Affinity:Chaos

Grey stood in the Chaos Space and looked at the budding darkness in it. He still didn't understand how this place truly worked, other than when he came here to comprehend the elements or to check his elemental grades, he knew nothing else about it.

The appearance of the darkness element gave him a little understanding, but it's not really much. Compared to the darkness element, he had been in more contact with the space element, yet he hadn't seen anything concerning it in the Chaos Space.

"*Phew* Here goes nothing," Grey sighed before walking into the darkness.

When he stepped into the darkness, he could sense a ravaging destructive energy that wanted to destroy everything in its part. Other than that, there was really nothing else. He looked around, but he couldn't get a glimpse of light, the only source of light was from the place he used in entering the darkness.

He walked about a hundred meters into the darkness, but as soon as he took another step past the one hundred meters mark, he suddenly felt a sense of danger and quickly retreated.

'The energy there is at least five times greater than it is here. I can't go any further, or I might hurt myself. Guess this is the first limit for this element huh?' He thought.

Each element in the Chaos Space has a separate space, there's always a limit when he first enters. After his elemental grade for that element increases, the distance he could go in without hurting himself increases. There's a different distance in each element, like for his wind element, before comprehending it, he could go as deep as three hundred meters, but for his fire, it was only two hundred meters. The darkness element has been the shortest so far.

With that, Grey sat crossed leg in the darkness and closed his eyes. There's no better way to understand something than to personally feel it. The destructive and corrosive energy of the darkness element started ravaging his spiritual body, giving him a better understanding of it.

This was his first time entering the darkness space in the Chaos Space, and it was a strange feeling. He had experienced the feeling of the fire, water, lightning, wind, and earth element, but this was the time he was experiencing the darkness element on his body, well, spiritual body.

Twenty minutes later.

'Crap! So soon?' Grey opened his eyes before standing up and dashing straight for the only source of light in the darkness space. Parts of his spiritual body was starting to slowly become black.

He managed to come out from the darkness space within a few seconds, but his left hand was almost completely black, and even though he was currently in a spiritual state, it was very painful.

The darkness which was previously moving upwards had stopped in its track. Grey stared at his left hand in fear, this was only the second time he had been hurt in the Chaos Space. The first time he was hurt was when he entered the lightning space for the first time, and it was because he didn't understand the rules of the place at that time.

Even though he knew that the time he could spend in the darkness space was short due to the short distance he could travel, he expected it to at least get to an hour, not twenty minutes.

The color of his hand slowly started reverting to its normal color after thirty minutes of pain.

'Shit! I hate this element!' Grey complained.

But as soon as the pain stopped, he ran back into the darkness space. He couldn't stop himself, how could he give up on the darkness element just because of a few minutes of pain?

This time, he sensibly timed himself. He stayed in the darkness space for only about fifteen minutes. After the fifteen minutes time, he would go out of the darkness space. He repeated the same routine another three times before he noticed he couldn't go in anymore.

'Well, that's it for today.'

By the time he came out of the Chaos Space, it was already late, but Void was not in the shack. He didn't sense Void in the valley as well, but he knew he wasn't far away.

'Where are you?' He asked Void through their mind link.

'On my way.' replied Void.

Grey sat down close to the stream and placed his legs inside it, enjoying the coolness of it.

Bam!

A dog-like beast with antlers was dumped on the ground before Void appeared above it.

'I brought dinner,'

'I'm out of ingredients,' Grey replied with a shrug.

'I know, that's why I got you some.' Void said before making some small containers to appear close to Grey.

Grey picked up one of the containers, opened the lid, and sniffed it. 'This isn't used for cooking, it's what ladies use for make-up.'

Grey burst out laughing when he realized what Void brought back thinking it was ingredients used for cooking. Although there were two among the five items he brought which were ingredients, he couldn't use them on this meat.

He decided to roast the meat without any ingredients, it wasn't like it wouldn't taste good without the ingredients anyway. The next day, Grey gave Void a detailed description of the ingredients he wanted before going into the Chaos Space.

Three weeks passed in this manner, Grey stayed in the darkness space most of the time, with Void having free reign to go out as much as he pleased. Now, Grey could stay in the darkness space for almost one hour without getting hurt by the darkness element.

'Just a little more, and I'll finally be able to leave this place,' Grey thought.

The only good news he got so far was that he could freely come out of the forest now since the Instructors weren't searching for him in the forest anymore. During the next week, he would occasionally head to the city, with his disguise on of course, and a large cloak.

One week later.

Grey was currently sitting in a crossed leg position in the darkness space, he looked like a statue that was completely covered by a black cocoon.

Crack!

A crack ran across the cocoon, after the first crack, more lines started spreading across the cocoon.

Boom!

The cocoon exploded out, spreading in all directions, and Grey who was seated opened his eyes, but his eyes were pitch-black.