Book 6, Chapter 66: Void (3)
So Void Starmetal was formed after a powerful creature was killed by the void.
Su Chen didn’t know how strong the creature needed to be for its remains to form Void Starmetal, but he had a strong hunch that not just every organism could be turned into this unique metal. This metal was probably the amalgamation between the essence of a strong creature and the indomitable power of the void, which resulted in the unique properties of this metal.
After the Lightless Blade absorbed the Razorback Shark’s Void Starmetal, Su Chen could sense that the surface of the Lightless Blade was now imbued with spatial Method power.
However, this spatial power had not yet taken form. It needed to be directed by Su Chen’s will before it would actually do anything.
Luckily, Su Chen’s comprehension of spatial Method Power had nearly reached the peak, so controlling the flow of spatial energy was no problem for him.
After a moment’s thought, he attempted to gather this spatial power at the cutting edge of the blade.
Imbuing the edge of the blade with spatial power would result in extremely powerful attacks, which made sense. After all, the Lightless Blade was at its core a weapon. Otherwise, if he wanted to teleport around instead, why would he use a blade?
Under Su Chen’s control , the spatial power gradually began to consolidate itself.
When it was ready, Su Chen swung the Lightless Blade. As it whooshed through the air, an invisible destructive spatial force rippled through the space in front of it, threatening to obliterate anything in the blade’s path.
Unfortunately, there was no point to using this technique while he was still in the void.
Even so, Su Chen was quite satisfied with its effects.
With this new unique ability to unleash spatial attacks, the Lightless Blade had begun to close in on the level of a Divine Tool.
However, powerful Divine Tools typically had a few Origin Skills that they could unleash. Just this spatial blade alone wasn’t enough to merit that title yet.
And Su Chen didn’t have enough spare energy to work on creating a multifunctional Divine Tool.
However, not all Divine Tools could necessarily activate many Origin Skills. If a tool only had one kind of power, but was devastatingly powerful, then it could also be considered a Divine Tool.
After absorbing the Void Starmetal of that Sovereign, the Lightless Blade’s spatial attributes had become relatively strong. At this point, Su Chen could use it to unleash multiple spatial attacks in a row, but he was still not satisfied.
He wanted to upgrade the spatial powers of the Lightless Blade to their utmost limits so that it could become a truly unrivalled Divine Tool.
As such, Su Chen continued his hunt.
He didn’t forget that this void had once contained hundreds of Sovereigns.
Some of them had managed to escape the Abyss, but there were definitely quite a few that hadn’t.
In other words, there was still a large quantity of Void Starmetal floating out there, just waiting to be found.
How could he just let all this treasures slip past his fingers like that?
So naturally, he began to search for more Sovereign statues.
As he wandered through the void, tempering himself, he would constantly search for treasures. Now that he had a new goal, his daily life was much less boring.
Through his search, Su Chen found quite a few Sovereign statues.
All of them contained Void Starmetal within them, confirming Su Chen’s suspicions on how it was formed.
After absorbing the Void Starmetal of two more Sovereigns, the Lightless Blade finally underwent another qualitative transformation.
The originally plain and unassuming Lightness Blade now glowed with a strange light. To the naked eye, it appeared as if this sword had taken on a slightly ethereal and illusory quality. Its essence was quite hard to perceive.
This somewhat illusory, somewhat corporeal body of the Lightless Sword had taken on some unique properties after absorbing enough Void Starmetal. It was no longer fully corporeal; instead, it appeared to be constantly slipping back and forth between reality and an illusory plane. Each one of its strikes seemed blurry, rather than crisp and precise. If Su Chen were to throw the sword through the air, it would even disappear and reappear every so often, as if it teleporting in the direction that he had thrown it in rather than flying through the air.
This spatial fluctuation property made its attacks incredibly hard to anticipate or predict.
In addition, the old Lightless Blade had a detrimental property that one it degraded after each battle. As the combination of an Arcana Technique and the Lightless Blade itself, the Lightless Blade consumed large amounts of metal to nullify the power of many Arcana Techniques. And now, after being imbued with spatial power, the Lightless Sword was capable of destroying Origin Energy.
When the Lightless Blade collided with a powerful attack, it would directly break down the Origin Skill or Arcana Technique within the opposing attack. In fact, a portion of the opposing attacks would even be deflected into an illusory space, causing its power to decrease significantly. As such, the Lightless Blade’s defensive capabilities had also been greatly increased by its intrinsically destructive capability.
Finally, Su Chen gave this spatial attack a name — Dimensional Slash.
An attack that seemed to break down everything in its path was virtually impossible to dodge. In other words, this blade was arguably one of the most powerful blades in existence.
The Sky Armor only possessed three effects, but each one was extraordinarily powerful. This more than qualified it for its title of a Divine Tool.
And because Su Chen had constructed the Lightless Blade himself, it was only natural that he was incredibly familiar with it.
Su Chen didn’t waste the rest of the Void Starmetal after the blade evolved either.
In addition to being able to withstand the void’s destructive power, Su Chen also needed to be able to move quickly through the void.
As such, Su Chen decided to use Void Starsilver to construct a pair of Void Boots for himself.
These Void Boots were made from Beast Hide, Heavenly Silk, and Void Starsilver. The Heavenly Silk was something that he had brought along for the Deep Sea Sorrow expedition. The Beast Hide, on the other hand, had been gathered on-site from the Void Seahorse. Originally, the Void Seahorse hadn’t been willing to cooperate, but Su Chen had tricked it by demonstrating his recent comprehensions of spatial power and then lying that he was confident in being able to keep the island intact if they really were to fight. Only with that threat did the Void Seahorse obediently lower its head.
In any case, the amount of hide needed to construct two boots was not much anyways.
There was one step of the construction, however, that gave Su Chen quite a bit of trouble. In order to give this Origin Tool its unique properties, he needed to inscribe an Origin Formation in it, which was not his area of expertise. The Lightless Blade’s situation was different because it was already a completed tool with its own Origin Formation inside; the Flowing Gold Blade merely conferred upon the Lightless Blade its appetite for metal.
The boots, however, needed to be made entirely from scratch, so Su Chen would need to personally inscribe an Origin Formation for them.
After many days of contemplation, he finally decided on a risky solution to this troublesome problem.
He wasn’t going to inscribe an Origin Formation.
He was going to imprint Method Power!
Given his level of understanding of spatial Method Power, if he was able to imprint that onto a tool, it should be more than sufficient to take the place of an Origin Formation.
This was probably the first time that Method Power would be used as the core component of a piece of equipment.
Su Chen had no idea what the outcome would be, but since there was so much Void Starmetal and Beast Hide available, it was worth trying.
Su Chen began to earnestly imprint his comprehension of Method Power and how to apply it into the boots.
This was wholly different from an Origin Formation.
Origin Formations were designed to operate by a set of rules. Once the Origin Formation was inscribed, effects that corresponded to these preset rules could be unleashed.
Method Power, on the other hand, was related to the principles that governed the operation of the world; it was the root of all things. As such, theoretically, it was infinitely adaptable.
Origin Formations functioned on a macro-scale, while Method Power was on the micro-scale — difficult to understand and grasp.
In some sense, imbuing a piece of equipment with the principles of Method Power would give it an infinite number of possibilities
As such, Su Chen had no idea what would happen once he successfully imprinted Method Power into his boots. He could only do his best to guide its creation in the direction that he wanted it to take.
The boots took three hundred hourglasses to finish.
After imprinting the boots with the final bit of spatial Method Power, Su Chen lifted them into the air. The boots emitted a profound and mysterious glowing aura as they appeared to morph right in his hands.
The Method Power, which was impossible to perceive under normal circumstances, appeared to manifest itself immediately. In that moment, Su Chen could sense the Method Power on the boots activating of its own will, forming them into a new shape.
Su Chen didn’t know what it would become. He had minimally restricted the Method Power on the boots, allowing it as much free reign as he could.
Very quickly, a set of new inscriptions automatically appeared on the boots.
It was an Origin Formation!
But Su Chen wasn’t the one who had inscribed this pattern. Instead, it had taken form all on its own.
The principles of heaven and earth had guided the formation of this pattern upon these boots.
These boots had basically been created by the Heavens. Su Chen didn’t know that he had just accomplished an unprecedented feat. Even so, he gazed at the boots in his hands with incomparable excitement, wanting to know what kind of effects had been bestowed upon them.
The Origin Formation’s inscriptions appeared quite slowly, as if someone was manually drawing them one by one with a brush. Towards the end, the inscriptions appeared so slowly that it almost felt as if the brush was being dragged through a thick pool of oil.
Even so, the more slowly the inscriptions appeared, the more obvious it was that these boots were being imbued with an extraordinary power.
Even though it was still spatial power, there was now an ineffable quality to it.
Even Su Chen felt his heart palpitate in awe at the boots’ aura.
What was this?
He didn’t know.
But since the situation had already reached this point, he could only wait and see.
Finally, the boots stopped transforming.
All of the light had disappeared as the boots settled down. The boots returned to their plain state, as if nothing had ever happened.
However, Su Chen could sense that something was clearly different.
As if…… something was changing around him.
He cautiously picked up the boots and glanced around him.
At that moment, he was still on the island.
The island was still as sparse and desolate as always.
Apart from the spectral Diomedes and the Void Seahorse, which spent most of its time sleeping, there was nothing really special of note.
Even so, at that moment, an ominous sense of danger began to creep over him.
Su Chen let his puppets out.
This action immediately caused the Void Seahorse to tense up. Even Diomedes felt that Su Chen’s actions were strange.
Diomedes glanced around and seriously said, “I can promise you that there’s nothing alive around us.”
Diomedes was an Astral. No lifeform could sneak past his senses, unless it wasn’t actually alive at all.
Even so, the portent that Su Chen felt had reached its peak.
He suddenly jumped into the air.
Whoosh!
A violent void fluctuation rippled past him so quickly that he almost couldn’t see it.
Only someone who had comprehended spatial Method Power could tell that that attack was definitely on the level of Dimensional Slash, if not greater.
An attack!
An actual attack!
Su Chen whirled around and slashed out in the direction that the attack had come from.
There was no response — Su Chen’s attack hadn’t even caused a ripple in response.
The surroundings were as empty as always, as if the attack had never even occurred.
“What’s going on?! Why are we being attacked?!” Diomedes yelled out anxiously. “There aren’t any other lifeforms here apart from the three of us!”
Su Chen glanced around and vaguely muttered, “The guy who attacked us isn’t here.”
As he spoke, he suddenly stabbed his sword forwards.
Even though it seemed like this sword strike had hit nothing but empty air, it actually sent streaks of rainbow-colored light everywhere.
And amongst the iridescent light, a shadowy, grey figure could be seen.
This figure was humanoid in appearance. And as soon as it appeared, it began to float in Su Chen’s direction.