The Walker Of Voids

[Thank you IWannaHugKobeni for your generous gift]

*BOOM*

*Clang*

*Swoosh*

The sound of battle entered echoed throughout the forest, yet none of them entered the shadows in which Lloyd moved in.

From within his shadow, Lloyd analyzed every one of the monsters and tried to find those closest to him in strength, yet after a swift scan of his surroundings, he quickly realized that these owls were much stronger than he had thought they were.

Most of them ranged from mid-stage first commandment to the initial stages of the Topaz seal's second commandment. However, one of them had a much more powerful presence.

'Mid topaz seal?' Lloyd asked himself before quickly shaking his head. That creature was not his problem; if it somehow did become his problem, he was as good as dead.

According to Lloyd's knowledge of commandments, the second commandment was split into five stages, each represented by a seal named after different gems, while the 6th seal is considered the bridge between the second and third commandments.

2nd Commandment:

• Topaz Seal

• Amethyst Seal

• Ruby Seal

• Emerald Seal

• Diamond Seal

• Half step - Pink Diamond Seal

The power difference between the first and second seals was like the difference between the initial to half-step stages of the first commandment. After every seal, the difference doubles from the last, making it harder and harder to advance as an individual closes in on the third commandment.

Leaving his shadow right behind one of the owls, Lloyd took out his sword and dug it into the weakest and most unsuspecting owl, instantly killing it as the sword pierced right through the creature's heart, yet before he could relax, he felt a gust of wind hit him before pain radiated from his back as another owl swooshed past him and attacked him with its talons.

Energy surges into Lloyd's body, but since he knows that it wouldn't do anything but heal wounds or replenish his mana, he controlled the energy to the best of his ability and moved the portion he didn't need to to his arms. He didn't know how it would have helped, but in a way, he expected it to work the same way shadow enhancement did.

However...

"Huh?"

Suddenly, excruciating pain shot through his arms, causing him to drop his sword before letting out a muffled scream of pain that alerted some of the nearby owls, indicated by the twitch of their antlers that came out of their head.

Several piercing blue eyes stared at Lloyd from a distance, yet before they could do anything, they felt a powerful shiver go through their feathers, and they were not the only ones who felt it.

Hime's hair stood on its ends, telling her that something dangerous was coming. As if her beast instincts themselves were trying to warn her of incoming dangers.

On the other hand, Felix felt something fluctuate through his spiritual senses, making him look in that direction just to see a powerful yet eerie mana source expanding in strength.

For a moment, every battle had stopped in its wake, sending a wave of silence through the forest that not even the tiniest of insects dared to disturb.

With violently glowing eyes that seemed to create a trail of violet whenever Lloyd moved his head, he looked down at his arms which had web-like cracks traveling through every inch of his skin.

Purple energy escaped from cracks in his arm, and before he knew it, his skin flakes began to fall off like leaves in the autumn.

Whenever a flake of skin fell off, Lloyd would see into an abyss that was the anatomy beyond his first layer of skin.

Lloyd knew that he had no organs or blood, but until this point, he had never seen what was beyond the surface of his skin, yet now that he could see it, there was only one word to describe how he felt.

Terrified.

An abyss... A seemingly infinite void. That was what he saw. It was completely black, yet in a way, the abyss felt alive, and the hole left on his body felt full.

There was a saying in the past that Lloyd had seen...

"if you gaze into the abyss, the abyss gazes also into you."

'Look left.' The voice in Lloyd's head whispered, yet instead of listening to the voice, something else happened.

As if Lloyd had used [Shadow Movement], he felt himself sinking into something, and in the same instant, his vision became black, and everything began to fade...

Everything became nothing, before everything turned into a single thing.

Everything faded, yet all the atoms, all the light, all the blood, and all the corpses seemed to break down and merge to create a thing that stood in the distance.

It was voiceless, or so Lloyd thought.

It had a powerful presence, yet it felt more like a trick of the mind.

The thing simply stood there for what felt like hours, yet when the thing began moving, Lloyd couldn't help but long for the moments when it hadn't been moving.

Every one of its steps were silent, yet they created a ripple through the abyss that made the very void below it reach out and grip the creature's feet.

Despite trying his best to move, the moment Lloyd looked into where the creature's eyes were supposed to be, he quickly found himself frozen, incapable of moving an inch despite his efforts.

It was as if the very abyss within his had stopped working, freezing in place as a way to preserve its host's life the same way a human's body might drop in temperature and freeze in place whenever an apex creature looks at it.

This was not a battle where fight or flight was an option. This was an encounter where Lloyd could only hope to god that the creature walking toward him would simply walk around him, forget his existence, or just swat him to the side.

A few minutes seemed to pass, and despite the creature's long strides, it was pretty slow. Yet, no matter how slow it was, Lloyd could not move an inch.

His fear was slowly building.

His breathing was becoming faster.

The silence of his none existent heart made everything sound weird.

He felt vulnerable, and he felt afraid.

So you would think that when the creature finally stopped around 15 meters before him, Lloyd's panic would subside, correct?

"Since when..." The creature spoke, its voice sounding closer to a metallic screech than to an actual voice, yet somehow, despite everything seemingly making it impossible for Lloyd to understand it, Lloyd understood every single word that came out of its mouth.

Its mouth?

What mouth?

The creature didn't have a mouth. It had two hollow holes for the eyes and a small bump representing its nose.

Its face was completely smooth, yet in a way, it looked very familiar.

"Since when have we been..."

The familiarity of looking at yourself in a mirror for the first time in your life... That's what it felt like.

A creature created out of literal shadows, slowly morphing to look more human. Slowly morphing to look more and more like the void walker before it.

"So disappointing?"

A reflection of Lloyd... After all, one could argue that the thing in the mirror is never truly you.