The Void Beasts looked like ducks, but white, and instead of legs they had wings, and sharp teeth at their beak, besides being three to five times bigger than a normal duck. They were called Ento.
They were all third-ranked so he knew Talho was taking this seriously.
With a screech, all Entos flew to Mares and the robots started shooting him.
Mares realized the creatures were using their Void Armors, but it was under their feathers and it looked different from the Void Armors he had seen before. Unfortunately, he lacked time to analyze it.
Using repulsion, he avoided one of the Ento's bites and grabbed its neck, with the marks already covering his body. To avoid getting attention and to keep his powers a secret, he would only make use of repulsion, because it was hard to notice, the reinforcement and his eyes.
The beast tried to resist but Mares pierced its eyes with his spear, killing it.
He kept hold of the neck and started moving the body around as a weapon to hit the other beasts.
It was very effective, the Entos were shocked to be hit by the dead body of their kin and soon became infuriated, which only made them more predictable as they were trying to knock the body out of Mares' hands.
Meanwhile, Mares also used repulsion to jump in the air avoiding the shoots made by the robots.
With his feet, he kicked an Ento and jumped to grab the robot. All the shoots were defended by the dead Ento in Mares' hand, and before the robot could do anything, the gladiator was in front of him.
Stretching his hand, Mares grabbed the arm the robot had the gun on and snapped it. He threw the arm away, adjusted his hand on the gun, and put it right at the robot's head, pulling the trigger.
Everyone watching in the seats cheered excitedly. Mares had already made their money worth and this was just the beginning. Some people were even trying to change their bets, thinking he could survive for longer.
With just that Mares became untouchable in the air. Any beast that tried to approach and attack him would be hit by their dead kin and then shoot, while the robots couldn't get a single hit on him.
The only downside is that Mares isn't used to shooting with a gun. The shoots required more precision than he could muster at the moment and they were smaller than the beams of energy he got used to throwing around.
His solution was to shoot everywhere until it hit the robots. He missed more than not, but it worked as best as it could.
As he approached the ground the Entos backed away, but screeching and looking hatefully at Mares, that just ignored them.
He let go of the dead Ento he was holding and right before hitting the ground used repulsion to jump, nullifying the fall. He stopped using his reinforcement, wanting to see how he would do in a battle with his base strength.
Mares rolled and stopped right in front of the first step of the pyramid.
There was a stair that would lead to the next step, but every one of them was blocked by a door with a symbol representing a number on it.
'Fitting.'
'At least he knows how to do a show.'
The couple thought as Mares entered under various cheers.
Each step of the pyramid was covered by a force field, stopping the silver eyed from simply jumping and forcing his way through.
There were a lot of gladiators around, all from the rooms above his, and probably even from the six thousand levels.
"You think you are big shit? We are go-"
Not bothering to hear what they were saying, Mares turned his multi-weapon into a sword and cut through his opponent. The guy barely managed to have his head from being cut off, but still ended up with a cut on his neck.
"Guh…"
Surprisingly enough, he was a life form that would not die by having his neck cut. He would have in case Mares managed to decapitate him, but currently, he was alive in excruciating pain.
Mares' attack had taken others by surprise. It was common practice to exchange words when fighting other gladiators, either to just waste time, excite the audience, or even prepare a battle plan. They weren't expecting the silver-eyed to break tradition.
Those in room 7600 were laughing now, seeing others experimenting with what they passed through when Mares first showed up.
"Take this little dipshit down!"
"He ain't ready for us!"
"Eat him alive!"
They were already very irritated that Mares was passing through the Trial with the chance, as minimal as they thought it could be, to move above them when he was still a rookie.
Adding to this "offense" made them livid to cut his head off.
They all surrounded and were about to jump him when everyone, even Mares, stopped and jumped away from where they were. They felt the ground becoming hotter and in the next moment a column of fire was raised, burning some unfortunate souls that couldn't escape.
Just as everyone was about to put their guards down, another warning came as drops of liquid fell from above. It was all the warning they got before a torrent of acid fell on them, killing even more of the fighters.
Mares naturally avoided both, but when retreating from the acid, someone tried to ambush him on his back.
His sword turned into a spear and he pierced through his enemy's body, turned the multi-weapon back as a sword, now with the blade pierced into his enemy and with a move of his fingers made the sword move on an arc, cutting all the upper body of the gladiator in two. All of this without taking a single step.
After he made the kill, he noticed that the symbol on the door changed from ten to nine. The minimum requirement to advance was to kill ten.
"On him!"
With fire raising from the ground and acid coming down from above Mares was surrounded by both the arena and the other gladiators.
"You are not ready to be here rookie! You won't be for the next thousand years!"
One of the biggest guys on this current step screamed to Mares. Next to him, the ground seemed to randomly break at his shout.
"Show him what we got Hyt!"
The gladiator named Hyt went to punch Mares, who dodged easily. However, Mares also moved his sword in defense stances, defending from invisible attacks.
"H-how?!"
Mares promptly ignored his opponent's shock and murmured to himself.
"An innate characteristic that allows you to make member parts invisible? Interesting, I didn't realize those could be so versatile."
This allowed the silver-eyed to understand that he had underestimated innate characteristics. They could come in all shapes and forms, and taking how rare technique users seemed to be on the Colosseum, most top fighters were probably users of innate characteristics.
At least his eyes allowed him to see through the invisibility thanks to heat vision. He had been lucky to find a simple innate characteristic that he could easily counter.
Knowing his powers had been discovered and were useless against Mares, Hyt turned his whole body invisible and attempted to run, but Mares took him down with a swing of his sword.
There were now eight left to kill.
"I am more than ready."
With a domineering attitude, Mares turned his weapon into a spear and lay it on his shoulder.
For a brief moment, everything stopped as all the gladiators looked at him with fear and even the arena didn't release fire or acid on them.
And then everything started moving again.
The fire raised and acid fell as Mares moved his spear in a circle. Some tried to move in his direction and some tried to get away, but it all ended the same. The sheer strength he put on the attack made the wind move, resulting in a large circle that cut through the other fighters. Some died on the spot while some were strong enough to survive. Either way, it was enough to open the door.
The silver-eyed once more put his spear in his shoulder and walked into the door. No one got up or tried to stop him and fight. Their fighting spirit was smashed and from now on they would just try to avoid Mares like he was the plague.
From the moment he put his feet on the ground until he got on the stairs, barely a minute had passed, less than half a cycle. And he was still to be scratched.
The audience had gone mad in cheering, they were all shocked by the sheer demonstration of power, especially since no one expected Mares to do so well in battle.
He only spent a few seconds going up the stairs, but for both the ones that would fight him and the audience, it felt like he took forever.
Once reaching the second step, Mares simply looked around.
"Whoever stands in my way will die!"