Chapter 231: Into the Hidden Dark II
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Sekhmet guided Sofia and Natasha through next, keeping enough distance to react if either tried something stupid. Neither did. The seal on their bodies and the unknown waiting beyond the doorway had pressed their confidence down hard enough that even their silence felt cautious now.
Then he crossed the threshold himself.
The world changed.
It did not change with sound. It changed by removing sound.
The void land opened around them vast and unnatural, a silent domain beneath a dark sky that did not behave like a true sky. There were no stars. No moon. No clouds. Just a deep stretch of layered darkness above, endless and strangely calm, as if the heavens here had never been built for weather or time.
Distance felt wrong in the void land. Not dangerous wrong. Bigger wrong. The kind of wrong that made the eyes hesitate before trusting what they saw. Space spread outward in all directions with a quiet arrogance, as though land and emptiness had negotiated a private agreement and chosen to keep mortals out of it.
The ground rolled away in muted dark tones, barren and open, wide enough to make normal courtyards feel childish and cramped. The air was still. No wind touched the skin. No insects hummed. No leaves rustled. No city murmur followed them inside. Just the enormous silence of a place that belonged more to secrecy than to nature.
Even Elena stopped.
Even Lady Seraphiel stopped.
That alone was worth noticing.
The older women stood side by side and looked across the void land with the same rare expression, restrained shock, though the shock meant different things in each face. For Elena, it was the realization that a power she had already respected in battle was far larger than she had guessed. For Seraphiel, it was sharper and more technical. Her eyes moved across the horizon, across the strange dark sky, across the texture of the ground, and Sekhmet could almost feel her measuring everything, silently assembling conclusions piece by piece about just how absurd this supposed lucky ruin prize really was.
"Well," Seraphiel said softly, "that is not a closet."
Bat Bat hovered proudly in the air like she personally deserved half the credit. "I told everyone he is special, but no, nobody listens to Bat Bat, great scholar of obvious truths."
One of the maids nearly sat down right there. Another did sit down on a stone after her knees made a separate decision without consulting the rest of her body. The third maid stared into the distance with the expression of someone rethinking every life choice that had brought her into domestic service under this particular roof.
Mira’s eyes widened despite herself. She turned slowly, looking around at the vastness, then up at the dark sky, then back toward Sekhmet as if he might apologize for casually owning a hidden world.
The twins stood shoulder to shoulder, scanning the horizon with the hard alertness of trained survivors trying to decide whether a place was empty or simply too large to show its teeth yet.
Auri looked over the land and let out a long, low breath. Even though he had seen the void land before, it still had a way of making old surprises feel new.
And this time there was something else.
He pointed first.
"Lord Sekhmet," Auri said. "Over there."
Sekhmet followed his gaze.
Near the side of the path where the spirit leaf’s small shelter and Auri’s rough little house stood, something had changed.
At first his mind did not fully accept it because the void land had trained everyone to expect barrenness. Dark soil. Empty ground. Silent space. But there, around the shelter and a little past the house, a thin spread of green had appeared.
Grass.
Not much. Not enough to transform the landscape. Just small patches. Scattered growth. A few brave strips and clusters pushing up out of the barren earth like nature itself had made a quiet bet against the void and decided to test its chances.
But in a land this empty, that little bit of green felt louder than a forest.
Sekhmet stared.
Even Bat Bat noticed. "That was not here before."
"No," Sekhmet said quietly. "It was not."
They moved a little closer, and the change became clearer. The grass was real. Fine, soft, still young. It spread in narrow seams around the spirit leaf’s area, clinging close as if drawn there by some gentle force. Beside it stood Auri’s house, humble and sturdy, looking slightly less lonely now with even this small touch of life near it.
Lady Seraphiel’s gaze sharpened. "Interesting."
Sekhmet’s thoughts moved inward at once.
System. How is this possible?
The answer came quickly.
[Ding! SYSTEM Notification: Analysis complete.
The spirit leaf used her nature aligned ability to influence the surrounding ground.
Forest and nature type beings can generate plant growth even in abnormal environments.
The growth amount depends on the being’s rank, purity, and energy reserves.
At her current rank, limited grass and minor life spread is the maximum expected output.]
Sekhmet kept staring at the green.
A little grass.
That was all.
But to him, at that moment, it looked like a possibility.
She can really grow things here? he asked silently.
[Ding! SYSTEM Notification: Yes.
With greater rank, greater energy, and stronger nature affinity, larger plant life can be sustained.]
That thought hit him hard.
He looked out across the barren land again, and for the first time he did not just see a secret prison or a hidden battlefield or a personal storage realm.
He saw an empty world.
One that might not have to stay empty forever.
A strange idea rose in his chest, quiet and immediate.
"Can I make this place green?" he asked.
There was a brief pause.
Then the system answered.
[Ding! SYSTEM Notification: Yes.
Recommendation: acquire pure chaos tree seeds.
Pure chaos trees can grow in environments without natural sunlight.
Such trees absorb ambient or supplied chaos energy as their primary nourishment.
The host’s chaos energy can be used as a growth medium.
Any available light source may support visual growth cycles, but is not required for survival.]