Sonido stood shivering before the pillar, finding that it was fully claimed. He hurried to check his spatial, only to find that the badge he thought was on him had already vanished into thin air, being nowhere to be found.
As Sonido looked around and realized that his Sect mates were likewise nowhere to be found, he became slightly agitated. Unwilling to face young master Zed directly, he hurried to snatch someone off of the streets, his features becoming menacing and stern.
"What happened here?!"
Sonido's voice boomed as Zed watched on indifferently. The latter slowly caressed the pillar, his shimmering bald head reflecting the golden lights above.
As Sonido listened, his expression only became uglier and uglier. His Sect mates had actually been completely wiped out to the last person without even a chance to fight back, and it was all done by that Ryu Tatsuya person?
He had known that Ryu was arrogant just by virtue of the fact he dared to kill a disciple of the Demonic Flame Sect in front of so many people. If he dared to do that, then he obviously wouldn't hesitate to crush a Third Star Sect like theirs. What was more surprising was that he actually had the power to do it so easily.
Although he had taken out a Heaven Class genius of the Demonic Flame Sect, it could still be argued that that genius was caught off guard, as were his Sky God protectors. After all, let alone the fact of distance, but just the prestige of the Sect was such that very few would even dare to look them in the eye, let alone attack one of them.
But now, there was no doubt that he had such strength, and if what these people were saying was correct, then he even as an extremely rare Spatial Soul Nature! It was no wonder he was so arrogant!
"Interesting," Zed said lightly before vanishing into the pillar.
Sonido watched on with a worried expression. If Zed could surpass Ryu, that would be for the best. But if he couldn't, then wouldn't Zed take out his anger on him? How would he even survive this? As enraged as he was about the death of his Sect mates, he was also hesitant to chase after Ryu. It was simply far too dangerous, he could very well lose his life.
And now that he had lost the support of his Sect mates, the road ahead would be even more difficult. He had gone from believing himself to be nearly invincible, to running into this Zed, and now to finding out he had lost his greatest backing to this unknown variable.
It was infuriating.
At that moment, Zed stepped out of the pillar much quicker than Sonido had been expecting, so much so that the latter didn't even have time to hide his ugly and enraged expression. However, even though Sonido hurried to hide this, it didn't seem to matter at all because Zed wasn't in the right mental state to care.
Zed coughed once, causing a mouthful of blood to fly from his lip. His face paled somewhat as he wiped the remnants of the blood away, his expression somewhat ugly now, a far cry from his previous nonchalance.
Clearly, Zed had thought that reclaiming the pillar would be relatively easy, but never did he expect to suddenly face an aura that shattered his staff qi entirely before it could even form.
If it was under normal circumstances, Zed would have a far better chance at dealing with this, but because of the unique atmosphere of the trial, he had no choice but to get crushed.
The way the pillar worked was that all of your abilities and even your personal strength was sealed away outside of what was being directly tested. This meant that Zed lost everything but his staff qi.
After entering, you would face off against shadows of the current city lord. Only after defeating the current city lord would you then be able to challenge the rest of the pillar and reclaim your authority.
If the previous city lord had cleared all of the trials, then you could skip over this step. But if the previous city lord was like Sonido, then you would have to clear them all yourself.
The reason Zed lost so swiftly was because he couldn't even last three exchanges against Ryu's staff shadow. The quality gap between a normal practitioner and a Staff God was simply too large. When all things were equal and there was nothing to rely on outside of staff qi, Ryu's aura would be so suffocating that anyone who entered wouldn't even be able to gather up their qi to begin with.
That led to this situation where Zed had practically just entered before he thrust out. How could his expression not be ugly?
"… Ryu Tatsuya…"
Zed mumbled this name darkly beneath his breath, a hidden light sparkling within his eyes.
…
Ryu had no idea what was happening in his bronze city, nor did he care. His main goal now was to bide his time before he could find another city that he could claim with 100% assurance. There would be no use in him claiming a city that he couldn't keep, so he had to find cities that tested him based on his strength. If possible, weapon cities would be the most ideal.
Ryu zoomed through the wilderness, his left palm flipped over to reveal his Matrix. He scanned the region for more and more Ruins, but he felt that he had basically almost cleared this area out. It would likely be necessary that he press onward to a new region as quickly as possible.
There were quite a few regions in the Heavenly Path, each one with differing climates and different opportunities. The Ruins he wanted to find here were too well hidden and finding them would slow him down too much. The trade off wasn't worth it although the Heavenly Favor they would give would be far greater.
Up until now, he had been focused on the easier to find Ruins as they were a right balance of speed and difficulty.
'Hm?'
Ryu's head turned in a certain direction and he stepped toward it without hesitation.
When he appeared, he found a small crowd of people, just about a dozen, standing around what looked like a slowly opening entrance to a Ruin.
Ryu looked down at his Matrix and his eyes narrowed.
It seemed that he was quite lucky. This should be a hard to find Ruin and these people had just stumbled onto it. In that case, he might as well take advantage of it while he was here.
Ryu's head turned and he raised an eyebrow.
Among the dozen or so people, there was one he recognized. She was from the Bewitching Charm Sect, the woman with a cold expression, Fairy Mae.
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