Since they wanted to test my true strength, why would they drop such clear hints as to how far did I manage to get? Unless they wanted to confuse me into thinking I reached a point I shouldn't cross if I didn't want to draw too much attention to myself, there was simply no point in painting the walls in either red or white colours!
As I marched through the fighting circle after fighting circle, my theory soon was confirmed, with more than ten arenas already behind me with all opponents uniformly defeated without any real attention from me, yet the walls in my surroundings continued with its white hue.
The first real change happened when I reached the twelfth stage, inhabited by the first female I saw ever since stepping inside the trial grounds.
"Don't even start your speech, please. I don't know if you are all ordered to try to bait me into thinking something or not, but let's just fight it out instead of wasting the time of both of us, okay?"
While my words could come off as provocative, my tone was that of a simply exhausted person, ready to continue pushing forward yet unwilling to bother himself with auxiliary matters.
"If that's your wish then sure."
Maybe because it was a girl and she didn't have the need to flaunt her strength with her words if she could prove it with her fists, or maybe she just realised that any attempts to bait me into carelessness would be futile. Without running her mouth, she simply took the fighting stance and started slowly approaching me.
Looking at her moves, I couldn't help but praise those who came up with the idea for those trials. Instead of trying to act intimidating, she was covering the distance that separated us in short steps, always keeping her centre of the mass stable, making me unable to tackle her if I were to possess inhuman speed. Her eyes were glued to my body, yet I could see how her energy created a set of strange, thing barriers, ranging one, two and four meters away from her.
Curious about her technique, I stoped my feet at the ground, ignoring her sudden halt, and picked a small shard of the stone that cracked out of the floor after my vicious attack. With the female cultivator watching patiently all my moves, I didn't dare to ignore her either, lowering my entire self to pick it up instead of simply bowing down.
"What the hell are you trying to do? Throw a pebble at me?"
While her words sounded harsh, there was an expression of genuine curiosity on her face, as if she looked at cute puppy attempting yet another silly attempt to catch the red dot of the handy laser.
"How could I do something like that? What if I hit you in the face and left an ugly mark on it?"
Straightening my body back to a standing position, I threw the pebble up a few times, trying to get a proper grasp on its weight, before throwing my left leg forward, catching the pebble from the air, pushing my right hand to the back, and with a twist of my entire body, shooting the small stone forward!
But just like I said, it wasn't even aimed at the girl herself, but just one and a half meter away from her!
With my energy vision on, I could see how my move startled her a bit, making the female change her position to the side in order to avoid the pebble before she noticed it wasn't aimed at her, but at her shields!
But it was too late for her to retract them, with my pebble easily penetrating both of the ones that stood in its path. In fact, there wasn't even any resistance as its speed remained absolutely the same, with the only even happening in form of a spark of energy forming at the hole and splitting in two, with one part reaching for the girl's body, while the other one swiftly dissolved and mended the opening.
"Some sort of area detection thingy?"
Returning my libs to the neutral position, I asked with a sympathetic smile plastered all over my face. Just like I thought, the first girl sent to fight me, turned out to be on a completely different level! Not only she approached the fight seriously, not relying on her physical traits alone but deploying additional warding techniques before even we managed to exchange a single hit, but so far, I couldn't even see through her level of strength, not even with my energy vision!
"Not bad. Yeah, just in case you were using some sort of illusions."
Instead of flaring up the moment I saw through her technique, the girl only raised the corners of her mouth, as if my diligence impressed her instead of making her disappointed at losing one card in the fight.
*Bonger, limit my strength just a bit more*
With how professional the attitude of this girl was, I decided to add some countermeasures against her realising that I was only faking my real level of power. In the case of any trouble, I could always rely on the moves from now evolved executioner's path, instead of trying to settle it with just a raw strength alone!
Since everything was said and done, there was no reason to stall this fight any longer. As the familiar feeling of my body adapting to the new muscle memory that suddenly infused it the moment I activated my preferred path to its full extent, I moved my entire body from a neutral position to a proper fighting stance.
With my opponent sensing a change in myself, the female-only smiled lightly, as if content with the fact that I decided to take her seriously as well. While the situation was turning tenser and tenser with every second, as we crept closer to each other, neither of us made any reckless moves, that could lead to showing an opening.
Five meters.
As I reached the maximum distance at which the girl deployed her sensory barriers, I infused my fist with as much normal energy as I could, hoping that the vibration of the air caused by it and the resonance of such powerful magical clog could disturb the working of my opponent technique.
Four meters.
Our moves only turned slower the closer we got. With my fist passing through the thin fabric of the barrier, my own energy instantly made it vibrate along and shatter the very next moment, stripping the girl from one of her defences. Even if it was a tool against illusions alone as she claimed it to be, I couldn't risk fighting inside something under her direct influence!
Three meters.
Closing to the second barrier, I felt the energy from my first waver, as it started to move around as if the girl's technique was drawing it in. Curious about this situation, I allowed just a small strand of it to leave my circulation and reach for the barrier, only for my own energy to diffuse into the thin air, as it failed to disturb the middle sphere of the girl.
Two meters.
There was no way for me to avoid direct contact with the middle sphere now, with my fist once again leading the way for the rest of my body, devoid with such concentrated energy. Still watching for even the slightest move of the girl, I internally breathed out in relief as the second barrier fallen apart under the powerful vibration of my disturbing force.
One meter.
Just as I was about to repeat the same steps as before, curious whether I could still be able to dispel her barrier with just this simple, makeshift technique alone, her first flashed in her attack, as her fingers formed into what looked like a claw, already infused to the brim with energy no weaker than the one gathered on my first.
Unable to just let her attack me freely for the sake of sating my curiosity, I stepped to the side, forcing her to break her own arm if she wanted to continue this downward slash of her fingers.
Contrary to my expectations though, she only twisted her waist, as if unwilling to let her feet leave the ground, circumventing through my silly attempt at dodging her attack. Just as she was about to strike me down, I felt something snap in my mind, with my favourite part of the executioner's path, predator's mindest coming online.
Chapter end
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