?


    *Snap*


    The moment the monster looked into Lloyd''s burning purple eyes, it felt the world around it instantly be darker, while Lloyd suddenly seemed so much more menacing.


    Time looked like it had slowed that, but that was a simple trick of the mind, not that the monster really had much of one.


    Suddenly, blue mes erupted out of the monster, causing it to screech in pain as the embers of the mes forced themselves into the monster''s body, ravaging internal organs and destroying everything from the inside out.


    The monster let out a deafening shriek, and before it could understand what was happening to it, its life force was snuffed out while the light of life left its eyes.


    Lloyd felt a surge of void energy enter his body, confirming that the monster was dead.


    Creating a pair of wings, Lloyd pped them and quickly took the third-year archer into his arms before scanning the falling monster and putting it into his ring.


    Landing onto the ground, Lloyd took out a tonic and ced it on her lips, forcing her to gulp down slowly and beginning the process of healing her wounds.


    Ss quickly retraced his wings. Looking around, he saw the swarm of monsters about to reach the peak of the firstmandment; however, unlike therger monster he had just killed, the chances of them being stronger than anyone in the secondmandment was close to zero.


    The facts were that the monster he had killed would have been considered one of the higher-tier monsters out of the storm. The monster was muchrger than the rest, and his power was incredible whenpared to the average half-step secondmandment.


    Of course, Lloyd was not only a void walker, a race that naturally had more talent than other races, but he also had a celestial grade ss.


    Celestial grade sses were the strongest sses out there,pletely trumping the legendary and mythic sses since celestial sses were well known for changing the very anatomy of a person to change them into a creature of a ''higher race.''


    While humans, elves, and dwarves loved to think of themselves as higher races, that simply was not the case.


    If one wanted to talk about a higher race, one would talk about phoenixes, dragons, void walkers, and star spirits. THEY were of higher races.


    Hell, star spirits were known for awakening from birth and instantly reaching the 5thmandment. There were star spirits so old that they were as old as the oldest stars in the universe, one example being Methush, dubbed as the sovereign of stars by every being of his race for being over 16 billion years old, possibly even older than the universe.


    Since Lloyd was of a higher race and had a celestial ss, his prowess at lowermandments was fated to be much higher than others, and the same could be said about the monster he killed and when it waspared to the rest of its race.


    Sure, monsters didn''t have sses, nor did they cultivate the same way as humans who awakened mana through sses and abilities, but they had their own hierarchies and their own cultivating methods.


    Lloyd slowly walked toward Alex and stood in front of him. Bending down, Lloyd raised his chin and looked him in the eyes.


    When he did, he didn''t see the eyes of a warrior. He saw the eyes of a man who had just given up.


    "Hello little man." Lloyd smirked.


    Alex widened his eyes slightly, was a fanatic glint appeared in his eyes.


    "I''ll... Kill... You!" He shouted, trying to reach out for Lloyd''s face, yet the moment Lloyd saw the handing toward him, he looked at it with a hint of disgust before-


    *Thud*


    The hand fell to the floor and was instantly absorbed by Lloyd''s shadow.


    "You disgust me." Lloyd spat onto his face; however,  no matter how much he wanted to torture him, Lloyd understood that this was the best chance for him to die.


    *Pitui*


    Lloyd''s hand stabbed into Alex''s heart before he slowly retracted it and wiped his hand with a white cloth.


    ''Ah... Why does that feel so good?'' Lloyd thought as pure void energy coursed through his body and revolved around his core, making him feel refreshed and happy all at the same time.


    "What the hell did you do!?" A voice shouted from behind him, and as he turned around, he saw a fireball approaching him.


    "Hmm?" Lloyd sidestepped, causing the fireball to hit Alex and burn his corpse.


    "Haley, what are you doing?" Lloyd asked.


    "You killed him!" She roared before waving her staff in the air and gathering an enormous morphing sphere of mes.


    "He was already dead. I simply put him out of his misery." Lloyd shrugged.


    Didn''t he do the right thing? Well, wouldn''t it seem like he did the right thing from where others were standing?


    The guy was clearly dying; Lloyd just helped him reach death.<novelsnext></novelsnext>


    So why was she...


    ''Oh...'' Lloyd gritted his teeth.


    Ever since he killed Veronica, he had be slightly numb to death.


    And the feeling only increased as he killed more and more. From the women who were the only ones barely alive, to all those prisoners Null had killed in his stead.


    Despite knowing that the prisoner''s deaths were Null''s doing, it still felt like the blood was on his hands.


    And now that this blood was beginning to pile up, he had be numb to it.


    Because, once one''s hands arepletely dyed with blood, dyeing it more would only refresh the coat of paint, not increase the amount of the hand that had been painted.


    He watched as the fireball shot toward him. It was quitergepared to the others, yet in the end, her mes were quite weakpared to his own.


    Stretching his hand forward, Lloyd watched as the ball of mes ravaged the forest and trees, burning through them and turning them into ashes.


    [me Control]


    And then the sphere froze.


    "Compress," Lloyd spoke, making the mepress in size, quickly turning it into a ball the size of a peanut.


    Lloyd quickly flicked the peanut-sized sphere at Haley''s head, or at least it initially seemed that way.


    However, the ball shot right past her head, shooting through the head of the monster behind it that was beginning to open its maw in order to feast on Haley''s flesh.


    [me Control]


    [Bullet Barrage]


    With a wave of his hands, Lloyd instantly created hundreds of bullets that shot toward the monsters, moving in zig-zag patterns and shooting through the heads, hearts, and mana crystals of all of them, killing them in an instant no matter what body part the bullets shot through.


    Their bodies were quickly engulfed in blue mes and turned into ashes. None of them dropped their mana crystals since they were ancient creatures before the times of abilities and sses. However, Lloyd thoroughly enjoyed the void energy coursing through him.


    "Let''s go. The main military base on this is a mile south of here." Lloydmanded while pointing toward the base.


    "Why would we trust you? You killed Alex... You''re a maniac. You probably want to kill us all. How did you even survive? Alex said you died; he said he killed you with his own hands. You were nothing but an early-stage firstmandment. You were supposed to be weak... But you''re a monster!" John stumbled back with an expression of fear on his face.


    "Did he just out himself," Lloyd muttered to himself before shrugging.


    "What? No, he didn''t? He said Lloyd sacrificed himself to save us while dying in the rubble." Derek rebutted.


    "Good to know." Lloyd sighed and directed one of the me bullets at John. However, instead of killing him instantly, the mes engulfed him, causing him to scream in pain at the blue mes burning away at his body and mind.


    They weren''t stupid. The moment John said such a thing, it made sense to everyone in the group.


    He was from a powerful family, and so was Alex. John must have felt humiliated after being beaten to a pulp by Lloyd, someone who was not only at the same stage as him, but was also amoner much younger than him.


    "Now... If anyone has any otherints, say them now or hold your tongue for the entire journey. Is the understood?" Lloyd asked, making them all nod without making aint.


    They saw what happened to thest guy who did, and even those who considered themselves Lloyd''s friends didn''t dare say a word.


    Clearly, Lloyd didn''t trust any of them; after all, he somehow hid his strength from all of them, and didn''t even bother to inform them about his increase in strength since the start of the academy.


    Lloyd lifted the archer girl and expanded his shadow, cing her inside and swallowing everyone else inside it before covering himself with lightning runes and moving as fast as possible toward the base.


    [Context: Methush is the oldest known star in the universe. It is also known as HD140283 and was first observed via the European Space Agency''s (ESA) Hippacros satellite. Scientists are asking how a star can be older than the universe itself, but no one knows.]


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