abyss, but it mostly looked like it had beforehand. If anything, it looked more empty for being connected to the void. An enhanced level of nothing stretched between the gaps of the basket.
He'd woven the basket somewhat loose, being a lazy bum, so each gap was an inch or two wide. At their widest, the gaps were noticeably lacking in any sort of interference, as if they held the clearest air from the clearest day within, when what they really held was 'absolutely nothing.' Smaller gaps were too small for anyone to notice anything, especially if they passed by, barely looking at the trash can. Honestly, even the biggest gaps were too small for someone to notice unless they went looking.
Rhys set the trash can down, then glanced around. Over at the edge, some trash had fallen through the structure where someone had passed by and dropped off fresh trash from the city. He jogged over and grabbed a piece, then shot it across the entire room toward the basket. He wasn't very good at basketball, but that didn't matter now that he was a mage. It flew across the room and landed unerringly in the basket's center.
"Nothing but net," Rhys muttered under his breath.
Even as it struck the bottom of the basket, the void hungrily ate it up, and a moment later, Rhys felt a tiny piece of trash materialize in the void just outside his core. The edges of his lips turned up into a smile.
It worked!