A silence hung over the lit dark blue flame. It took a long while for the young woman at the podium to grasp what had just happened. When she finally did, her face reddened with an intense shame.
She wasn't a fool, no normal person could surprise her to such a state. It was very obvious that she had misunderstood Ryu. She had allowed her annoyance in taking on such a menial task to impact her mood, and by extension, her judgement.
However, even if she knew this, she found it difficult to swallow her pride. When her gaze landed on Ailsa, who was looking toward where Ryu had disappeared with lovestruck eyes and an adorable white creature in her arms, her anger flared once more.
"Entering the trials of the Three Pupil Eclipse Sect without permission is a capital offense –!"
Ailsa coldly swept a gaze over the young woman, but, she surprisingly didn't say a word. Instead, her lip curled slightly and she remained silent, the bubbling strength within her lithe body settling into a low rumble.
In a while, the thoughts of this girl wouldn't matter for much of anything. The young lady could feel that her attempts at being overbearing had fallen on deaf ears once more, leaving her feeling stifled. However, at that moment, a torch lit on the gate to her back, causing her to freeze in place.
'… Impossible…'
Not only were these tall doors massive, but they were surrounded by unlit torches of dark blue fire that followed the arch of the door's frame.
There were a total of 99 of these torches, representing the 99 floors of the Martial Tower. The fact that one had been lit already meant that Ryu had already cleared a floor. However, he hadn't entered for more than a few seconds. On top of that, he was a Divine Vessel Realm expert, how was this even possible?
She had hardly finished her thought when the second torch was lit even quicker than the first.
The young woman's body trembled. She realized now why Ryu had only given her a glance and Ailsa was too lazy to deal with her. Anyone who could perform so well so well in this Trial wouldn't have to worry about her rage at all. Even if this kind of person wasn't accepted into her Sect due to their strict bloodline requirements, they would still be valued to some level. Ryu simply didn't have to care for her opinion at all.
In the case that his bloodline met the requirements, he would practically be guaranteed a spot amongst them. In the case that it didn't, he would still gain an honorary title from their Sect. In some instances, these honorary titles were worth more than even a true position within their echelon.
Soon, there came a third, then a fourth, then a fifth… not even five minutes had passed by the time the tenth torch had been lit.
By now, considering many had already been paying great attention to Ryu, the Martial Tower was in a state of combined wildness and contradictory stillness. The crowds of people found it difficult to choose between their stunned states and discussing just what in the world was going on.
Within the trial, Ryu coldly glided across a bland landscape. Though a single glaive dragged along, its blade just barely a fraction of a centimeter from the ground, he didn't use it.
As crackles of lightning followed his seemingly casual but impossibly quick steps, numerous [Vector Eagles] flew in beautiful silver patterns around him like the wings of proud birds of prey.
There was nothing complex about the trial floors of the Martial Tower, they weren't particularly large either. In fact, as the enemies grew, the rooms seemed to be gradually shrinking in size.
This place reminded Ryu of the fourth floor of the crystalline jade. Bland grey floors, ceilings and walls, a fairly small area of a maximum of 50 square meters, and the only difference was that instead of facing just one enemy, Ryu was facing many.
These enemies didn't appear all at once, though, which was key to why Ryu had moved forward so quickly to now. As soon as Ryu cut down one enemy, another would appear, only for him to cut it down and yet another to appear right afterward.
It wasn't until Ryu had already cleared the 30th floor that he realized that there were two rules for the appearance of the next enemy. They would either appear right after you defeated the first, or they would appear if you took longer than ten seconds to defeat the first.
Like this, the longer you took to clear a floor, the greater the difficulty over time became due to the fact you would be facing more and more enemies at once in a relatively small space.
Realizing this, Ryu stopped entirely relying on his Mental Realm and began combining this strength of his with his glaive.
Though this was the Immortal Ring trial, that didn't mean that all of the enemies he faced were at this level. In fact, much of the difficulty of the lower floors was dealing with large numbers of powerful Half-Step Immortal Ring Realm experts.
However, after crossing the 30th floor, Lower Immortal Ring experts began to appear. By the 40th, the ten second time lag had dropped to nine, and by the 50th, it dropped to eight.
As Ryu expected, the trial had gained an extremely terrible flaw. This flaw had most definitely not been present at the advent of this Martial Tower or else it would have never gained its reputation of great difficulty. And, it seemed that not many were able to exploit this weakness, or else its previous reputation would have taken a great hit.
The flaw was simple: the enemies didn't appear with their Immortal Rings deployed. Instead, they would attempt to form them after they appeared, but before they succeeded, Ryu would have already cut them down.
Ryu suspected that the only reason that such an obvious flaw hadn't been dealt with yet was precisely because this Fell City was merely among the middle tier cities of this Moon World. The 'geniuses' that appeared here would find this trial enough of a challenge, so why change anything?
However, even as Ryu had this thought, he felt that it was more complex than this. What the true reason was, though… He wasn't sure.
Ryu coldly cut down another grey armored puppet, crossing into the 70th floor.