The Walker Of Voids

The pressure from the aura caused it to freeze in place. Even its weak breaths stopped.

"I know you can understand me. Give me the orb, or I'm going to rip it out of you." Lloyd narrowed his eyes.

He knew that with enough time, all of its injuries could be healed, and it would be back to its peak, or at least its peak, before it had consumed the lightning orb.

Of course, its recovery would be much faster with the orb, but it wasn't worth its life. Lloyd was essentially telling it to either give him the orb, or he would kill it and get the orb anyway, even though it would be slightly weakened since he would be forcing it out of the Raiju without the Raiju's consent.

The Raiju slowly opened its mouth and let the orb roll out.

The orb was powerful. No, it was like nothing he had ever seen before.

Even his father's military equipment and recourses couldn't compare to the orb before him.

It was amazing. The orb was essentially a pseudo-mana core, capable of creating its own mana by purifying normal mana into pure lightning energy.

It could be used on anything from creating equipment to using it as a second core or even fusing it with your own core to create a powerful lightning core that could even resemble the elemental mana cores of the dragons.

However, Lloyd wouldn't use it on any of those things. He was simply going to use it to cultivate.

With a snap of his fingers, Lloyd sent in a spark of void energy before using [Aspec of Void] to engrave runes all over the lighting orb. The energy inside it instantly turned purple, and now Lloyd was ready to cultivate it.

"Oh yeah... I almost forgot." Lloyd muttered, his eyes locked onto the orb in his hand while he raised his other hand, pointing his palm towards the Raiju.

Without even looking at it, Lloyd used [Void control] to shoot a beam of void mana through its head, killing it in an instant while the remained void mana fused with Lloyd's will, quickly corrupting the mana and life force inside the Raiju and sending it into his body.

His lightning rune turned purple, and devoured the Raiju's lightning affinity. At the same time, the rest of the energy remained just outside of Lloyd's core, shrouding it like a dark mist waiting to infiltrate it at the first sign of weakness.

At the same, Lloyd channeled the pure essence of void lightning, through his mana channels and core before circulating it through his body instead of his core.

While he would have loved the opportunity to enhance his core, Lloyd knew that enhancing his body with the lightning element would be the best choice in this predicament.

Lloyd spent the rest of his hours cultivating the orb into his body and strengthening it with the use of void lightning. Not only did this mean that his body was stronger, but it also meant that his body's affinity with the lightning element increased.

The moment the world around him flickered and turned into a black abyss, the rest of the orb went into his core and began cultivating itself as if his body was doing it on instinct.

Lloyd's eyes flickered open, and he quickly concentrated on his core, allowing the void energy to finally enter it and mix with the lightning energy from the orb.

It took him another hour to cultivate the rest of the orb into his core, since cultivating his body would release little bits of void energy and expose his identity as a void walker.

When he felt like he was about to go through a breakthrough, Lloyd quickly went into his shadow and let it out.

*BOOM*

The shockwave traveled in every direction, yet his body didn't break like before, nor did his core do so either. Instead, it brightened with a new light before radiating a dark purple that shone through his shell and into the shadow realm itself.

Lloyd was had finally reached the early first commandment for his core, but his body was far ahead of it, already having reached the 90% mark to the mid-stage of the first commandment.

Lloyd was now certain that he could probably take an amethyst seal head-on, but he also didn't want to overestimate himself and underestimate the power of an amethyst seal.

An amethyst seal wasn't like having 10 topaz seals, even though that's what it took the create them. The gap between 10 topaz seals and one amethyst seal was like the difference between the half-step second commandment and the second commandment itself.

The gap was huge, even though it might not seem that way.

With a short sigh, Lloyd left his shadow and quickly jumped out of his bed. It was only 6 am, but he never usually slept, so he didn't mind waking up at such an early time.

Since it was technically a new week, Lloyd went to the gym and spent the majority of his hours on a single 6 1/2-hour session with one of the dummies. He quickly realized that he couldn't fight an amethyst seal on his own without using any of his racial abilities. Doing it without was extremely difficult, even when he had set the dummy's talent to average.

Lloyd quickly left the gym after a long session and walked straight to the assembly hall since that was where they were supposed to meet before going to this other planet.

Since he didn't sweat, he didn't see any need to change or shower, so even though his hair was disheveled and untidy, he smelled better than ever if you ignored the faint smell of smoke that remained on his clothes.

The hall was filled to the brim with chatter, yet once one of the military instructors seemed to have walked onto the stage and snapped their fingers, everyone quieted down.

"The process is simple..." The man spoke without even caring to introduce himself. He was a bald man, and if Lloyd remembered correctly, he was the one who stood on the pillar the first them they came to the academy.

"You will all be put into teams of five, while our best group of third-year students will be there to support and guide you and will only save you if you are on the brink of death. Is that understood?" He asked while narrowing his eyes.

"Sir, yes sir!" Everyone shouted in unison while saluting the man.

"Good. Your teams and supervisor will be sent to you in a message. The ship you will be taking will be in the message, too, I wish all of you the best of luck, and I hope all of you come back alive from this mock exam." The man saluted the students.

"Sir, yes sir!" they all roared in unison once more. Everyone was worried, scared, or even a little stressed. No matter what dungeon they went to, going to a real planet filled with monsters that had mutated over time was a completely different thing.

And for the richer folk, this entire thing was a new experience. None of them had ever felt the feeling of being beaten an inch of their lives, or surviving by a hair's breadth or even by luck. There was always a group of people there to protect them. Yet, even though that was the case now too, the person protecting them was only one person who had to divide their focus among 5 people, and to make it worse, they were also just students too, despite being in their third years.

However, while everyone else was worried whether or not they would get out of this 'mock' exam alive, Lloyd was trying his hardest to restrain a grin from breaking out on his face.

After all, this mock exam was a gold mine for someone who cultivated off the mana and life force of others that would allow him to reach the mid stages of the first commandment on both his cultivations.

'Served on a golden fucking platter.' Lloyd thought with a wry smirk and a pair of purple-black eyes that shone through his colored contacts.

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