Chapter 62 Eternal Autumn [4]
Chapter 62 Eternal Autumn [4]
[Huge thank you to Master_Atlest for his generous gifts]
Lloyd's steps halted, causing the two beside him to turn toward him just in time to see a smile stretch across his face.
"A vampire..." Lloyd muttered, making the two instantly flashback to his reaction when he met a beastkin for the first time. Sighing, they simply stepped aside and chose to let him get it all out before he went into the camp, where his reaction would definitely be much more intense.
Looking down, the vampire looked into Lloyd's eyes with her deep crimson ones, yet after a moment's pause, a sweet smile stretched across her face, making the two beside Lloyd feel a shiver go down their spines.
"And who are you?" She asked while appearing before Lloyd in the blink of an eye. Her eyes narrowed dangerously while her aura exploded, making even the likes of Lloyd to freeze in her presence.
"L-Lloyd E-Elrod at your service." Lloyd stuttered while trying his best to look into the woman's eyes.
She was tall, standing around 6 feet tall, yet Lloyd suspected that an extra inch or two might have come from her heeled boots.
Despite not being taller than Lloyd, he could not help but hunch a little as his body tried its best to make him look small while still remaining standing, making her seem much taller than she actually was.
It would not have been an exaggeration to say that she was a Gartia-shattering beauty, and to an extent, she quite literally was.
When it came to her, the saying was no longer a saying since Lloyd did not that she might have caused a few wars by just being alive.
"Elrod?" Her fake yet sweet smile disappeared and was quickly replaced by a more inquisitive one, yet despite everything changing, her aura remained dominant like a tiger in the middle of a pack of bunnies, while her stare remained like that of a serpent's, ready to strike at a moment's notice.
"Do you happen to know Noah Elrod?" She asked.
"Y-Yeah... That's my f-father." Lloyd stuttered back.
"Oh my... Ana will definitely kill you if she finds out that you came here alone." The woman chuckled, yet Lloyd only raised a brow as he quickly unwound, returning to his untense self.
"You know my sister?" He asked.
"Yeah, I met her a few years back. I believe I am just a little older than you in human years." She smiled as her serpent-like eyes faded, and her aura gradually collapsed into her, yet her presence still remained with enough vigor to probably keep away most creatures under the first commandment.
"My name is Veronica Everdale. Nice to meet you." She stretched out her hand and clasped Lloyd's despite him not having stretched out his own.
Veronica's smile disappeared once again without skipping a beat before she turned around and walked towards the camp, or at least that's what Lloyd assumed since the other two followed her without thinking twice.
"We moved the camp up a little due to uhm... You know." She pointed with her thumb towards the right, and while it was hard to decipher what exactly she was pointing towards, it quickly became obvious to Lloyd.
They were longer walking through a forest... They were walking through a treant's cemetery, every single one of them frozen into the position they were in before death with a clean, almost incomprehensible sword wound going through their midsection.
"Oh, come on, Vee! We can't keep moving camps because you can't keep your hands to yourself." Roderick facepalmed.
"Hey, it's not my fault this forest has a personal space problem." Veronica shrugged unempathetically.
"That's why we ask you to keep your hands to yourself!" Roderick shouted before Hime, her arm around him, and rubbed his shoulder as if she was trying to silence a crying child.
They continued to walk for a while, and while the three seemed to bicker with one another throughout the trip, Lloyd stayed completely silent to the point where they would even forget that he was there.
"You sure are quiet. Hell, I can't even hear you're footsteps, nor do you seem to have a personal scent." Hime commented on drawing Lloyd's attention.
"Oh, thanks?" Lloyd tilted his head, unaware if he was being complimented or ridiculed, yet the latter did not seem to be something Hime would do to him for no reason despite doing it to Veronica without batting an eye.
"A natural assassin if you ask me. Too bad, you're a mage." Roderick laughed while Veronica simply glanced back for a moment to look at Lloyd's reaction
"I'm an assassin type... Don't ask; it's complicated..." Lloyd sighed while the rest descended into an unbreakable silence.
A few minutes later, evidence of human civilization could be seen in the distance, and when they finally reached the group of tents that had been built right next to each other.
"Goddamnit, Vee! What did we say about coming back here!" A masculine voice spoke from within one of the tents before a man with snow-white hair walked through the tent's curtain, his scowl visible for miles as his aura flared without an ounce of it being held back.
The winds quickly picked up, and before Hime could stand in front of Lloyd to protect him from the man's aura-
*BOOOM*
After hours of watching his every step while being aware of his surroundings, Lloyd found himself on his toes even after being told that he would be protected by Hime and Roderick.
And so, when an unknown figure suddenly lashed out with his aura laced with killing intent, his instincts took over, and within an instant, a powerful, dark, and violet monarchical aura exploded out of his body like a hungry dragon being released from its hell-forged chains for the first time in decades.
His aura was that of an apex predator, and everyone around him felt it, yet not to the extent that people at the same level as Lloyd would have.
Lloyd's eyes glowed violet behind the black and purple fog swirling around him, and despite all of them being much stronger than him, they could not explain the type of dread that washed over their body at the moment.
As if their very instincts had been trained for millions of years to do one thing and one thing only...
To run away from whatever that thing was.
The white-haired man's eyes glowed an ocean blue while his veins moved around below his pale, almost transparent skin, glowing bright red while forming into runes that powered every cell in his body.
"Everyone, stop!" Veronica roared and released her own aura that trumped both Lloyd's and the white-haired man's auras in a matter of seconds.
Hearing Veronica's voice, Lloyd calmed himself down before closing his eyes and allowing them to return to their usual selves.
His aura quickly suppressed itself within him before an apologetic expression replaced his cold and apathetic one, yet before he could bow and ask for forgiveness for his rudeness, the man did not waste a second as he walked up to Lloyd.
In a move that no one expected, the man lifted his foot off the ground and landed a devastating hit on Lloyd's abdomen.
Of course, it wasn't hard enough to kill him or anything, but Lloyd could not help but hear and feel a few cracks spreading through his abdomen while the sharp pain from the hit made him feel a little woozy, yet only for a moment.
'That imbecile. Let's burn him inside out!'
Flipping mid-air, Lloyd got to the appropriate position to land safely, and despite seeing the man line up for another attack, he knew that neither Roderick nor Hime would allow the white-haired man to land another punch. He wasn't so sure about Veronica, but he was sure that she was nice.
'You know we can kill him, right? He is just an Initial Topaz Second Commandment.'
Well, he thought she was nice from the very small and limited interaction he had with her. For all he knew, she might be a serial killer.
Landing on the ground just as they restrained him, Lloyd let out a sigh while rubbing his 'wound,' but after a while of doing so, a thought came to mind.
'Did he just try to attack me with a killing blow, or did he somehow know that someone that hadn't reached the first commandment could take such a hit without turning into a bloody mist.
Lloyd's anger flared slightly, but after taking a few deep breaths in, he felt a little calmed despite his chest not having moved an inch, simply because he didn't need to move his chest to breathe... Nor did he need to breathe at all.
'Do you ever wonder what would happen to a human body if we were to fill it with void flames? A question that science had not solved yet... How interesting.'
"Hey! It's not my fault the kid released so much killing intent! Get off me already!" The man roared, yet he could not budge from where he stood as he was being held down by both Roderick and Hime.
"Are you okay?" Hime asked with real concern in her voice, completely ignoring the man she was holding down.
"Yeah, I'm fine." Lloyd replied, his eyes glued to the man.
'We should kill him.' A monotonous and emotionless voice spoke in Lloyd's head, yet for some reason, Lloyd felt as if the voice was simply hiding an unimaginable amount of rage behind it.
'No...'
'Why?' it asked.
Ignoring the voice, Lloyd stepped forward and quickly strolled past the white-haired and stood in front of an empty field of orange grass before raising the hand with a watch on it and muttering-
"Open and expand."
A small ball left Lloyd's watch, and right before his eyes, it turned into a medium-sized tent, not nearly as large as the others but good enough for him, or so they thought.
Lloyd glanced back at Hime, and with a fake smile, he spoke-
"I'm fine, don't worry."
Before quickly entering and closing the curtain behind him.
"Thank god I have loaded parents, this would have taken me years to afford." Lloyd thought as he walked through his tent, which now looked much larger from the inside than the outside.
Dimensional Engineering was one of the most up-and-coming jobs around the universe. A job limited to the very small portion of people who have any power over the affinity of space.
The power to make the internal dimension exceed the external dimensions by creating a pocket dimension within the object. It is also the reason why the tent easily collapsed into a sphere the size of a marble without any repercussions.
The wonders of dimensional engineering were slowly lost throughout time as fewer and fewer individuals had the needed class and affinity to fit the job of a dimensional engineer, and even when they did, at that time, they were considered more useful on the battlefield for their war-ending abilities capable of killing millions in an instant.
Of course, this was not the case with Void Walkers, who, throughout the years, evolved to the point where dimensional and space abilities had become a genetic third limb, or that was what the stories said anyway...
No one really knew what happened since the only reliable sources of information were the texts and drawings of ancient civilizations that had been extinct for eons.
All they knew was that the Void Walker race quickly rose to the top, discovering and creating one scientific wonder after the other, easily becoming not only one of the most powerful races in the universe but singlehandedly revolutionizing the entirety of the universe.
Looking around the room, Lloyd's mind raced with calculation and ideas.
He could not understand the scientific marvel before his eyes, yet he did not care all that much.
What caught his attention was how familiar the runes felt to him, alongside how cozy being inside a pocket dimension felt, yet he was quickly snapped out of his daze as a sharp pain reminded him why he ran away from what happened outside.
The inside of the tent was huge. It was possibly 3 or 4 times larger than his own room and about as big as his parent's room, but it still felt like something from another universe.
It had a large bed at the back, a dining area, a wardrobe just big enough to fit a hundred pairs of clothes, and much more, but despite wanting to divulge in whatever was in the room, he walked to one of the mirrors and looked into it.
"I will have to rest a little to heal this wound." Lloyd whispered under his breath while lifting his shirt, yet his eyes widened in surprise when he looked at his abdomen.
A faint light shone from the cracks that were there, and as the already partially sealed cracks faded faster than ever, Lloyd's blank mind was quickly replaced by three words.
"What the f*ck?"
[Author's Note: I'll be locking my chapters soon, so hold on to your fast passes as you might need them (Even though I would recommend using coins since that is the only way I could earn money from this novel, but it's up to you.)
Secondly, massive mass release on the 16th and the 27th of December, as well as the 1st of January. 5 Chapters will be updated on every one of those dates, so you'll get and extra 12 chapters in total. I cannot promise that every single one of those chapters will be the same size as the current ones, but I will try to stick to over 1.2k words per mass release chapter.]