Chapter 391: I, A Wizard

With a resounding crash, the ragged white door slammed into the void. A forcefield instantly spread outward from its frame. Wherever it passed, the very nature of the void changed irrevocably. The dark green void dissolved, leaving behind pure transparency stripped of all color.

Footsteps struck solid ground. For the first time, Wang Yu did not rely on the husk of the dream god to hover in the void. Instead, he let himself fall naturally—and did not plummet into the void's endless depths.

His boots found purchase on a floor he knew well, carved with lines and patterns he had once seen in his mindscape after falling unconscious.

"What a strange sensation... I don't understand what's going on, but wouldn't this be considered a form of wizardry? What I once lost has now returned to me in a new form..."

As he murmured, void energy welled unbidden into his palm. In a blink, he conjured the weapon he had once held long ago back at the Villa Mayene: the hammer that had shattered the Undying Lord's barrier..

He gave it a casual swing. Its weight was perfect, its motion smooth, and its originally rather mediocre effect had now advanced by an entire tier. It could now truly be considered a "blast hammer." If he were to summon it on the material plane, it would rival the Devastation Blade forged by Avia herself.

"So this door... carves out a piece of the void itself for me to claim?"

𝒇𝓻𝓮𝓮𝙬𝙚𝒃𝒏𝓸𝙫𝒆𝙡.𝓬𝓸𝒎

Beneath his feet stretched an expanse of flooring that extended no more than fifty or sixty square meters before ending in an abrupt cliff, beyond which the void resumed.

Wang Yu could clearly sense what lay within a certain radius of the door. The mad, howling frenzy of the void was gone, replaced by stillness—pure, untainted space. Here, one could stand unscathed. Here, even others might be able to enter the void without being devoured.

But shelter was not its true nature. What the door had done was occupy the void. This little territory was his and his alone, much like how the leviathan octopus anchored itself within the void.

Within this circle, all void energy was his to command. His wizardry, which had once seemed useless, was now returned to him in an entirely new guise.

"What an unexpected gift. I never thought this ability would transform into something so unreasonable... And yet, the stronger my body grows, the nearer this door comes to manifesting in reality. That much is certain. Now, it's time for me to leave."

He seized the door's panel and pressed it to his brow. It vanished at once, sinking into him as if it were some special essence. His right arm glowed, wrapped faintly in gold—the Chariot's power in another form.

He stretched his hand, and void energy flowed into his golden arm. Power spread outward, claiming an area smaller than the door had managed on its own, but still enough for his purposes. Energy gathered at his will, propelling him upward.

His mastery of this newfound gift was still crude, yet serviceable under Avia's prior guidance. Already, he could sense its staggering potential.

He thrust his hand through a rent in the void, gripped its edge, and hauled himself out. Once more he stood on the solid ground of the material plane. His gaze sought out Avia, who was tending to Sieg and Noelle.

Sieg, still in dragon form, lay sprawled on the ground, body charred black, a crater seared into his chest where his heart should be. He looked lifeless.

Yet Avia was pouring potion after potion into his maw, and the faint dust that rose and fell at his nostrils told Wang Yu he still breathed.

"How's the Professor?"

Wang Yu sprinted toward them, glancing at his own hand. Even here in the material plane, the door's power endured, though it was far more muted than before. Where once his entire arm had shone with golden light, now only his hand gleamed.

"He's extremely weak, and still unconscious," Avia replied. "I've never seen a dragon wounded so deeply from within. I can only pour medicine into him to replenish what his body has lost. But the heat trapped in his heart is stalling his recovery."

Wang Yu's eyes flicked to the hollow in Sieg's chest. Without hesitation, he thrust his hand inside. The Chariot's power spread as it reached into the dragon's heart. He felt the terrible heat gathered there, and mingled with it, a reservoir of strange magic.

"Hm?"

He grunted, but did not linger on the mystery. Instead, he seized the gases around Sieg's heart and began to circulate them. Void energy surged, extending his Chariot's reach and drawing the heat away.

A blast of scalding air erupted from Sieg's chest. The moist earth around them dried in an instant as vapor hissed upward. Then, even the soil itself began to melt.

"This is... the energy of the void?"

Avia's eyes narrowed. As a wizard, she recognized its nature at once—yet it was unlike any wizardry she knew. She handed him a barrel from the Seed of Eden and glanced at him curiously.

"Right. I guess I'm a wizard now, though a rather unique one. I'll explain in detail later. For now, have you seen the likes of this sort of mana before?"

Wang Yu drew forth a trace of strange mana from Sieg's heart, extracting it with the power of the Chariot before handing it off to Avia. At the same time, he opened the barrel that Avia had handed him. Within it swirled a reserve of bright crimson blood, stockpiled in advance for precisely such circumstances.

Then, he produced eighteen oversized potion flasks—some glowing, some turbid, one or two even writhing with slimes suspended within—and upended them all into the barrel in one pour. The blood churned of its own accord under his Blood Tempest secret art, swirling until every drop had been blended with the uncorked flasks. Then, frothing, it surged outward directly into the hollow cavity at Sieg's chest.

The sight was grotesque: Wang Yu, bent over a vat of blood as he mixed a riot of multicolored potions into it, looked like some deranged alchemist of a forbidden cult. Yet however grim the spectacle, none could deny his skill. He had become a master herbalist of sorts, and his focus on vitality and regeneration had left him a rather skilled physician over the years.

The blood, now mingled with potions for healing and nourishment alike, coursed into the dragon's body. Siegabsorbed it greedily. Wang Yu felt the liquid being consumed at astonishing speed, sustaining the grievously wounded dragon, replenishing his lost vitality, and knitting together the ruined flesh around his heart.

"This is very peculiar mana, Wang Yu," Avia's voice rang out as she studied the strands he had pulled from Sieg's heart. "I cannot use them. My mana spiral cannot draw upon it, and besides, it's dissipating far too quickly."

Wang Yu only nodded. He hardened his blood to seal the gaping wound in Sieg's chest, then lifted his head toward the distance. Somewhere out there, the tide of destruction was stirring once more.

"Come on. We'll talk more back in the void. You'll have to open up another rift."

He clapped Avia on the shoulder, then turned to Noelle. The young red dragon had been hovering anxiously over her brother, almost vibrating with fear. Wang Yu pressed into a vial of his own concentrated energy tonic into her hands. She too seemed shockingly weak to him. What sort of ordeal had Sieg and his sister endured in their dimension?

As Noelle accepted the vial, Wang Yu noticed something odd. There was something like a scorch mark on her hand, but it wasn't a burn. It wasn't a wound at all, but rather an imprint that seemed to have emerged of its own accord.

"Can't you open a void rift on your own now?"

Avia had done so on his orders, but it was still quite a bit too small for Sieg's unconscious bulk.

"Not as I once did," Wang Yu replied. "Before, I took advantage of the affinity from Roland's key. Now, it's more like a form of robbery."

He strode to the rift and pressed his golden hand against its edge. With a wrench, he widened the tear, then thrust his arm inside.

With a flick, he hurled his conjured door into the gap. It anchored itself there and established a territory within the void. Its power spread over the rift, stabilizing it against rejection from the material plane to prevent its collapse.

They moved quickly. Avia and Noelle slipped through first. Wang Yu, flooding himself simultaneously with fighting spirit, blood, and the power of the Chariot, forced Sieg's colossal frame through the rift before leaping in after him. Moments later, the ruinous tide swept across the material plane once more, erasing all that remained—yet not so much as causing a ripple in the void they had just passed through.

"Sorry, it's a bit cramped..."

Wang Yu scratched his head, glancing sheepishly at Avia and Noelle. The space claimed by his door was perhaps five or six dozen square meters at most, though it could be expanded vertically.

Sieg, massive as he was, lay coiled in an awkward sprawl, leaving the three of them perched uncomfortably atop his scaled body.

"How unexpected," Avia remarked, studying the space. "This is quite like how that octopus occupied the void. Yet here, the void responds to me as well."

Wang Yu blinked. By rights, this domain wrested from the abyssal leviathan should have obeyed him and him alone. But it did make a certain amount of sense: the door had a mind of its own. It would automatically grant relevant permissions for friends, family, and allies.

"Alright, then... Noelle, what happened to you and the Professor? How did you merge these dimensions together?"

They had escaped the tide of annihilation. Here, at least for the moment, they could speak.

Gathering her breath, Noelle recounted the tale of the deadlands: the old dream god, the abyssal beast, the prior civilization, the Dragon God, and the magic Sieg himself had wrought.

"I see..." Wang Yu muttered at last. "What a trial. But it's clear what we need to do now, and how."

His gaze fell upon the tentacles of the abyssal monster, still clinging to the rift between void and the material plane. Void energy surged through his veins. In his hand, the Wallbreaker's Hammer appeared once.