The transition into the Glimpse was smoother than usual, improved by the evolved Spirit and immense mana reserves I now commanded. The Void did not resist me; it ushered me in.

  The simulated world materialized with oppressive, magnificent clarity.

  I was standing at the foot of the dais in a throne room that defied engineering. This wasn’t a jagged, natural cavern; it was the throne room I had encountered in the Dungeon run years ago. This was Opulence. Rivers of liquid gold and basalt-heavy magma cascaded down aqueducts carved into the obsidian walls, casting a shifting, angry light over the chamber. Massive banners of white silk — enchanted to resist the incinerating heat — hung from the ceiling, rustling in the thermal drafts like the breathing of a giant lung.

  At the center, seated on a throne of jagged black glass that seemed to absorb the ambient light, sat the Sovereign who ruled over fire.

  Kharonus.

  He was leaning back, bored, one crimson hand idly swirling a sphere of superheated plasma. He looked exactly as I remembered him: eight feet of casual arrogance, radiating a Tier 8 Authority that turned the air in the room solid.

  I stood at the entrance, uncloaked. I didn’t engage my Veil. I wanted him to see me.

  I wanted him to know exactly what was coming to him.

  Kharonus stopped swirling the plasma. He tilted his massive, horned head. His eyes — chips of black diamond floating in pools of lava — locked onto mine.

  A slow, cruel smile split his face.

  “The thief returns,” his voice rumbled. It was deep, resonating in the fluid of my inner ear, bypassing the air entirely. “The one who stole the Heart, the little spark. Did you come to return it? Or did you come to burn?”

  He stood up. The movement was deceptively lazy, but the pressure in the room instantly doubled. The white banners snapped taut as if pulled by invisible hands.

  “Neither,” I said. My voice was calm, weighted with the new density of my Tier 7 Foundation. “I have come here to fight.”

  “The little spark dares defy a star,” Kharonus scoffed.

  He flicked a finger.

  He didn’t cast a spell. He didn’t weave a sign. He simply asserted his Tier 8 privilege to dictate that the oxygen around me should become plasma.

  A sphere of white fire detonated in my personal space.

  In our first fight, this had nearly killed me. I had burned precious resources just surviving the environmental damage.

  Now?

  I opened the Maw.

  [The Void-Star’s Hunger]

  I didn’t raise a shield. I didn’t dodge. I expanded the borders of my metabolic authority. A rippling distortion field — like heat rising off asphalt but darker than black — manifested around my armor.

  The plasma explosion hit the distortion and simply… sank.

  There was no heat. There was no impact. The furious energy of the spell swirled into the vortex in my chest.

  I tasted it. And as I tasted it, a strange sensation started brewing from within, demanding more. Very High-tier Fire Mana. Refined by centuries of sovereignty. I felt my Mana reserves pulse, topping off instantly, and something deeper within my bones shift — my Body attribute inching upward as the high-quality energy was integrated into my physiology.

  Kharonus paused. He lowered his hand, his black eyes narrowing.

  “A barrier?” he mused, stepping down from the dais. The lava rivers rose up to meet him, forming protective coils around his legs. “No. You… silenced it?”

  “I’m feeling peckish, Kharonus,” I said, rolling my shoulders. “And you look like a buffet.”

  “Insolence!”

  The testing phase ended. Kharonus grew bored of talking.

  He reached out with his left hand. His telekinesis — a force strong enough to crush diamond — clamped around me. It was like being grabbed by a god. The invisible grip squeezed, trying to collapse my ribs, to burst my organs, to wring me out like a wet towel.

  I felt my armor groan. My bones creaked. The Tier 8 difference in raw stats was real. He was stronger than me physically.

  But strength isn’t just about pushing. It’s about leverage.

  And the Void provides infinite leverage.

  I focused the Hunger outward, flooding the telekinetic grip with Void Mana. I ate the binding mana structures holding his will together.

  “Delicious,” I rasped, the grip shattering into motes of light that flowed into my mouth. I felt a surge in my Spirit attribute — the act of digesting another Sovereign’s Will hardening my own mental fortress.

  I lunged.

  I engaged [Void Walk], vanishing from his sight lines. I reappeared mid-air, bringing an Ashen Sword down towards his neck.

  Kharonus was fast. Faster than physics should allow.

  He spun, catching the blade on a forearm bracer made of solid, pressurized magma.

  The shockwave cleared the room of banners, vaporizing the silk instantly.

  “You are heavy, little thief,” Kharonus snarled, pushing back. His physical strength was overwhelming, sliding me backward across the floor, carving furrows in the stone. “You hide your weight well. Who made you this dense? What have you been hiding? Who is your mentor?”

  Unauthorized reproduction: this story has been taken without approval. Report sightings.

  “Who’s asking?” I grunted, using all of my six subsidiary cores.

  We broke the clinch.

  The fight descended into chaos. Kharonus unleashed his Domain fully.

  The entire room was transformed. His Domain’s name seared into my brain.

  The Burning Court.

  The floor liquefied. Gravity multiplied by fifty. Spears of telekinetic force rained down from the ceiling. He was a maestro of destruction, weaving telekinesis and fire into a storm designed to erase life.

  I danced in the hurricane.

  Every time a spear hit me, the Void-Star spun.

  A lance of fire struck my chest — I ate the impact velocity and converted it to mana. My Body attribute ticked upward again, acclimating to the Tier 8 kinetic stress.

  A gravity well tried to crush my legs — I devoured the localized physics distortion and used the fuel to power a [Phoenix Rebirth], healing a fracture in my forearm instantly. My Mana capacity expanded, stretched by the constant inflow and outflow.

  We traded blows for what felt like hours. I was battered. My armor was cracked in three places. My mana cores were slowly depleting, but my Void Hunger was constantly refilling them.

  And I was getting stronger.

  With every exchange, I stole a fraction of his power. I wasn’t just surviving; I was devouring him. My density was increasing minute by minute. The Hunger was actively converting his high-tier assault into foundational mass for my Soul.

  Kharonus noticed.

  He threw a punch that I blocked with a gravity-palm. He pulled back, his eyes wide with a sudden, dawning horror.

  “Your aura,” he whispered, staring at me. “It was slowly fading earlier. Now it is... growing? You are feeding?”

  He looked at his own hand. The Domain was slowly but surely dimming. The bright, angry red had faded to a dull orange.

  “You aren’t fighting me,” he realized, his voice trembling with a mixture of rage and terror. “You are dragging this out on purpose. Are you using me for testing, spark? The audacity. You gain some rudimentary skills with the Void and then suddenly think of me as a meal, child?”

  I grinned. It probably looked terrifying, wreathed in black static and blood.

  “I told you,” I said, stepping forward. “Peckish.”

  Kharonus scrambled back. The arrogance on his face was slowly disappearing, replaced by the look of a prey animal who realized the cage was locked.

  “Fool,” he hissed. “To challenge me in my Domain. You will learn a valuable lesson today.”

  Kharonus roared. He plunged both hands into the rivers of lava flanking him.

  He drained the room. The lava turned grey and hardened as he siphoned every drop of heat entropy into his own core.

  His body swelled. Horns erupted from his shoulders. His skin cracked, revealing a core of blinding white plasma.

  He openly showed me his skill, displaying his arrogance by sharing the name through a mental connection.

  A Mythic Skill: Avatar of a Star.

  “Burn,” he shrieked. “Eat this, void-spawn! Let’s see if you can eat a sun!”

  He unleashed a beam of concentrated stellar energy. It was a erasure ray.

  Tier 8 Peak output. It was enough to drill a hole through a moon.

  It hit me dead center.

  The [Void-Star’s Hunger] screamed. The input was too massive. It couldn’t digest it fast enough. The spillover heat began to reach my skin inside the armor.

  But I felt… nothing.

  My Flame was a thousand times hotter, my body used to heat that would make this fire feel colder than ice.

  After basking in the sensation, I activated the lesson I learned in the Deep.

  I Dual-Wove.

  I took the overflowing energy from the beam — energy that was rolling off me — and channeled it directly into my Domain, creating a searing blade in my other hand.

  I used his attack as the fuel for my counter.

  I pushed forward, walking into the beam. My own concentrated flame caused my skin to blister and heal in nanoseconds. My resistances to fire were climbing so fast I stopped keeping track.

  “You give me fire,” I roared over the noise of the beam. “I’ll give you Ash!”

  I reached him.

  I placed my palm on his chest.

  Releasing the entire built up pressure into a single point.

  The beam in my hand wasn’t fire. It was Deletion. Powered by his own massive mana reserves.

  It punched through the Supernova Avatar.

  The white light flickered and died. Kharonus’ expanded form collapsed. The plasma cooled instantly into grey dust.

  He fell.

  He hit the dais, a broken, shrinking husk. He looked small now. The brilliance was gone. I had drained him to the dregs.

  He looked up at me, his body shaking. He was weak — barely comparable to a Tier 4 in strength now. His core was empty.

  “Wait,” he gasped, blood black as tar dripping from his mouth. “Wait! I yield!”

  I stood over him, the Void-Star spinning lazily in my chest, digesting the massive meal. I felt drunk on power. My senses were sharp enough to cut glass.

  “Yield?” I asked.

  “A contract,” he begged, clutching at my greaves. “I am an experienced Sovereign! I know secrets! I know the locations of the Ancient Vaults! I will serve! I will be your hound!”

  “Secrets,” I mused.

  “Yes! You have a Void affinity, I can show you records of The Deep Ones! The Primordials! I know where the Ember King hid his Hearth!”

  He was desperate. He saw the cold hunger in my eyes.

  “I will bind my soul to yours! A System contract! Eternal servitude! Just don’t...”

  I looked down at the demon who had caused me so much trouble earlier. The being who had forced me to kneel after torturing Jeeves for simply speaking out. The entity that represented an impassable wall.

  Now, he was just a meal.

  “Secrets are valuable,” I admitted. “And a slave Sovereign would be useful.”

  Kharonus let out a breath of relief. “Yes. Yes. Wise choice, Master. I will—”

  “But not right now,” I said. “And I’d rather test what this skill does instead.”

  “Wait—”

  I put my hand on his head.

  “Maybe next time I’ll take you up on that.”

  [Void-Star’s Hunger] activated.

  I pulled.

  I didn’t just take his mana. I took everything. His potential. His density. His attributes.

  Kharonus screamed — a sound that frayed into static as his very concept was digitized and consumed.

  His body turned to ash and dissolved into the Hunger.

  He was gone. Not dead. Consumed.

  The Throne Room was silent. The banners were ash. The lava was stone.

  I stood alone in the center of the devastation, breathing in the quiet. I felt enormous. Heavy. Complete.

  I checked my status window, taking note of the effects and the boosts as the Glimpse ended.

  I ended the skill.

  The world dissolved. The scent of ozone faded, replaced by the cool air of my Sanctum meditation room.

  I opened my physical eyes.

  “Jeeves,” I said, my voice hoarse.

  “Master? Vital signs elevated.”

  I looked at my hand. It was crackling with residual Essence.

  “Status,” I commanded, a confused expression on my face.

  The blue window unfurled.

  And then I froze.

  [Body: 745]

  [Spirit: 749]

  [Mana: 743]

  I stared at the numbers. The numbers hadn’t reverted. The Void had somehow bypassed the timeline. The Hunger ate irrespective of where the meal was served.

  “Jeeves. The stats I gained and the Essence I stored in the Void from the Glimpse fight are still there...”