“Take this!”
A giant block of stone came down from above and smashed towards where Amber stood. A cloud of dust exploded from the impact. Within that dust, sand scattered and formed into a humanoid figure.
In her sand form, she swung her arms, creating and launching a wave of sand knives towards Sol.
A wall of stone rose from the ground and blocked the sand knives. Once the attack was blocked, Sol commanded the wall to move forward, and so it did, sliding across the floor towards Amber.
A pillar of sand blasted her into the air as she carried that sand along with her, creating a giant fist that hurtled towards Sol. In response, he created an equally large fist out of stone to meet hers.
BOOM!
Both fists exploded, and the force knocked both of them away from each other. With distance between them, Sol began to create a highly dense stone spear, knowing it would be able to break through her sand attacks. A large stone spear formed, and just as he began to compress it, Amber suddenly appeared ten feet away and flung another wave of sand knives.
Sol was forced to abort the earth spear and used the uncondensed large mass to block the attacks instead. As he did, Amber somehow appeared behind him and held a knife to his back.
“Too slow,” she commented as she stowed her dagger.
“I know. I still can’t condense stone as fast as I want.”
Sol and Amber were sparring because his original plan to fight the 20th floor boss and 21st floor enemies didn’t pan out as he wanted. It wasn’t that he couldn’t win; it was the opposite. His fight against the Handless Fiend did not take more than ten seconds as he crushed it with stone cubes from all angles. The 21st floor enemies were too strong; he was unable to kill them with just the skills in his fake status.
After defeating a few enemies on the 21st floor, besides obtaining a few new skills, Sol didn’t see any improvement in the skills he actually used for the tournament. It was then that Amber suggested he spar with her instead. She had been getting ridiculously strong during her training as she was finally able to develop her [Sand Queen] talent. She was at the point of being able to defeat the Handless Fiend equally as fast as Sol.
It was at that point the two became sparring partners. Sol limited himself to just the skills used in the tournament, and Amber went all out. This resulted in her winning most of the time, but that didn’t bother him; he just wanted to improve his skills.
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As they sparred, a surprising benefit occurred. Sol’s [Terra Manipulation] and Amber’s [Sand Manipulation] were very similar, which meant they could be applied in similar ways. The two would inspire or teach each other better ways to use their skills during their fights, helping both of them come up with new attacks and techniques. Even though Sol wasn’t using [Reinterpret], his [Terra Manipulation] had leveled up twice in this short amount of time, which he didn’t even know was possible.
Once they realized the benefits, they focused on solely using their manipulation skills to fight. Sol hoped that by doing so, it would level up more and hopefully become strong enough to contend against Victor.
“It’s getting late, we should head back and continue tomorrow after the fights.”
Though Sol wanted to continue sparring, their high intensity fights began to take a toll even on him. He assumed Amber didn’t fare much better, but she was very good at hiding that kind of stuff.
Amber agreed, and so they used the teleporter sigil to leave the dungeon. He gave her one final wave as he headed towards the royal palace while she headed to the inn.
Once Sol arrived back at the royal palace, a few people tried to invite him to celebrate with other new recruits, but he declined them all and returned to his room.
He lay on his bed and thought to himself.
‘I need to focus on making it faster. As it is, it takes too long to condense the stone. Amber was able to easily take advantage of the time it took to condense it, and I don’t think Victor would sit around and wait like my illusion mom did.’
With a direction to improve upon, Sol used [Reinterpret], sending himself into the white room. With endless energy and mana to try and experiment all he wanted, he was able to continue his training.
His main focus was on condensing, which was his strongest attack if he was able to complete it. His hope was that by morning, he could cut the time it took by half. With a goal in mind, he began controlling the stone in the white room.
...
A knock was heard from the door. Sol, within the white room, noticed the disturbance, so he left the white room and was immediately met with a system prompt notifying him of his progress.
[[Terra Manipulation] leveled up! (3 -> 5)]
Ignoring the message, as he already knew it had improved around that much, Sol went to answer the door.
“Hey Sol! I’ve finally found you!”
“Hey Nataly. What's up?”
She was baffled by his nonchalant attitude. “What's up? Do you even know what time it is?!”
Sol shook his head. He had completely lost track of time within the white room.
“Oh my gods! The fights are about to start! Luckily, you go last, so if we run, we can still make it.”
“Wait, really?!”
“Yes, really! Let's go!”
The two immediately booked it outside of the knight headquarters and out of the side gate of the royal palace. On the way to the colosseum, a huge crowd of people blocked the streets, making it hard to get past.
Sol could use the same trick as last time to go underneath them all, but he didn’t want to leave Nataly behind after she went out of her way to remind him.
“Nataly, hold on to me.”
“Huh? What do you meeeean!”
The ground shook as a circular platform of stone launched from the ground and flew into the air. Sol grabbed hold of Nataly so she wouldn’t fall off and controlled the platform to fly towards the colosseum.
“I'M GONNA FALL!”
Nataly was in full panic mode as they zoomed through the sky.