"What! If I fail here I'll have to pay ten million gold coins before I'll be able to write the exams again. This means that no matter the circumstance I must pass this exams"
Natsu was in deep thought as he heard that.
"Natsu, Natsu, hey can you hear me Natsu..." Yami said as he then hit Natsu back to his senses.
"Huh, what happened!" Natsu said.
"I don't know, I should be the one asking you that. What are you even thinking about, the main final part of the exams has started, for stage 1 at least" Yami said as he tilted his head to look at Natsu.
"Oh sorry, I zoned out. I was thinking of how we were going to win the last stage" Natsu said as he lied to Yami while scratching his head and laughing awkwardly.
"Oh, so that may be his powers" Yami thought to himself as he continued looking at Natsu, "Can he see the future or something, that explains how he's able to know what's about to happen before it does"
"I hope he believed what I just said" Natsu thought while still scratching his head and laughing awkwardly.
"Will you two stop acting weird" Kazuko said as she surrounded herself with wind and began to float.
Natsu looked at Yami and whispered "Where do you think we're heading to?"
"I don't know" Yami replied as the instructor then said, "Try and keep up" as he began to run.
"I see, that's nice" Natsu said as he then stayed quiet for a while and said, "Yami, I have a proposal"
Yami looked at him and said "Go on I'm listening"
"Okay this is how it goes, I want you to carry me to where the man is and I'll carry you to the finish line, is it okay"
"What! Are you crazy?" Yami asked as he then said, "That's too risky, they might disqualify us if we do that"
Natsu looked at him weirdly and said "Okay no problem, just forget about it" as he then thought to himself, "What was I even thinking? I should have known that disqualification was a possibility, I can't pay ten million gold coins just for a stupid mistake, I have to be more careful before i enter into a never ending debt"
Yami looked at Natsu and smiled as he said "Alright then, let see who's going to be the first to reach the finish line this time around"
"Sorry about that, but I won't be able to compete this time, I'll just walk to the place" Natsu said as he waved his hands and began to walk.
"Wait what! Did you just hear yourself? Are you really planning on losing" Yami said while shouting because of how shocked he was by Natsu statement.
Sigh...
"They didn't give us a time limit you know, so why waste a lot of energy trying to reach there fast when we can just walk there"
Yami stayed silent and later ran to meet Natsu and said, "If I fail it's all your fault!" as he started walking with him.
They both started discussing with each other and later arrived very late to the place.
The instructor saw them and looked at them walking as he said with a very angry tone, "What were you guys doing, don't you know that your being timed you dummies"
Natsu looked around and saw that most contestants weren't moving but just standing and looking at a pit hole with sand pillars all around the hole.
"This is interesting", Natsu said as he then looked at Yami and said, "This was what we were meant to trade" as he picked up a stone and threw it into the hole.
The stone hit one of the pillars which made it to crash.
"What was that for?" Yami asked as he was looking at the big pit.
Suddenly a giant sand serpent came out of the hole and hissed as it broke some pillars while goings inside the hole.
This terrified Yami and made him fall to the ground with his butt and placed his hands on the ground for support, so that he won't fall to his back.
Everyone looked at Natsu as they were all surprised on how he knew it was there.
Yami thought to himself "Yep there's no doubt about it, his power is really seeing the future, there's no other explanation for this"
The truth was this, Natsu didn't want to race with Yami because he knew that Yami would figure out he doesn't have super speed if they race. And for how he knew about the sand serpent, well that one was easy. He saw the way most of them were looking at the hole so he figured out that something must be there that's stopping them from running or getting past it.
So with those two things put together, it looked like he could tell from the beginning on how things were but the truth is that he couldn't.
"Okay, so do you already have a plan of crossing it" Yami asked while looking at Natsu from ground.
Natsu looked around without knowing what to do and began to scratch his head. He then looked at Kazuko and said "Hey I thought you said you weren't going to let me win you again, so why haven't you started moving"
Kazuko looked at him with a serious gaze and said "Do you know who you're talking to brat, trust me I'm not going to fall for your pathetic little trick"
The instructor then stood up and said "I'll meet you all on the other side and try not to waist time" as he started using his powers to move rapidly on the pillars inside the pit to move to the other side.
Yes all the pillars he stepped on like the others came crashing down and as usual the sand serpent came out of the hole and began attacking, but the instructor didn't go in a straight line, he went in a bizarre formation that made him dodge the serpents and get to the other side in one piece.
Everyone saw this and realized that the pillars are becoming very few cause anytime the serpents come out they break some pillars even when they go down too.
Asahu thought to himself as he looked at the pillars "If we don't cross this thing now, we won't pass the exams but this won't be any problem for those of us that has the ability to fly. The only problem is this, how would those who don't have it cope. Why am I even thinking of them? Right now I should only be thinking of myself"
Natsu ran and jumped on a pillar and stood on it.
Yes it collapsed and I'm not sure it will shock anyone when I say that a sand serpent came out like the rest and hissed.
But it wasn't carrying Natsu this time like everyone thought it would especially Yami.
Natsu fell into the pit with the blocks trying to know the depth of it.
Kazuko was surprised because she thought he was going to ride the sand serpent or at least use it as cushion to pass the pit.
"What's he thinking? Is he really that stupid to actually jump inside" Kazuko thought.
Yami started laughing out loud which drew everyone's attention to him as he then said, "Now I see your plan, so that's why you wanted to carry me along with you"
As he stood up and then used his powers to it's maximum capacity and said with a serious voice and tone, "But I'm not going to lose to you hope you know that" and dashed off.
Kazuko felt threatened by this so she started surrounding her self with wind and ran towards the pit and then glided through the wind to make it across.
The reason she didn't just cross it earlier before the instructor left was because he told them not to fly above the pit limit.
Everyone began to use their powers to cross it but as they were crossing a girl stayed behind and watched them.
Luckily all of them made it through after a while as a girl that had a short snow colored hair took a deep breath. She was just like Kazuko and Asahu since she's also from a noble clan.
Everyone looked at her with their jaws wide open as she summoned an ice bride and comfortably walked across it and reached them.
"What!!! Why didn't you do that in the first place, it would have saved us lots of time and magical energy you know" Asahu shouted in shock by what she did.
"Don't disturb me, I hate pests like you! So please will you just close that hole in your face that you call a mouth" the girl said.
Asahu looked at her and said "You know Mitsuki, your as cold as Kazuko"
Mitsuki who's the girl with the ice powers and snow colored hair kept quiet and didn't say a word.
"I hate the both of you really" Asahu said as he then walked away from them.
Meanwhile Natsu finally landed on the ground, in other words he reached the depths of the pit.
He stood up and started walking to the other side but as he was going he noticed the sand serpent movement on the ground.
He immediately hid himself behind a pillar and watched the way they moved.
He slowly walked towards a serpent and then threw a rock at one of the pillars and jumped on top its tail.
The pillar shaked but didn't fall as little rocks landed on the serpent.
It continued moving and Natsu switched from one snake to another, until he reached the wall.
"This didn't take too long" Natsu thought as the serpents were moving fast on the ground.
"But how am I going to reach the top now" Natsu thought.
As he was thinking a serpent got a glimpse of him and pretended not to notice him. It moved like nothing happened and was just changing its direction randomly but its end goal was to reach Natsu without him noticing.
It was successful in doing so, and as it came close to Natsu it immediately rushed towards him.
Natsu saw something fast heading towards him and jumped away.
He could barely dodge it's attack as he thought, "That thing is faster than I thought, what now?"
The sand serpent then hissed as it was coming closer to him slowly.
As Natsu was facing it, he remembered the skill he used to hold on to the liagole for it not to kill him.
He then ran towards it screaming as the serpent increased it's speed and opened its mouth to swallow him.
He couldn't jump over it since it's mouth was very wide, instead he held on to its mouth as it tried to swallow him. He was like a stick that prevented it from closing its mouth.
The serpent crashed into so many pillars to be able to close its mouth but couldn't because Natsu was trying as much as possible to keep its jaw opened.
The serpent became angry and a seal appeared in its mouth.
"This is going to get ugly" Natsu said as he saw the seal.
Boommm!!!
Natsu crashed into so many pillars as acid came out of the seal and threw him straight forward into so many pillars until Natsu finally stopped.
He realized that the pillars were going to crumble as he sat there.
He then immediately stood up and started moving to dodge the big rocks that were falling down.
Other serpent noticed this and went for the hunt.
Natsu was in the nest of a sand serpent as so many serpents began heading towards him, Natsu didn't understand why but he immediately felt excited as a smile appeared on his face showing it.
"This is getting interesting" Natsu said as the serpent began to make their move and attacked him.
One came towards Natsu from the side trying to swallow him, he rolled forward dodging the attack and began to run.
He started trying to dodge all the attacks from the serpents but one of the serpent came way too close to him that he was unable to dodge it.
He got swallowed by the serpent and as he entered inside the serpent mouth, he rolled on its tongue as he jumped and held onto it's glottis, the serpent because uncomfortable and tried to spit him out and crashed into some pillars. Since it wasn't successful in bringing him out a seal appeared in its throat area as it spat out acid from it's mouth.
Yes the inside was slippery, toxic and corrosive but Natsu couldn't care much about that as there was a lot of adrenaline in his body.
As the serpent spat out acid, Natsu came out with the acid which made the serpent feel relieved but later noticed that it's prey has escaped.
Natsu fell from a height and landed on a serpent and the snake that spat him out followed him to swallow him back and accidentally bit the other one which started a fight.
All the serpent wanted to eat Natsu but he was being smart and dodging most of their attacks and since the place was filled with snakes, the attacks would hit one of them causing a fight between them.
Natsu jumped and held onto one of the serpent's tail which threw him into a pillar as he then tried climbing.
But unfortunately for him the pillar collapsed as he then held onto to a rock. The rock he held onto was about to hit one of the sand serpent, which made it shoot out acid from it's mouth causing the rock to fly out of the pit to the other side.
"I've finally made it to the other side! I need to hurry and catch up with the others before I get disqualified, I wonder what they're doing" Natsu thought.
On the other hand the instructor and the other competitors were inside a forest running from wild monkeys.
The monkey look like regular monkeys but are gigantic and physically built, to put it simply it looks like a gorilla with a tail and without the pot belly.
They avoided being crushed or eating by the monsters as they began to approach a wide and open field.