I fly closer to the floating forest as the dark void falling down on me expands and descends at a constant rate.
While it appears at the far edges of my perception, hundreds of kilometers in the air, it's still rapidly descending, and my assumption is I only have a few more minutes to find a way to transport the trees with me before they're engulfed in the void of nothingness too and I lose my chance.
With soul energy and yellow divine threads powering my footsteps through the air, I make my single focus the small clump of obsidian trees.
Many thoughts race through my mind about how they'll react to my spatial magic. I compile multiple tests in an order in which I'll follow them, just in case the seeds at their cores are harder to capture than I initially anticipated.
The next few minutes go by in a blur.
I push myself and make it to the floating forest just in time as the endless void is less than a dozen kilometers overhead.
With under a minute to perform my tests, I use my heightened senses to open up various spatial magic portals to test things out.
Some of the trees have grown as high as 100m into the air from where their seeds float in the water, while others have just begun to sprout and haven't even grown as tall as my greater form.
I target the smaller trees first.
I dive down into the trees and don't even try to keep myself hidden or my intentions subtle as I come crashing down into the rocky forest to create a massive crater in front of the still badly injured hunter being torn apart by red divine threads from the inside. He's clearly going through the withdrawal symptoms from eating the red fragments without his body being ready.
Once the dust clears and I stand before him with my arms crossed, the apex hunter's eyes widen and he coughs up even more of his blood.
However, that doesn't stop him from charging his body with electricity and pulling a handful of red and orange fragments from his item box.
"It's- You! I knew I'd find you! The Bedrock Region will pay! All of you will pay! I can finally get my revenge! I'll show you once and for all the Apex Region is greater than all the other regions combined." He yells out with sleep-deprived eyes and a battle-crazed stare.
I let out a sigh as he brings the fragments to his lips.
My gaze moves to the sky as I still sense the void descending, and shake my head while whispering under my breath. "I gave you more than enough chances to change, this is truly just who you are... It's time for you to give up, Trax. This is getting sad."
I activate my mana manipulation skill, binding its malleable form with yellow divine energy and telekinesis to perfect the fine movements and shoot out an orb of energy toward the blood-stained hunter to knock the handful of fragments out of his grasp.
Next, the yellow orb of light expands and turns into many impossibly tough yellow ropes that wrap around the hunter's neck, arms, and legs. I lift him in the air, unable to move, with an angry and disgusted expression on his face while I push him up against a tree about 5 meters away.
He starts to yell out again, presumably an insult or degrading other regions for no good reason, but I shut him up by activating intimidation and confusion to blast his psyche with an attack that would knock out an enemy ten times his strength.
The hunter's eyes turn white, and he falls to the floor of the forest while I use plunderer and lifesteal to bring both his MP and HP below 5%.
The moment they do, I get the mythic grade absorption notification that allows me to steal skills without killing the enemy, and I allow the red soul energy to wrap around his body without hesitating at all.
Seconds later, a skill orb with extreme grade lightning summoning falls into my storage.
I think about whether or not I should kill him here and send him back to the association asleep , or let the mysterious void envelop him.
Either way, there's a risk that he'll tell this story, and my meticulously crafted hunter identity will be linked to someone who can take skills from people's status. While it wouldn't be the end of the world, it would be a waste of time and effort for putting up this facade for so long.
My mind races while the endless void continues to descend.
Then, a perfect idea comes to mind.
I pull out an item from my storage that I crafted by accident when I was first playing with the limits of my mythic grade plunderer skill, then read its description.
[Enchanted Lizardman's Claw Pendant][+55% Mental Strength][Plunderer Attribute][Cursed]
[Cursed Item Created!] The holder of this item will lose 1% of their remaining MP every minute. If the item holder hits 10% of their original max MP with this cursed item still on their person, even if MP is restored and the item is removed, the item effects will not leave the user's status.
I rename the pendant to [Unknown Item][Cursed] and in my mythic grade craftsman skills editor interface, I completely scramble all of its descriptions with question marks and random jumbled letters.
Next, I use telekinesis to place the cursed item around Trax's neck, and it appears on his status instantly, and the slow MP drain activates automatically.
I walk over, letting out a divine energy-imbued fireball behind me to destroy the last remaining teleport platform, then stop about 20 meters in front of the rift that leads back to the association.
There's just one more problem I have to solve... If I walk through this rift without my partner Emrie Carter from the Bedrock Region, there are going to be quite a lot of questions I'm unable to answer.