Zero to Overlord: The Forsaken God's Ascension

Eating in the Dark

The wind didn't just howl in the Abyssal Rift; it screamed.

I hit the bottom of the pit with a sound of snapping bones. Any normal human would have been a pile of meat. Any normal God would have died from the fall alone. But I wasn't a God anymore. I was a hole in the universe.

I lay there in the freezing muck, staring up at the tiny circle of light miles above. That was the world of the living. That was the world that had spat me out.

"It hurts..." I wheezed. Blood bubbled in my throat. My chest felt like it had been hollowed out by a hot iron.

Then, I heard it. The scratching.

From the shadows of the jagged rocks, eyes began to open. Dozens of them. They were glowing red and sickly yellow. The Void Eaters. These were the monsters the Empire used to frighten children—creatures made of pure shadow that fed on the mana of anything that fell into their domain.

A Shadow Wolf, the size of a carriage, stepped into the dim light. Its jaw unhinged, revealing rows of obsidian teeth.

"Go ahead," I whispered, my voice cracking. "Finish it."

The wolf lunged. Its teeth sank into my shoulder.

I waited for the pain of being torn apart. It didn't come. Instead, a strange, cold sensation flooded my veins.

[Target: Void Stalker. Attribute: Shadow. Consuming...]

The wolf froze. It tried to pull away, but its head was stuck to my skin. Its body began to flicker like a dying candle. The black smoke that made up its form was being sucked—violently—into the gaping wound in my chest.

The wolf let out a pathetic whimper before it vanished entirely, absorbed into my bone and marrow.

A surge of cold energy hit my heart. My snapped ribs clicked back into place. My shattered legs knitted together.

"More," I hissed.

The other monsters sensed the shift. They didn't see prey anymore; they saw a predator. They turned to run, but the hunger inside me was a physical weight. I reached out, and black tendrils of smoke erupted from my fingertips, lashing out like whips.

"You wanted to eat me?" I stood up, my eyes glowing with a dark, predatory light. "Come here. I'm starving."

I hunted them. For hours, or maybe days—time didn't exist in the Rift—I tore through the dark. I didn't use techniques. I didn't use "divine" magic. I just touched them and watched them dissolve.

With every kill, the "Zero" energy in my blood grew denser. I wasn't getting "stronger" in the way my father understood. I was becoming a vacuum.

"Stop eating my dinner, little ghost."

The voice was like a blade of ice cutting through the humid dark.

I spun around.

Standing on a pile of monster carcasses was a woman. She wore silver armor that was cracked and stained with old blood. Her hair was white as a blizzard, and she held a broken sword that radiated a terrifying frost.

"Who are you?" I demanded, my hands crackling with black energy.

"Someone who has been down here much longer than you," she said, hopping down from the pile. She looked at my chest, then at my eyes. She let out a short, sharp laugh. "Well, well. I thought the Thorne family was boring. I didn't know they were hiding a Void Singularity in the basement."

"You know my family?"

"I know your father," she said, her eyes narrowing. "Magnus is a coward. He fears what he can't control. He saw a God in you, but he was too blind to see the Void beneath the surface. He did you a favor by ripping that core out. It was a cork in a bottle of poison."

I stepped toward her. "I don't care about the philosophy. I'm getting out of here. Are you in my way?"

The woman smirked, raising her broken blade. "I am Valeriana Frost. The last Ice-Sovereign. And 'little ghost,' nobody leaves the Rift alone. You have the hunger, but you have no path. You’re just a beast in a hole."

"I'll find a path over your corpse," I growled.

I lunged. I was fast—faster than I had ever been as a Prince—but she was a blur of silver. She didn't dodge; she parried my hand with the flat of her blade, the frost on her sword stinging my skin.

"Too slow," she mocked. "You're trying to use strength. Use the hunger."

We clashed in the dark, a dance of black smoke and blue ice.

"Why are you helping me?" I panted, skidding back.

"I’m not helping you," she spat, though she lowered her sword. "I'm making a deal. Look at my arm."

She pulled back her gauntlet. Her veins were black, pulsing with a foul, purple light.

"Abyssal poison," I noted.

"It's killing me," Valeriana said, her voice dropping the sarcasm. "I have the techniques to get us out of here, but I don't have the strength to fight the Gatekeeper. You have the stomach to eat this poison, but you're an idiot who doesn't know a stance from a stumble. You cleanse my blood, I teach you how to kill an Emperor. Deal?"

I looked at her hand, then up at the distant, unreachable sky. I thought of Julian laughing. I thought of Seraphina’s cold eyes. I thought of my father’s spear.

I grabbed her hand.

The black poison in her veins immediately began to flow into me. It felt like drinking liquid fire, but I welcomed it. My "Zero" energy roared in approval.

"Deal," I said.

Valeriana leaned back, a genuine, wicked smile crossing her face. "Good. Then listen close, Lucius Thorne. The first thing you need to learn is that 'Zero' isn't nothing. It is the beginning of everything."

She pointed her broken sword toward the deepest part of the Abyss.

"There is an exit that shouldn't exist," she said. "But to reach it, we have to kill something that hasn't died in a thousand years. Ready to lose that 'Prince' title for good?"

"I already lost it," I said, my voice turning into

a low, terrifying vibration. "Call me Zero."