Infinite Hoarder: Storage of the Void

Chapter 4: Customer Return: Fireballs

The air in the clearing didn’t just heat up; it screamed.

The first acolyte, a man whose face was half-hidden by a jagged bone mask, thrust his obsidian staff forward. “Vermin! You think you can toy with the secrets of the Cathedral? Burn in the Rot’s embrace!”

A sphere of swirling violet flames, the size of a beach ball and humming with an unstable frequency, tore through the grass toward Baskara.

“Whoa, okay, look at that!” Baskara didn’t move. He stood his ground, his eyes darting across his blue status screen. “System, quantify the thermal output. Is that consistent with a standard combustion engine or are we talking high-grade plasma here?”

“Baskara, get down!” Valen screamed, her fingers already fumbling for another arrow. “That’s a Void Fireball! It doesn't just burn your skin, it eats your mana!”

“Eat my mana? Well, that sounds like an unauthorized withdrawal from my personal account,” Baskara muttered. He looked at the fireball, which was now only three meters away. “Let’s see... Target identified: Gaseous Thermal Mass. Status: Active. Logic? If I can store a turnip, I can store a fire.”

“Are you insane?” Mayari gasped, her voice cracking as she struggled to stand. “You can’t store an active spell!”

“Watch me. Select slot four. Label: ‘Spicy Air.’ Range check: Within reach. Now... Store!”

Baskara thrust his hand forward as if he were catching an invisible ball. The moment the violet flames made contact with the square of blue light shimmering in front of his palm, they didn’t explode. They didn’t even flicker.

They vanished.

The silence that followed was so heavy it felt physical.

“Wait,” the acolyte with the bone mask blinked, his staff still glowing. “Where did it go? Where did my mana go?”

“Honestly? About ten centimeters to the left of a very old sandwich,” Baskara said, checking his inventory logs with a satisfied nod. “And wow, you guys have a really terrible efficiency rating. You wasted about eighty percent of the energy just on the visual effects. You’re essentially just paying for a glorified light show.”

“Impossible!” the acolyte barked, his face turning a deep, angry purple. “You... you must be using a nullification shield! High Priest Johan said you were a discard! A failure with zero offensive capability!”

“Oh, Johan mentioned me? How sweet,” Baskara stepped forward, his boots crunching on the dry grass. “Did he also mention that I tend to overthink logistics? Because I just checked the weight limit. Fifty kilos of non-living items. Turns out, heat and kinetic impact don’t have mass in the traditional sense when they're contained. They’re just... data points. And my storage has quite a bit of storage for data.”

“He is a monster,” Mayari whispered from behind him. “He didn't just block it. He... he deleted it.”

“I didn't delete it, Mayari,” Baskara corrected her over his shoulder. “I’m just holding it in escrow. There’s a big difference. One is destruction; the other is deferred delivery.”

“Kill him! All of you, focus fire!” the lead acolyte shrieked.

The other five robed figures surrounded the clearing, their staves held high. A barrage of magical missiles, needles of dark ice, bolts of lightning, and more violet fire, rained down from every angle. It was enough firepower to level a fortress wall.

“Now you’re just spamming the system,” Baskara sighed. He started walking in a small circle, his hand moving in quick, rhythmic swipes through the air. “Store. Store. Store. Filter by velocity... and done. Store!”

One by one, the spells hit the invisible blue grid surrounding him and simply blinked out of existence. It looked like he was swatting invisible flies.

“Is he... is he really doing that?” Valen asked, her bow lowering slightly as she stared in disbelief. “He’s not even dodging. He’s just walking around like he’s picking groceries.”

“He is walking through a storm of gods as if it is a gentle mist,” Mayari murmured, her indigo eyes wide. “Who is this man?”

“Guys, look, I hate to be the one to tell you this,” Baskara called out as the acolytes’ barrage slowed down due to exhaustion, “but you’re literally just filling up my gas tank. I was worried about my mental energy limit, but it turns out tracking projectiles is actually quite fun. It’s like those old arcade games, but with much higher stakes.”

“What kind of hero are you?” the lead acolyte panted, his bone mask slipping. “Identify yourself! Which God granted you this heresy?”

“God? I’m from the Department of Logistics,” Baskara said, finally stopping his walk three feet from the lead acolyte. “We have a very strict policy regarding unwanted deliveries. Do you have a returns receipt?”

“A... what?”

“No? Okay then. That’s too bad,” Baskara said, his grin widening in a way that looked genuinely terrifying in the violet light. “Because according to the fine print of my Dimensional Expansion skill, items held in storage for less than five minutes can be released with all their properties intact. Including their original vector.”

“Vector?” the acolyte stammered.

“It’s a fancy word for ‘direction’,” Baskara said. “System! Set release output to: Multi-Target Spread. Item release: All stored spells. Target: The idiots in the dresses.”

“Wait, no!” the acolyte screamed.

“Delivery confirmed,” Baskara whispered. “No signature required.”

He slapped his hands together, then threw them outward.

A supernova of stored energy erupted from his palms. The sky, which had been dark only seconds before, turned a blinding white. All the fireballs, ice shards, and lightning bolts he had absorbed in the last three minutes were released simultaneously, but with one crucial difference: they were all aimed directly outward in a perfect 360-degree radius.

The impact was immediate.

The lead acolyte was lifted off his feet by his own violet flames, his bone mask shattering into a thousand pieces as he was thrown backward. The others were sent flying like ragdolls, their staves snapping as they were hammered into the surrounding bone-white trees with the sound of several car crashes happening at once.

Thud. Crack. Groan.

Silence returned to the Dark Forest, deeper than before. The only sound was the crackling of small, dying fires in the undergrowth.

“Wow,” Baskara said, peering through the smoke. “I really need to adjust the feedback on that. That almost knocked me over. Newton’s Third Law is a real pain when you don’t have a proper stabilizing platform.”

He looked around. The ritualists were all unconscious or embedded in the shrubbery. Not a single one was left standing.

“You...” Valen started, her voice barely a breath. “You just took out a whole squad of elite temple casters without drawing a weapon.”

“I draw conclusions, Valen. It’s more effective than steel,” Baskara replied, brushing ash off his shirt. “But man, my head is spinning. Storing energy really takes a toll on the processing power. I think I have a migraine coming on.”

Mayari struggled to her feet, using the ritual stone for support. She looked at the devastation around her, then at the man standing calmly in the middle of it. The purple veins on her skin were completely gone, her silver hair catching the dying light of the released magic.

She stepped toward him, her movements shaky but purposeful.

“You did not just save me,” she said, her voice filled with a gravity that made Valen go stiff. “You reclaimed my life from the Rot. You stood before the emptiness and told it to leave.”

“I just told it I didn't have space for it in the main inventory,” Baskara said, trying to downplay it. “Really, it’s all about resource management.”

Mayari didn't listen. She slowly lowered herself until one knee hit the mud. She reached down to the small, obsidian-hilted dagger at her belt, unsheathed it, and held it out with both hands, the flat of the blade resting on her palms.

“Whoa, what are you doing?” Baskara stepped back. “We don't need to do any more ceremonies. I’ve had enough ritual stones for one night.”

“Mayari, wait,” Valen whispered. “You are the last of the border guard. You cannot...”

“I can,” Mayari said, her gaze locked on Baskara. “My kin are gone. My mission was failed. My life was spent. This human, this logistics-master, has purchased my breath with his logic.”

She bowed her head low. “I am your blade, Baskara. My shadows are your shadows. My steel is your steel. Until the inventory of my life is empty, I serve only you.”

Baskara looked at the beautiful Dark Elf kneeling in the mud, then at his status bar.

[New Entity Detected: Ally / Bound Loyalty.]

[Warning: Bound subjects count toward the logistical weight limit if transported. Current available space: 49.96kg.]

“Wait a second,” Baskara muttered, scratching his head. “If I accept this, do you weigh fifty kilos or more? Because that might really mess up my travel plans.”

“I... I am quite light,” Mayari said, sounding genuinely confused as she looked up.

“Great,” Baskara sighed, reaching out to help her up. “I guess welcome to the team. But seriously, do you have any idea where we can find a decent sandwich in this forest? I’m starving.”