UNLIMITED SPEED

'Crap crap crap crap!' Noah screamed inwardly, trying to escape the blinding explosions happening below him by swimming upwards.

'Why do my spells have to hurt me,' Noah complained, feeling his feet experience heat. Even with the amount of speed, he swam at; although it wasn't anything groundbreaking, he found himself losing against the velocity of the almost one hundred explosions happening below him.

The "Lightning Flake's" spell proved to be something of a force to reckon with, and unlike his chains, he had no control over them, apart from being able to move them. But the flakes could exist by themselves, even with his mental consciousness not overseeing their activities.

Having retracted his consciousness due to the ache his head felt from the explosions, Noah understood why the tier 3 expert in the Holon family mansion, hadn't been able to capture him. Explosions within the range of his mental waves forced them to crumble, sending waves of pain to his mind.

The water around Noah had begun to boil at some point, and due to his low energy, he could only bear it. Thankfully, moving upwards wasn't much of a hassle, since the ponds upwards push helped him.

However, even at that, he couldn't give total control to the pond's power, since he would most likely suffer injuries, and find himself barreling towards the sixth stage. Noah felt positive that he would be disqualified if such happened.

Beating the water with his feet, Noah continued to swim upwards, even if his paddling almost did not affect his moving speed.

Not until a whole minute had passed did the explosions, capable of killing anything at Noah's level, and injuring anyone in the middle-stage die down. A sigh escaped Noah's mouth and he quickly turned around to look downwards. The pond's push continued to slam into his figure, but a wave of essence had quickly encased him in its power-filled glow.

The water below and around him looked cloudy, as bubbles were abundant in almost every direction. It looked like a white disk had appeared inside that pond, and continued to expand. Noah had swum about four kilometers up, allowing him to witness that scene.

"Damn," Noah couldn't help but mutter.

His surrounding still felt hot, but the lack of explosions to refill the heat allowed the surrounding water to mix with the upward-flowing pond. Each major movement made by the experts forced them to battle the pond upward flowing water.

Narrowing his eyes, Noah tried to search for any survivors and felt his heart begin to palpitate with excitement when he found no one, not even Eric.

Unfortunately, his excitement vanished when he laid eyes on an orange barrier of sorts at the edge of the now clearing foamy and slowly approaching disk. The barrier looked to have multiple layers, as the upper one looked like it would fall apart at any time. The other layers were made from other elemental properties.

Noah could tell that the perpetrator, had been none other than Nathaniel. And when the barriers dispersed to reveal a few experts, Noah's hunch proved correct.

Unfortunately, Eric wasn't among the six experts down there. This of course didn't sadden Noah, who felt glad about that outcome even. But seeing as his very dangerous spell had been survived by the very individuals he wanted gone, a deep sense of hopelessness arose in his heart.

Although the experts hadn't escaped unharmed, as all of them looked almost completely naked, and their bare skin featured burnt patches, and missing fingers or toes, Noah didn't feel satisfied.

All of them looked exhausted, as only their helmet and a few patches of their latex swimming suits remained. How they kept that glass material in one piece baffled Noah, but seeing as he too had his in one piece at least ignoring the various cracks, he could only give up on that topic.

The experts looked to scan their surroundings, and excitement seemed to appear on their faces at least from Noah's point of view.

Needless to say, they began to look upwards, and their expressions turned dark.

Noah too had a dark expression but simply stared at their figures in the distance. None of them moved from their spots, not even Nathaniel, who already felt the desire to quickly end that struggle.

In their minds, Noah had become un-killable, and pointlessly chasing after him would lead to their elimination. This of course caused them to look at the other person and plans to eliminate each other appeared In their heads.

Noah could immediately understand what was going through the minds of the exhausted experts, and he could only watch them eat each other up while evaluating himself.

'I'm powerful,' Noah started staring blankly at the water below him, while the lights of spells flashed in his eyes, followed by muffled explosions.

'But I lack proper training,' he continued. This evaluation was a more or less obvious situation. In total, Noah had spent only a bit over four months, maybe five in Creagar. This period for its denizens was too short to gain proper experience, and develop suitable battle techniques, or sense.

In reality, Noah remained a newbie cultivator who simply had enough power to overwhelm experienced experts. If not for the special state of his existence, he would have long been dead.

And from the looks of things even his power would soon begin to become useless in the face of both monstrous and experienced experts. 'I definitely won't have to wait for gods to get into real trouble. And if I remain this way, I'll die immediately I lose the protection of the bracelet,' he thought.

'I need a real teacher or my learning would be too slow, even if I am supposed to learn things quickly,' Noah concluded feeling his heartache weirdly. His situation felt dire since death didn't look far away anymore. It was only a matter of time before he ran out of luck.

The Lightning flakes spell had been powerful, but he needed a proper understanding of its pros and cons to effectively utilize it in a battle with battle-experienced individuals. Not even the knowledge gained from the first time activation of skills could create effective battle plans. For that, he needed testing, which meant getting into fights frequently.

The battle between the six experts ended, when a male expert among them who found that he would be the next to be eliminated after two experts had eliminated one person; activated the "Finish" function available to him.

This caused a respledent explosion of golden light to wash over them, but it didn't carry any destructive power. A series of green magical circles and purple inscriptions immediately appeared before the experts irrespective of their positions.

"CONGRATULATIONS!" The familiar mechanical voice boomed out, but they were all too tired to acknowledge it.

A ring appeared to float out of the inscribed circles, to land on the outstretched palms of the cultivators.

Immediately the rings landed on their palms, the magical circles behind the inscriptions washed over their figures, and the five of them immediately vanished from the pond.