Looking into the pair of crimson eyes, Lloyd finally broke his stare before flipping the image over to look at the back.
For the last few seconds, he had been analyzing the image of a couple screaming in joy as they rode what seemed to be a fun fair ride. From the water splashing on them, he assumed that it was a water ride, but that part of the picture wasn't relevant... Or, it wasn't relevant for now.
In the picture, the couple seemed to be no older than 20, and since there were several pictures in the house of them and a child, he assumed they had met in high school and grown into a married couple.
He couldn't understand why the woman had a pair of red eyes. Were they contacts? No, because there were pictures of her with red eyes as a baby.
"She might just be unlucky... I heard photos in the past sometimes made people's eyes look slightly red. But this doesn't seem like it. Her eyes were naturally red, and those numbers on the back of the safe were also red." Lloyd rubbed his chin before looking at the back of the picture, which had its time and place signed on it.
"Drayton Manor, 14th of August 2015." Lloyd read aloud before a frown appeared on his face as he moved toward other images.
As he had expected, every single one of them had the date and location at the back of the picture. Well, actually, most of them had the date, while less than half had the place. However, there was one picture that had none of those.
"The red-eyed woman's baby picture. She looks no older than 12 months old, but I don't understand how this would be a clue." Lloyd muttered with his frown becoming more and more distinct as time passed.
Hours passed as Lloyd searched the house for more clues. After getting a few more pictures, Lloyd finally understood the timeline and had a rough idea of the main events throughout these people's lives.
After finding out their son's age and plotting a date for his birth, he tried it out as one of the possible answers yet still somehow got it incorrectly.
The minutes became hours, and the hours became days.
He couldn't use [4-Dimensional Thought] for too long as he would get a headache before having his cognitive thinking capabilities reduced for a short time afterward, so instead of using it all the time, he used it sparingly.
Until...
'Holy shit! I think I actually got it this time!' Lloyd roared.
While he might have celebrated too early when he found the fun fair picture when looking at the sequence of numbers he had just created, he had a really good feeling that it might be the right one.
...
30 Minutes ago.
After looking at all the numbers laid out before him, Lloyd narrowed his eyes before an amazing idea made him smile.
He quickly revised his knowledge of morse code before creating a system that might work.
'There are 14 pictures here, and only 12 of them have dates. If I look at this from a day/month/year standpoint...' He muttered before listing the days in one column, the month in the other, and the year in the last. Of course, he did it all in chronological order, making the earliest picture come first while the latest one came last.
He then split the numbers among each one of them and made a system to calculate the numbers.
'4 and lower is a 0, and 5 and higher is a 1.'
And while it might have seemed like binary, for now, he quickly used this formula to get a sequence of numbers for each number on a date.
Well, that's when he realized it.
The answer was never a date. It was just a sequence used to fool someone into thinking that the answer was a date.
After transferring the 0-1 format into morse code, he finally got-
94/21/5923
Inserting those numbers into the safe, his smile widened as he saw a crimson key enter his line of sight.
He did not hesitate for a moment as he grabbed the key and ran downstairs, and within the same instant, he had inserted it within the keyhole before turning it and opening the door, yet...
*Fwoosh*
Just when he thought there was nothing but white on the other side, he felt his body being sucked through the door before he immediately lost consciousness.
However, right before his vision could darken, a booming sound entered his ears. A booming distressed voice, roaring down from the skies themselves.
"Beware Void Walker! The stars are going out!"
"And once they do...
Silence will fall!"
***
*Thud*
Falling to the ground face-first, Lloyd quickly got up and rubbed his nose, which had now become red. Tears filled his eyes out of pure instinct to getting hit in the nose.
He quickly wiped the tears out of his eyes before getting out a tissue and blowing his nose, which had started to become runny.
'So much for not having organs. What's the point of this body if I have to perform normal human acts like blowing my nose?' Lloyd asked himself, forgetting that he hadn't gone to the toilet since he became a void walker.
"You're back already? That was fast." Jenna commented.
"Hmm? What do you mean? How long was I out for?" Lloyd asked with a frown.
"5 minutes." Jack replied from a corner of the room where he sat in the lotus position with his legs crossed.
Lloyd could feel a tremendous amount of energy flowing within the boy, an amount he had not felt coming from Jack until now.
"Wait... 5 minutes?" Lloyd snapped out of his trance and exclaimed with shock.
"Yeah, 5 minutes. Why?" Jenna asked.
"Well, I was in there for about 2 days." Lloyd explained and continued to rub his nose.
Jenna was clearly about to exclaim in shock, yet right before she could do so, Lloyd turned toward Jack and asked.
"By the way, what are you doing?"
"Cultivating."
"Cultivating?" Lloyd tilted his head.
Now that he thought about it, he hadn't tried cultivating yet.
Opening one eye with a frown, Jack looked at Lloyd and asked-
"What? Have you never seen anyone cultivate before."
"I have." Lloyd replied while thinking back to the 'blood cultivation' that Zack did whenever they trained.
According to Zack's father, the blood cultivation technique Zack used was something that could only be used by those who had was something that could only be performed by those who had a class that was either linked to the barbarian class or linked to a class that either used blood as their main form of contact, or blood as their main form of strength.
Berzerkers were known for their ability to get stronger as they fought and even stronger as they killed. And while the strength boost is mostly temporary, they can use a specific cultivation technique to take advantage of all the energy inside them to become stronger.
The point was that every cultivation technique was unique in its own way, since, just like a people, plants like a banana tree can't grow in the same conditions as wheat.
"Your cultivation technique simply piqued my interest. I felt such a strong energy come from you that it almost startled me, haha." Lloyd explained and rubbed the back of his neck with a smile.
"Well, if you are that interested, I can explain how it works to you. It's not like you can copy it or anything." Jack shrugged before waving over Lloyd, who completely ignored the frozen Jenna, who was too shocked by being forgotten to do anything other than stand there with an aloof expression.
Sitting next to Jack, Lloyd looked at him and waited for him to say something, but after a minute of silence, Lloyd's patience was running thin.
However, right before starting the conversation, he saw that Jack was about to say something and stopped himself from speaking.
"I'm sorry about earlier." Jack finally opened his eyes and raised his head to turn to Lloyd with a genuine stare.
"F-for what?" Lloyd asked, a little taken aback by the sudden apology.
"You know when we were saying our goals earlier, and you kind of smiled when I said that I wanted to become to the greatest martial artist."
'He did?' Lloyd thought, trying to recall the incident.
"I did?" Lloyd asked aloud.
Even after recalling the incident, all he could remember was him acting slightly bored, since he was bored.
"Yeah, and then you went on to being all unenthusiastic, so we all kind of thought that you were either making fun of us or thought you were better than us." Jack chuckled while Lloyd almost paled.
'Damn...' He inwardly sighed.
"Oh, my bad. I didn't wanna seem like that." Lloyd looked around awkwardly with no expression on his face, but Jack could tell he was uncomfortable... It was almost written on his face despite his sunglasses hiding away a lot of the emotions that would have been clear otherwise.
"And the way you glared at Fatima made us think you were jealous of her." Jack laughed while Lloyd felt a vein protrude from his forehead, bulging out and becoming visible but barely being hidden by Lloyd's hair
"That's why we acted a little badly to you." Jack explained while Lloyd began to question his ability to sense other people's emotions.
"But now that we fought alongside you, you aren't a bad person. Hell, most people as strong as you and Fatima wouldn't bat an eye at a guy like me who prioritizes martial arts over my class, but both of you treated me well. You treated me equally to everyone else, while Fatima encouraged me to fight no matter how hard a fight was. So thank you." Jack smiled.
The conversation went on for another minute with Jenna pouting on the other side of the room, yet after they called her over, the pout disappeared and was quickly replaced by a bright smile that lit the room as she skipped over to them.
"Alright. Before I explain how I cultivate, how do you two do it? Mine is a bit complicated since its mainly created to help martial artists like myself to ingrain mana and martial arts into our system, not only making us strong physically, but also spiritually." Jack explained.
Yet despite Lloyd understanding most of what was said, Jenna simply gawked repeatedly while opening and closing her mouth.
Jack then looked at Lloyd, who quickly nodded and explained-
"Well, I don't actually cultivate."
"..."
"..."
"Not the normal way anyway." Lloyd finished, making both of them let out a breath of relief.
They didn't know what they would have done if they had found out that Lloyd was some kind of supreme being capable of getting as strong as he is from not cultivating at all.
"Aren't you a little young to participate in this ceremony anyway? I understand if big shots like that Glade guy participated since he had an amazing talent and class, but you look no more than 18 despite your stature. Most people wait until they are half-steps before taking part." Jenna asked.
'That explains why most of the seven reapers haven't taken part in the cemerony in the past few years. Now that I think about it, shouldn't they take part this year? I haven't checked yet.' Lloyd thought before shaking his head and looking at Jenna.
"Well, my friend Zack and I have been training for a while, and since he was going to partake, I assumed that I might as well join too." Lloyd explained before shrugging.
"Back to the cultivation, please. Despite wanting to know more about your take, we are running low on time here. The other two should be back any time now." Jack explained, causing Lloyd to nod and explain.
"My father has this sword style we passed down the family. It's called the [Flower Petal Style], and it has a sequence of moves I do every day that makes mana flow into me. Then I just have to eat, which becomes like a nutrient that strengthens my body and increases my cultivation once the food is fully digested." Lloyd lied through his teeth.
Well, it wasn't a full lie.
The flower petal style did have such a moveset, and if he were a normal person and completed the set, he would grow in strength. The problem was that the moveset simply didn't work on him, and he could only assume that the reason was because he was a void walker.
'Now that I think about it, my cultivation isn't the thing that makes me this strong...' Lloyd thought to himself.
He would most likely lose if he were to have an arm wrestling match with someone like Osmygold, and the reason for that was simple.
Osmygold was a 1st commandment human, while he was a half-step. While Osmygold might have a hard time winning, he would most likely win if Lloyd didn't use any of his abilities.
And this got Lloyd thinking.
'How strong are my abilities?'
He killed a high first-class being quite easily, and that was without using his flames, yet it made sense to him. At least to a certain extent.
His [Flame Control] is the ability of a hobgoblin with amazing talent, capable of controlling its flames from the moment of its awakening despite how hard flame control was supposed to be, according to OracleOfFlames.
Hell, even [Aspect of Void] was a power he was not supposed to get until much later.
While [Shadow Claw] and a lot of his other shadow abilities were nothing special on their own (except shadow enhancement), Lloyd's capability of using them to their full extent, combined with his natural combat prowess (his martial arts and sparring experience), as well as his physique that made him much stronger than the average person in his class, made him a force to be reckoned with.
Suddenly, he was forced to snap out of his realization as the sound of someone collapsing into the cold floor entered his ears.
Looking back towards the center of the room, Lloyd saw John lying on the ground before a portal.
The other side of the portal showed a sea of sand, which explained why John was laying in a bunch of sand as they all ran over to him without thinking twice.
"Are you okay?" Jenna asked with distress in her voice.
"What do you think?!" John sneered before coughing sand out of his lungs.
Without skipping a beat, Jenna began healing John, and within moments of her starting, another portal opened up, yet there was something different this time.
*DOOOM*
Even Lloyd felt it this time.
Dread.
Absolute dread.
A dread that would have made non-awakeners drop to their knees and rock themselves back and forth in the fetal position until they slept.
"W-W-What is that?" Jenna asked with fear laced in her words.
On the other hand, Jack got into a fighting stance and waited for the creature on the other side to jump through.
Lloyd unconsciously summoned a katana and held it in his hand. He could tell that it felt a little different, almost as if it had bonded with his soul, but since he was getting ready to fight, he couldn't take any time to look down at the pitch-black katana he had just created out of thin air.
The same katana he used in his void walks.
As they all waited for the creature to come through, Lloyd quickly realized that the bloodlust wasn't affecting him the same it did to the others, and within a moment, it finally clicked.
"Don't tell me," Lloyd muttered with a frown.
At the same instance, a bare and slender foot, covered in blood, came through the portal and stepped onto the cold and hard ground.
The bloodlust seemed to increase further, to the point where John had completely lost consciousness while Jenna had dropped to the ground and reached the point of almost peeing herself.
*Thump*
Yet, in an instant, it seemed like the bloodlust had vanished as the creature coming through fell face-first and slammed into the ground with a low thud.
This creature covered in blood and grime was none other than Fatima, that, despite being unconscious, felt like something had changed about her.
'Oh... Crap.'
{Author's note: Extra long chapter for you guys! Thank me later.}