The Walker Of Voids

Standing across from a white-haired man. Lloyd could not help but sigh when thinking of what had led up to this.

***

"Now that he's agreed, can I be the one to show him his schedule?" Veronica asked with a sweet smile that hid the cruel one she wanted to show.

"No." Roderick rolled his eyes.

"Pretty please?" She begged.

"No..." Roderick sneered.

"With a cherry on top?" Veronica asked again, yet this time she had gotten uncomfortably close to Roderick, to the point where he could feel her breath tickle the back of his ear.

"Goddamnit, fine! Go ahead." Roderick shouted with a faint blush on his cheeks, making Hime face-palm and everyone else, except Lloyd and Felix, chuckle.

Lloyd felt slightly surprised that Lachlan had laughed despite how depressed he had been over the last day or so, but he threw that thought to the back of his mind the moment he saw the schedule they had in place for him.

"I thought that a day in this dungeon only had 32 hours." Felix raised a brow, yet when he saw his name on the schedule, he was overridden with rage.

"I know that a day-night cycle in this dungeon consists of 32 hours of the night and 18 hours of day, but do we really have to use every second of it to train?" Lloyd asked, yet he was not the only one with complaints.

No one other than Hime, Roderick, and apparently Veronica had seen the schedule, causing many of them to widen their eyes in surprise, while one seemed to have the most to complain about.

"There is no way in hell I'm going to train this walker-looking brat." Felix roared.

"There will be no discussion when it comes to this schedule. It has already been made with the thought of Lloyd being behind us in the commandment; therefore, we will need to train him harder than he had ever been trained before." Hime explained.

"Can't someone else train him?!" Felix shouted.

"No. Since your racial abilities and your genetic dysfunction have forced you to hone your senses and instincts past anything any of us could reach, you would be the best person to teach him that." Hime explained before looking at the schedule again.

"The training regiment is split into seven different six-hour regiments. Felix will start Lloyd off first by training him to hone his instincts, reflexes, and awareness for 6 hours before the training is passed on to me, who will teach him the art of beast fighting." Hime read aloud, yet the last part of her sentence made even Roderick raise a brow.

"You said you would teach him how to fight against beasts. Are you sure you want to teach him your races martial art?" He asked.

"Its fine." She waved Roderick's concerns off before continuing-

"Rex will teach him human martial arts and the basics of fighting, Lachlan will train him in using his shadow abilities, Veronica will teach him whatever she thinks is necessary at the time." A huge smile appeared on her face, causing a shiver to go down Lloyd's spine.

"Finally, Tina will teach him elemental magics, cultivation, and ways to improve his use of his elemental abilities. This will spill over into the day, where Roderick will take over and teach him about scenario strategies and basic probabilities." Hime finished explaining before looking Lloyd in the eye and smiling.

"Good luck."

***

Feeling agitated when remembering Hime's smile, Lloyd folded his arms and waited for Felix to stop sulking and actually begin training him.

Little did he know, the training had already begun.

*Swoosh*

"Huh." An audible sound came out of Lloyd's mouth before the hairs at the back of his neck stood up.

Without a second's thought, Lloyd raised his arm to block the attack that he had assumed was coming from his right based on the sound of the wind being parted, yet he found himself quickly corrected.

"Just because it sounds like I'm coming from your right-" A voice entered Lloyd's right ear.

"Doesn't mean that I am actually there." Lloyd's eyes widened in disbelief as the sound now came from his left, yet before he could react in time to the attack he knew was coming, a foot entered his line of sight before smashing into his face and sending him several meters away before regaining his balance.

Felix landed gracefully with a deep frown etched on his face before sneering at Lloyd.

"You are much worse than I thought you were. No wonder you lost against that elk-looking monster from before." He sneered again.

"It was an entire commandment above me." Lloyd argued with a tone of complaint in his voice, yet Felix was having none of it.

"Yes, it might have been an entire commandment above you, but is that really a reason to have lost so badly against it?" Felix spat.

"Yes... Also, I put up a pretty good fight if I say so-" Yet before Lloyd could finish his sentence, he watched Felix's body flicker for a moment before completely disappearing from sight.

However, just a moment later, Lloyd felt a foot slam into his back, sending him a couple of meters away before, but instead of allowing Lloyd to regain his balance, this time Felix appeared above Lloyd and slammed his foot onto Lloyd's back once again, consequently smashing Lloyd into the ground as Felix stood above him with one foot on his back.

"Yes, you are pretty strong for someone who hasn't reached the first commandment yet, but do you really think that you are the first person to have reached the power and skill that you show?

You were born lucky to have such a powerful awakening, but other than that, you are pretty weak." Felix sneered before taking his foot off Lloyd's back and slamming it into his side, shooting him across the grass field.

"But despite your luck with awakening, you are still plenty weak. I've seen people with pseudo-mythic classes at the same stage of cultivation as you, capable of defeating Peak Topaz stage Second Commandments with ease."

"Yet you seem to have two different affinities, a plethora of abilities with some being more versatile than others, two parents in the military who are both Generals, more than one passive, an aura that can send a shiver down every first commandment's spines, yet you are incapable of measuring to even a fraction of their power."

Lloyd felt Felix's powerful glare fixate on him, yet instead of cowering like most at his stage would have, he stood up and looked into Felix's eyes with a pair of unblinking violet eyes filled with scrutiny and sparks of rage.

'If I could use my Void Walker abilties in front of you guys, you wouldn't even be standing here.' Lloyd thought before closing his eyes and calming the rageful storm that was brewing within him.

*Swoosh*

Yet before he could do that, he felt Felix's foot smash into his chin, giving him an uppercut so powerful that his feet left the ground and levitated multiple meters of it for several seconds.

"If that wasn't enough, despite clearly having wielded a sword for your whole life, you don't have a single shred of environmental awareness." Felix spoke as he appeared at Lloyd's side before slamming his foot into where Lloyd's liver would have been if he was not a void walker.

Nevertheless, Lloyd was sent straight into the ground, kicking up a dust cloud so large that it was nearly impossible to see him embedded in the ground with a large crater surrounding him.

Barely getting up from where he lay, Lloyd touched the area he had been kicked in just to find cracks spreading out from it.

While gritting his teeth, Lloyd contemplated using [4-Dimensional Thought], but after recalling the headache he had suffered the last time he used it, the fact that he still had 6 sessions left, and the fact that this was training, not fighting, he shook his head and tried to overcome the problem using his natural intelligence rather than his ability.

'I could figure out his attack pattern, but that isn't the point of this training... I need to form my instincts and create an environmental awareness capable of allowing me to sense attacks and react within an instant.'

However, despite Lloyd's thought process, he could not help but see a pattern in Felix's attacks, and it was the fact that he purely used on his legs to attack.

'Feels like a form of taekwondo, maybe? It's as if he took a martial art that mainly used his legs and adapted it to his speed.' Lloyd thought to himself before looking Felix up and down through the smoke.

'No... What am I thinking.' Lloyd face-palmed, yet the image of Felix's veins moving around and morphing into blood-red runes remained in his mind.

However, before he could shake off the memory, something else helped him do so as a speed foot shot through the dust cloud and slammed into Lloyd's face, hitting him across the field once again.

This one-sided beating continued for three more hours, and just when Lloyd was about to use his flames out of anger and frustration at the fact that he was struggling to even touch Felix, let alone hit him, Felix suddenly stopped in his place before landing gracefully.

"Alright. Now that I've released most of my frustrations, let's get to the actual training." Felix stretched with a wry smile on his face.

'This bastard...' A twisted expression appeared on Lloyd's face, but he was quickly able to hide most of it... Well, everything except the vein that was bulging from his forehead.

"Sit down right here." Felix pointed at a spot in the field of mostly destroyed orange grass before flickering and appearing almost 10 meters away.

Lloyd did as he was told, but for some reason, he felt like he would regret doing so. As if his future selves were shouting at him to not start this journey since it would only end in an endless misery of painful training.

Before Lloyd could react to the sudden gust of wind that hit his face, he saw something cover his eyes.

"What is this?" Lloyd asked with a weirdly calm voice.

"A blindfold." Felix answered simply.

"Why?" Lloyd knitted his brows.

"It's part of the training. Don't worry about it too much." Felix spoke normally, but Lloyd could not help but feel like there was a large smile on his face, one that stretched from ear to ear.

"The way I trained my senses was simple. There are three stages to this training.

The first stage of your training will train 3 of your 5 basic senses. Sound, smell, and touch. By blindfolding you, I've robbed you of the sense that you rely on most and force your body to enhance every other sense.

The second stage of your training will force your body into allowing you to sense mana, and the third stage will force your body to rely on your very soul to sense other people's auras.

I know that mana and aura sound the same, but they are fundamentally different, especially when it comes to sensing things. Think of them as both being either your right hand or left hand. Assuming your right handed, mana sense is your right hand. You were born with it, and instinctually throughout the first few years of your life, you found yourself using it more often until you've mastered doing everything with it.

Aura sense, on the other hand, is your left arm. You were also born with it, but for some reason, it has always been the weaker arm. Of course, you can train it so it can reach the same stage as the right arm, but your right arm will always be the superior one in everything you do."

"..."

"What?" Felix asked after seeing Lloyd's agape mouth.

"That's a surprisingly good analogy." Lloyd replied.

"Suprisingly?" Felix raised a brow before a frown appeared on his face.

"Are you calling me stupid?"

"Well, I always assumed that you were the least intelligent person in this team."

"..."

"..."

"Anyway..." Felix smiled while a shudder went down Lloyd's spine, and within the same instant, he understood why.

*thud*

A small thud could be heard as a pebble-sized rock smacked onto Lloyd's forehead with enough power to make his head lean back.

"Let your training begin."

***

"Are you sure you want to have him trained?" A voice echoed within a room with two figures sitting down at a small round table. Rather than sit across from the woman, the male with black hair sat beside her, so that they didn't have to look each other in the eyes, but to where they could both turn 45 degrees to do so.

"Yes..." The woman replied with a one-word answer, yet her cat-like ears twitched for a moment, making the man narrowed his eyes.

"There is a chance that he might be one of them. He has all the characteristics of one, the only thing left for us to see is his race's energy and abilities. Are you really willing to strengthen a monster like that?" Roderick asked.

"The chances are extremely are extremely thin. You know how unlikely it is for one of them to pass all the scanning devices... Hell, after the war, the united government put so many scanning devices that they probably don't know where half of them are if they aren't activated. They literally cannot awaken without being caught." Hime explained before continuing.

"And you said it yourself. He is the child of two generals. Humans can't give birth to void walkers, and if he was replaced or turned into a void walker, I doubt that two generals wouldn't be capable of seeing past a measly half-step first commandment's swapping game."

"You saw the cracks."

"I did, and they don't mean much. Several Mythic and Celestial classes are capable of completely changing someone's anatomy. You know that better than anyone here, and you've seen how it can mess with someone's head.

To not be accepted by their own race, nor the race they had transformed into." Hime glared at Roderick, making him seal his mouth for a few minutes.

The sound of metal and glass clattering as they both ate their food in silence echoed throughout the tent, yet before Hime could finish her food and return the plate to the dining hall tent, Roderick spoke up once more.

"And what if he is a void walker... What if, in a life-and-death battle, he is forced to show his true colors and uses his void walker abilities. What then?" Roderick questioned while glancing at Hime, who was on her way to leave the tent.

Pausing, he turned just enough to side-glance and look into Roderick's eyes.

"Then, and only then, will I kill him myself."