It was a dark realm.
Similar to the Void, except instead of celestial bodies like stars or drifting cosmic particles, it was filled with pipes.
Better yet, nodes, each interconnected chaotically, stretching farther into the Void than he could see.
This realm remained absolutely silent, devoid of both sound and motion, until a quiet flicker arose and a figure appeared within.
It was a tiny black cat, its fur almost blending into the surrounding Void.
This was none other than Void, and for his smaller size, he had learned to ignore it, as it was nothing but the effect of being within this Void realm.
Void floated forward quietly, looking around him.
He soon turned to his side and discovered a peculiar set of interconnected pipes.
"Here..."
"The Celestial Wingo Realm should be situated around here," he mused, looking at the nodes, but then he was dumbfounded.
"If the gate ought to be hiding the nodes, then it’s obvious there should be no nodes here at all, yet here they are."
"That could only mean one thing," Void mused, looking at the nodes.
"This is a trap," he muttered beneath his breath.
Things like these were usually left within the Void:
Fake Nodes.
Stepping into them, one might expect to enter the correct node, but could suddenly find themselves hundreds of miles from where they intended.
This must have been laid down by the experts at the gate.
Any fool would have teleported straight in, only to probably land in some underground dungeon where all Void nodes had been locked perfectly, imprisoning them without the guards even lifting a finger.
"But if the nodes are hidden, then where are they hidden? Where are the missing blanks?" he asked none other than himself.
Its limbs hovered around the space, driving it forward.
It weaved in between these wrapped-up nodes, getting stuck in some that were too tightly knit together.
But just like a cat, wherever his head could enter, his entire body could definitely go in, and Void was no exception.
"Huuuu!"
He exhaled loudly in relief as he tore himself out of an exceptionally tight hole, breathing out in exhaustion.
He turned around to see the hole that had given him so much trouble, and his brows quivered.
"It’s not even that small a hole?" he mused, before turning to his stomach.
Even with his small size, the flab of fat could still be seen jiggling around, and Void grabbed it, shaking it up and down for a while before he groaned tiredly.
"I really need to get back in shape after this," he muttered, before turning his attention forward.
Now that he had been able to cross through the trap nodes, he had arrived in a different area.
An area that held the place where the real Void nodes to the Celestial Wingo Realm ought to be, but just as expected, there was nothing.
Before him was an endless stretch of Void with not even a single node in sight.
Without nodes, there was no way he could open a vortex that led into a place that didn’t exist.
This was what he was trying to explain to Ryuk, but in that moment, the words echoed out in his head.
_______
"But there is a place there, right? And if there’s a place, then there is a node. It is just hidden!"
_______
"Now that I think of it," Void mused quietly, floating forward.
"This is a realm of nodes, so the word ’no nodes’ shouldn’t exist," he muttered softly to himself.
"So if nodes don’t exist, the high chances were that..." he mused before he paused.
"It was being hidden!"
He narrowed his eyes suspiciously at the blank area around him.
Slowly, the empty pieces began coming together, and the form of things began piecing itself together in his mind.
Even though the area around him was nothing but a blank Void, as he continued floating, it all began appearing in his head.
Ethereal images of nodes all around him in the empty space.
Void was never one to give such in-depth thought to something quickly, and soon his head began ringing with headaches.
Still, he continued wallowing around for about ten circles.
By the eleventh circle, he had been able to completely piece everything together.
"To hide a node, one must take advantage of the Rune Node."
As he imagined the arrangement of the nodes, he slowly drifted to where the Rune node ought to be, and quickly appeared before it.
Without his eyes opening, his hands morphed into claws that instantly dipped into the Void.
As expected, the claw didn’t fit like expected.
It fit wrongly, and so he tried more forms of dipping before he found the one where all his claws entered, and in the next moment, it dipped, finding the right nodes before he forcefully twisted.
CLINK!
CLINK!
CLINK!
The clear sounds of a lock being unlocked immediately rang out, and Void snapped his eyes open in the next moment.
His fur stood on end, feeling a sudden swell of energy, and immediately it raced away from the Void.
BOOOOOOOOM!
A powerful collision of energy sent Void flying out of the blank space.
It quieted down a moment later, and Void dragged himself out of the trapped node he was hiding in.
When he looked forward, his jaw dropped.
Right before him, the blank spaces were no more.
Instead, there was an endless array of various nodes.
Nodes that should lead directly into the Celestial Wingo Realm.
"I did it! I finally did it!" Void screamed in glee, preparing to quickly open a vortex in one of the nodes, but then he paused.
A sudden roll of purple energy appeared, repelling the node he had been trying to open.
"What the?" he muttered.
He tried to open another one, only to fail.
It was like the nodes had been locked down, but that didn’t make sense.
It was impossible to lock down the nodes. The Void can be locked down from the outside world but never within.
Before Void could give his third try, sudden words echoed, freezing him completely and sending all his fur standing on end.
"And who might you be?"