Chapter 1302: Evolved Powers: Another Attack!!!

Phei had stared at that version for an embarrassing amount of time too.

"So its separate now?"

The System, naturally, had offered no useful commentary.

Bastard. ’I don’t need you to tell me the obvious either.’

But Phei understood it better after months of feeling the change happen inside himself and after so many fights and more cultivation and tempering!

Void and Void-Ice had always belonged together, yet they no longer needed to remain indistinguishable.

When Phei summoned Void-Ice now, he did not merely call upon ice carrying traces of Void. The two could descend together so naturally that distinguishing where one ended and the other began became almost impossible. Space could crack through frozen air. Ice could appear through a Void opening without first crossing the distance between them. Darkness could flow through frost, and frost could spread through the hollows Phei sensed everywhere around him.

Yet when he wanted only Void, the ice no longer needed to follow.

And when he called only Void-Ice, it possessed enough of itself to answer independently.

Phei exhaled slowly; it wasnt easy to explain to another person but himself.

A white mist escaped his lips and froze into glittering dust before the wind could carry it away.

"That took me way too long to understand." His other great change had nothing to do with winter:

Primordial Blood.

Phei lowered one hand and turned his palm upward.

A tiny bead of crimson rose from beneath his skin but no wound had opened.

The blood simply emerged.

It hovered above his palm, darker than ordinary blood and carrying a quiet pressure that made the surrounding frost tremble. Phei curled two fingers slightly, and the bead lengthened into a thin crimson thread before dividing into several smaller strands.

Months ago, manipulating Primordial Blood with that much delicacy would have demanded far more concentration and his INT stats.

Now it felt almost natural.

The Great Immortal elixir had refined more than his muscles, bones, marrow and organs. It had changed the Primordial Blood flowing through him as well, drawing him closer to something that had always existed inside his own body and almost part of his soul the way Void-Ice and the Void were yet had once felt far more difficult to understand.

He could feel it now.

Every pulse, every movement in every place and everyone and even beasts as long as there was blood or if they had blood running in them!

Phei had nowhere near the same mastery over it that he possessed over Void-Ice. Infinity Control remained an entirely different level of understanding, one he had not yet approached with Primordial Blood.

Gods, though...

The things he could already do with it.

His smile deepened.

Strengthening his body was merely the most obvious use. Primordial Blood could gather beneath his skin, flood a limb before impact, move through weapons, sharpen attacks and carry enough violent life within it to turn otherwise ordinary techniques into something far nastier; every imagination he could thing of with his Primordial Blood were all in realm of possibility!

Then there was the part Phei had enjoyed most.

Combining it!

Void-Blood had proved what happened when he stopped treating his powers as separate little treasures stored inside him and started allowing them to work together.

Void could tear open the road and even make his attack or any skill he used more 100x stronger. Primordial Blood could make whatever travelled through that road terrifying enough to kill and even explode on impact or from within.

Void-Ice could freeze an enemy before a Void Armament reached them.

True Void Steps could carry Phei behind something his Primordial Blood had already weakened.

True Void Sense could reveal the place an attack needed to emerge.

The possibilities were multiplying far faster than he could test them.

Phei scratched his cheek: "Calling them Void abilities is starting to sound stupid."

It had made sense when Hollow Touch, Void Step and Minimal Void Sense first appeared.

Abilities of the Void.

Easy.

But what exactly did one call them after the Void itself awakened as one of his elements?

Void abilities sounded almost disrespectfully small now.

Phei had awakened the Void, not simply a few techniques borrowing from it; he possessed the thing itself.

SCREEEEEECCCCCHHHH!!!!!

A violent screech interrupted his thoughts.

Phei’s eyes shifted.

The horizon had darkened.

Hundreds IF not thousands of Frost Reavers were pouring between distant glaciers, their wings beating through the storm while more shapes gathered behind them. Glacial Skyrays emerged higher in the clouds, their broad armored bodies gliding between pillars of frozen mist before angling toward him.

Below, the ice began shaking:

Cracks spread through the spotless plains as several Rime Colossi hauled themselves from beneath ancient frost, followed by smaller beasts whose claws scraped furrows across the ice while they charged.

Phei sighed: "So much for thinking."

A thunderous sound answered from beside him.

The Ice Dragon had already regenerated.

The broken jaw had returned perfectly into place. New crystalline scales covered the wounds left by the Rimeleeches, and even the torn sections across its back had closed beneath fresh layers of blue-white ice. Frost streamed from the enormous wings as it hovered beside Phei, its long body curling through the storm while bright eyes watched the approaching swarm.

Phei turned toward the Dragon.

For several seconds, he simply looked.

Then his mouth curved:

"Let’s do this."

The Dragon’s head shifted toward him.

Phei grinned wider.

Of everything that had happened during the endless months inside the Primordial Frozen Zone, the story behind this Dragon was easily the most interesting.

Actually...

It wasn’t even close.

That story was fucking insane!

Phei hovered before the great dragon with winter coiling around him with his white hair streaming behind his shoulders while the cold itself seemed to cling to his body like something tamed. His grin came easy, bright and shameless even out here in this frozen hell where lesser men would have long since gone mad.

"Hey, lady dragon," he called, voice carrying clearly across the screaming wind. "You can eat the cores and keep a few for later if you get full. I’ve got a lady to please back at home, you see."

He gave her that annoying, charming smile that somehow still looked sincere, then tilted his head a little as if he had not just said something outrageous to an existence that could swallow him whole.

"If you finish before I am done with these bastards, come join me." His grin sharpened; there were actually thousands of them coming to them!

"That is, if I’m not done with them first."

And then he was gone.

Space broke with a sharp, brutal crack.

Not metaphorically or beautifully; it truly split before him like glass forced apart by a hand too strong for the world, and Phei vanished into the dark seam with the ease of someone stepping through a familiar doorway. The rip closed behind him at once, but his voice lingered for another heartbeat, trailing back through the cold.

"Don’t take too long."

The dragon had not even drawn breath to answer him when—

BAAAAAAANNNNGGGGG!!!!!!