Arriving at a highly guarded, Lloyd could not help but raise a brow at the display in front of him.
This was a high-tech area, and while it was made to look like this was just a governmental facility created and raised around a scientific phenomenon, it was, in fact, just the adventurer's association putting measures in place to ensure that no one would get close to the gate.
Leaving a dungeon gate accessible to the public would cause horrible consequences, to the point where not even temporary dungeons would be easily accessible.
Before deciding whether or not he should enter, he quickly snatched a black mask out of my wristwatch's dimensional space and put it on.
The black mask was quite plain. Its face was completely smooth, making it look like it was a part of an egg's shell, while near the upper middle were two eye-sized holes that made it very easy for anyone to see Lloyd's deep violet eyes that seemed to pierce through people's souls with a single glance.
While usually, a mask like this would have hindered Lloyd's vision, it was created with battle in mind, making it so that despite only two holes, Lloyd could see through the black material of the mask. This made it so that his vision wasn't hindered in the least, while his peripheral vision could still be used even if the mask continued being on.
"Halt! State your business!" One of the guards shouted and stepped forward with his weapon in hand while the other guard silently shook his head in both embarrassment and disappointment.
Clearly, it was the loudmouth's first day; otherwise, he wouldn't have acted like that.
Lloyd sighed and was about to rub the bridge of his nose, but he quickly realized he was wearing a mask.
"Mitchell, there is no need to shout at everyone who comes around!" The other man's face palmed. Hearing this, Lloyd could not help but let out a small chuckle while taking several steps towards the door.
"I'm an adventurer. I'd like to enter the E-rank dungeon, please." Lloyd asked the face-palming man, his voice slightly cold. Taking out his adventurer card, he handed it to the man and waited for him to say something.
Adventurer cards were the one thing that could not be forged without trillions of dollars. At the same time, they could not be stolen because they were biometrically linked to the person that owned them.
"Seems legit. One thing, though... You can't enter the dungeon alone when you are under D rank. I suggest you try and party up with an E rank squad." The man informed while giving Lloyd back his card.
Moving towards the door, Lloyd put his card in and looked around to face the man.
"Thank you for your advice..." Lloyd thanked, yet it was cold and distant. He didn't understand why his voice kept coming out this way, yet he did not complain in the least. The more distant he seemed, the less connections he would make, and therefore the lower the chances of anyone finding out he was a Void Walker.
"Your welcome kid. Well... I think you are a kid. I don't actually know." He shrugged while the man behind him clenched his weapon even harder than before, his anger reaching a boiling point.
*Pshhh*
The door behind Lloyd opened, and he immediately entered. While he was curious about what the man who was beginning to glow red in anger would say, after seeing him almost reach his boiling point due to being ignored, Lloyd thought against his plan and ran away.
'Better safe than sorry.' Lloyd thought.
Moving towards the center of the room, he looked around for a bit and found quite a few groups of people talking to each other.
After eavesdropping for a couple of seconds, he moved from one group to the next, yet it was one disappointment after another. None of them seemed to be talking about anything relevant, and from what Lloyd was seeing, none of them needed an extra teammate.
While Lloyd wanted to join a group, he would not lower himself to being a porter where he would do nothing but carry items all-day. At the same time, he was too socially awkward to go to random people and ask them if they wanted another teammate, not that the chances of them agreeing in the first place were high either way.
Lloyd pondered about his situation for a few seconds before he finally lost interest and began to walk out, yet on the way out, he caught a glimpse of something from the corner of his eye.
Walking over, he stood in front of a 'Squad referrals table and asked-
"Can I be assigned to a squad?"
"Yeah. Just give me your card, and I'll tell you the squad you should go to." She explained while Lloyd did as she told him.
A few seconds quickly passed, and his card was returned to him before he was directed towards a specific squad in the distance who were laughing and chatting their hearts out.
Walking over to them with a stoic expression under his mask, Lloyd looked at their burly leader and gave him a paper detailing how he would join their squad for their next dungeon raid.
"Oh, nice. Well, seems like we have our last member." The man smiled widely before extending his hand in a friendly manner.
"My name is Osmygold, but you can just call me Osmy. I'm a Paladin," the squad leader stated while shaking Lloyd's hand.
'Strong grip...' Lloyd thought while peering into Osmygold's eyes.
An expression of slight shock appeared on the man's face, something Lloyd noticed, yet it disappeared as fast as it came making it so that the others did not see it.
"Hey, I'm Peacexelr. You can just call me Peace. I'm an archer and usually fight as support. I can be a very good damage dealer, though, so sometimes I deviate." A man with a bow on his back walked over to Lloyd and shook his hand.
Pushing up his spectacles and pushing away his long black hair from his eyes, Peace turned around and looked at the girl behind him while waving her over.
"Oh?" She tilted her head a few degrees to the right before a bright smile appeared on her face. It was a smile akin to an innocent girl, yet Lloyd knew better than to trust that smile of hers.
Those who have the most innocent smiles are either fools or the deadliest tricksters known to man. No adult should be capable of unleashing such a smile, especially with how cruel the universe can be to those most ignorant.
Seeing Lloyd's wariness around her, she could not help but smile even more widely than before as she extended her hand for a handshake.
"I'm Rosepetal. I'm an elemental swordsman." She stated simply, yet something else ran through the minds of everyone as she spoke. Everyone but Lloyd.
'What a melody...'
And to a certain extent, that was true. Her voice was melodious to the ears. It was as if her voice was created to please the ears and relax the mind.
"And this right here is my friend-"
"Trishaless... I'm a Barbarian" Her friend cut her off while grumbling under her breath. Despite the girl seeming quite fragile due to her petite physique, a giant waraxe could be seen tied to her back as she moved flawlessly without a hitch.
It almost looked like she didn't feel the weight of the waraxe on her back.
'A paladin, elemental swordsman, barbarian and archer... Pretty good team if you ask me.' Lloyd thought to himself.
A paladin was considered a class of the Magic rarity, making it very rare for anyone to have the class. The same goes for the elemental swordsman, a class also in the Magic category.
While barbarians were strong, they were only in the rare category, one rank lower than the paladin and elemental swordsman, and to a certain extent, it was considered nothing more than a cheap copy of the legendary ranked berserker class that a barbarian has the low chance of evolving into every time they go up a commandment.
[Author's note: The ranking goes like this-
-Common
-Rare
-Magic
-Legendary
-???
-???]
After everyone introduced themselves, they all looked at the slightly disinterested Lloyd standing in the middle of them all with folded arms.
After a few more seconds of staring, Osmy finally spoke up with a disgruntled voice that he tried his best to hide.
"You haven't introduced yourself..."
"My name is Null, Shadow assassin." Lloyd kept his introduction brief and as concise as possible, making the others look at him weird but eventually shrug it off as him 'Trying to act cool.'
Not many wore masks, and those who did were criminals or wanted to act cool; very rarely would there be another reason.
After a bit more small talk, they finally packed up and moved towards the 7-and-a-half-meter tall rapture in space-time.
After continuing to walk in the lead alongside Osmy and Peace, Lloyd could not help but have a bad feeling emerge within his heart. However, he simply threw the feeling to the back of his heart.
Despite that, the sweating did not halt, nor did the feeling of unease go away, yet he had done the best he could to suppress it, and he knew that.
As he watched all of them enter the space rapture nonchalantly, Lloyd took a deep breath and finally entered behind them.
*VHOOOM*
Lloyd's vision twisted and warped in many different ways, and before long, he felt as if he was about to get ejected, so he braced himself for the impact.
*Fwoooosh*
*Thud*
Leaving the dungeon gate, Lloyd found himself falling from 5 meters in the air.
Without thinking about it, Lloyd quickly regained his balance mid-air by discerning which was way up and which way was down, allowing him to land on both his feet.
*Thud* *Thud* *Thud*
The remaining three landed beside Lloyd, and despite some falling and others landing on their feet, Lloyd only spared them a glance before looking back at their leader.
One might have called this an egregious act or a crappy thing to do, yet every time Lloyd looked at them, he could not help but have a bad feeling about them.
It wasn't that he felt danger from them, no... He felt he needed to distance himself from them and have the least amount of interactions with them.
It was a feeling he felt before whenever he found himself in social situations, yet now, it was as if that feeling was being amplified 100 times.
"Hmm... A fores-" Before Osmy could say anything, he instinctually pushed himself back, causing him to roll and regroup with Lloyd and the rest.
"What was that?" He asked, a tinge of fear in his voice as his life seemed to have flashed before his eyes.
However, before anyone could think of analyzing their surroundings, the archer pointed toward something and caused the rest to look at the thing sticking out of the ground.
"An arrow?" Trishaless asked with a raised brow.
Lloyd could not help but narrow his eyes, looking at the arrow lodged into the ground.
'So these are goblins, huh... They are a lot more intelligent than I thought they were.' Lloyd mused with cold and apathetic eyes.
Looking up, he narrowed his eyes and quickly made a conclusion.
While it might have looked like there was a sky above them, Lloyd had researched enough to know how this dungeon worked and what the creatures inside it would be.
They were on the first floor of the great labyrinth, which humanity had still not found a way out of.
While many permanent dungeon portals linked to this specific labyrinth, not only on planet Deroxa but also on several other planets in the human domain, it was well known that the first 3 or so floors were filled with creatures without a commandment, making it very easy for anyone to come here and train, yet this did not mean that the training would all of a sudden become easy.
People could very well lose their lives with one mistake here, and while it wasn't as accommodating as the human-colonized planets, there were still a very large amount of people who had chosen to move into the labyrinth and create small civilizations.
Lloyd knew that going to the lower floors was completely prohibited if they did not kill the boss of the floor they were on, and since bosses and other 'mobs' respawned after a while of being killed, it meant that most people would go to the next floor, or die trying.
"We are being ambushed. Since we spawn at random places, we can only blame our luck for spawning next to a goblin village!" Rosepetal explained and got into the formation with the rest of them, yet despite that, Lloyd had no idea what he should have been doing, so instead of joining them in their cool little formation, he slowly melted into the ground and disappeared from sight.
'This is going to be fun...' Lloyd muttered to himself, but despite his jovial words, his voice in his mind was bone-chilling, while his expression under the mask remained the same, continuing to be cold and uncaring as his head finally melted into his shadow.
This was going to be a one-sided massacre; it just wasn't obvious who would be on the receiving end this time.
