My Taboo Harem!

[Hollow Touch Lv.1]

[Description:Host may perceive and physically disturb minor hollow points existing within matter, energy, barriers and spiritual constructs. By touching an identified hollow, Host may weaken the integrity of the surrounding structure, disturb the flow of energy through it or create a temporary flaw that may be exploited through sufficient force.]

Phei read the description slowly, then went through it a second time before his expression settled somewhere between thoughtful and unimpressed.

"So... I touch weaknesses."

[An oversimplification.]

"An accurate oversimplification."

The System declined to reward that excellent description.

Phei leaned back and considered the ability more seriously.

Everything contained minute places where its existence was slightly less complete than the surrounding whole. Matter possessed microscopic hollows in its structure, energy barriers could contain points where their circulation thinned, and even spiritual constructs might carry tiny absences between the essence, intention and authority holding them together.

Hollow Touch allowed Phei to find those places and disturb them.

Unfortunately, Level One did not mean he could stroll up to a mountain, tap it politely and watch several billion tons of geology reconsider structural integrity. The hollow needed to exist already, Phei first had to perceive it, and anything sufficiently powerful could possess hollows so minute or stable that disturbing them accomplished very little without further force.

That made the ability useful against barriers, formations, defensive treasures and certain techniques, and Phei could already imagine how disgusting it might become once properly developed.

Tonight, however...

He shrugged.

"I don’t think that’s saving my ass."

Phei pushed the first window aside and opened the second.

[Minimal Void Sense Lv.1]

[Description: Host may faintly perceive disturbances connected to the Void, including minor spatial hollows, erased traces, missing presences, swallowed spaces and locations where ordinary existence has been unnaturally disturbed. Current perception is limited by range, clarity and Host’s understanding of the Void.]

Phei stared at the word Minimal for a moment.

"At least you’re honest."

This one initially sounded even better than the last... he could faintly sense things that were missing or connected to the void.

Still, the description explained several strange sensations he had begun experiencing since touching the deeper Void. Certain places occasionally felt wrong despite appearing perfectly ordinary. Tiny discontinuities existed where space seemed fractionally incomplete, and erased traces sometimes became noticeable precisely because something should have remained where nothing now existed.

Minimal Void Sense was apparently what allowed him to notice those disturbances.

Understanding them was another matter.

At Level One, it felt less like receiving supernatural sight and more like discovering his ears could suddenly perceive another frequency while every creature speaking on that frequency had decided to whisper from behind several walls.

’Useful later.’

Phei opened the final window.

[Void Step Lv.1]

His eyes sharpened:

[Description: Host can collapse your position to the Void and emerge through another spatial hollow within a maximum distance of ten meters. Movement occurs instantaneously without crossing the intervening physical distance. Host may Step in any direction and through ordinary physical obstacles, provided a viable destination exists within your perception.]

Phei’s expression gradually flattened.

"Ten meters?"

The System offered nothing.

Phei could create portals capable of crossing distances so ridiculous he had never bothered discovering their limit, yet after finally awakening an actual movement technique from the Void itself, he had apparently received enough range to teleport across a respectable bedroom.

But all that was nothing compared to one word that had dragged his attention.

Instantaneously!

Ten meters was insulting for transportation.

Inside a fight, ten meters could become enormous and move him from directly in front of an incoming blade to behind the bastard swinging it before the attack had even completed.

"All right."

Phei rose from the couch and rolled his shoulders.

"Let’s see how pathetic you actually are."

The lounge offered plenty of room for experimentation, its warm amber lamps pushed mostly toward the walls while the furniture remained clear of the broad central floor. If Phei managed to embarrass himself, at least he had chosen somewhere private enough that no witnesses could preserve the humiliation for future generations.

Or so he believed.

Several meters away, Consort remained perfectly concealed, her presence folded beyond his current perception so thoroughly that even Minimal Void Sense passed over her without finding anything unusual.

Phei focused on an empty section of floor roughly eight meters ahead.

There were no hand seals to remember and no complicated circulation pattern waiting inside him. The ability felt surprisingly simple, almost brutally so. He chose the destination, commanded the Void and allowed whatever came afterward to happen.

"Void Step."

Something reached him.

Phei’s entire body flickered before collapsing inward.

For less than a heartbeat, flesh, clothes, blood, essence and presence seemed to lose their ordinary shape as his figure folded into a black-white distortion and compressed through an impossible direction that did not belong to conventional space.

Then he disappeared and next reality spat him out almost eight meters away.

His right foot struck the floor first...

Badly.

"Wha..."

His balance vanished before the rest of him remembered balance was important. Phei twisted, attempted to correct himself, somehow improved absolutely nothing and landed squarely on his ass with enough force to insult both Dragon pride and villa flooring.

Silence followed.

Phei remained seated for several seconds with one palm against the floor, dignity quietly gathering its belongings around him.

"...Ouch." So he can lose his balance in the Void despite the ridiculous power and his stats.

At the edge of the lounge, Consort’s eyes widened before her lips immediately compressed.

No... absolutely not.

She was an Immortal, and Consort to one of the most terrifying women existence had ever suffered. She had crossed realms, watched armies collapse and ended lives without allowing emotion to disturb so much as the angle of her shoulders... she would not laugh merely because Phei had disappeared with the majesty of an awakening Void sovereign and returned to reality like someone had thrown him out of a cupboard.

A tiny sound escaped through her nose.

Consort covered her mouth immediately.

Phei looked around; his eyes narrowed suspiciously for another moment before he rubbed his abused backside and climbed upright.

Luckily, Eira was not here.

If that little traitor had witnessed the landing, Phei suspected he would still hear about it after becoming a Primordial.

He pushed the humiliation aside and replayed what had happened.

The movement had been instant.

’Actually instant.’

Phei had not crossed those eight meters at incredible speed with wind rushing across his skin, and the floor passing beneath his feet and there had been no awareness of travelling between either location!

More importantly, he had not folded space in the way his portals did...

Portals manipulated access between places, creating a passage through which Phei physically moved from one point to another.

Void Step had done something fundamentally different.

Phei himself had vanished from the ordinary route connecting those two positions.

For one infinitesimal instant, his body had been folded into something else before the world accepted him again at his destination.

The sensation bothered him slightly, though there had been no pain.

What unsettled him was how external the movement had felt. Phei had given the command, yet the actual Step seemed to have been performed by something reaching outward from the Void and taking a hold of him.

There had been no finesse to it and the sensation had felt crude too, powerful and almost reluctant, like some vast thing obeying because it recognized an authority it had not yet decided whether it respected.

Phei slowly opened and closed one hand.

"Did the Void itself just... listen?"

He waited but nothing answered; perhaps his mind was simply trying to give personality to something it did not yet understand.

Still, he had felt it.

Phei stored the thought away before another mystery could climb onto the already overcrowded shelf inside his head. He had enough unresolved cosmic nonsense without beginning a philosophical argument with literal nothingness.

The more immediate problem was considerably simpler.

His landing had looked fucking stupid: so range and control.

Two problems.

Phei selected another point, this time almost ten meters away, and focused more carefully on how he wanted his body positioned when he emerged.

"Void Step."

He vanished again: there was one brief instant where every ordinary sensation disappeared, then reality returned and Phei emerged ten meters away with his knees already bending.

Both feet struck properly this time; his upper body was lurched forward hard enough that he needed two quick steps to catch himself, but his ass survived the second experiment with dignity intact.

"Better."

From her hiding, Consort nodded approvingly before realizing what she had done and becoming mildly irritated with herself.

Phei tried again; sideways and his body folded and emerged beside the windows, then backward, vanishing beside the glass and reappearing closer to the couch.

Forward again:

***

With every use, the strange sensation became easier to interpret. Despite the name, he did not need to physically step anywhere at the beginning. His stance mattered far less than he had assumed. What truly mattered was choosing a viable destination and surrendering his current position to the Void.

That realization naturally encouraged stupidity.

Phei looked toward the ceiling.

"Hm."

Consort’s expression immediately changed.

She knew that sound.

Phei selected a point several meters above the lounge floor.

Void Step activated.

He vanished and appeared almost six meters in the fucking air!

For approximately half a second, Phei felt extremely clever before gravity submitted a formal objection.

"Ah, fuck."

He dropped.

Instinct took over before he could reach the floor, Phei focused on another position several meters away and activated Void Step again, his falling body disappeared and emerged upright beside the couch.

Perfectly still.

Phei blinked.

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