The Walker Of Voids

The torture Felix called training continued for 3 more hours, and despite knowing the training was coming to an end, Lloyd felt like there was no end in sight.

"Felix. I think that is enough for today, don't you think?" Hime asked while winking at Lloyd, who could not help but simply smile towards her with genuine gratitude written all over his face. Of course, with the blindfold still being over his

Lloyd's body was covered in cracks, yet at that point, everyone on the team knew about Lloyd's weird anatomy. They had seen it before when he was fighting against the monster, so they would not have been surprised to see it again after his training with Felix, where everyone had assumed that Lloyd would have gotten his ass beaten by him due to their past encounters.

With a sneer, Felix turned around and went straight to his tent without saying another word.

"So, are you going to train me now?" Lloyd asked while trying to get up, yet the instant he moved from where he lay, he felt an excruciating jolt of pain shot through his body, forcing him to drop to the ground and grit his teeth.

"Oh... Looks like he did quite a number on you." Hime chuckled while crouching to Lloyd's level and taking his blindfold off, and with the grace of a mother caring for her child, she swooped out a potion from within her spacial storage and began to pour it into a spoon before putting it into Lloyd's mouth.

"Oh god, that tastes horrible." Lloyd cried out after gulping the liquid down.

"Stop complaining. Drink this and you'll feel better." Hime explained and put another spoonful of the potion into Lloyd's mouth before he could find the time to complain.

This continued for a few minutes, and whenever someone from the group left their tents, they would chuckle before going on to do whatever they were thinking of doing before leaving.

While Lloyd felt a little embarrassed by the situation, he quickly accepted it since he had no other choice.

After a few minutes, however, he began to feel more energized, while the cracks all over his body began to heal while the pain subsided slowly, allowing Lloyd to finally think straight.

"Thanks. I owe you one." Lloyd smiled while getting up from where he sat.

"Don't thank me just yet." She smiled before also standing up and turning around.

"You're going to teach me beast fighting, correct?" Lloyd asked while recalling what she had said when she had been announcing all the training he would do.

Now that Lloyd felt energized again, he felt as if he could do anything, and now that Hime was before him, ready to teach him her race's basic martial art, he was more than willing to learn.

"Us beast-kin are slightly different from you humans. We might seem the same structurally, but if you were to dissect the body of a beast-kin, depending on what kind of beast-kin you dissect, the difference in our bodies would be like night and day." She explained while Lloyd simply stayed in the same place, waiting for her to finish.

"While I don't know much about the fishfolk, the reptilians, or the birdfolk, I know just enough to tell you that every one of us is different in our own ways.

Birdfolk have lighter bones, reptilians are cold-blooded creatures who usually have scales and long tongues, fishfolk have gills, and we mammals have a higher bone density than most, warm blood, fur, or hair, and a higher muscle density than the rest of those.

However, even within every category of beast-kin, some of us have different heritages, but we're not here to talk about that.

Today, I will teach you the basic martial arts used by most, if not all, mammalfolk." Hime explained while Lloyd simply nodded, trying to absorb most of the information he had just been given.

"Most humans have horrible flexibility, and while half of that isn't your fault, I've seen humans who have been capable of training themselves so they could be as flexible as some of us mammalfolk."

"Wait, aren't humans also beastkin... Or at least mammalfolk? We're basically just upgraded monkeys." Lloyd questioned.

"Well, that would have been the case, but the unified council said that humans, elves, and dwarves all have common ancestors," Hime explained, yet this time Lloyd couldn't help but feel as if there was a hint of loathing in her voice, yet instead of being a nosy bastard, he stayed quiet and continued to listen.

Hime's explanation continued for a while, and by the end of it, she had given Lloyd a few exercises to increase the flexibility of his joints. Of course, Lloyd didn't have joints, nor did he know how his body even worked without the existence of his muscles or bones, but instead of questioning everything about his body, he simply excepted to do the exercises as told.

After completing the set of exercises he knew he would be doing every day until he left the dungeon, Lloyd jumped back a few meters and got into a fighting position.

"What are you doing?" She asked.

"Uhm... Getting ready for the training?" Lloyd tilted his head.

"I'm teaching a martial art, not beating it into you. Well, that part comes later anyway, so you don't have to worry about it for now." Hime smiled, yet for some reason, Lloyd could not help but feel even more unsettled by her words.

"Basic beast fighting martial arts is what you humans describe as 'brutish,' but it gets the job done. It is quick and swift in doing what it needs to do, and it balances attack and defense quite nicely." She explained before smiling.

"Now, while I could fight one of the beasts outside this dome, its probably better if I give you a first-hand experience on how deadly it can me." her smile grew slightly, yet instead of the psychotic smile that Veronica usually had on whenever she was around Lloyd, this one felt like the smile of a mother.

Calming and soothing, yet for some reason, it felt like it was purely being used to set Lloyd up to gain a sense of security around her.

"I thought you said you wouldn't beat it into me."

"I won't be. Don't worry, I'll be gentle."

'That's what he said.' Lloyd inwardly sighed before getting into a battle stance and covering his hands in shadows.

[Shadow Claw]

Hime raised a brow at this since it was the first time she had seen him use it, yet before she could think about it anymore, the sound of the wind being parted entered her ears before a figure shrouded in shadows appeared in front of her with their claws extended towards her face.

With a smirk now on her face, Hime twisted her waist while leaning back, completely avoiding Lloyd's attack.

However, instead of jumping away like most would have in such a vulnerable position, a strange glint shone within her eyes as her arm swung at lightning speed, slamming into Lloyd's stomach and shooting him across the field of grass.

*BOOM*

Having taken advantage of the split second where Lloyd had become vulnerable after shooting out an attack, Hime's victory in that exchange had become inevitable, yet in a split second, before her fist had connected with his stomach, Lloyd had used all the brain power available to move the shadows covering his body onto the area she had attacked.

"I thought... you said... you weren't going to hit me too hard." Lloyd grunted while sliding down the barrier around their camp.

"Oops. Just attack me again, I swear I won't fight back this time." She rubbed the back of her head with a slightly embarrassed expression that only served to piss off Lloyd even more.

However, since she was the one training him, he sucked it up and shot towards her again despite the small amounts of pain coursing through his body, most likely due to the cracks that were spreading from his abdomen.

*Swoosh*

Attacking again, this time Lloyd analyzed his every move alongside Hime,s and after watching her step to the side without much effort, he quickly shifted his step before switching position and attacking straight towards her face with his left hand rather than his right.

And just like he had expected, she leaned back quite far, allowing her to avoid his attack once again.

Lloyd wasn't stupid, of course. From what he had seen, read, and learned over the past years about beast fighting, he felt as if beast fighting wasn't the right kind of fighting for him, and therefore wanted to show that through his fight with Hime rather than have her train him for a long time just for him to not use it.

While Hime was quite brief about the mammal beast fighting style, it was not like it was the first time Lloyd had seen it. Countless beast-kin compete in tournaments with other allied races in the universe, and it was inevitable that someone would analyze their martial arts.

Of course, one would need something like the third eye of wisdom to analyze some of the more advanced techniques of the third commandment and above, but everything below that was self-explanatory.

The mammal's beast-fighting techniques relied upon the person's instincts to a certain extent. It allowed the user of the techniques to go on fighting for much longer than they usually would when injured while also being a martial art that encourages sacrificing limbs and being wounded to achieve an end result.

In a way, the technique almost makes them into berserkers despite not having the ability to grow stronger the more angry or injured they are. However, everyone who analyzed the techniques gave credit where credit is due...

The martial art did its purpose, and it was more than effective in doing so if someone didn't mind losing a limb or two.

Yet, Lloyd, despite not wanting to lose limbs or be injured during battles in the first place, his problem of not bleeding had a lot more dire consequences.

*Crackle*

Dispersing the shadows over his left hand, Lloyd revealed his hand that was covered in flames.

'I'm at an angle that makes it close to impossible for her to kick me before the attack lands, and from how she's bent herself back like that, I'm assuming that it would be difficult to move out of the way.' Lloyd thought before releasing the flames he had stored under his [Shadow Claw].

*BOOM*

Her entire upper half had been completely covered in flames flickering between orange and blue, but before Lloyd could celebrate, he saw something yellow flicker below the flames and-

*Swoosh*

Without skipping a beat, Hime's head suddenly shot out of the flames before it swooshed past his hand and suddenly appeared before his face.

'Sh*t'

Before Lloyd knew it, Hime's glowing amber-yellow eyes had reached too close for comfort before the back of his head slammed into the ground.

He could see the ground beginning to crack while a clear crater appeared before a shockwave shot out of where they both stood, sending a gust of wind in all directions and making most of the group leave their tents to watch the exchange if they hadn't been doing that already.

The hit felt like it had rattled his brain in ways he could not imagine, but after gritting his teeth and digging his nails into his palms, Lloyd barely avoided losing consciousness.

"Whoops. I think I went too far." Hime spoke with panic in her voice.

"He's probably blacked out now that you hit him so hard. Give him a potion or two, and he'll wake up in a few hours." Roderick sighed, yet before he could walk up to Lloyd's unmoving body, he felt something...

They all did.

"Oooo! Killing intent!" Veronica clapped with excitement before munching down on her handful of popcorn.

*Bang*

*Swoosh*

At a speed that none of them had seen Lloyd produce, a hand covered in shadows shot out of the ground and aimed straight for Hime's neck, yet before he could reach her, she had avoided it by a hair's breadth.

'He scratched me?' Hime thought while touching her wound, and despite there being no blood, she knew that the attack had hit her, yet that was the least of her worries.

The shadows quickly disappeared before Lloyd's flaming hand replaced them.

'That trick again?' Hime thought and chose to take the attack head-on the same way she had done before. The flames were too weak to heat anything beyond the surface of her skin, so why should she care?

*BOOM*

However, this time, the flames shot out with double the power, and the explosive power alone would have been capable of shooting most first commandments across a football field. However, before Hime, that flame explosion was no more than a gust of warm air, and that's all it was supposed to be.

*Swoosh*

Using the momentum of the explosion, Lloyd, carried it through his leg, allowing him to shoot off the ground before spinning and landing a flaming foot shrouded in shadows into her cheek at Mach 2.

"I have to say..." Hime's voice echoed throughout the camp, yet unlike the usual stone-cold voice she had, or the motherly one she would portray in front of certain people, this one was different, in a way that sent a chill down the spine of most.

Seeing that his kick had only moved her head a few inches, Lloyd grit his teeth and retracted his killing intent before trying his best to move as far away as possible without being caught by her, yet it was far too late for that.

'I should have known that the killing intent trick wouldn't work. She's a soldier, not some kid who's green behind their ears.' Lloyd thought while pulling his foot away, but he quickly knew that it was impossible.

Hime's iron-clad grip held onto Lloyd's ankle tightly, making it hard for him to even move an inch, yet before he could find the beast's course of action since using flames would be a waste of mana, he felt himself being risen into the air.

'Oh sh*t, she going to throw me to the ground.' Lloyd began to panic, but before he knew it, his vision stretched and blurred as his body descended at speeds it shouldn't.

[Shadow Movement]

However, instead of slamming into the ground and losing consciousness, Lloyd sank into his shadow.

*Swoosh*

Appearing behind her, Lloyd slashed his katana toward Hime, yet in what felt like the blink of an eye, his blade was caught between her upper and lower teeth, and despite the seemingly weak grip it would have had if it was anyone else, Lloyd could not budge the blade even an inch despite trying his best.

Suddenly, Lloyd felt a cold half on his face, and just as his eyes caught the bronze-tinged hand over the right side of his face, he quickly found himself being slammed into the dirt with half his face being embedded in it.

"I know what you were doing, so this should teach you a lesson, right?" Hime smiled while crouching down to Lloyd's level.

"The mammalfolk's fighting style isn't about getting hurt when you fight. It is about not having to use your brain for every single move you do. It is about letting your instincts take over while keeping enough of an emotional balance that allows you to keep your sanity..."

"It's about being able to make rational decisions without planning every single possibility in your head, and that's one of the many skills you lack." Hime explained before playfully flicking Lloyd's face as he slowly lost consciousness.