Lloyd's eyes shone with determination, and he slashed down with immense speed that caused a dust cloud to be kicked up behind him.
The creature also disappeared from where it stood and dashed forward, its speed unmatched and the power behind its claw enough to slice a house into 4 pieces from its wind pressure alone.
Death loomed over Lloyd's head for the umpteenth time ever since entering this 'Void.' He could feel himself slowly but surely becoming stronger over time as he sliced and killed several beasts, his life being supported by an untethered rope.
His killing intent reached new heights, to an extent where every single one of his breaths sent out waves of chilling bloodlust.
Letting out a world-shaking warcry, he sliced down with all his might and resigned his fate.
Yet fate was a concept that went beyond mortal understanding.
Before the claws of death could destroy Lloyd's life, his body suddenly disappeared, and the claws struck at nothing but air.
Wind currents sliced through the air and destroyed several beasts instantly, the same beasts Lloyd found himself on the brink of death with after a single clash with them.
As the Void became eerily quiet once again, a pair of eyes shining with a vibrant violet light shone in a room that had been shrouded in darkness... Unnatural darkness seeped out of the body to which the pair of violet eyes belonged.
This was Lloyd's room...
There wasn't a single scratch on his body, something that made the previous scenes seem no more than a dream.
However, those thoughts were flung out of Lloyd's mind as he realized that he couldn't move, and as if waiting for that, a wave of excruciating pain washed over his body, and the once looming shadows shot into his body at speeds that created a whirlpool.
In a few seconds, the thick and viscous shadows were no more while the once repressed killing intent shot out of his body, bloodlust spiraling out of control and forcefully moving through every crack, hole, or crevis in the house.
In a room on the third floor, a middle-aged couple had their eyes shot open after feeling an immense killing intent, almost suffocating them in their sleep.
The pressure was so immense that the moment they felt it, they could not help but freeze where they slept, mainly because they were caught off guard.
After a few seconds, they shot out of their beds, cold sweat covering them from head to toe, causing their clothing to cling onto their delicate skin.
Their hearts dropped, and their eyes were filled with terror.
"Lloyd..." They spoke with horror-filled expressions, and in an instant, their bodies flickered as they appeared in front of Lloyd's room.
Similar scenes could be seen all over the house, as Lloyd's three sisters and two brothers all dashed out of their rooms, some much faster than others due to having already gone through their awakenings. However, in the end, all of them were in front of Lloyd's room with weapons held in their firm grips despite some of them clearly being far from capable of fighting off an average human.
Without hesitation, the middle-aged man's foot rose into the air and slammed into Lloyd's door, which caused the reinforced steel hinges to break and the door to be flung into the room.
Once the door touched the other side of the room, it immediately turned to ashes.
Lloyd's father and mother barged into the room and looked around with fear, but the sight that entered their vision was more unsettling, but not in the way they expected.
Lloyd was leaning on the floor room with his back to them. A pitch-black katana was held firmly in his grip before disappearing like it had never been there. In the eyes of his parents, it was as if the blade was a part of their imaginations.
The room had been turned upside down, everything from the ground to the ceiling left on the verge of collapse despite having several mechanisms that made such a thing close to impossible.
Finally, after a few seconds of shocked silence, Lloyd's father regained his wits to speak again. He didn't know why, but when the killing intent was out, he felt speaking would be a dangerous act. However, he was a 4-star general and therefore was the first one to regain his wits.
"Lloyd, are you okay?" Lloyd's father asked with evident worry. He didn't believe that his son would have the ability to release such a powerful killing intent and therefore had concluded that there must have been someone else who had entered the room and had released it instead.
Hearing the sudden voice that echoed inside his room, his survival instincts flared, and with a turn of the head, he looked directly into his father's eyes with a side glance; however, that was enough to make most of them frown.
Those were not the eyes of an intelligent human; instead, they were the eyes of a feral creature that would eradicate everything and anything that stood in its path.
Lloyd's fierce eyes locked with his father's worried ones for a bit longer than what was necessary, but after a few seconds of them staring into each other's pupils, Lloyd looked away while standing up.
Turning around again, he was like a changed boy. His eyes had returned to normal, while his gaze did not feel like sharp blades ready to cut through hell itself to reach its enemy's throat. His family almost have problems linking the two to each other.
"I'm fine. I was fought them off for a few seconds" Lloyd replied, an innocent and warm smile on his face while the katana he once held seemed to have been a product of their imagination due to it having disappeared into thin air despite Lloyd not wearing his wristwatch.
"Do you know what they looked like? Are you hurt?" Lloyd's mother barraged him with questions that only made him smile slightly while feeling an ounce of guilt in his heart since he caused his family so much stress.
"W-W-We felt a huge pressure!" A little girl with snow-white hair looked up at her brother and opened her arms wide to show Lloyd how enormous the pressure was. She had been holding a mace in her hands, yet the moment she felt her brother's gaze, she dropped it out of fear.
Lloyd didn't really understand why his younger siblings tried to come for his aid, but he didn't question it since he had other things bothering him.
The rest of the siblings were also startled by Lloyd's gaze, yet now that he was acting normal again, it was as if that sight was nothing but a distant dream.
They all entered, their eyes not even glancing at the semi-destroyed room around them... This was the case with everyone except two who watched on from a few meters away with worried expressions failing to leave their faces.
"Are you sure you are okay?" Lloyd's father asked, yet all he received in response was a slight wave and a smile. He immediately knew something was incredibly wrong, yet he did not dare bring it up in front of the rest of the family as he could already imagine the mess that would be created.
Two hours passed, and the sun had already risen.
According to all the clocks in the house and Lloyd's wristwatch, he had only slept for a couple of hours, yet for some odd reason, Lloyd struggled to believe that it was just a 6-hour dream.
While it might not seem like it, Lloyd was barely holding it together. In fact, the moment he had left the 'Void,' he was attacked by a wave of excruciating pain that would have sent anyone into a mad frenzy of screams, yet not him.
He endured what felt like days, weeks, if not months of constant injuries, wounds, and battles to the death.
He had scraped death so many times that in just 6 hours, he was capable of unlocking killing intent, something no other man in the world had been capable of unlocking in less than a few years of going to battlefields and fighting to the death.
Taking in a shaky breath, Lloyd stood up from the couch and walked back into his room. The awakening ceremony was barely two hours away, and he needed to change into some presentable clothes.
After a few minutes, he left his room with a blue denim jacket while wearing navy jeans and a pair of white sneakers. He also wore a white shirt under his denim jacket.
Hesitation could be seen in his steps as every movement seemed to remind him of the hell he went through. Two words kept echoing in his mind...
"Void Walker..." He muttered
'It said that I was going to void walk... What is that even supposed to mean!?' Lloyd slammed his hand onto the wall but immediately braced himself for the pain, yet after a few seconds of waiting, he opened his eyes and looked at the wall with widened eyes as a cobweb of cracks could be seen spreading out from the point of contact.
"I-I did that?" He asked himself...
***
Planet Glade, Snow City, Glade household.
A man lay on the floor, their breathing weak and extremely shallow as if something was stopping them from taking in a deeper breath.
11 others stood in the room while two sat on a nearby throne. Their eyes lingered on the boy below them, their gazes unflinching, yet simultaneously filled with worry. None of them dared look away for even a second, while others had reddened eyes due to what a passerby could only guess as either grief or prolonged periods without blinking.
The woman, Zack's mother, continued to sit on the throne's armrest, yet despite her posture indicating that she was completely unfazed, she constantly bit on her fingernails while looking at he son's brutally battered body that was littered with wounds ranging from cuts to bruises.
Rubert, on the other hand, looked the most worried. He had already seen one of his young masters pass away due to this ritual, and the grief was not only hard on the child's parents but also on Rubert himself.
Many would have considered Rubert as being the family's third parent who took care of everything no matter how hard it was. From raising the children to helping eliminate any threats to the family, he was always there.
Yet now, he had to watch one of those he cared for getting thrown into a ritual where they could possibly die. However, unlike their biological parents, he did not have a say in the matter. If the parents could watch the scene before them, who was he to say anything?
"The ritual is a success." An unknown 14th voice entered the ears of everyone in the room, causing them all to let out a collective sigh of relief.
"Well, now that that's done, let's get a move on. We have an awakening ceremony to attend to." Zack's father grinned in both happiness and relief...
He finally had a worthy successor to cultivate.
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