"T-That..." Theo stammered, unable to find words to express his surprise. "Where did you get that?" He finally managed to squeeze out the words amidst his shock. Even Duke Gravier, his father, was surprised at his reaction. This was the prodigy Theo, who was unfazed by everything in the world as though he had seen it all. It seemed, however, that he was still a seven-year-old.
The problem, though, was that he was surprised to see a stone. It seemed this stone was not ordinary. "Do you know what it is? To date none of the ancestors could come up with any ideas, so they just directly called it Black Stone. My father mentioned to me that it was given to us by The Fates. It is the only indication that they actually visited us."
"Of course I know what it is. Can I have it?" Theo asked, eyes never leaving the 'stone,' like a man possessed. "S-Sure, right after I finish what I was saying earlier." Duke Gravier replied, a bit stunned by Theo's response.
Theo quickly fixed his expression after noticing his abnormality. He had been able to keep up his mysterious vibe for seven years, yet it seemed this one thing would out him. "Please continue," he said, acting as though that scene had never happened.
"Good. Earlier, I was about to tell you a story that has also been passed down in our family for generations. This story might actually be useful to you considering your... well, your talent."
*Boom* An explosion immediately sounded just as he was about to continue.
"Oh no, they're here!" Duke Gravier quickly pushed the jade box towards Theo. "Quickly, take it and leave this place. We will follow your original plan and stage a performance. However, it is imperative that you find The Fates; they are the only ones who can guide your path now." He quickly turned around while pulling along Solstice. "Friday!"
"Way ahead of you, sir." As though on the same wavelength, Friday pulled Theo and led him really quickly down a dark part of the mansion. "This is as far as I can take you, young master. Godspeed to you!" They were in front of an extremely old door that looked as though it had been eaten by termites yet was still extremely sturdy. Friday pushed the door to reveal a stairway barely illuminated by the one torch hung on the right side of the wall.
Theo dashed out and plunged into the darkness while the door closed behind him. He had barely gone a few meters before realizing he didn't take the torch with him. He slapped his forehead and climbed back up before uprooting the torch from its metal mount. He once again plunged deeper into this unknown rabbit hole before disappearing out of sight.
Outside the mansion, about a hundred white-robed figures continuously bombarded a translucent dome that covered the entire mansion. This went on for a while before the owner of the mansion personally came out to welcome them. After today, some very shocking news spread across the whole of the kingdom, and because of that news, Duke Gravier was directly called over to the capital for an audience with the king.
After two days of travelling non-stop, a tired Theo finally found a large lake in the forest a few hundred kilometers south of the city. He stopped to rest for a while and unintentionally slept off. He was luckily still in the range of the city, where it was mandatory to clean up the fierce beasts very often. If he had encountered a fierce beast in his sleep, poor Theo wouldn't even know what hit him; perhaps he would just wake up in the Netherworld without a hitch.
Theo slept for hours before finally waking up to chirping sounds. The sun was high in the sky, and he was extremely refreshed after taking a very long nap on the tree branch. He sat up on the branch and took out the jade box from a wrapped cloth. According to knowledge he recalled, dragons were extremely rare in this world, and even more so for their eggs. Moreover, the rarest dragons were the black dragons said to rule space, and there could only be one in existence at each point in time. Whenever the black dragon nurtured an egg, it would immediately exhaust its lifespan and die.
Finding their eggs was even harder since these black dragons liked to reside in the nodes between space. They could travel a thousand miles in a second and leap past mountains and volcanoes like nothing was there. This was why Theo was shocked when he saw the dragon egg. If it were a normal dragon egg, perhaps it would make him raise his brows, but it would not elicit as much of a reaction as this black dragon egg did.
He recalled the hatching process of a dragon and shook his head. First, he had to learn to control his own power. The absolute perk of having void immunity was that he could devour literally anything. Whether or not he could use what he devoured would then depend on him. In a way, it was a blessing, and in a way, a curse. If he did not know his limits and went ahead to devour something above his pay grade, who's to say his body wouldn't explode from the massive intake of energy?
For a power as useful and also as useless as this, he had to find a cluster of people with various affinities, who had trained their elements to various lengths. Thinking this, Theo already had a destination in mind. But first he had to learn to harness even the most basic function of this void power. With enough practice, he could even warp his looks and use someone else as a scapegoat.
Over the next few days, Theo remained in this part of the forest, always close to the river. Whenever he was about to encounter one of the search teams that had been sent after him, he would disappear into thin air and hold his breath for a while. After some time, he no longer needed to hold his breath. He could directly steal the light that reflected on him without anyone noticing. This would prove an invaluable skill to him in the future.