Zaman watched the fight between Sol and his mother, or as he knew her, Knight Sylvia.
The illusionist by his side was also watching the fight through his own orb and commented out loud.
"Impressive. To reach the final floor in a little over two hours, but unfortunately he had to fight her. Well, any other knight would have been impossible to beat as well, but she is extra hard."
Zaman nodded in agreement. "Of all the knights he could have fought, he got paired with the Walking Fortress. It won't be easy to get past her defenses."
When the Commander gave the order to change the test, he added a surprise twist for the final floor. The opponent of the final floor would be randomly selected from over a thousand knights who had disappeared or fallen in battle.
The Commander lamented, "It's unfortunate she ended up getting controlled by the Black Tongue. If that hadn't happened, we would have been able to see her reach such heights in real life…"
The illusion of Sylvia didn't represent her actual prowess but an empowered version of what could have been. All her levels and skills were raised to fit appropriately as the final boss of the test.
"Still, something doesn't add up. I instructed that the final floor pair the applicants with knights that shared similar traits. These two could not be any more different; one's a physical defender, and the other is a magical attacker. The only similarity is that they both use swords, but that's not the main focus for either of them."
The reason for needing to be similar was to show the new recruits the future they could hopefully reach one day. In addition to that, there was the chance to learn from their predecessors who were no longer with them and have a chance to learn some of their skills. Zaman could have also added knights that were actively serving but he could just assign them later to teach them if needed. The formation was expensive to maintain, so he chose to make the most of it and see if some of their lost techniques could be revived.
The illusionist next to him began to sweat.
"Well, uhh… yeah. Boss, the thing is…"
"You don't know?"
The illusionist shook his head and sighed before explaining what he knew.
"It's not that I don't know, but I can't give you the answer you want. You were the one that gave us the illusion formation. We know how to turn it on and change the settings, but the deeper intricacies of how it works elude us. I believe it has something to do with the artificial intelligence of the formation. It's what identifies the levels of the applicants and automatically adjusts the strength of the enemies. I can assure you that the formation found some similarities between the two, which is why they were paired; I just can't tell you what it was exactly."
Unbeknownst to the two, with the requirements to match those with similar traits, the illusion formation struggled to find a proper match for Sol. It simply couldn't find any that matched all of Sol's skills and talents. His true status page was revealed to the illusion formation, but it didn't care or have any way to report it if it did. It only followed the settings it had in place to find something of similarity, which it did. After sequentially cycling through all the knights and their records seven times, it found the familiar traits that the two shared and went along with that as it couldn't find any other alternative.
Zaman waved his hand. "It's fine. This will still be a great learning experience for the young man."
…
BOOM!
Explosions and shockwaves had completely destroyed the surroundings. If not for the walls of the tower being reinforced, it would have already collapsed on top of them.
As another shockwave boomed, Sol ran away from it as quickly as he could.
'This is ridiculous! Is her [Limit Break] ever gonna run out?!'
For two entire minutes, Sol had been playing cat and mouse with his fake mom as she destroyed her surroundings with every attack. This wasn't just blind destruction but carefully executed to make it as hard as possible to run and hide. Even [Burrow] proved useless as shattering the ground hurt and revealed him.
'Gods, I wish I included earth magic in my status…'
With earth magic, he would've been able to reinforce the ground and at least prevent it from exploding. Sadly, he didn't add it to his repertoire of skills because [Terraformer] somehow didn't gain earth magic.
'The books I read about the [Terraformer] talent showed them controlling earth directly without the need to cast spells… It's similar to [Terra Spikes], which was why I went with it. Wait a minute!'
Sol was suddenly hit with a wave of inspiration, which he hoped was the missing part holding the skill's evolution back. Another shockwave headed his way, and Sol started implementing his idea immediately. Earth rumbled underneath him as he was launched into the air by a pillar of earth. Midair, Sol attempted to use [Terra Spikes] again. Normally, he wouldn't be able to do that, but after siphoning [Relay Magic], he had gotten better at transmitting his mana remotely. Like an invisible tendril, Sol's mana commanded the earth to launch a volley of spikes towards the illusion.
Tens of spikes were launched from the walls and parts of the roof still intact, attacking the illusion from all directions. Fake Sylvia saw his attempt to attack her from all sides and had a look of contempt that gave a 'This again?' feeling.
She swung her shield, sending a shockwave from the sheer force and destroying most of the projectiles. The few that survived were soon blocked by her shield and the magical shield that orbited around her.
Sol knew that the attack wouldn't work; he just needed to buy some time. While the projectiles were still in motion, he was frantically trying to change the skill in a way he never could before and this time without the help of [Reinterpret]. Instead, Sol activated [Overpower].
With his massively boosted intelligence, time felt slower as he had much more time and magical capabilities. With [Overpower], Sol could also brute-force the fight, but it would be too obvious if he did that, and he also wanted to see if his idea was correct.
Using the earth pillar as a reference for changing the effects slightly, blocks of earth began to rise in different shapes. Some were malformed, and others had unique shapes on purpose to better understand how to change them to his desires. Within seconds, Sol had created a museum's worth of earth figures and shapes. None were bigger than a foot tall to minimize mana consumption.
"Now for the real deal!"