dying for a friend story

A strange illness had affected humanity that caused them to succumb to despair and violence, slowly draining their life force until they die and their corpses morphed into murderous and hungry creatures known as hellspawns, plunging the world into chaos and destruction. Meanwhile, a so-called labyrinth of trials that had descended to the world along with the hellspawn disease was conquered by humans and allowed them to awakened their innate abilities in order to fight back against the monsters that threatened to end the world. 20 years later, Lloyd Claudel, who had just turn fifteen years old, had a wishful dream of living a comfortable and carefree life without worrying about food. Having lost his mother at an early age in the midst of chaos that caused a riot among the civilians due to shortage of food supply, life was a hard struggle for him. He was rescued by an aspirant from the clutches of his father who had turned into a hellspawn later after his mother's death, which gave him a second chance to live, but his luck ran out soon enough as his remaining resources were slowly being depleted to the point it threatened his survival for one more day as he had no job and no one to rely on. Having no choice left but to heed the advice of his savior, he ended up bribing a guard for a recommendation to enter the academy and participated in the trials ceremony secretly that was supposed to be only for the rich and capable people, only to get entangled with horrible fate once more after awakening a non-combat innate ability and even had almost crossed the boundary between life and death inside the trials. Surprisingly, he was one of the very few people who had awakened another soul tree system, making him unique and giving and allowing him to grow stronger and faster than others. Will he be able to turn the tides of fate this time and survive the ruthless ordeals of the trials or would he succumb to death this time? Follow Lloyd as he embarks in his struggles to fulfill his goals and ambitions.