"What the hell was that?!" Haley screamed when she heard a wet squishy sound followed by the sound of rain.
She quickly illuminated the area with several fireballs, allowing everyone to see Lloyd climbing out of the hole in the monster's abdomen.
"Shut up! You'll alert the rest!" Lloyd shouted in a whispered voice, but it was already too late.
He could see several other creatures appear from within the shadows, walking out from behind bigger rocks or climbing out of crevices in the ground.
As Lloyd scanned and put the creature into his ring, he could not help but be a little happy to see so many of them. The one Lloyd had killed not only strengthened his connection to the shadow element, but it also gave him a good amount of void energy for a monster at only the peak of the first commandment.
However, he was worried about whether or not the others could handle them. Most of the creatures that were coming out were in the mid to late stages of the first commandment, while very few of them were in the peak.
However, while everyone else was trying to assess the problem at hand, Alex was staring at Lloyd with furrowed brows. He couldn't understand how someone as weak as Lloyd could kill something like the monster he saw. He was certain he would have to participate in the fight, yet it only took one punch for Lloyd to kill the creature.
And from what Alex saw, it was like Lloyd didn't even use any mana.
Of course, this was a product of Lloyd's shell that blocked anyone from seeing beyond it, but there was also the fact that even with mana vision, someone like Alex would not be able to see or sense void energies.
It was one of the reasons why Lloyd was so good at hiding. No one could sense his energy, and they had to let their instincts tell them whether or not he was stronger or weaker than them.
Yet, now that Lloyd could control his aura, even Alex could not decypher who was stronger between the two of them. Most people would think that Lloyd was simply using cloaking runes, but Alex was a little more suspicious than anyone else would be.
Untraceable mana was not one of the recorded abilities of the void walkers, and since Lloyd was wearing contacts, he had no reason to think that Lloyd might be a void walker.
"Alex... A little help here?" Haley tugged at his side while giving him the best smile she could.
"You know the rules..." Alex shrugged with a chuckle.
He had a teleporter that took the straight to the main base, but he didn't want to tell them that. On the other hand, he also wanted to see what Lloyd would do.
"Guys... We can use this to our advantage." Lloyd spoke with a lowered voice.
"You're the one who put is into this mess! No one wanted to com-" Lloyd covered her mouth with his hand, forcing Haley to shut her mouth.
His hand was like a vice grip, and no matter what she did, she could not get it off her.
She even tried biting or licking, but it didn't bother Lloyd.
"Shut up... You see how they don't have eyes?" Lloyd asked while pointing at them. Since Haley had lost control of her flames when he stopped her from talking, Lloyd had to control them himself, causing them to go from a red-orange to a blue flame.
"Yeah... Oh shit." Jay whispered while the D ranks took a little longer to understand.
"They feel heat and listen to sounds. They also use vibrations to walk around uninterrupted, yet due to our small size, they don't think of us as threats but more like objects.
It's only once were get close to them that they understand that we are living beings, and at the same time, sound can stimulate their senses, directing them to us." Lloyd explained.
He had seen how the creature reacted when he shot off the ground, and how it reacted to the fireball that came toward it.
The fireball only alerted its senses when it was a few meters away, while the vibrations and sound from Lloyd's attack allowed it to instantly pinpoint his location and assess what he would do next.
"You got all that from a few seconds of fighting that thing?" John asked with a frown.
'Its not my fault I'm the only one with a brain!' Lloyd thought.
"Yes?" Lloyd actually asked with a puzzled tone that made everyone else feel dumb. To them, Lloyd looked like a genius who simply didn't know it yet, and that was the impression he wanted to leave on them.
Lloyd finally let go of Haley when he saw her calm down. He quickly wiped his hand on her shirt before using the cleansing feature of their clothes to clean his hands.
'Disgusting...'
Standing up, they all looked over the cliff they were standing on and watched as the creatures stopped above Lloyd's flames.
They felt the heat, but they had no idea where it was coming from.
'No sunlight for generations has made them like this. They don't know what fire is since it hasn't been a problem for far too long.
They are like bears back when humans just discovered fire. They have no idea what it is, and it scared them. The only heat they've known is that of their enemies or their brothers. What I don't understand is why they haven't developed a mana sense.' Lloyd thought while moving the flames down and creating a wall of flame spheres in front of the team.
"Do you want help?" Haley asked.
"Just create a few more and in the same order. Our goal is to corner them together. These creatures are like Lions. They have small groups with a leader, but put a ton of them in the same place and all you'll see is a bloodbath." Lloyd grinned.
"Doesn't that also mean that by the end, we're going to have to fight the strongest one?" Haley asked, now much calmer than before.
"Yes, but at the rate, we were going, he would have had to do that anyway. Now not only will we cut down on the numbers, but we're also fighting a weakened and exhausted version of the strongest monster." Lloyd explained while raising a finger.
There were far too many of them to circle in, but Lloyd and Haley did their best to corner most of them into a single place. While some of them tried to attack the orbs of the flames, they quickly retreated when they felt the excruciating pain it caused.
Sadly, the monster themselves didn't seem flammable, but Lloyd knew that due to the texture of their skin, the hotter their outside got, the hotter the inside did too.
They were a bit like reptiles, but their body temperature was much lower than that of reptiles, but at the same time, they could distinguish one another from the ground or the rocks around them because the ground and rocks around them were much colder than they were.
The fire closed in more and more, and by this point, anyone who retreated back after trying to hit the flame bumped into someone else. The fighting among themselves had begun, and Lloyd would enjoy what he saw.
Of course, that didn't mean he would let them die without receiving his fair share of void energy first.
Many of them were close to death, while others had already died. While Lloyd didn't get their void energy since he didn't kill them himself, he was waiting for something else...
'Just a little bit more...' Lloyd thought while the others rejoiced in their victory. After this, they simply wanted to kill the strongest ones and leave this hell hole, but for some reason, now that Lloyd was their unelected leader, they felt they wouldn't be leaving any time soon.
'Now!' Lloyd thought when the moment finally came. A moment where the average monster was wounded to the point that Lloyd's next attack would kill them instantly or at least injure them to the point where they would die a few seconds later.
"Let go of your control over the flames," Lloyd asked Haley, and even though she wanted to rebuke or ask why like how she might have done before today, she simply stayed silent and did as she was commanded.
Lloyd quickly took control of her flames and turned them blue, something that Haley was still a little shocked by, and very jealous of at the same time.
Despite knowing her overall control over flames was superior to Lloyd's, it still stung to know that Lloyd had a better understanding over flames despite it being his second element.
Of course, she had no idea that the reason behind this was the fact that Lloyd had simply absorbed the fire element from the creatures he killed, but she didn't have to know that.
After Lloyd took control of the flame orbs, he positioned them in a grid-like pattern around the battlefield before snapping his fingers and muttering-
"Overload."
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