The Walker Of Voids

[Final Spell]

[Arcanum]

As Tina slammed her staff onto the ground, unbelievable amounts of mana circled around her body, instantly destroying the spears that protruded from her chest and temporarily sealing up her wounds.

A look of pure shock appeared on Veronica's face, seemingly unable to believe her eyes.

"You shouldn't be capable of using that..." Veronica gritted her teeth while readying the hundreds of spears that floated around her.

Tina raised her staff again, pointing it at the sky before slamming it down again, gathering mana from the earth below her and absorbing it into the staff alongside the mana she had gathered from the sky.

Tina's hair fluttered in the wind as the violent storm began to pick up in speed, and before anyone knew it, thunder crackled through the clouds while rain poured from the skies like water out of a broken dam.

"Arcanum Domain." Tina whispered, yet her whispers thundered through the entire dungeon.

"Shit." Veronica gritted her teeth and clutched her fists tightly when she felt her control over the blood spears significantly weaken, yet despite trying her best, she could not recover her control in time.

A blue beam of light shot toward Veronica at speeds that rivaled Lloyd's void rapture.

Veronica quickly moved her hands and tried to block the attack by morphing her blood spears into blood shields, but after seeing them barely moving, she resorted to dodging by the skin of her teeth, slightly scorching her blood armor.

While she had lost most of her control over the blood spears, her control over her blood armor had remained the same because the armor was touching her body, making it nearly impossible for anyone of the same strength to dominate her control over it.

"Lloyd... I need you to leave. Follow Rex. He took Hime a few minutes ago and fled to the west." Tina spoke as her figure floated into the sky, her now bright blue eyes staring back at Lloyd. The roots of her hair were also turning silver, and while it made her look like an angel, to Lloyd, it looked like a timer.

"You're going to die if you carry on using that form." Lloyd argued, yet Tina simply smiled.

"So what? I was already going to die, why not make a difference as I go out." She replied, her words causing Lloyd to feel short bursts of dread.

Looking down in shame, Lloyd's eyes fell on his missing arm, yet when he looked again, he realized something.

Looking up at the purple beam of light shooting toward him, he felt a semblance of hope glistening deep in his heart.

"The breakthrough void energy is healing me," Lloyd muttered to himself while a dangerous thought passed through his mind.

*BOOM*

a blood-red magical aura exploded out of Veronica's body and flooded everything within a several-mile radius. Her aura wasn't like anything Lloyd had felt before.

It was filled with so much anger and killing intent that it felt more like the suffocating aura of an unbeatable monster.

'Half-step Third commandment...' Tina and Lloyd thought simultaneously as a grim realization hit them. Veronica was no normal person. She was a prodigy amongst prodigies.

With such a large gap in strength alongside her terrifying close combat abilities, it was nearly impossible for them to leave alive, no matter how much one of them tried to stall for the other to flee.

Gritting her teeth, Tina suddenly widened her eyes before tensing every muscle in her body. In the same instant, every blood spear that was once under Veronica's control was now covered in a bright blue and white hue before shooting toward Veronica at lightning speeds, all at once.

Veronica simply sneered when she saw the incoming spears, and with a burst of energy, she stopped them all in their tracks and destroyed the hue around them.

With a snap of Veronica's finger, the spears slowly turned around and shot in the other direction, absolutely desecrating most things in hundreds of meters.

Tina furrowed her brows before quickly creating several barriers around herself and Lloyd to protect them from the attack. She had sacrificed more than half her lifespan on the power she had been given, so there was no way in hell she was about to let any of it go to waste. She would make sure that the remainder of her friends would get out of the dungeon alive, so she wasn't about to take any chances.

The barriers around them almost broke after several spears hit them, but instead of waiting for the next attack, Tina sent one of her own out.

"Arcanum: World Blaster."

Suddenly, the skies above the dungeon lit up with a bright blue hue, and powerful magical energy enveloped the entire area.

Veronica's face scrunched up when she felt the overwhelming power in the air.

"What is this?" Veronica asked more out of curiosity than disbelief.

"Is this..." Lloyd's eyes widened before he decided that the best course of action would be to get as far away from Veronica as possible.

Hearing a rumble come from the clouds above, Veronica looked up with a raised brow. Yet, before she could even react to what she saw coming toward her, she was enveloped by an enormous beam of pure mana that shot Veronica into the ground while scorching everything around her.

The beam slowly began to expand, going from 2 meters in radius to 10, 20, 40, and finally a hundred meters in radius.

When the beam of pure mana finally disappeared, an eerie silence followed, only to be broken by the sound of Tina collapsing onto the ground.

Lloyd quickly rushed to her side and held her in his arms, trying to keep her awake.

"Tina... Are you okay?" Lloyd asked in a worried voice. Half her hair had become silver by this point, so Lloyd could only imagine the stress of using her domain to complete such an attack.

Her domain spell was the ability to control all mana in a certain radius around her. Of course, those with stronger wills and higher commandments can override this with the use of their own spells, but natural mana is free for the taking. She had simply pooled every single natural mana particle in the area into a single blast that shot down from the sky.

Lloyd could see that the spell had temporarily sealed off her mana and energy, rendering her immobile and powerless while also putting a heavy strain on her life force, second commandment seals, and her mind.

"I have to admit... That was a pretty good attack." A voice echoed through the dungeon as Veronica slowly stepped out of the crater; her armor had taken the full brunt of the attack, causing it to be mildly scorched.

Cracking her neck, Veronica stepped out of the crater and onto the soft ground.

Seeing this, Tina attempted to stand up, yet the moment she did, she felt every cell in her body ache in pain to the point that not even her vocal cords had the bravery to move enough for her to scream.

"You've done enough..." Lloyd muttered while patting her head lovingly.

"I'll take it from here." He smiled as Tina begged him with her eyes not to fight Veronica, yet he had already made up his mind.

When he turned around to ensure Tina couldn't see his expression, Lloyd dropped the act and looked at Veronica with a soul-chilling stare.

"Oooo. I'm actually scared." Veronica laughed as she continued to walk forward. She knew Lloyd wouldn't activate his void breakthrough energy so close to Tina, so she was taking full advantage of it, not that it mattered anyway.

So far, it felt like Veronica was simply playing with the two of them, the same way a cat would play with the corpse of a mouse or a rat. In her eyes, they were nothing but playthings now, so she was simply extending the amount of time she gets to have fun with them.

"How do you like my new arm?" Lloyd asked while showing her his now-fixed arm.

Her eyes widened slightly before narrowing in suspicion, yet Lloyd closed his eyes and took a deep and shaky breath before she could say anything.

"What's wrong?

Scared?" Veronica teased.

"No..." Lloyd replied, his voice sounding cold and distant as if Null had taken over again, something that simply was not the case.

There were Lloyd's raw emotions, and even though he didn't like the idea of him being close to Null in any way, shape, or form, he could not deny that they were similar in a certain sense.

"Don't mind me too much." Lloyd whispered before opening his eyes and looking into her bright crimson ones.

"I'm just getting ready to finally kill something that isn't a dungeon monster..." Lloyd spat before getting into a fighting position.

"You? Killing me? You know what, I'd love to see you try." Veronica laughed, yet she quickly choked on that laugh as a powerful aura sent shivers down her spine and Tina's, Hime's, and Rex's spines.

"It's my turn..." Lloyd announced as his aura flared before an abyss appeared directly behind him.

[You feel a wandering presence watching you...]

The silhouette of a pair of black and violet eyes shone in the sky, and looked directly at Lloyd before closing and disappearing in the same instant.

[You have received Eris' blessing.]

[Void Channel]