Strawberry Devil in a Fantasy World

The two of us left my home and entered the second layer of my subspace. Before I did, I casted my void barrier around myself, or rather, my status and celestial core. No one but me should be able to see my own status! I made this a permanent thing so no one should be able to land a sneak attack on me.

The previous |void| trait was like a demo version of the real thing.

Currently, energy generation and conversion was at least ten times more than before. It was essentially a tiny black hole.

My original |void| trait prevented others from targeting me directly. Now, I could adjust the properties of this |void| trait on anything I applied it to. For example, I could become completely invisible to all senses, essentially devoid of existence, if I casted the strongest version of void barrier around myself. If I wished to be visible, I could just adjust the trait on it, and I would become visible. Of course, self-defence wasn't the only thing this could apply to. All in all, this trait was one of my trump cards.

"Yo, Oortez, how've you been?"

He was just making angry faces within the barrier I encased him in.

"Oops, forgot about it." I snapped my finger like a boss, "There you go!"

He seemed like he was about to try another insult but refrained himself from doing so. His eyes narrowed at me and I just replied with a mischievous smile. I knew he tried to examine my status.

Nice try, rookie.

"Oortez, before we leave, I need buy some insurance from you. You don't mind, do you?"

"What non-sense are you speaking?"

"Or, do you rather be stuck in my subspace forever? No, right?"

"No... " He scrunched his face.

"Great, then you accept my proposal?"

"Do I have a choice?"

"Of course. I just gave you two choices. Vorte, this isn't violating any Edicts, right?"

"Indeed, no."

"Perfect! Oortez, stay still, otherwise I might mess up!"

"Huh?"

"Here it comes!"

Via my [creation] ability, I locked onto his soul. In an instant, half of soul energy pertaining to knowledge was isolated. Then, I carefully sealed away into my subspace.

I also did not forget to remove the backdoor channel that allowed thought manipulations. It was something likely not even Oortez was aware of. Someone was apparently able to hack through the |devious| trait which meant I just had to remove it to destroy the backdoor.

The work was finished in a jiffy because the upgraded [creation] ability was just that awesome.

"What did you do to me!?"

I checked his status to confirm the results. He lost about a third of his level and good chunk of his stats. His |devious| trait had also disappeared. Though, just because it was removed didn't mean he would suddenly become a righteous demon. There was no such thing as a righteous demon. It might take some time before I should see changes if at all.

As expected, soul mass really has something to do with levels.

"Like I said, it was insurance. Once this is over, you can have it back. It was part of our agreement, right? It's not like complaining will get you anywhere."

"You! I...!"

"Nuh uh! Treat me nicely or else."

"Grr... You are vicious."

I guess I should keep it down a notch otherwise ugly traits will start popping up...

Based on the information I had gathered, there were two ways to bypass the chaos barrier.

Originally, if I hadn't evolved again, I would have tried to collapse my subspace and use my previous void barrier to imitate or rewrite the condition to allow my passage. And, if that didn't work, then I would try to split the subspace infinite times in a single direction to breach the barrier since subspaces weren't real but merely concepts or as Vorte putted it, dream world. By creating countless stacking singularities, eventually, a zero would become a one, probably? However, the chance of failure was quite high since the other side could adjust the barrier size. And, if all that failed, I would brute force it with my abilities because fundamentally no barrier was invincible. It was only a matter of willpower.

Now that I had evolved, I knew that completely collapsing my subspace was impossible. What had came into existence cannot return non-existence.

With my upgraded |void| trait, I could easily bypass this chaos barrier or override it. Something that theoretically didn't truly exist couldn't be influenced. In a way, my new void barrier functioned as a null space which existed everywhere and nowhere. Though in my case, space existed within my barrier and I could still control the movement of space outside.

Simply put, I took a page out of Echo's book and made it my own!

"Alright, off we go."

I casted a second set of void barrier around the three of us. Within this barrier, the coordinates displayed were nearly all zeroes. Of course, that was because the barrier's coordinate was absolute zero and we didn't share the same positions.

I inputted the coordinates provided by [creation]. Just like that, the scenery changed to that of a familiar vast desert. It was just too bad I couldn't input time coordinates.

"Easy as that! Vorte, aren't you proud of me?"

"Indeed. You have come a long way."

"Will you be going back to Vera?"

"Yes."

"Alright, I'll drop by later. Can you let Kanoko know there's a bit of delay on my side?"

"Consider it done."

"Thanks! You're the best!"

After I released my barrier, Vorte silently took off. 

"Now, where is my little girl? Oortez, you should know. Where was the ambush?"

I was already at the general location where Smoothie was when I removed the fey cores. However, her presence was nowhere to be found, not even the escorts. I even checked the path she would have taken for the next few day and scanned the nearby canyons but there was not a sign of them. Not only that, the desert didn't leave a trace of any type of battle.

Looking at my [creation] menu, I was able to determine that less than a day had passed. Currently, the dark sky was littered with stars gently illuminating the world in silence. Even so, with my celestial eyes and enhanced senses, I could see clearly as day.

How strange... They must have the ability to teleport? Or, perhaps underground? No, I don't sense any underground activity but there are traces of magic. Were they sealed in a barrier then teleported? Or perhaps they reached their destination and I'm just over-thinking?

Just to be sure, I even warped to where Smoothie's plant body was. And, as expected, it had yet to evolve. There were a few wandering elves in its proximity surveying the forest but otherwise appeared uninvolved. Though, not too far away were several wreckages of one person sized magitech airships.

I quietly swapped the proxy fey core of the original body with an artificial one created by me. Along with the proxy fey core came a huge chunk of her original body, roots and vines. These were safely kept in my subspace in a suspended state.

No. This is bad... Really bad.

For the first time in a long time, my mind was going into hyperdrive. I tried my best to remain calm but my mind was racing, searching for any clues that might lead me to her.

Strictly speaking, I knew how to find her but I was afraid of a direct confrontation with De Planck. It would be suicidal. He was one of the most dangerous beings in this world. To make things worse, he probably had countless demons under him. I was one person, one being and I knew my limits. My traits and abilities were powerful but not to the point of omnipotent. I had to exercise caution.

"It might already be too late." Oortez stated solemnly.

"It better not be! Where is she? Do you have the coordinates?"

"After the ambush, they were supposed to be transported to the Kingdom of Appallia. I was not given their exact rendezvous nor was I interested."

"You better be interested now because your existence depends on it."

"I know!" He gritted his teeth with frustration.

Huh, the human kingdom, I guess a visit is due. Brace yourselves, if any harm comes to her, you'll all pay for it, dearly.

"Take me to their capital city where the Hero King is. He would know, wouldn't he? I have a bone to pick with him for manipulating the human populace into hating fey beings. I suffered quite a bit because of it, you know?"

"Fine, I'll take you there but leave me out of the mess."

I had a feeling that Oortez was not fully telling me the truth. It was as if this was all part of their plan to lure me to the Hero King. And, after I had weakened, De Planck would have analyzed my powers and came up with a way to subdue me elsewhere. I knew yet I had no other way of locating Smoothie thus I decided to play along.

Regardless of what my excuse was, I would technically be considered an invader and the Hero King a defender. However, because I wasn't a demon, I should still have the advantage. In the best case scenario, I would negotiate with him and rescue my kid. A plan was set in motion.

Let's see if he deems me as an invader or a visitor.

I still had the official seal Kanoko had given me.

I flew up into the sky. Once I had a clear visual of the human country, I warped into their sky along with a pet demon in tow.

In a few seconds, I had reached their capital city, Rotask, where the Hero King resided.

Hmm... So this is their capital city.

I was a bit perplexed by the mood of city. It was in a festival mood despite the opposite I had expected. After all, they just lost a major battle; it didn't make sense for them to celebrate.

Unless, they haven't received a single reports. Is that even possible? I didn't even wipe out all of them.