Nadran wasted no time and immediately attacked one of the shadows, dispersing it before the others could close in. Sweat was beginning to form on his brow, and while he was very physically fit due to climbing mountains to make a living, he could still feel the first onsets of fatigue. He rarely needed to undergo exercise this strenuous for extended periods. He was pushing himself to his limits of speed and strength, and this would obviously affect his stamina consumption.
Nadran wasn't worried about this, though – at least not yet. He knew that he could maintain this pace for at least another 10 or 15 minutes before collapsing. This hinged on his stamina expenditure not increasing over time, however, and it likely would increase with the growing number of enemies.
Nadran stayed calm and analyzed the situation, figuring out what he could do to optimize his killing speed. Otherwise, he would be quickly overwhelmed by the growing number of enemies, and could end up facing upwards of 20 enemies by round 10 if things went badly. [Let's see, the reason my killing speed is slowing down is mostly because… I have less opportunities to attack, since I need to spend so much time dodging. Thinking about it, it's actually pretty impressive that I haven't gotten hit yet with so many attacks coming toward me. Hm… wait! What if I try to incorporate my attacks into the same movements as my dodges? That way I can dodge and attack at the same time. If I manage to succeed, I can avoid being forced to be on the defensive, and have opportunities to attack even while surrounded.]
With this thought, Nadran avoided an attack by jumping toward an enemy, but the movement was somewhat rushed, and he only managed to lightly injure his opponent without landing a decisive blow. Nadran frowned and leaped backward, avoiding four separate attacks that would have pierced him through had he stayed in place. [It looks like this will take some time to perfect,] Nadran thought as he tracked the locations of the shadows, taking a deep breath. [At least I have plenty of targets to practice on,] he grinned and leaped back into the fray.
Meanwhile, the man who had taken Lilia's bet was looking rather uncomfortable. His record for this particular room was 6 minutes and 7 seconds, but this low-slate cultivator had already been fighting for 7 minutes and 20 seconds, beating his record by a full minute – and he was still going strong. It must be stated that every additional minute was a substantial increase in difficulty. He could easily fight 10 weak enemies one at a time, but fighting those 10 enemies at the same time was impossible for him. Every additional enemy essentially multiplied the difficulty, and all it would take was a single injury for the difficulty to skyrocket. While the individual enemies were not that strong, this was not an easy challenge by any means, and most people couldn't even last as long as Nadran had up to this point.
"How is he still fighting?" the man asked in shock. "He's just some low-slate cultivator who still hasn't reached mid-slate after being alive for more than 20 years."
Lilia smirked and replied, "What does his sigil realm have to do with it? The room always matches the strength of the enemies to your own sigil realm, so he's not inherently at a disadvantage here."
The man grimaced and tried to stay calm. There was still plenty of time until the ten-minute mark, he hadn't lost yet. But he could not suppress the sinking feeling in his stomach as he started to subconsciously wonder if he was going to lose this bet.
At the same time, Nadran was dodging around, gradually improving his abilities. [If I use the momentum from my dodge in order to increase the strength of my blow, I can get a lot more power. When I'm in the middle of dodging, I don't have the ability to wind up for an attack, since I don't have a solid stance. Using momentum can compensate for this, however.]
Nadran weaved through the shadows, destroying them one by one. This challenge tested not only his dodging and counterattacking abilities, but also his peripheral awareness. He needed to constantly be aware of attacks coming from behind, and while he tried to keep them all in front of him as much as possible, this was easier said than done.
Despite this, Nadran found that he was enjoying himself as he jumped around constantly in an evasive dance. His feet moved him nimbly back and forth, avoiding every attack that came toward him. To someone who had spent nearly half of his waking life climbing cliffs, moving on flat ground was a breeze by comparison, even the more complex footwork required for these unusual dodges. He was very physically fit, and with the aid of his internal energy, he felt that his body could execute any action he asked of it.
Nadran found himself getting immersed in the rhythm, barely even noticing when another 9 shadows appeared. In this odd state, he felt his movements getting more and more quick and solid, allowing his exerted strength to increase. He only stopped when he suddenly noticed that there were no more shadows to destroy. He looked at the timer to see that 8 minutes and 53 seconds had passed. He still had seven seconds until the tenth wave began.
Nadran took a deep breath before resuming his combat stance. [I've already used over half of my internal energy maintaining the wyvern claws technique. It seems this will end fairly soon, one way or another.]
Right as the clock hit nine minutes, ten shadows formed, lunging toward him. Nadran smiled, running forward to meet them. He slashed with his ghostly claws, jumping about. While the wyvern claws technique had impressive offensive power, it did not provide much in the realm of defense other than protecting his hands. While he could block the shadows' attacks with his claws, he felt that doing so would delay him, allowing the shadows to all hit him at once. Nadran did not want to clash in terms of strength with so many enemies, and he had not learned any defensive sigils other than that basic barrier he had used while fighting Kalio. If he could avoid the attacks altogether, that seemed to be the best way to survive while conserving his energy.
As he fought, Nadran noticed that one of the shadows was standing back, tracing a sigil. It soon finished, and a blade of wind came hurtling toward him at high speeds. Nadran was in the middle of avoiding seven other simultaneous attacks, and thus was unable to react in time. The blade sliced across his left arm, causing him to gasp and grit his teeth in pain.
These shadows could cause no true harm to the challengers, but that did not extend to preventing pain. The injury hurt just as much as if it were real, making it almost impossible to move the injured arm. Since his body thought that it was injured, it reacted as though it really was, restricting Nadran's movements.
[I guess this room also tests your pain tolerance,] Nadran thought, smiling grimly. [Well, I guess this is an important quality. After all, if you stop fighting due to a superficial injury, that could mean your death.]
This pain did not pose a major threat to Nadran, however, since he had been beaten up many a time by bullies while manning the shop. He was unsure whether he should feel lucky or unlucky for this inadvertent training, but it was helping him persevere now.
The pain was more acute than most of his bully-inflicted injuries, but Nadran was able to grit his teeth and keep fighting. Due to the distracting pain and inability to use one of his arms, however, his killing speed slowed down. He immediately dealt with the shadow who had injured him, and was glad that he did, for that shadow had already been preparing another strong sigil. Soon enough, though, the timer hit ten minutes, and another eleven shadows appeared, while there were still five shadows Nadran had yet to kill from the previous round.
Nadran became incredibly focused as he faced 16 enemies at once. He noticed that two shadows were now casting longer sigils, and Nadran dashed over to stop them. He immediately downed one, then finished off the second one just as the other shadows caught up to him, striking him hard. Nadran winced and dove into a roll, trying to mitigate the force from the blow that had struck his back. He ran to a corner and turned around, facing toward the approaching shadows.
[This will cause my energy to deplete even quicker, but… it seems like I don't have much of a choice.] With that thought, Nadran began fleeing from the shadows as best as he could, trying to quickly draw a sigil at the same time.
Outside the room, Lilia stood composedly, while several boys stood a respectful distance away. Lilia had an amused expression on her face, and continued to watch Nadran's movements calmly. The boy nearest to her, however, had an expression that seemed to be a mixture of shock and despair. 3,000 points was not an insignificant amount, especially to him, and he had just lost that many in a bet due to his hotheadedness.
[Less than one in a thousand can last over ten minutes in this challenge room. How could this random guy succeed with such low cultivation? It took me months to save up this many points, and now they're all gone…]
Lilia, meanwhile, was watching Nadran's performance with interest. "At this point, he's already reached the leaderboards. He's lasted this long by relying on a single offensive-type sigil," she mused aloud. "It seems that his combat instincts are not to be underestimated. And yet, his cultivation is so low for his age. It's been a while since I've come across someone this interesting…"
Nadran was not in the mood to listen to the thoughts of others, though, and couldn't hear her words, anyways. He finally finished the sigil he was casting, which had been slowed down by his need to split his concentration to avoid being hit. With the barrier sigil casted, Nadran became surrounded by a small transparent shield. Being such a basic defense, it could not stop much, but it should be able to at least block some weaker, indirect blows. With so many enemies, Nadran was no longer confident in his ability to avoid them all without sustaining any injuries.
Nadran quickly turned around and dispatched the shadow that was closest to him before running away once more. Like this, he tried to slowly chip away at the enemy forces, but still spent most of his time fleeing. Dodging through this many enemies was a fool's errand, at least with his current strength. Despite these tactics, however, he still received a few glancing blows, causing his barrier to dim significantly.
[Oh yeah, when I was fighting Kalio… didn't I cause my barrier to explode or something?] Nadran attempted to recall what exactly had happened at the end of that fight, but the memory seemed fuzzy. He had been in a special state of comprehension at that time, and regaining that state was not something that could be done at will.
Nadran shook his head to clear it, focusing back at the task on hand. He downed another enemy, lowering their numbers to drop to eight. At this point, the timer reached 11 minutes, causing 12 reinforcements to appear. Nadran now had to contend with 20 enemies.
Nadran had already reached the top 25 in the slate leaderboard, causing the boy who had previously insulted him to stare blankly at the video feed, feeling as though he was trapped in some horrible dream without being able to wake up.
There were separate leaderboards for slate, marble, and quartz ranked cultivators. This was because, while the enemies matched the sigil realm of the participant, students with higher sigil realms would generally have more means with which to survive the waves of enemies. For this reason, the leaderboards were divided into three. The slate leaderboard was the most popular, since most of the students were within the slate realm. The highest time on this leaderboard was just over 15 minutes.
The marble leaderboard was the next step up. Since this was a very prestigious academy, the number of students who reached the marble sigil realm were not few. The times were noticeably higher than the slate records, with the highest one being more than 25 minutes.
The quartz leaderboard was incredibly sparse by comparison, with less than 50 total names being listed. Each one of these names, however, commanded respect. The lowest times listed were more than half an hour, while the highest was an astonishing time of over three hours. This implied fighting more than 180 enemies at the same sigil realm simultaneously. It was said that the room needed to grow in size just to accommodate all of the enemies, but that was just a legend, and nobody knew if the room was even capable of increasing its size.
In sixth place on this quartz leaderboard was the name of the current dean of Mirror Dragon Academy, Merelius. The fact that the current leader of the academy had only ranked sixth on this leaderboard during his time as a student showed just how difficult it was to achieve any high rankings. These leaderboards had existed for over a thousand years, and most of the names were hundreds of years old.
None of this mattered to Nadran, however. He was struggling to maintain his barrier, and eliminating enemies had become nearly impossible. The barrier finally flickered and vanished, allowing a spear of ice to leave a gash along Nadran's side. The timer hit 12 minutes, and the number of enemies rose to 29.
Nadran backed up, his back hitting the corner of the room as he faced the overwhelming number of enemies that stood before him. He took a deep breath, trying to steady his mind and push back the rapidly encroaching fatigue, then muttered, "I'm not defeated yet. Let's see just how much longer I can last!"