He is gone in a blink, and I couldn’t even hope to track him. There’s no movement of mana, no vibrations flowing through the air. Something I’ve even started to notice with Tacita at times is not even slightly present here.
I hear shouts and look back to see Noname now standing in front of the door with his hand on the white palm symbol. The door starts shaking, dust and dirt falling off the edges as it opens to reveal a similar room. Inside, a single person stands on a small island surrounded by glowing, pale blue water. The huge, square room has the same gray walls, but this time, there are three massive black doors marked with identical white palms.
Symbols cover the area, painted in subtly different shades of black, along with other markings that probably hint at which door to open next.
The person standing on the island floats into the air, and translucent, bird-like wings glow behind her. Her skin is slightly grayish, the same as all of the avatars, and her face holds that empty expression. I recognize her as a Beyonder—one of the top three from the second round.
Noname and the woman disappear from my sight again, only for both of them to crash against the ceiling. The wings on the avatar's back change and turn into dozens of long arms that reach toward Noname, who pins her against the ceiling, neither of them falling, as if unaffected by gravity. All of those arms freeze mid-air, and the woman's head bursts open before she disappears into a shower of blue particles.
I can barely keep up as Noname suddenly reappears on the ground, right by the first door. He opens it without a single damn concern for any traps there might be or whether it’s even the right one. Then the mana obsessed buffoon with, why the fuck not, white hair, does the same to the remaining two doors, and all of them start to open at once.
One of the doors reveals a cluster of fifty attendees, all trapped within the blazing ring of a firewall. The others swing open to reveal rooms packed with avatars, easily a hundred in each.
From where I stand, I can already feel the pressure radiating from Noname like a tidal wave. Then he moves. No hesitation. No pause. He charges straight in, ripping through them like paper, completely unfazed by the other members of Hell difficulty or their numbers.
POV Rafael Vaughn - Channeler
The room is massive, enclosed by the same four gray walls as the last one, but this time we're standing on a vast grassy field. Towering pillars, each as thick as a sequoia, stretch upward, nearly touching the ceiling.
Two avatars face us, walking toward us at a steady pace. CarrotCake and Klara, both of them winners of their first tournaments.
All five Hell difficulty fighters on our side are already down, and the rest of us can only watch and wait for it to be over. The two avatars, on the other hand, remain completely untouched.
Then a huge door to the right opens slowly, and a single figure steps through the massive entrance.
The white hair and red eyes are the first things I notice. Then comes the expression, strange enough to throw me off, just long enough for the realization to hit me too late.
Nathaniel Gwyn does not wear his usual calm, distant expression. Instead, he is smiling with a strange, eager intensity. Even his movements are different. Every shift of his body sends a warning straight to the primitive core of my brain. There's a predatory energy in the way he moves, something sharp and unnatural. It feels wrong, almost like no one should be able to move the way he does.
There is no crown, no mana, no projectiles, no orbs, no golden flames. Nathaniel simply steps into the room without deploying any of his usual countermeasures, even though he must know he’s up against two of the best physical fighters in Earth's tutorial.
And he attacks first.
I do not see any movement, but out of nowhere, he’s standing in front of me, and CarrotCake is gone. Then Klara disappears as well. A split second later, two of the pillars explode as their bodies crash against them.
"Damn, I knew his output was high, but what is this shit?" Nathaniel says.
The voice is the same, but the tone, pronunciation, and rhythm are very different. When he turns to me and I see those red eyes, it’s all I need to confirm that this is not Nathaniel, it has to be someone else. The latest_epɪ_sodes are on_the novelꞁire.net
"I know he keeps comparing us, but I'm more handsome than you," he says after examining my face.
A pair of shockwaves ripple out from where the ruined pillars are, and both Klara and CarrotCake appear in the air in front of him, stopped mid strike as if they were being held there by an invisible force. CarrotCake is frozen mid-punch, and Klara is swinging the gladius in her hand.
Nathaniel moves with a speed I can’t even begin to follow. One moment he’s there, the next he’s already confronting the two Beyonders, striking before they can react. The moment they clash, all of them burst into motion, and the space around them erupts with force.
The two avatars and Nathaniel vanish without warning, only to reappear seconds later in a blur of motion, then they vanish again before anyone can react. Their battle rages across the entire field, too fast to follow, too violent to contain. Pillars as thick as trees are shattered like glass in their wake. The ground is torn apart, rent asunder by their stray blows.
Even the attendees caught near their clashes don’t stand a chance, some are killed outright, reduced to nothing just for being too close.
It all happens in a matter of seconds. Then Nathaniel is standing beside me, the gladius Klara once held now resting casually on his shoulder. She’s gone with no trace of her to be seen.
Only CarrotCake’s avatar emerges from the smoke. One arm is missing, his body has been torn through, leaving him riddled with ragged, bloody holes, and half his face has been reduced to little more than blood and ruin. But he still strides forward without hesitation, each step heavy enough to make the air around him hum.
"Do you like it, you asshole?! It's not fun when your opponents don’t use mana, right?" Nathaniel shouts at the avatar. Then he vanishes again, leaving only an echo behind.
For a split second, I catch sight of Nathaniel standing right in front of CarrotCake. In one smooth, brutal motion, he slams the flat side of Klara's gladius against CarrotCake’s chest, unleashing a shockwave that sends even me tumbling until I crash into a tree.
I lift my head with the taste of blood thick in my mouth. Nathaniel is already gone, leaving no trace. CarrotCake’s avatar remains standing for a moment longer, chest ripped open and heart completely destroyed. Then he collapses. His form unravels and dissolves into streams of pale blue particles, rising into the air before scattering like fading embers.
The room we’re in is filled with motion-activated traps. Even the slightest movement causes mana to gather around the crystal floating high above, and a crystalline projectile shoots out almost instantly. I saw one pierce straight through the barrier of a Hell difficulty attendee from the first round, and another break through the shield of a Beyonder from the eighth round, even though it was an upper epic shield.
Even talking sets it off. Fortunately, a few of the remaining Hell difficulty attendees, like me, have noticed the inscriptions etched into the stone floor and have begun channeling their mana into them.
As in the previous rooms, this one must also have a solution; we just need to proceed carefully. But I have a strong suspicion that if you find a solution, it will only apply to you and exclude you from movement tracking. I suspect this because even the avatars here with us stand unmoving, working through the same process.
At this point, it is a race to see who regains the ability to move first.
This does not mean there are no fights. The avatars and attendees can still use their primordial energies or rely on skills that don’t require movement to pepper each other with attacks. Both sides are defending and attacking at all times.
That's when Noname appears in the middle of the room, caught between two fighting factions. For some reason, his hair is white, and his eyes have turned a dark shade of red.
"Damn, what a bunch of losers," he says simply.
Three crystal projectiles shoot at him, only to freeze mid-movement before they can pierce his body. He tilts his head with curiosity, and three more shoot his way, all of them stopping in the same fashion, just an arm's reach away from his body.
He moves and touches the tip of one of the crystal projectiles, and each movement causes more and more projectiles to rush his way as dozens of them start collecting around him.
Taking one of these crystals into his hand, he twists his body and throws it. The crystal projectile disappears from my sight, leaving just a blur in its wake.
One of the avatars crashes against the wall, a crystal stabbed through its chest. Even that movement causes a few more projectiles to form and hit him on the ground, turning him into a mist of fine particles.
Around Noname, there are already dozens of crystal projectiles, and he snickers deviously, taking them out of the air and throwing them at the avatars. Beyonders, Hell difficulty, even Easy difficulty, he doesn’t leave anyone unscathed, and quickly clears the room.
He disappears, and the rain of projectiles trails in his wake, slamming against the ground, but they’re still too slow to catch up. The next time I see him, he puts his hand on the white glowing palm on the huge wooden door, which immediately begins to open.
Before he leaves, he turns back, and I can feel his red eyes locked on me. Around him, a hundred crystal projectiles hang frozen in the air, with more forming every time he moves. He mouths something I can’t hear, and an invisible force pushes against me just enough to make me stumble.
The last thing I see is a dozen crystals speeding toward me from the crystal floating high above. A moment later, I find myself outside, in the common area.
I glance over the area at the crowds already outside the event, watching the screens. Some of my men are already here as planned, the ones who gave up on the event early just to record the fourth event using the cameras we set up.
"How’s it going?" I ask as I step up to one of them.
"It’s a mess. We haven’t been able to locate that silver-haired woman yet, but Noname is on a rampage. He’s already hunted down dozens of Hell difficulty avatars and several of the avatars of the tournament winners. We also tried to track Victoria, but just like during the previous event, she’s been holding back. It’s tough to properly estimate her abilities."
"Continue then," I tell him, and move to my spot to watch the screens.
On them, I see Noname tearing through another room, jumping off the walls to dodge attacks and tanking close-range hits from another physically powerful avatar.
I remember the time his mana destabilized in the common area and wiped out hundreds of attendees. And I wonder if someone like him should even be allowed to set foot on Earth.
But at this point, I have to ask myself if there is anyone who can stop him.
I’ve seen Nathaniel fight time and time again, and over time, I’ve come to agree with something he himself admits, though many of the others would say the same. Nathaniel is not among the most talented people here; he is not a genius like Savant, Tess, or Tacita.
Still, out of everyone I’ve met, out of every attendee, he’s the one I want to mess with the least. That guy is harder to kill than a cockroach, and his mana output only seems to increase as a given fight progresses rather than running out.
There is just too much bullshit he can throw around. The last fight against Absolute Candidate Ruby was proof of that. That red-haired woman was one of those rare, talented fighters and beat the shit out of him for most of the fight, but in the end, he still technically won by managing to die just a split second later.
I saw the expressions of people in the common area during that fight, as well as the reactions of spies from other rounds, and it is obvious that the countermeasures they’ve been preparing against him will only increase in number.
To put it simply, Nathaniel is someone I absolutely do not want to fight or have as an enemy.
Yet here I am, standing against his avatar.
Our group of a hundred attendees is positioned across the massive square room. It has the same gray walls and red ceiling lit by the same white crystals as the other rooms. The rest of the enormous space is filled with buildings reminiscent of the ones the lynthari on the fourth floor seemed to like. There’s even a fountain in the center, and the area is large enough to host a small city.
There are four beyonders I know: Kang Jiwon from the 10th round, some girl from Victoria's round, Leticia, Luna, and one more guy from Jean's round. Then we have 10 Hell difficulty attendees, and I don't even bother to count the lower difficulties.
It could be said that the collection of people here is impressive.
Still, Leticia, standing by my side, whispers, "Should we run?"
Luna, beside us, growls, now at the largest size I’ve ever seen this golden retriever reach. Her fur stands on end, and her massive teeth are bared.
I look in the direction Leticia has been looking.
Nathaniel's avatar hovers in mid-air. A pale blue crown floats above his head, and the gray tones of his form make the crown's glow and the golden circles around his pupils stand out even more.
Leticia grabs my arm. "Why isn’t he moving?"
He really isn't. Nathaniel's avatar just floats there, dead center of the battlefield, with no attacks, no skill activations, nothing. And yet everyone feels it; the air thickens, and the ground trembles under our feet despite the lack of movement.
I swear I saw Kang Jiwon take half a step back. Just half. Enough to mean something.
His crown pulses once, and mana rises up around him. Someone shouts, and defenses fire up and activate. Left with no other choice, I activate what I have prepared and stack it up around us, and prepare to fight.
My attempt to pierce into his mind is deflected as if I were slamming my head into a steel wall.
Again, pressure around him increases.
Ten people disappear. No screams, no impact, just gone, vaporized, or maybe something worse.
Luna lunges forward before I can react. She vanishes.
Leticia shouts and attacks. And all I can do is reach for my mana and hope the next attack doesn’t come for me.