[Star-Collapsing Fist]
Space warped around Lloyd's fist as it traveled fast than the eye could see.
Purple energy swirled around Lloyd's fist, and before Veronica could even react to the sudden attack, it was already right in front of her face. However, Veronica was no ordinary person either.
Thousands of calculations went through her mind in a split second as she instantly used [Blood Control] on herself to move as fast as possible.
She barely avoided the attack in time.
The moment Lloyd's fist passed her face by mere inches, everyone felt a shift. It was as if the wind pressure and density had suddenly changed, and at the same time, shudders went down the spines of everyone, including Lloyd.
Space raptured right in front of Lloyd, and as he retracted his fist, he stared upon the rapture in space while taking on a feeling he didn't always get to feel.
The feeling of complete relaxation. It was unlike anything he had ever felt before from anything else. Not even Veronica could make his problems wash away like the sensation he got when looking or stepping into a void, and now that he was so close to one, the sensation was close to its peak.
The spatial tear shot into the distance for hundreds of meters. While it was extremely long, it was much narrower than its length, only coming at about twice the width of Lloyd's fist.
Cracks began to spread out of the space rapture, yet when the universe finds a vacuum, it tries its best to fill it with anything, especially when that vacuum is one between dimensions.
As if the very reality around the rapture was being warped, everything within a 2-meter radius of it got sucked in.
*BOOM*
And in less than half a second, it all imploded. Everything happened between the first and second, making it look like Lloyd had shot a beam out of his fist and created a 2-meter wide crate that went out for hundreds of meters. Yet, despite its speed, Veronica had more than enough time to become a blur and appear on a tree branch several meters away.
Veronica's abilities were way beyond Lloyd's, yet Lloyd still felt like he could beat her despite knowing that. Even though he knew using it would kill him.
The moment he broke through, he felt something inside him become shackled, and despite it being just a feeling, it was as if he knew exactly what had happened.
All his cooldowns had been set to 0, and since he had only cooldown, it meant that his deadliest ability had become usable again.
*BOOM, BOOM, BOOM*
Lloyd's arm shot out several times a lightning speed as the fabric of reality raptured before his fist, creating a line of the pure abyss that seemed to shoot infinitely into the distance.
Veronica dodged quite easily at first, but the close Lloyd got to his ability wearing off, the faster he attacked and the more reckless he became.
While at first, he made sure to attack directly at Veronica, Lloyd began to attack everything around her too.
While it seemed like Veronica was simply dodging with ease to Lloyd, Veronica was beginning to struggle.
She had seen what happened to the tree behind her, and she could not help but think that the same would happen to her if she took a direct hit from Lloyd's attacks.
Lloyd's accuracy and prediction of her next moves were improving at a terrifying rate, so she quickly found herself being cornered before she knew it.
*Zip*
*Zip*
*Zip*
Lloyd's body flickered around as he essentially spammed the use of void step because he knew that he had an infinite supply of godsent energy shooting down from the sky.
He didn't care if he got to use the energy later. She had already killed 2 people he cared about, so he wasn't about to let her kill anyone else.
"Lloyd, I need you to listen to me!" She roared, yet her voice only enraged Lloyd more.
Every word that came out of her mouth was like a mockery of everything he stood for, and while he might not have stood for a lot, he knew one thing.
"I've heard enough." Lloyd spoke, his voice filled with so much rage that it felt like it was almost laced with void energy.
Veronica closer her mouth and stared at Lloyd for a moment before she seemed to have made a decision.
"So be it." She muttered while rising to the sky.
Blood began to surge toward her from all around the forest as animals and monsters alike turned into clumps of blood, leaving behind drained carcasses.
As the blood shot toward her, trees withered on their paths, and the orange leaves and grass turned dark brown. She wasn't just sucking the blood out of living creatures; she was sucking out their very life force, including the remaining life force from those who had fallen.
At the same time, Lloyd felt the runes on his arm begin to fade, and the instant they did, cracks shot through his entire arm as an unimaginable amount of pain made him feel like dropping to the ground and screaming at the top of his lungs.
Yet, he just looked at his crumbling arm slowly turning into ashes. His eyes were devoid of all emotion this time, yet deep within, he felt a spark.
A spark of something magnificent.
On the other hand, Veronica extended her arms in both directions and closed her eyes, causing all the blood she had gathered to turn into hundreds of spears.
When she opened her eyes again, the sky darkened, and her eyes shone like two crimson stars in the night sky, barely lighting up the area around her but making everything a shade redder.
The remaining blood shot toward her body and covered her from head to toe before the life energy entered the blood, causing it to shine bright crimson.
'The blood knight in crimson armor...'
It was an old story told to children to make them go to sleep. While to children, it seemed believable, to adults, it was just another fairytale story that came around when the earth had awoken its mana for the first time.
It was the story of a crimson knight who upheld justice and destroyed monsters wherever they found them.
According to the stories, after protecting humanity for hundreds of years, one day, the blood knight almost went insane after seeing all the evils of the humanity they had been trying to save for hundreds of years. Who were the real monsters?
Legend was that after killing an innocent child in its blood-lusting state, they gained a sense of their old self back and killed themselves to stop their rampage, and while some stories end there, others say that the blood knight's ghost still roamed the earth for the years to come.
The thing was that, every civilization that is still alive to this day had the same story for the first few hundred years of their newly awakened civilization.
But... What if the blood knight in crimson armor wasn't dead?
What if it had been hiding under our noses for thousands, if not tens of thousands of years.
What if they had inhabited a different body or reincarnated like some of the elven stories say.
What if they had been reborn as a vampire?
"I see..." Lloyd muttered as he looked away from his crumbling arm and into the sky where Veronica stood, staring into his soul with her vicious blood-red eyes.
"Last chance." She spoke emotionlessly while grabbing one of the blood spears and making it twice as large.
"To give up and join you, right?"
"Yes..." She simply replied.
"..."
"..."
"If I join you, will you let the others live? Including my family and my parents?"
"..."
"Answer the question." Lloyd growled.
"What if I say no?" She asked with a tilt of her head.
"Then I'll kill you."
"..."
"..."
"Ha... Ha Ha... Hahahahahahaahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha." Veronica began cackling, her laugh sounding more maniacal than it usually did.
However, before she could respond, a voice echoed from behind Lloyd, causing him to slowly turn around and look into the pair of dark brown eyes that stared right into his bright violet ones.
"Don't join her!"
"?" Lloyd raised a brow
"I know I haven't been very accepting... of you... But I was scared. I felt betrayed... and... I felt like I didn't know who you were.
I know you. I know who you are, and I know no one could fake what we all had. No matter what you hid from us, you will always be a part of us." Tina smiled warmly while raising her staff and letting out a deep breath before...
*Swoosh*
Three crimson spears shot through Tina's chest, yet her smile did not waver for an instant. No... It only got bigger. It only became greater.
Lloyd's eyes widened in horror as he felt rage almost overtake his senses again. He could almost feel Null's expression at that moment, yet when he looked into Tina's eyes, he stopped.
'So this is trust, huh...' Null spoke inside Lloyd's mind.
"Even if you are a void walker, you're not a bad person, and I'll make sure you never turn out like the others did." She coughed as blood began to leak from her mouth before she slammed her staff into the ground.
[Final Spell]
"And hey... Even in death, I will always love you." She smiled before blood leaked out of her eyes and orifices.
[Arcanum]
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