"I-I did that?" Lloyd asked himself...
He was just an average human... He didn't even awaken yet. The only thing that made him strong was that he was good with the katana, and that was it. How could a human like him put the slightest dents on the reinforced wall of a house built to withstand the power of anyone under the average prowess of a 1-star general?
"Impossible..." He staggered back and threatened to fall, yet as his body descended, his frightening reflexes kicked in, and as if his life had been put in danger, his instincts flared and instantly flipped and landed into a battle stance.
A few seconds later, he sighed in relief, but the realization hit him like a truck.
Why did he flip like that?
How was his reaction so fast despite not being awakened?
'I can't be a void walker. It's impossible! I am human for godsake!' He inwardly cried out, but his expression had already been filled to the brim with terror, while his chest began to feel tight and his breathing had become quick and heavy.
His heart rate began to quicken, and his vision blurred as he fell to the ground, his breathing now loud and audible while his hand clung to the middle of his chest.
This was no longer a laughing matter... He had to take this seriously because if his theory was true, he could say goodbye to his everyday life. He can say goodbye to having a loving family, a wife, and even kids.
Void Walkers were creatures that humans and the other races knew very little about, yet there were always a few things that all void walkers had in common.
To the coalition of races, Void Walkers were threats to the very establishments of their races. They believed that a single Void Walker could have the ability to crumble everything those races had built for hundreds of years, especially if the Void Walkers would become strong enough.
According to many of the books Lloyd read, Void Walkers were a race of beings that were born from the essence of the Void. Despite being a race of their own, there were very few of them even before they became well known, and after 'that' incident, they had become the most hunted race in the universe where it was treason to not attempt to kill them on sight.
The people didn't know much, but they knew that a Void Walker would most likely mean the decimation of a race and, if left to grow, possibly the decimation of several races.
'Haha... There is no way I am one of them...' Lloyd laughed, his voice monotone and his eyes blank.
There were many ways to identify a Void Walker, but a few certified ways could be completed relatively quickly, one of which was the blood test.
Void Walkers were creatures devoid of blood. In fact, they had no organs, muscles, or cells. All they had were mana cores that kept them intact.
If one were to slice through a Void Walker, all they would see inside would be an endless abyss, and due to not having any organs, muscles, or cells, not only did it mean that they could not grow stronger through working out, but it also meant that their only weakness was their mana cores and any other damage would cause temporary and insignificant damage to their bodies.
Slowly, Lloyd got up from the floor and walked to the kitchen where his mother was cooking, and without hesitation, he grabbed one of the knives and left the room without his mother even realizing that he had entered in the first place.
Such an act would have been impossible since his mother was so much more powerful than him, yet she did not feel him enter the kitchen nor leave it despite him not hiding his presence.
When he reached the empty living room, the knife rose into the air, and with one quick movement, the knife shot down and stabbed right through his hand without a trace of resistance.
Lloyd retracted the knife out of his hand and narrowed his eyes towards the wound he had created, yet his gaze quickly changed from one of suspense to one of dreaded terror.
He didn't feel an ounce of pain, nor did he see a drop of blood fall to the ground. Looking at the blade with a semblance of hope, he saw that it was stainless, but at the tip, one could see that it was a bit eroded, not that Lloyd could notice in the first place.
Slowly, the wound began to close as pitch-black threads that looked like they had been created out of the fabric of space left the palm and stitched the wound closed in a minute.
Lloyd felt like falling to the ground and crying his heart out. His life was over. His dreams, his family, his loved ones. He would lose them all. Once the government discovered his sudden mutation, they would instantly kill him or use him as a lab rat to learn more about the Void Walkers.
Yet, the moment tears were about to leave his eyes, he felt footsteps come towards the living room from almost 10 meters away, and as if the emotions he felt had become nothing but a facade, he stood up and dusted his clothes with a cold expression on his face.
In fact, his face wasn't the only thing to become cold. Even his emotions had disappeared, and eventually, he forced himself to look behind him and lock gazes with a girl that held a phone in her hands while wearing a pair of earbuds.
"Why are you looking at me like that? I get that you are nervous about your upcoming awakening ceremony, but don't take it out on us!" The girl sneered and flopped onto the sofa next to her.
Lloyd looked at her for a few more seconds before choosing to leave.
45 minutes passed in the blink of an eye, and it was time for Lloyd to leave for the ceremony.
Lloyd had already resigned himself to being taken away or killed on the spot, so he wrote a goodbye letter to his parents and sisters while putting it under his pillow.
He didn't know why, but after he was almost caught stabbing himself by his sister, he felt oddly calm about everything that was about to happen. One could say that it was the calm before the storm, while others could say that the stress has snapped his mind and put it into a state where his mind would cease to work correctly and experience something as simple as stress.
Leaving his room which had already been refurbished with the help of the robots on stand-by, he went towards the door and wore his wristwatch.
He lowered his wrist once again, and at speed too fast for him to see, the wristwatch glowed red for a split second before purple runes appeared on it.
The screen flashed purple for a moment, but the shine dimmed, and the blue screen returned.
"I'm leaving." Lloyd stated with a cold yet domineering tone that echoed throughout the house despite Lloyd not raising his voice.
"Good luck!" Alice shouted and, in an instant, appeared like a black blur and tackled him, but instead of falling, he stood there unmoving and patted her head warmly, scruffing her black and white hair.
"Thanks..." He replied, his voice still cold but his expression warm. It was as if his real emotions were clashing with those he wanted to show to the outside, but he didn't mind it since it might be the last time he gets to meet his family.
Even if they remembered him with this memory, at least they remembered him in a good light rather than a bad one.
Lloyd saw his two parents come out of the living room while his older sisters, Ana and Elana, walked behind them.
Ana had a bright, encouraging smile on her face as her black hair swayed from right to left as she walked towards the front door in her work attire, while Elana had a permanent sneer on her face, her white bangs covering up the scrutinizing gaze she threw at Lloyd.
Lloyd looked back at her and narrowed his eyes after seeing her stare, which only shocked her more since she was confident that her eyes were covered by the shadow of her bangs.
"Good luck son... We'll be seeing you when the the awakenings begin." Lloyd's father grabbed his wife's hand and held it tightly. He was just as nervous as Lloyd's mother, yet his mind kept returning to the scene from earlier in the day when they were all forced to wake up at 6 am.
Shaking his head rightly, he sighed a left the house without saying another word.
The journey to the school was excruciating, to say the least. Lloyd felt every step he took and knew that it only brought him closer to his death, but denying the inevitable would be stupid and careless, if not selfish.
He knew that there was no turning back at this point, and the only thing he could do from now on was move forward and hope for the best.
He finally walked into the ceremony hall, where roars of laughter, cheers of excitement, and chatter filled with theories and bets sounded out and entered Lloyd's ears. The sudden loud noise that would have usually pumped him up for his upcoming fights had not thrown him into the pits of despair.
He didn't know exactly how the ceremony worked because he never attended his older sibling's ceremonies for various reasons, but he knew one thing for sure: the entire academy would know his class the moment he touched the blue tablet.
His abilities and affinities would be kept secret to everyone except the higher-ups, and while Lloyd understood that Void Walkers were a race of people, not people with specific stats, how was he supposed to know how his race change would affect the scans?
After half an hour, the flow of students coming in began to slow while the flow of parents began to speed up significantly. While parents had another hour to come, many of them chose to come early because it is an unspoken rule that the higher, more important families would come in the last 10 minutes, and therefore, after another 30 minutes passed, Lloyd felt a few significant gazes on him.
Turning back at an angle, he glanced at the 7 figures who had entered the hall. While two were significantly younger than him, the others were his older siblings and his parents.
His parents were shocked to see that he felt their gazes, while his two older sisters and older brother narrowed their eyes and had a single thought in their minds.
'He's changed...'
Lloyd let out a small fake smile that wiped the nervousness off his face, yet other than calming down his little sister, it did nothing but worry the rest of them except Lloyd's little brother, who looked like he couldn't give a crap about the situation.
It was normal for someone of Lloyd's age to feel nervous, yet they had never seen him become this nervous before. Usually, even if the thing he was about to witness had the chance to change his life, he wouldn't react too much to it, especially not while knowing others were looking at him...
The doctors said it was because of his 'incident,' when he was still in the fourth grade, so no one questioned it... But now, he was more than openly nervous, to the extent where most of his classmates noticed the sweat that trickled down his forehead.
After everyone settled down and the doors closed again, the hall went silent before an echoing boom resounded inside the hall, and everyone turned their heads towards the door.
Several known figures came in, ranging from the Glade family, the Crimson family, the Quinn family, and the most influential one on sight, the Lightbreaker Family.
