The Walker Of Voids
chapter-52

Seeing that Jack had finally calmed down, Lloyd looked over at Jenna, whose eyes drooped while an aura of tiredness surrounded her.

"Can you save her?" Jack asked, his body also feeling heavy.

"No..." Lloyd muttered as Jenna fell back and lost consciousness. The moment she did so, Lloyd widened his eyes as her body glowed before disappearing in the blink of an eye.

Looking around again, he saw that Fatima and John were also glowing, and in the same second, they both disappeared from where they lay, leaving nothing but a bright flash of light as they disappeared.

"I don't think I can... Keep my self awake." Jack muttered as his body felt heavier by the second.

"Crap." Lloyd cursed and went to catch Jack, but before he could, Jack began glowing before disappearing even though he hadn't actually fallen yet.

'What will power...' Lloyd thought to himself before closing his eyes and taking in a deep breath despite not needing it.

It was something that helped him relax and feel more human, yet there was a voice at the back of his mind telling him that, no matter what he did, he would never be human again.

Dashing through the slowly opening doors, Lloyd acted like he was holding his breath.

He knew that he was being watched, and they the higher-ups would most likely ask why he stayed awake far longer than everyone else.

While he feigned being slightly tired, he shot through the small tunnel while extinguishing all the flames in his way with one strong gust of wind as he passed by.

He blitzed through almost every room with monsters while using [4-Dimensional Thought] to complete the puzzles in less than 10 seconds.

However, that's when he got an idea.

[Welcome to the gate of mysteries. I shall ask you 3 questions. If you get them wrong, you will lose. Get them right, and I will allow you to move to the next room.]

Inwardly smiling, Lloyd was waiting for a room like this.

They appeared about every 5 rooms, and since he knew that he wouldn't actually lose consciousness because of the Carbon Monoxide, this was his chance to get out.

"I can fly, but I have no wings. I can cry, but I have no eyes. What am I?" The figure asked.

"A fountain?" Lloyd answered while grabbing his head like he got hit with the worst headache of his life.

"Incorrect. The answer is cloud." The figure announced before its eyes became red.

"You have failed this test. You have been eliminated." It spoke before shooting him with a red beam that seemingly incinerated him.

Of course, he was simply sent out of the dungeon, and when he finally opened his eyes to absorb the scene around him, he could not help but wince slightly.

After using [4-Dimensional Thought], he usually got a headache and felt slightly less intelligent than the usual.

"Don't worry." Fatima's voice entered his ears, making him narrow his eyes as the image of her bloodied body entered his eyes.

"It's just phantom pain. We were all healed the moment we left the dungeon." She explained, but Lloyd couldn't help but feel like the resentment in her eyes had increased since he had last seen her. She wore a fake smile as she spoke to him, and despite it not being that long since he had last seen her, he saw a huge amount of pain in her eyes.

"I see." Lloyd nodded despite knowing that the pain he felt wasn't phantom pain.

After finishing the dungeon, they were given a few hours to rest. Lloyd, Jack, and Jenna took this time to learn about each other's cultivation techniques while not technically learning how to do it. It was as if they were giving each other snippets of the true cultivation technique, to the point where the others would understand it but not have the ability to replicate it.

John and Fatima, on the other hand, slept. While John was simply mentally tired from being chased for what felt like days, Fatima had curled herself up into a ball and slept. Her olive-colored skin looked paler than ever.

She shook and tossed in her sleep to the point where Jenna felt obligated to wake her, but she was quickly stopped by Lloyd and Jack. They both knew that this was something she had to go through on her own, and despite knowing that, Jack couldn't help but feel extremely worried alongside Jenna.

"Fatima Khan?" A man with a clipboard asked while looking around.

"There." Jenna shouted while pointing at the sleeping Fatima.

The man quickly walked over to her and woke her up from her slumber before whispering something to her that caused her to widen her eyes.

Sharpening his senses, Lloyd barely heard a few words being whispered, but he quickly formulated the most likely string of words to create several sentences. Yet even after doing so, he couldn't believe his ears.

Walking over to her group, Fatima was still wide-eyed as she muttered.

"Well, I've been kind of disqualified." She rubbed the back of her neck.

"What?!" Jenna and Jack shouted, causing John to also wake up.

"They said that I broke into the first commandment in the dungeon." She explained, but Lloyd knew that it wasn't the whole truth.

'The higher-ups have chosen to disqualify you from any further exams since the power gap will be too large. We can't have a late-stage first commandment competing against those without a commandment.' Lloyd recalled the man explaining.

They didn't know how it happened, but the higher-ups thought that something must have occurred within the pocket dimension that caused her to awaken a secret bloodline or gene within her, allowing her to jump an entire class.

Such a phenomenon was extremely rare, as Fatima's little awakening was the first case in a decade, but such an awakening would have most likely given her a golden ticket into any academy, allowing the higher-ups to disqualify her without any problems occurring.

While the entrance ceremony felt a bit like a tournament rather than a test to let candidates show off their prowess and ability, it was split into three different challenges for a reason.

While most don't see the battle royal as a true challenge, it was a clever ploy to separate the weaklings from the mediocre and strong, and it worked as a filter of sorts.

Since people are allowed to retake the entrance ceremony as long as they are below the first class and under the age of 21, the battle royal was a way of telling people that they weren't ready to enter an academy yet and should probably go to a pre-academy to get themselves prepared for year to come.

The second challenge was made to help recruiters of mid and higher levels academies choose possible candidates, while the final challenge was created to expose the hidden gems that aren't from big families, and allow the top 6 academies to select the best of the best.

After a few gasps and congratulatory hugs, Fatima waved at the group before leaving. However, the moment the large metal doors closed behind her, everyone perked their ears up as an announcement entered their ears.

*"The final and simplest challenge is here, folks. All contestants that have not been disqualified, please make your way to the public stadium's center platform,"* The presenter ordered, causing several grunts to resound through the hall before everyone began to move towards the stadium.

***

In a different stadium sector, a girl with black hair and brown eyes curled up in a chair and looked through one of the private booth's windows as a man stood in the middle of a platform.

The man had white hair, yet everything else, from his eyes to his long leather trenchcoat, was black. He wore a pair of gloves while his lower face was covered in a black mask, covering everything from the bridge of his nose down to his collarbones.

*Knock Knock Knock*

"Mhm..." The girl hummed from between her whimpers.

*Creak*

As the door opened, the figure of a tall and slender man with smooth bronze skin walked through the door with a worried expression on his face.

Worry could be seen in his eyes as he looked at the girl who had rolled herself into a ball, but instead of acting hysterical like he usually would have done, he took a deep breath in and slowly walked towards his daughter with a loving smile on his face as he did so.

Sitting next to her, he placed his large hand on Fatima's back and asked with the softest voice-

"Hello, honey. What's wrong?"

"Nothing..." She replied.

"You know you could have taken part in the next activity, right? Its not like someone's commandment affects the result." He stated, yet she remained quite.

"I can tell something is wrong. So what is it?" He asked with a soft and kind voice.

However, unlike the usual shrug he would get whenever he saw Fatima in this state, he widened his eyes in surprise when the girl before him, the same girl he had thought to be the most mature out of all his children, turned into a little girl once again as she pulled him into a hug and cried her heart out.

As tears soaked his shirt, the man could not help but feel a powerful hand squeeze and crush his heart. He had taken in Fatima a year after her parents' deaths after he found her beaten and abused in one of the less privileged orphanages.

The orphanage was run by a local gang known for using violent crime, but they were also notorious for taking care of their own, and that's what they saw Fatima as... Their own.

Of course, no good deed comes from the goodness of a criminal's heart since this organization, while taking care of kids by feeding them and giving them a place to stay, also used these children to commit crimes for them, such as smuggling drugs or using them as fodder.

Yet, despite Fatima having gone through such things in the past, Mr. Khan had never seen her cry in front of him, as if she had vowed to never shed a tear before him, the moment she was released from her captives.

He had watched her as she grew into who she was today, yet despite seeing her smile and treat him like he was her real father, he could not help but remember the days when she would refuse to speak, cry or eat.

"It's okay..." He muttered just loud enough for her to hear him.

"Everything is going to be okay." He smiled and placed her head comfortably on his chest until she finally ran out of tears and fell into a deep slumber.

Looking up with a sigh, he could not help but notice that he had missed a large portion of the event... Luckily, however, just as he looked up, he saw a shirtless black-haired boy wearing a waistcoat that reached his knees. What stood out about the boy, despite not wearing a shirt, was the fact that he had been wearing sunglasses throughout the entire event and had not taken them off once ever since the start.

Of course, there was the occurrence of him beating the top 10 of his group within the span of the 10 minutes when the cameras were off, but if people were to ignore that, the only thing interesting about him would be his sunglasses.

However, something else caught his attention when Mr. Ahmed saw the boy for the first time.

'That boy... He's the one that Fatima can't affect...'