While the 50 assassins were slowly tiring him out, Adam was holding them back while trying to add Qi to his sword. He already knew the feeling, but he couldn't find the origin of his Qi, he needed to stir the base to bring out the Qi.
Two minutes into the fight, one of the leader assassins yelled "Fall back!" The moment he did, every assassins jumped away from Adam, but they were still encircling him.
Adam looked at the one who yelled and asked with derision "And here I thought you were going to be a threat, I wonder how many of your assassinations are lies?"
At his words, a few of the assassins looked ready to jump on him, and interestingly they were all catkin, but they were held back by the others. Inside, they were all very frustrated.
The reason Adam was able to last so long against them was because they had their skills locked too. Since they were young, they had always trained with their skills, and they had grown so accustomed to having them that they were struggling to fight without them.
As for Adam, Old Adam never had any particular skill but rather specialized into his diversity, he never constricted himself to singular moves like most martial artists.
That's why, despite Adam being much weaker physically, he was able to last for so long against them, and train. The leader who yelled before looked at the Rangers and said "Block his movement, don't focus on shooting him."
Then, he looked back at Adam and said "Today, you will die, and I will make sure to make it as painful as possible!"
Adam grinned and said "Not if I kill you first!" The moment he said that he used the weight of his sword to cross the distance between them in an instant, and striked at the leader's head.
As for the assassins, they were so stunned that most of them didn't even react. Adam was supposed to be finding a way to flee, not attack them head on! What kind of mad man were they against?!
Despite being stunned, the leader attacked still had opened the 1st Gate, and so he was able to block the sword. However, the moment he did so he felt something hit his throat hard, then stab his eyes before finally smashing his groin.
The damage done by Adam wasn't much, but the pain was immense. Despite being a strong individual, the leader's body froze, leaving him opened for Adam to attack.
The three other Assassin leaders all jumped toward Adam, and the archers shot him, but he was still able to slash his sword against the injured leader's face once. Once again, the damage done wasn't very high, but Adam was able to sever an ear.
After slashing once, Adam raised one of his legs from the ground and used it to rotate on his other leg, and slash behind him. This allowed him to parry the daggers coming for his back, and use the strength of their wielders to jump away from the arrows' trajectory.
Then, he rushed toward the remaining assassins and began attacking them like a devil, he wouldn't stop for a second and even when he was defending himself he would make sure to hit at least one assassin.
Thanks to this, Adam was able to switch from the defensive to the offensive, and train even faster. However, the expenditure of his energy was much bigger than earlier, and that's something both sides knew.
So while the assassins were confused as to why he would do something like that, they welcomed it and decided to follow his lead. After all, in the state Adam was in, although he could overpower them in term of skill, he would never be able to kill them, their HP and defense were simply too high compared to his damage.
But they didn't know that this was exactly what caused their deaths. Five minutes later, the assassins were putting less energy into defending against Adam, they were waiting for him to tire down by himself and finish him off after.
And it wasn't a bad strategy, since Adam was already very tired because of the constant concentration and use of almost all his muscles. However, amidst his tiredness, Adam could feel it. He wasn't far from breaking through, his body was finally advancing a little, meaning he wasn't far from unleashing his Qi.
Another minute went by, and now Adam was visibly tired, he was sweating so much that he could probably fill a bucket, and it was getting harder and harder to take a breath.
However, it was in this critical moment, when Adam was once again approaching death, the oh so sweat death, that enlightenment struck him.
Adam jumped back from where he was, surprising the assassins, and struck at one of the leaders. The leader thought that Adam was finally about to breath his last, and was trying to bring him down with him, so he was rather nonchalant when he parried the sword coming at him.
The sword and the dagger collided, and… the dagger didn't budge. Adam hurriedly jumped back, but he was sporting a huge grin. The leaders looked at each other, what was wrong with him. They looked at the one who was attacked, but seeing he was completely fine, they couldn't understand why Adam was so happy.
What none of them was able to see though, was that when Adam had struck earlier, a thin white mist had coated his weapon, and had made his strike a little stronger. He had only used a very small amount of his Qi, but it was enough as Adam immediately felt his very core shake intensely, and then an energy stormed out of the center of his body, spreading everywhere in his body.
Adam's body began shaking as it was getting transformed, but the assassins misunderstood what was happening. They thought Adam's body was finally too tired to go on, and the shaking came from extreme fatigue, so they didn't move and looked at Adam.
The transformation was extremely quick, but Adam was able to feel and understand what was happening to his body. Normally his muscles should all tear open and get healed immediately after, letting the muscles reach their limit and remain in that state later.
However, this time it was different. Instead of the muscles 'opening' up by themselves, the Qi in Adam's body was doing the work for him. Normally, the Gates shouldn't strengthen his body, only allow him to use it better.
However, Qi seemed to change everything. Adam's muscles were pushed to their limit, but they wouldn't need a constant heal from Adam's Second Gate. Instead, this strengthened state had become their natural state, and thanks to hi Qi's help, they had stabilized in this state.
And it was the same for his tendons, joints and the rest of his body. He became stronger and more flexible, and he could feel his body much better than before.
The Gate of Opening allowed one to have a better perception of the outside world, but the Gate of Limit had a hidden effect which was to allow one to have a better perception of their insides.
But all of this wasn't the best improvement. Instead, it was the new energy Adam could feel in his body, his Qi. Before, he struggled to use it because he didn't even know where it was, but now that he knew his inner body like the back of his hand, and could perfectly understand everything happening within it, his control over his Qi had become perfect.
When Adam felt the changes inside him finally finish, only a second or two had passed, but he felt like a completely different man. And so did the system apparently, as it sent him two notifications.
[Mighty Strike has been perfectly mastered!]
[Congratulations for opening the Gate of Limit! All stats multiplied by 5! Aura Control perfected!]
The moment he received the notification, Adam started emitting an incredibly dangerous feeling. In the assassins' eyes, Adam had transformed from a dying man to a powerful dragon. The aura he was emitting was so powerful that it felt choking to them.
One of the leaders wanted to signal his comrades to attack, but before he could even emit a sound Adam appeared in front of him, his glowing sword already smashing against the leader's throat, gruesomely beheading him and sending blood, bones and other substances everywhere.
Critical Hit! -8400HP!