"AAAHH! My future is there! I can't falter now!"
"This is my only chance to escape my debt! I won't settle for anything less than first!"
"How can this be?! You filthy commoners can't possibly surpass my courage! I am the scion of a noble house! I have undergone unimaginable training to get where I am. I refuse to be your lessers!"
The candidates tried their best to reach Ves while fighting back against the Doom Guard's ominous glow.
As far as Ves was aware of, the intensity of the glow of a mech roughly scaled according to the inverse-square law.
Light, gravity, electrical fields and more all operated along the same lines. This effectively meant that as the candidates moved closer, the difficulty of taking the next step rapidly increased!
This meant that all of them quickly slowed down. It was no longer possible for them to jog. They had to take it one step at a time.