The sound of his own laughter echoed strangely in the silence of the Whisperwood Forest.
It was a raw, unburdened laugh, entirely out of place in the solemn woods. Rhys finally let it die down, a satisfied grin lingering on his face.
The sheer absurdity of his situation was intoxicating.
Hours ago, he had been a powerless outcast, a shame to his family name, walking towards a life of mediocrity at best.
Although he tried to appear strong internally, Rhys knew that in this brutal world, there was no place for the talentless.
Without enough strength, he couldn’t survive in Silverwood town, let alone adventure outside of it.
He might not even be able to travel to nearby towns.
However, everything was different now. Rhys clenched his fists.
Now, he was a walking calamity with a body forged from void energy and a direct line to the instant mastery of any skill he could get his hands on!
He took a deep, experimental breath.
The world flooded his senses in a way it never had before. It was as if he had been viewing life through a murky pane of glass that had just been shattered.
He could smell the damp earth ten feet beneath his boots, the sweet scent of night-blooming moonpetal flowers half a mile away, and the faint, musky odor of a small animal hiding in a nearby burrow.
His hearing was just as sharp; the rustle of a single leaf falling from a branch a hundred yards away was as clear as a spoken word.
This was the passive effect of the Void-Tempered Immortal Body. It wasn’t just about strength; it was a total system upgrade.
A sudden, foul stench assaulted his newfound senses, making him wrinkle his nose in disgust. He looked down at himself.
The process of reforging his body had expelled every last impurity, leaving him coated in a thin, sticky layer of black, viscous grime.
It smelled like a combination of burnt hair and rotten meat.
"Right," he muttered, his good mood deflating slightly. "First order of business for the new god-king: a bath."
Before that...
He needed a base of operations, a place to call his own where he could experiment in peace without some wandering cultivator stumbling upon him.
A cave would be ideal. With that goal in mind, he began to move.
It wasn’t running, not in the conventional sense. He pushed off the ground, and the world became a blur of green and brown.
His perfected Basic Stealth and his new body worked in perfect harmony. He flowed through the dense undergrowth, his feet never seeming to touch the ground.
A five-foot-wide fallen log blocked his path. He didn’t slow down, simply bending his knees and leaping, soaring over it in a silent arc and landing on the other side without a single crunch of leaves.
He felt weightless, like a ghost of the forest.
He was heading in a generally upward direction, remembering from his childhood lessons that streams and waterfalls were more common in the higher elevations leading toward the Ironfang Mountains.
’At least there are some useful things they taught me,’ Rhys mused.
It took him less than twenty minutes of this effortless, exhilarating travel to hear the tell-tale sound of rushing water.
He emerged into a small, secluded clearing dominated by a beautiful sight.
A curtain of water cascaded down a twenty-foot cliff face of dark, mossy rock, collecting in a crystal-clear pool at the bottom before flowing away as a small stream.
It was picturesque, untouched, and most importantly, hidden.
’The perfect scenario for a jade beauty bathing in open waters...’
Without a moment’s hesitation, Rhys stripped off his simple, now-filthy clothes and waded into the pool.
’...that would’ve been better...’
The water was shockingly cold, but the moment it touched his skin, his body adjusted instantly, the cold sensation fading to a pleasant coolness.
He scrubbed the grime away, watching it cloud the water before being carried away by the current.
As he stood there, chest-deep in the pristine water, he caught his reflection.
He was entirely different from the sixteen-year-old boy who had been exiled this morning. Now towering over six feet tall, his muscle mass had increased aesthetically.
His hair had also changed from light blonde to dark brown. However, what took him aback were his eyes.
They were pitch-black, without a trace of white.
Rhys involuntarily shivered, gazing into his own eyes. If he wore a mask showing only his eyes, people might mistake him for an old cultivator who had lived for thousands of years.
They held a depth that seemed to swallow the light, an unnerving stillness that betrayed the immense power lurking just beneath the surface.
His gaze drifted from his reflection to the waterfall itself. There was something about the way the water flowed... a slight indentation in the rock face behind it.
’Isn’t this the classic cave behind a waterfall?’
Curiosity piqued, he swam closer, pushing through the cascade. The roar of the water became a muffled hum as he passed through it, finding himself in a dry, hollow space.
It was a cave, just as he had thought, its entrance perfectly concealed by the waterfall.
’Well, not perfectly.’ Since he found this place, others might also. Not that he cared.
It wasn’t going to be his permanent home; he just wanted a space where he could rest after training.
The interior was larger than he expected, roughly thirty feet deep and twenty feet wide, with a high, vaulted ceiling.
The floor was smooth stone, and the air was cool and dry. It was perfect: defensible, with a source of fresh water right at the doorstep.
"Home sweet home," Rhys declared to the empty space, a genuine smile gracing his lips.
He retrieved his clothes—which he noted with some annoyance he’d have to wash—and his mother’s moonstone pendant, placing it carefully on a dry ledge.
’Can’t dismiss the possibility that there’s a grandpa sleeping in this pendant.’
Rhys shrugged.
For an ordinary nine-to-five office worker to transmigrate into a world where a simple mistake could cost him his life was terrifying.
But if that ordinary office worker received a trait and a system like his, it was salvation.
At least here, he had a say in his future.