[Thank you Tyler-Hotker for your generous gifts]
"Sir what are you doing here?" Lloyd asked with surprise.
He was perfectly ready to kill the man who appeared in the cave so suddenly, but when he saw it was his instructor, he quickly lowered his hand.
"No time to explain. We must leave here before that thing reaches the second commandment." Mirage said while turning to look at Fatima laying in Lloyd's lap.
"Is she okay?" He asked with a slightly worried expression.
Even though he didn't usually show it, he truly cared for the students feeling as if they were like his own children.
Even though Fatima wasn't technically one of his students, he still showed his worry for her.
On the other hand, Lloyd didn't know what to say to his instructor. He wasn't in control when they found Fatima, but he could remember glimpses of her condition when they did find a and the situation around what happened to her.
"I found her in one of the caves... Her entire team had been exterminated by a group of monsters, and she was taken captive for some reason." Lloyd replied.
"Is she okay now?" the instructor asked; however, he didn't seem too worried about the deaths despite his visible worry for Fatima.
"She's fine now, but she hasn't woken up yet so I'm a little worried." Lloyd replied with a worried expression.
He didn't really care that much for Fatima. If anything, she was like a therapy dog to him without the same attachments to a dog that a normal person would have.
He didn't care for her too much but wanted to seem like he did so the instructor wouldn't ask any more questions. Seeing Lloyd so worried would most likely stop him from interrogating Lloyd further.
"Alright... Put her on my back and you hold onto my arm tight, okay?" The instructor ordered, making Lloyd nod and do exactly that.
*SWOOSH*
Everything around Lloyd turned into a blur. He couldn't see anything that was around him due to the sheer speed of the instructor, allowing them to shoot through the air and appear at the main military base within a few minutes.
Lloyd didn't struggle to hold on at first, yet due to the win pressure practically being slammed into his face, he quickly found himself struggling to hold onto the instructor's arms.
Once they landed, Lloyd fell onto his back and panted heavily.
"Where's the rest of your team by the way?" The instructor asked while preparing to return to the snowy tundra if needed.
"Uh... Long story short, we got a little separated." Lloyd chuckled, yet in the back of his mind, he had vowed to kill Alex the moment he saw him.
He could already imagine himself plunging his dagger into Alex's heart, watching the light leave his eyes as blood slowly seeped from the other side of his chest.
"When was the last time you saw them?" The instructor asked.
"Uhhh. Like, a week ago, I think? I've kind of lost track of the days." Lloyd sighed.
The instructor narrowed his eyes.
"Where did you last see them?" He asked.
"Near the valley between the rocky dark mountain biome and the snowy one." Lloyd shrugged.
"I see..." The instructor muttered before launching away at top speed.
Walking into the military base, Lloyd held Fatima in his arms; however, he could not help but look down at her peaceful expression.
"What the hell is a unity?" Lloyd muttered under his breath as he stared at Fatima's face.
If he had to be honest, she was pretty cute. Her bronze skin looked like it was glowing under the light of the military base, while he smooth face and jawline made her look more innocent than she actually was.
He saw the state she was in when she left the trial she had taken back in the entrance exams, and since her trial most likely had something to do with a past memory, he could only imagine what her childhood must have been like.
Mr. Khan was known for adopting children without homes, so what took her home away, and did it have something to do with her goal?
'I'm going to kill all the remaining void walkers!' Those words echoed throughout his mind.
'Did she somehow encounter one of them in the past?' Lloyd thought to himself, yet he was quickly snapped out of his thoughts when a woman wearing all white walked up to him.
"Sir? Is this girl injured?" The nurse asked. She had brought a miniature bed with her to carry any of the injured students toward the infirmary. Still, since all the students were taking the ships straight to the academy instead of going toward the main military base on the planet, she didn't have much to do.
All around lay dozens of students who had been nearby when the explosion sounded throughout the planet.
Some of them had smiles on their faces as they talked to the rest of their teams with cheery voices, yet others had dark expressions on their faces.
Many looked like they had lost a few people in the mock exams due to the military's negligence in checking out the planet. However, the vast majority only had a few injured teammates.
'Was I just that lucky to find so many second commandments?' Lloyd thought to himself before shrugging.
"Sir?" The woman asked with a worried tone. She looked at him with pity, unable to understand why the military would make kids the same age as Fatima and Lloyd fight for their lives to the point that they would be this traumatized.
Of course, Lloyd wasn't traumatized; he was just not listening to her.
"Oh, my bad. Yeah, she might be injured. I gave her tonics to fix her up, but I worry that the mental scars are far worse than the ones that were on her body." Lloyd replied.
The woman nodded and quickly placed Fatima onto the makeshift bed.
"Is she your teammate?" She asked while looking back at Lloyd, whose eyes were already darting around, looking at everyone around them with a dark expression on his face.
He knew that what he was looking at was technically the best-case scenario. The chances of anyone near Cthulhu surviving were nearly zero, but he still held out hope.
Even though his memory was fragmented, he could remember what Null had told Cthulhu. Null could have killed him, yet he didn't, and that would possibly cost the military, many innocent lives.
The D ranks had almost no chance of surviving such an encounter, while the A ranks would have struggled to survive against even the smallest creatures of Cthulhu's army.
"She's my friend." Lloyd finally replied.
"Do you know where her teammates are?" She asked.
"Dead." Lloyd replied without a change of emotion within his voice.
"Oh, don't worry. The students don't die. A moment before their deaths, a ragdoll is left behind, and they are teleported to safety." She explained with a smile.
'What? No, that doesn't make sense. When I put those two women out of their misery, they looked gravely injured. A few more seconds and they would have died, so why didn't they get replaced?
I could even feel the fading life forces in the bodies around them. Plus, when I put those two girls out of their misery, I got the void energy equivalent of their kills. There's no way they aren't actually dead... And if they are dead, what does that mean?' Lloyd thought to himself.
"You see those over there?" The woman pointed at the kids with dark expressions on their faces.
"They were teleported here after the third year in command of them failed to protect them. It's a new thing the military wants to try out. They are making the mock exam as real as possible, so the students now grief or guilt whenever one of their teammates die." She explained, yet the dark expression still loomed over Lloyd's face.
'Did those monsters somehow find a way to stop them for being teleported away. And if they did somehow do that... Does it mean that Cthulu is capable of doing the same?' Lloyd thought.
At the this point, he knew that Alex would have been f*cked if Lloyd was a normal human. The moment he is teleported away and healed back to top shape, he would have told the authorities. He would have gotten Alex kicked out of the academy and possibly even imprisoned for several years.
However, Alex was the least of his worries in that moment.
"Look around, do any of those look like her teammates?" The woman asked with a soothing smile to calm Lloyd down.
"I think a problem just showed up..." Lloyd muttered.
"Hm?"
Lloyd slowly turned to one of the screens that showed Cthulhu battling against several third commandment instructors despite still being in the topaz stage of the second commandment.
However, before Lloyd could finish what he was saying, a voice suddenly spoke over one of the transmitters.
["Take the dead students off this planet. The revival system only works once and the monsters are closing on on the base."]
The woman raised a brow and paced over to the revival room, yet when she saw no students there, she frowned.
"No students have been teleported here. Are you sure they're 'dead'?" The asked.
The silence that followed was deafening as everyone came to a realization.
["FUCK! Code red! I said code red! The revival system is down! Save all the students now!"]
[If you have enjoyed this chapter and would like to support the author, please vote using your power stones or golden tickets.
Rewards for hitting certain milestones/quotas are in the synopsis.
