UNLIMITED SPEED

Opening his eyes to a familiar environment, which of course was the room lady Edna informed them about the events that would take place in the different stages. Noah felt himself cringe at the sight of that environment.

For some reason, he disliked the lighting in that room.

The room was filled with experts, and to his and the surprise of the other five, they were teleported to a different spot in the room, an odd sight for the others who sat solemnly, waiting for that phase to end.

'Finally,' Noah thought walking forward, away from his previous opponents. He felt unready for the awkwardness that was the fact that he literally tried to get rid of them merely a few seconds ago. He couldn't just begin to talk to them after that.

Feeling multiple gazes land on his figure from almost all sides in the room, Noah felt unfazed by them. The gazes mostly came from experts that had witnessed his raw power, or the ones that had left before the battle began.

Picking an empty spot in the room, Noah sat alone, before casually sweeping his blank gaze on his surrounding. Though he behaved like this mostly to disperse the tense feeling he didn't know his mind harbored.

Fortunately for him, no one walked closer to him, at least apart from Ariana.

A sigh escaped Noah's mouth when he saw the busty young-looking woman begin her walk toward him without a shred of emotion on her face.

"I'd rather be alone for now," Noah spoke through his mental waves; almost immediately halting her steps. Their gazes locked for a moment and she quickly understood how serious he was about his words.

Nodding her head, Ariana continued her steps, only this time towards a different spot in the room. Seemingly as though she too wanted to be alone.

Experiencing a tinge of guilt, Noah vanquished that emotion as soon as it appeared. He needed his alone time, and there was nothing wrong with it.

Sweeping his gaze on his figure, Noah got reminded of how bad he looked. The latex suit had disappeared upon their teleportation, leaving only his black garment. Which already barely hung on his figure without revealing some of his blemish-less skin.

"I need to do something about my clothing situation," Noah muttered, heaving another helpless sigh.

The room had many above 800 individuals, but Lady Edna and her fairy were nowhere to be seen. However, the aspirants understood the reason for her non-presence was that the time limit for the second trial had not ended.

The battle between Noah and the over forty experts which eventually ended n the experts ganging up on themselves had taken about half an hour in total, and a whole day remained. There could be experts still on their way to the seventh depth stage, even if their chances of actually succeeding would be next to zero.

A miracle would be needed for such aspirants to reach the desired depth stage, and the rewards had already been claimed too.

Thinking about the rewards, Noah felt reluctant to check what the black and golden colored ring contained. But he did so anyway.

Sneakily wearing the ring on his finger, Noah sent his mental waves forth to inspect its contents. And an area space of about 700m radii appeared in his mental sight.

'Large,' Noah thought raising an eyebrow. He could immediately tell that the large space of the ring was part of the reward. However, he couldn't tell if that space was something groundbreaking since he hadn't interacted with dimensional rings much.

In the center of the brown space, were a few items. They were more than just "a few" items.

Moving his consciousness to the center spot, Noah got able to see what the items were. He sighted an attire, mainly black, a series of mostly red and orange glowing objects numbering more than fifty. Noah felt shocked to realize that he had been given mana cores. Not to talk of the orange mana stone, even though it stood at only 2ft in height and around 4ft in width.

At the center of the heap of mana, cores were surprisingly a sword. A heavily inscribed one at that. Noah immediately zoomed in on the weapon, picking it up with his mental waves.

The sword radiated power at the beginning of the middle-stage, nowhere near as strong as the sword Nathaniel wielded. It would be important to note that Nathaniel's sword radiated a peak middle-stage aura. Which allowed for his show of skill. Noah had a bad habit of overlooking such details, during battle.

The silver yet brown blade shining with brown inscriptions, had a black and golden handle shimmering with inscriptions etched into its material. At the mid-section of the swords, the handle was a light orange mana-stone, only around 2 inches in size.

'This is already a lot,' Noah thought fascinated by the thought of gaining a new weapon. There was also a scroll beside the heap of tier 3 mana cores, and Noah immediately picked it up to see what it contained.

To his surprise, Noah found a series of intricately webbed drawings, featuring a series of symbols, that he surprisingly understood. The scroll carried a vague meaning that communicated with Noah's consciousness, informing him of the spell. Needless to say, a panel popped up in his eyes.

[You have come in contact with a lightning-based spell]

[Lightning golems]

[Elemental Affinity: Lightning]

[Tier: 3]

[Current power output: Middle-stage]

[Rank: D]

[Do you wish to learn it]

[Yes/No]

Picking yes, Noah made sure to not have his hopes up. Honestly, he doubted the actuality of its functioning.

[Commencing integration with User…]

[Error!!…...]

[Spell needs to be reworked to match Users unique energy]

[Reworking Tier 3 lightning-based spell]

[Error!!.....This function is currently locked]

'As expected,' Noah thought, shaking his head at the system's annoying method of starting things that it wouldn't finish. 'Though I would have loved to read its description' Noah thought heaving a sigh.

His eyes fell on the rest of the panel, and he couldn't help but get curious about the rank of spells, seeing as the system never showed him what rank his spells were.

"Why do you always leave out such details," Noah complained to the every listening system. "Firstly you never show me how much damage I take from every attack, unless I manually check, now this," Noah spoke, mentally glaring at the system.

[[Such details are unnecessary, and will prove bulky if they were all listed on your stats]]

[[About the damage notification, from my calculations I realized you don't need them due to your ability to regenerate]]

"What about the ranks of spells? I only knew weapons and armor had grades, but not spells," Noah complained.

"Explain to me," he added.

[[The ranks of spells are simply based on how intricate and powerful of an effect the spells will generate when conjured. All your spells are ranked at B, any higher and you would kill yourself upon activation]]

[[Not only do higher-ranked spells have more spectacular activations, but they also cost more energy, and would need to be highly optimized to allow experts such as yourself cast them]]

'So in essence they are like the various colors of the mana core. Even if it was a higher tier spell; compared to the same spell but of a higher rank, the feats achieved by the higher-ranked spell would be greater," Noah pondered ignoring the last sentence the system made.

[[Affirmative]]

'I guess that's the real difference between me and the others,' Noah thought momentarily exiting the ring to gaze at the resting cultivators.

[[You can turn on the feature to see the ranks of spells aimed at you, and also activate the damage notification]]

"Nah, I'd rather not. Though it would be useful if you notified me when a spell as high as a B rank is launched at me or anywhere around me. That might be the difference between life and death," Noah explained focusing his gaze on the last package in the ring;

A small bag containing exactly 25 small gold coins.

Noah almost ran mad at its sight.