The cadet leader glared at Leon, his eyes narrowed in anger. "You may have taken our weapons, but you're still outnumbered. We'll take you down easily."
Mako stepped forward, cracking his knuckles. "I don't think you understand. We don't want to fight, but we will if we have to... and if we do, we won't hold back."
The cadet leader gritted his teeth, clearly frustrated by the situation. He looked at his teammates, then back at the group of five in front of him. The tension in the air was intense as both groups stared each other down.
Suddenly, the cadet leader gave a signal, and all eight of them charged forward. Mako, Bill, Iris, Erin, and Leon quickly spread out to avoid being surrounded. The cadets were clearly skilled fighters and were putting up a decent fight against the group.
Mako separated two cadets out of the eight that he made into his opponents. The two cadets were a good duo who understood the importance of ability syncing as one was using the fire ability while the other was using the wind ability. These two abilities complemented each other quite well and produced some destructive combinational skills.
Mako didn't want to rely on just his abilities in this fight, so he tried to keep the fight mostly physical. He would dodge the flame projectiles and the wind blades that his opponents would through at him using his superior agility and perception and as soon as he got close, he would deal devastating blows using his superior strength.
Bill planted the miniature sand spikes he had conjured into the ground as soon as the fight broke out. The cadet next to the leader rushed toward Bill thinking that maybe he had let his guard down, but he was quite mistaken.
As soon as the cadet stepped on one of the planted miniature sand spikes, the ground around him exploded and a small sandstorm erupted right on the cadet's feet, disorienting him and making it difficult for him to see.
This was a brand new skill that Bill had come up with on his own while he was stuck inside the cave for two days. It was possible for anyone to create their own skills once they had unlocked the ability, but the method of how to do so was completely hidden from the public so people would remain in the dark, and the capitalist businessmen would continue to profit from skill books.
However, people did still create skills on their own without learning the actual method, which was achieved through sheer luck, but this didn't stop them from telling the world that they had cracked the code and figured out how to create new skills. This created a genre on the internet where individuals would share their tips and tricks on unlocking new skills, and even though what they were sharing was true for their own case, it didn't work the same for anyone else.
Now that the cadet was blinded by the mini sandstorm that had erupted on his feet, Bill quickly closed the distance between them and started to release a barrage of punches on his body.
Leon, meanwhile, was a blur of motion as he darted in and out of the cadets' range. The cadet leader himself had decided to deal with Leon as he was the fastest out of the group but still was nowhere near the level of agility that Leon possessed.
The cadet leader had two abilities, one being lightning and the other being hardening. The only reason why he was able to put up a fight against Leon, was because he had a skill that allowed him to boost his perception by focusing his lightning aura on his eyes amplifying the electrical signals that they were sending to the brain.
That combined with hardening allowed the cadet leader to stand up to Leon's blows and even counter-attack at times.
Seeing that Iris was a water ability user which was the weakest out of the five basic elemental abilities, three cadets had decided to gang up on her, hoping to get a clean easy win and have one less person to deal with.
However, what these cadets didn't know was that Iris and Erin had one of the worst days of their lives as they were given the news about their teammates being eliminated and not only that, they had been deceived and played around like a fool by the person who had eliminated their teammates.
Iris was a strong fighter in her own regard, but when facing three skillful cadets at the same time, she was getting pushed back and overwhelmed with ease. Just as one of the cadets sent a blade of fire at Iris' unprotected back, all of a sudden, a wall of ice appeared behind her and protected her from the incoming fire attack.
Looking to the right, the cadets could see Erin standing there with her hands on the ground with a trail of ice that lead to the ice wall that had erupted behind Iris protecting her from the fire.
Erin looked up at the three cadets who were fighting Iris with a face full of anger. She didn't even realize this yet, but the cadets were completely intimidated by Erin, and not only because of her Ice ability aura, or emotions but the fact that her eyes were GLOWING!
Erin's eyes glowed with icy bright white light as she stared at the three cadets with anger.
She had already lost her boyfriend and two of her friends during this test and she couldn't bear to see her best friend be defeated as well.
The cadets looked behind Erin and could see that she had already defeated the cadet that was her opponent and the second overall strongest in their group with ease as he was laying unconscious on the ground, covered in bruises and cuts with ice shards all around him.
The cadets gulped as they saw how easily Erin was able to defeat their second-strongest fighter and as the white glow in her eyes began to intensify more, they couldn't help but subconsciously move back in fear, but that didn't stop Erin from moving forward as she would no longer forgive anyone who dared to harm those who she cared about.
Iris circled around the ice wall to join back in on the fight and she was also left stunned as she saw Erin's eyes glow white like snow.
However, before she could even comment on Erin's appearance, Erin dashed forward while yelling at Iris to follow behind. Iris knew exactly what Erin was trying to do as this was one of the attack combos they had practiced with both of them using the circular water blades.
However, this time, Erin was using her Ice ability to freeze Iris' water blades mid-attack so that they retained their cutting edge and momentum but were now solid and would deal a lot more damage.
The attack was pretty simple, both girls would rush toward an opponent at the exact same time from both directions in perfect sync making it so that the opponent couldn't figure out who to defend against first. They would then cross paths just before their opponent and strike them from both sides using the circular water blades.
They executed the attack flawlessly with the cadets so scared that they couldn't even muster up the strength to defend against the incoming attack, and as a result, they were sent flying just as the ice blade made contact with their body.
After defeating the three boys, a smile appeared on Erin's face as she was happy with her newfound power and celebrated the fact that she just defeated 4 cadets whereas only 24 hours ago, she could barely hold her own in a one-on-one fight.
'The resonated abilities gave a bigger boost to our bodies than regular abilities, but I never imagined it to be this much,' Erin thought.
Erin was not wrong in that resonated abilities did indeed give a bigger boost, but the level of strength that Erin had managed to achieve was not just because of her resonance alone. There was another reason for the insane jump in strength and only Iris was the one that had noticed it up till now.
After they had defeated the three cadets, Iris turned back toward Erin to confront her about her glowing eyes, but to her surprise, her eyes were back to normal. Iris couldn't believe her eyes. She was sure that she had seen her best friend's eyes glow white, but now there was nothing.
Afraid that maybe she was hallucinating or something and the fact that she didn't want her best friend to worry, Iris decided to keep this information to herself at the moment and try to see if she could spot her eyes glowing again to confirm before alarming anyone of this unique development.
*************
[At the military headquarters]
"Sir! Sir! You are not going to believe this!" The sergeant exclaimed as he rushed toward the main commander once again with wild news about a specific group of people that had continued to amaze the officials during this recruitment test.
