The wind at ten thousand feet was freezing, cutting through Ren's thin shirt like jagged glass, but he barely felt it. His entire body was numb, vibrating with a dull, rhythmic ache that seemed to pulse from his very marrow. Beneath him, the obsidian scales of the shadow wyvern, Kaisel, felt solid and real—the only real thing left in a world that was starting to feel like a fading dream.
Ren looked down at his hands. They were still translucent, flickering in and out of existence like a dying lightbulb.
"Don't look at them," Jin-Woo's voice came from the front, steady and calm despite the roaring wind. "The more you focus on the instability, the more it claims you. Look at the horizon, Ren. Focus on what is constant."
Ren forced his gaze upward. The sun was setting, bleeding crimson and gold over the Japanese coastline. "How did you do it, Jin-Woo? When you first got your powers... did it feel like you were losing the person you used to be?"
Jin-Woo remained silent for a long moment, his eyes fixed on a point in the distance that only a Monarch could see. "Every day. Every time I leveled up, a piece of the weak, struggling E-Rank hunter I used to be died. But I didn't disappear. I evolved. What's happening to you isn't evolution, though. It's an erasure. The System isn't trying to make you stronger; it's trying to format you like a corrupted file."
"And Thomas Andre?" Ren coughed, a small spray of dark purple blood hitting the back of Jin-Woo's cloak. "I saw his face. I didn't just break his armor. I saw the fear in his eyes. I... I liked it for a second. That's what scares me."
Jin-Woo didn't turn around, but his shadow flickered, sensing his master's grim mood. "Power is a mirror, Ren. It doesn't change who you are; it just shows you the parts of yourself you were too weak to acknowledge before. If you want to stay human, you have to fight the Void as hard as you fought the Goliath."
Suddenly, Kaisel let out a low, thrumming growl. The air ahead of them began to warp. It wasn't a standard red or blue Gate. It was a shimmering, nearly invisible ripple in space, hidden between two jagged mountain peaks in a remote part of the Japanese Alps.
"We're here," Jin-Woo announced.
As Kaisel dived into the ripple, the world changed. The freezing wind was replaced by a heavy, stagnant warmth. They landed in a valley that shouldn't have existed. The sky here was a pale, sickly violet, and the trees were made of white, calcified stone. There was no sound—no birds, no wind, no heartbeat.
[Notice: You have entered a 'Null-Zone' Gate.] [The System's influence here is 0.01%.] [Warning: Recovery speed reduced by 90%.]
"This is a dead dungeon," Jin-Woo explained as he hopped off Kaisel's back and helped Ren down. "The boss died centuries ago, but the gate never closed. Because there's no mana here, the System doesn't bother monitoring it. It's a blind spot. The perfect place for a glitch to hide."
Ren stumbled, his feet hitting the bone-white sand. He felt incredibly heavy. Without the System's constant mana flow, his body felt like an empty shell.
"Now," Jin-Woo said, turning to face him. His eyes suddenly glowed with an intense, suffocating purple light. He didn't summon his daggers, but the shadows around him rose up like tidal waves, surrounding Ren. "We don't have much time before the World Association finds a way to track us. You need to learn the first rule of the Void."
Ren braced himself, his heart hammering against his ribs. "Which is?"
"The Void isn't something you use," Jin-Woo said, his voice echoing in the silent valley. "It's something you are. Stop trying to push it out like a spell. Pull it in. Cage it within your own willpower. If you can't contain it, it will continue to leak out and erase everything you touch—including your own soul."
Jin-Woo moved with a speed that defied logic. He struck Ren in the chest—not a lethal blow, but a strike intended to shock his mana core.
Ren gasped, and instinctively, the Void exploded outward in a defensive surge. The white trees nearby simply vanished into nothingness.
"No!" Jin-Woo roared, catching Ren's wrist. "Control it! Don't let it leak! Look at the gap you just made in the world. That's a piece of reality you just murdered. If you keep doing that, there will be nothing left for you to protect."
Ren screamed, the pain in his chest feeling like a hot iron. He closed his eyes, visualizing the swirling black hole inside him. He didn't try to stop it; he tried to wrap his own consciousness around it, like a blanket over a fire.
The flickering of his hands slowed. The purple aura around him began to pull back, retreating into his skin, leaving behind raw, red burns.
"Good," Jin-Woo whispered, though his expression remained stern. "Again. We stay here until you can stand in this valley for an hour without erasing a single grain of sand."
Deep in the shadows of the calcified forest, a pair of ancient, glowing eyes watched them. It wasn't a monster, and it wasn't a shadow. It was something that had been waiting in this dead world for a long time—something that recognized the scent of the Void.
Ren didn't notice the watcher. He was too busy fighting the hardest battle of his life: the battle to remain 'Ren.'