Sam opened the door and walked into the room.
The whole room is completely empty. There is nothing else except for a circle in the middle.
A circle big enough for a person to stand properly. He walked towards the circle and stood there.
Suddenly the whole room started glowing with a purple electric glow and in holographic hourgla.s.s with white sand could be seen dropping slowly.
A screen appeared with Round 1 written on it.
At this moment, the whole room seemed to have changed. Lightning started raining down on Sam from the top of the room.
He dodged it hurriedly, but it didn"t stop. Several lightning strikes started falling one after another. Each strike is extremely strong and chaotic. Full if deadly lightning energy.
Sam doesn"t even know if he could take it without flinching. He looked at the ceiling to see if he could get any visual on that. But as soon as he did that. The lightning suddenly came from the sides and hit him.
He fell forward and felt like his muscles were all swollen up for a second.
"It is better if you don"t look up."
The Avatar"s voice could be heard in his mind.
Sam stood up slowly and looked around. The lightning strikes are still falling, but it was not too difficult to dodge. If he used the lightning element, he is confident that he can take them all directly without too much of a problem.
It is not that big of a test. At least until the moment, he thought like that.
Because at that moment a few silhouettes started forming from thin air and six feathered appeared.
But they are a bit different from normal feathered. These guys are actually wearing a full body armor. Only their wings and eyes are exposed outside. Even the hands are covered by metal gloves.
Every one of them is holding a spear.
Sam just stood there as he waited for them to move.
The six feathered are currently surrounding Sam and all their spears are held towards him and they stabbed simultaneously, all at the same moment. Sam ducked the stab as he crouched on the ground and slid to the side.
He held the legs of the feathered and forcefully took him down and rolled over making sure that he is not exposed to the rest of the five feathered.
His arms turned metallic and fingers turned sharp as he stabbed into the armor with his palm and hit directly at the heart.
When the lightning was about to strike Sam he threw the body upwards to block it and moved forward to take on another feathered.
When a spear came flying towards him, he dodged that and jumped towards the feathered in front of him like a cat and took his down once again. This time, his metallic hands are targeted at their wings.
The wings were cut down and he stabbed the heart through that hole.
The rest of the group are showing no emotions, not even a bit of rage, anger or even a flinch when he killed them like they are nothing.
They seemed extremely robotic and they are not using their wings.
There is no one flying around. The wings are more of a hindrance.
There is no challenge except for the lightning dodging.
He made quick work of the rest of the group and was done with it.
At this moment another bunch of silhouettes started forming in the air and another bunch of feathered came out of nowhere.
Then came another six feathered with the same type of armor. But this time, they are flying, and unlike before they also have elements.
And the battle began once again.
Sam didn"t even get a second to rest. Not that he needed it at the moment, he just felt that he would be needing it later if the battle got too intense as the change in the nature of the feathered is a clear indication of the increase in difficulty for each level.
Sam took out two daggers this time and activated the shadow element.
The room is still pretty dark and the feathered is not flying too far. They are just gliding a bit higher than the floor.
He moved like a ghost as he dodged the lightning and the attacks from the feathered as he left nicks and slashes all over their bodies.
They slowly started falling and soon the second wave was also done in.
But he didn"t feel happy, because after the second wave came the third, and this time their strength seemed to have increased. Until now, the six of them are barely at Late-stage, but this time, they seemed to be of Peak stage and all of them had different elements while they flew higher.
The difficulty kept on increasing.
Sam started fighting like crazy. He stored the daggers away and took out the staff as he jumped constantly to smash the feathered flying around him.
But the situation just went on and on.
By the end of the first day, he dealt with feathered that came with various perks and difficulties, and then he got a breathing s.p.a.ce in which he took a giant swig of the heavenly wine.
After finishing that off, the feathered appeared and this time, they increased in number.
Apart from the original six, there are another six but they didn"t fly. They attacked from the bottom while the first six attacked from the wind.
Whenever Sam tried to look up, the lightning is striking from random sides and the more he looked at it, the more intense it is becoming. That is the only lightning strike he couldn"t dodge since he entered the room.
He couldn"t use harbinger. It came under the cla.s.sification of special weapons.
It was really annoying.
After some time, Sam thought of something and activated his partial light elemental fusion. He started running around as he dodged the attacks and the lightning strikes and suddenly looked upwards just for a moment.
The lightning struck the spot he was in but it didn"t manage to hit him, instead, the feathered who didn"t have any elemental affinity and chasing him to get clean close-quartered combat was stuck by that and halted in his tracks.
Sam turned around, deactivated the elemental fusion, and swung his staff to hit him straight at the neck with the full force of the wind at the end.
Upon contact, the highly concentrated wind cannon was launched at the point-blank range at the windpipe of the feathered which made the throat burst open and the feathered fell to his knees.
Sam used the same trick again and started tricking other feathered to fall under the rage of the lightning strikes.
But the feathered are not stupid. After the third target, the rest of the nine already guessed what could happen and immediately stopped following him.
They are focused on the long-range attacks and in fact, tried to avoid getting close to him. After multiple tries, Sam managed to get near one feathered but that guy waited as he has fallen for the trick, but stopped Sam right in the track with a kamikaze attack to make him get stuck with the lightning.
Sam collapsed on the floor.
And the feathered tried to take advantage of this and tried to hit him.
"I didn"t want to use this early, but f.u.c.k it."
Sam"s body was deactivated from the light elemental fusion and he activated lightning elemental fusion. He looked like a silver ball of lightning as he started punching the feathered that came near him.
He didn"t care about the lightning strikes that are coming from the top.
He manipulated most of it to attack the feathered constantly and the rest of it was completely absorbed to recharge the spent energy.
Soon, this wave was finished and the next wave came.
This time, the number of feathered increased by Six again.
s.p.a.ce is now a little cramped and the worst part is, the new addition is all lightning type and they are immune to the lightning strikes that are landing from the top.
They are just attacking Sam without care and even if Sam wanted to use the same trick, he couldn"t do it and the lightning strikes seemed to be taking some toll on his physical body even with the fusion as the merging and manipulating process is taking some effort from the spiritual core.
He has to take some heavenly wine in between which is leaving openings for the rest of the feathered.
Even though he is capable of fighting them off, this is really annoying as it is time taking.
The worst part is, he couldn"t even use the shadow soldiers who could have bought him some time and even these bodies are disappearing as soon as he killed them.
He can only grit his teeth and endure this whole long annoying process.
After this wave is over, twelve out of eighteen turned out to be immune to lightning and the next one all of them are immune to lightning which forced him to change to the earth elements and use gravity to deal with them.
After that, twelve are immune to lightning and the six are of lightning elemental fusion. This went on and on.