*Boom, Boom, Boom*
The sound of several explosions echoed throughout the tundra, catching many eyes, mostly of monsters around the time, and some of the humans that happened to be in the general area.
Of course, the chances of so many humans being in the same area was very low, but due to how much water and mountains there were on the planet, the tundra seemed like the best place to be, even though it clearly was not.
Even with his mana and soul sense, Lloyd could not distinguish between a group of humans or an enormous monster in the distance. So, instead of attacking everything he saw blindly, he would wait until they were close enough for him to discern before killing them.
It had been around two days since his alleged death, and almost six days since the start of the exam. Since he didn't have to rest anymore with the rest of his team, he spent the last 48 hours doing nothing but killing monsters left, right, and center.
And the one that landed right before him was a monster with 5 topaz seals.
Since there was no real need for a weak monster, Lloyd scanned it and absorbed it into his ring. Since they wouldn't be told their points until the end of the exam, he had no reason to believe that the rest of the team would discover that he was alive.
Also, seeing him racking so many points over such a short time had a chance of alerting them, so he was thankful the higher-ups could see his points. Since they knew his father was Noah and that Lloyd himself had the prowess of a second commandment, he didn't mind them knowing.
All he had to do was not scan or send in a monster of the amethyst seal, which was pretty hard to do since his eyes always shone with greed whenever he killed one of them.
Another few hours passed by, and finally, Lloyd found something that caught his eye.
"One amethyst seal, huh..." Lloyd spoke aloud as he used mana eyes, causing his purple eyes to shine through his colored contact lenses. Thankfully, no one was around to judge him about his eye color.
'Let's hope no one else can access my military records.' Lloyd thought while flaring his killing intent and catching the attention of the creature that flew above him.
*SCREEECH*
The monster screeched, making Lloyd tilt his head before a smile appeared on his face.
It was a creature with a very long neck and an enormous wingspan. It was huge, probably reaching about 20 meters in length alone.
It had white feathers to symbolize its connection to the snow element. The sheer power it exuded had caused most monsters to hide while making most of the humans retreat.
But Lloyd was neither a monster nor a human. He was a void walker, and he was about to do what void walkers did best.
Hundreds of basketball-sized fireballs compressed into small musket bullets that shone like stars from the bird creature's point of view.
They were pale blue and mixed quite well with their icy white environment, yet every time a piece of snow even thought of coming close to it, they were instantly turned into vapor, not even given the ice enough time to turn into water.
[Flame Control]
[Counter Artilary]
With a swipe of his hands, Lloyd controlled every single fire bullet in a 100-meter radius and shot it toward the creature that was now perching toward him with a cyan flame in its mouth.
The bullets looked like hundreds of tracer bullets shooting toward the monster at random sequences, making it look more a shower of tracer bullets rather than a rain of them.
*FWOOOOSH*
The monster released its flames, swallowing most of Lloyd's bullets, but that did not last long.
Every time Lloyd's bullets made contact with the bird's icy flames, not only did the power of the icy flames decrease, but it also made an enormous explosion created from the thermal shock.
A layer of steam covered the bird, and slowly, despite it having ice-resistant feathers, a layer of ice covered its wings and made it slightly harder for it to move.
Pointing his forefingers toward the bird, Lloyd let every last bullet smash into it before he began to gather a powerful bolt of electricity, nowhere as powerful as his void lightning, but much stronger than his normal lightning, or even the lightning he had used against the monster he met when he used [Lightning Fusion] on himself.
Seeing this attack pointed at it, and the fact that the flame in its mouth had become warm at best, the bird tried to flap away as fast as possible, yet it was far too late for such a thing.
Its action only exposed its belly, and by the time it was getting ready to turn around and run away, the lightning had left Lloyd's fingers. It had smashed into its abdomen, creating a loud explosion followed by an enormous cloud before the bird began falling.
Yet, just as he expected, a moment before the bird was about to fall onto the ground, it flapped its wings once more and tried to run away, much slower than before this time.
Scanning everything within a mile radius, Lloyd thoroughly checked every life form, but he understood that they were too far to see anything, especially with the storm that made it impossible for the average person to see past their feet. Even Lloyd struggled to see since this was no longer about night vision but instead about blizzard blindness.
[Void Step]
Lloyd's body flashed a faint purple before it disappeared and appeared above the monster who was trying to run away.
[Lightning Fusion]
[Shadow Enhancement]
Covering his arm with wounds and shadows, Lloyd cocked it back and shot it forward with lightning speed, creating a sound so powerful that his punch sounded like thunder. In contrast, his contact with the bird's body created a powerful shockwave that the blizzard dissipated momentarily within a 20-meter radius.
The bird shot to the ground and slammed into it with its full body weight.
Lloyd quickly flapped his wings to remain afloat, creating a pair of black wings behind him. Instead of having two wings like before, his wings came out as 3 pairs. Three on his right and three on his left.
They were enormous, reaching a wingspan of almost 10 meters as he raised his hands into the air and muttered something under his mouth.
In an instant, dozens of star-like flaming bullets combined with had shadow manipulation shot toward the creature and exploded it until Lloyd finally felt its life force disappear.
Dropping to the ground, Lloyd quickly stored it in his storage space without scanning it. He then used his wings to cover himself, making it look like a robe covering him from head to toe and making it hard to see who he was without removing his hood.
Feeling the energy enter his body, Lloyd dropped himself into his shadow and made the hole narrow so that no one could enter it without being the size of a rabbit.
Lloyd decided to cultivate his body, yet since he had already cultivated his shell, he was now cultivating something else. Something below his shell; the only problem was that he had no idea what it was... All he knew was that what he was doing was working; in reality, that mattered.
Questions could remain until he actually had time to find the answers to them.
*Pop*
A powerful gust of wind shot in all directions, making Lloyd grin as purple energy leaked from all his orifices before shrouding his body and making him feel stronger than ever.
Despite barely a week or two since his last breakthrough, Lloyd had no problems reaching the next rank. Of course, the main reason he was doing so well was that the monster in void walks gave so much more void energy for so much less work.
Another reason was the fact that he absorbed the lightning orb, so his body cultivation skyrocketed before slowing down when he left the void walk.
Evidence of that could be further seen when you look at Lloyd's progress with his core. Despite having killed so many monsters, his core was barely 20% of the way to the next stage, so from then on, he had decided to put all his energy into cultivating his core until he reached the late first commandment, something that would probably take months at the rate he was going at.
That was unless he somehow found a way to cultivate like a maniac and as fast as possible. How lucky would he have been to find a group of monsters staying in the same place, ready to be incinerated in the hundreds with a few void flames?
"Hmm?" Lloyd tilted his head when he walked into a forest, and despite the blizzard being as fierce as ever, he could smell the scent of blood...
No, that wasn't the scent of blood... His soul senses told him that there was death and suffering nearby, a lot of it at that.
Lloyd increased his pace and reached the source of the scent. However, when he saw it, he could not help but narrow his eyes.
The sight of small creatures eating both corpses and living beings. The dead people were all humans, and Lloyd even recognized some, but he was never close enough to them to care about them.
'Isn't that the girl who tried to flirt with me at the party?' Lloyd thought with more curiosity than pity.
After losing a group of friends that were like brothers and sisters to you, it was hard to care for those you didn't know.
And that was what Lloyd was feeling.
Complete apathy toward the situation.
'I hope my roommate isn't here. It would be a real pain in the ass to try and find a roommate who won't be a dick.' Lloyd thought with a frown.
Yet after looking around, the only person he recognized was the girl.
"I wonder how this happened... Shouldn't they have a third year with them?" Lloyd asked aloud, his voice causing the monsters that were feeding on the humans to look at him with the same anger and hunger that they looked at dead humans with.
Lloyd didn't know what they were, but despite their resemblance to goblins due to how skinny and short they were, their grey skin made it possible that they weren't goblins, and instead a sub-race created from goblins.
"Maybe I can kill their leader and get a cool ice ability!" Lloyd clasped his fist as a lightbulb idea entered his mind.
At the same time, the monsters were beginning to charge at him. The humans that were still alive would have told him they were coming, but their vocal cords had been frozen, and their bodies were getting so cold that their minds were turning blank, and their eyes were becoming drowsy.
Lloyd didn't even have to move. Well, he didn't really react to the incoming monsters. They were too weak to even lay a scratch on his skin, let alone the shadow robe/cloak he had covered himself with.
Lloyd's foot shot at lightning speed toward the monster's head, instantly blowing it to pieces. It was more of an instinctual movement to such a grotesque creature trying to touch him, so he didn't realize he had killed the monster until a little bit of blue blood landed on his face.
"Ugh... You know there aren't any lakes nearby, right? I can't get my face washed!" Lloyd shouted while using the cleansing feature of his clothes and burning the rest of the monsters alive.
Walking up to one of the women that were half eaten, but alive, Lloyd narrowed his eyes and asked-
"You're the third year, right?"
"Help... Me..." She asked, but after thinking for a moment, Lloyd didn't know if he should. She wasn't the girl he knew. She was clearly the guide assigned to the wiped group from her commandment.
On the one hand, he could kill her and gain the void energy of a human for the first time. At the same time, he would consider it an act of mercy.
On the other hand, he could waste a potion on her, and even then, her chances of surviving were low.
Looking a few meters away from her, Lloyd saw the emergency button that all the guides held. The first years weren't supposed to know about them, but it was obvious that every guide would have one in an emergency.
Lloyd could see all people over. They could probably be there in less than 5 minutes, and a potion would keep her alive for that long. At the same time, it would give the military a chance to take all the kids out of the planet since there is a chance that something above the amethyst seal lives on the planet.
'To think they'd risk so many lives over this... There must be something important about the planet if the military is willing to risk so many lives... On the other hand, this might be a filter to keep the strong and get rid of the weak, but even as I think that, it sounds like the most stupid thing anyone could ever do.' Lloyd thought while scratching his chin.
If he were to call the emergency, he couldn't be able to farm the monsters that had done this. He could already imagine the number of points and void energy he would gain. He was almost drooling, but he contained himself.
"There are only 5 of you here, so the monsters who did this must have taken someone in. I don't really care who they took in; I'm just wondering why.
I doubt these monsters have the intelligence to experiment on a human, but at the same time, if they have any links to the goblins, there is a chance that what they are doing is unspeakable." Lloyd muttered, remembering the town of goblins where female humans were kept prisoner.
"Welp... Out of my hands now." Lloyd shrugged while opening the coin flip application.
"Heads I help these assholes, tails I kill them and hunt the monsters by myself."
[...]
[...]
[...]
[Tails]
"Heard you loud and clear." Lloyd pointed his finger toward the third year and shot a purple bolt through her forehead before quickly aiming at the other girl and doing the same.
Yet, even though he was expecting the void energy to be the same, something was different.
The void energy was so potent... So pure.
It was almost addictive, but Lloyd quickly slapped himself out of it and focused on the task. He could think about the cocaine-like drug he had just uncovered later.
"Let's commit a genocide, shall we."
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