UNLIMITED SPEED

"Excuse me?" Eric muttered, taken aback by Noah's words.

Noah didn't even bother to glance at the stunned experts, since he felt he had wasted enough time.

'I could still get rid of him, but he could be useful,' Noah thought sweeping his gaze on the experts around them. Truth be told after Eric's words he had lost a large amount of the excitement he had for the rewards, but still wanted to see them nonetheless.

"Now, where were we?" Noah announced focusing his gaze on his opponents. Tightening his grip on the chains of pure energy flowing down his hands. Noah caused them to shoot forward. All three hundred of them. That remained the highest he could create, and it cost him 2000SE.

That area seemed to experience a powerful quake, as the rumbling sounds caused by the collision of the chains on each other, produced something terrifying.

Due to the sheer amount of light those chains produced, the experts already running away from Noah could not see that he swam among his chains, rapidly moving towards them.

Recasting his speed force armor, Noah swam among his chains of doom. He quickly arrived around a kilometer from the experts, and his mouth opened to give voice to taunts.

"Are you going to continue running till you hit a dead-end!?" He spoke, but his exact position remained unknown.

The running experts seemed to agree and shot towards different positions in the vast pond. The space within that pond felt able to fit a small city.

Noah cursed at the sight of his targets splitting up. But knew they would have done the same even without his taunts. The one and major limit of the "Lightning chains" skill was the fact that its full power was limited to how far his consciousness covered on a linear path.

In truth, he could cover every inch of the space his consciousness covered with the chains, but outside that space, they would simply vanish. It also didn't matter that he could see the area outside that space.

An explosion of light suddenly spread out as an orange figure shot through the water, towards some of the escaping aspirants.

Eric resembled a bolt of lightning traveling toward them. Fast. From Noah's point of view, it seemed all lightning affinity holders were capable of moving faster than the average cultivator.

Finding that an expert had fallen into the space of his consciousness, Noah threw his left arm forward, and the chains connected to that hand barreled forward.

His victim was a woman in the middle-stage, she had an orange core in the octahedral stage, and was of the fire element.

His chains arrived at her position in no time, and Noah didn't hesitate to allow them to surround her from all sides. 'I could kill her with this attack,' Noah thought, feeling he should hold back, but didn't anyway.

Pouring essence into the 150 chains connected to his left hand, Noah watched what resembled a light show occur.

The sound of high voltages going bizarre flew out in all directions, followed by an intense flash of deep-yellow light.

The lady tried to wrap herself in a series of fiery defenses and succeeded. But Noah's attack remained too overwhelming for her.

Before a shout of pain could exit her mouth; her entire figure experienced violent burns as a result of the sheer amount of heat the lightning attack produced. Coupled with the flow of those erratic energies through her body.

Needless to say, her hair, clothes, and skin instantly disappeared, but she got ejected before the attack could thoroughly fry her.

In merely a few seconds another person had been eliminated. Noah immediately became terrifying in the eyes of the fleeing experts, and some who desired to ruin his plan of taking everything activated the "Finish" function available to them.

Nine experts pushed the button so to say and vanished from the pond. Eric managed to eliminate one other person. Meaning, that apart from him and Noah, only eight experts remained.

'How do I eliminate all eight at once,' Noah pondered, allowing his sea of chains to float below him.

With the incredible push the 7th depth stage generated still acting on the environment, Noah's chains tried to sink upwards, but the energy they contained made them sink instead, but their casters consciousness allowed them steadily float in place instead.

Honestly speaking, Noah understood how difficult of a task producing the chains would be if he did it himself.

Actually, the remaining eight experts wondered how he had the reserves to produce such powerful attacks consistently. Even if he sported a green core, that display for someone his level was totally outrageous.

So with a silent agreement, they waited for the moment he ran out of energy.

And Noah knew this was the reason they had yet to let go of their chances at getting the rewards.

"You should really manage your reserves," Eric's deep voice resounded behind Noah. "I don't want you getting eliminated, all my efforts would have been for naught," the cultivator added, although relatively respectful tone.

Simply frowning tat the man's once again shameless words, Noah took the advice in them nonetheless. The aspirants had stopped moving at this point, but their figures resembled dots in the distance. Only the color of their defense's to repel the upward push making them somewhat visible from that distance. Not even the completely white environment could help.

"What would you do if you were in my shoes?" Noah enquired of a casually floating Eric.

A moment of silence followed Noah's words, but Eric soon opened his mouth to speak.

"Seeing as they are far away from us, i would; if I hand any of such spells. Cause a distraction," The man started putting on a pensive look. "We are only two, they are eight, we need something that can gather them up in one spot. But they wont have to know," he continued.

"Tell me something I don't know," Noah snorted, but browsed through his skills anyway. He had a few spells capable of causing a distraction, but the one based on his lightning affinity didn't sound able to do what their situation required, except he spammed it.

[Lightning Storm[Active]: Generate a tier 3 storm of Lightning within the radius of your mental consciousness, that strikes your enemies down. Costs: 800SE, Duration: 4 minutes, Cool-down: 20 minutes]

​ A simple spell, but one that would and could only be properly effective if his opponents were close by, since it was also limited to the range of his consciousness.

'If i revealed my ice affinity, I would surely cause a big enough distraction,' Noah mused, perceiving things in slow motion. 'But this isn't worth revealing my ace. And others are watching,' he thought raising his head to stare at the space above him.

"Speed; if you were somehow able to arrive in their midst, you'd be able to eliminate them in one go. But I doubt even you possess the blink spell for the lightning element. Its simply too rare," Eric explained, but Noah understood the hidden meaning behind his last sentence.

'I feel unsafe around this man,' Noah thought in mild irritation. He couldn't reveal too much or it could be used against him in the future. But the spell fascinated him.

'A spell able to allow people arrive at places fast enough to be considered an ace,' Noah thought. 'Could I term my speed that,' he mused. 'But the trail of energy would give me away. I'd need to see the skill in action to know if i could hide under it,' he thought focusing his gaze on Eric.

"Whats the blink spell?" Noah asked, now using his identity as a country bumpkin to gain information.

'Oh its just a semi-dimensional spell able to allow its casters travel through space to arrive at different points. Though its very limited, since if you can't clearly see the area you wish to go, it won't work," the man explained a tad bit disappointed, but also glad that Noah didn't possess it.

"For we lightning affinity users, we leave a trail of sparks between the point of entry and exit," Eric added. "But its the same for other elements. Fire and light being the most obvious. At least according to what I've been told."