Ulrich heard the sound of multiple small platforms rise up from where Wedding Girl fell and felt the giant hunk of metal fall behind him, looking back as the metal wall started advancing towards everybody. The black man immediately ran towards the new set of platforms, making his way through them rather easily. The people at the ledge fell into the spike pit, being trampled by a horde of terrified teenagers.
Ulrich jumped through the platforms, noticing the others failing to make the jumps and falling. He lost his footing for a second only to be helped by someone falling into him. He heard the person fall into the spikes below, but he kept on moving. He fell onto the comforting chunk of blue metal, running to the next part, a series of metal poles suspended over another spike pit, around 5 of various sizes to get through. He grabbed onto one of them, being held in place awkwardly while several apparent gymnasts made their way through the poles. Ulrich swung himself, flinging himself to the other pole, about to keep up the momentum he was getting, only stopping when he heard screaming in front of him.
Several people front of him seemed to have lost their grips at the same time, all of them falling into the spike pit below. This left one girl in the middle, and Ulrich could hear panting in front of him, which quickly turned into sobbing. He tried to make the swing again, breathing a quick sigh of relief when he landed.
And then he felt the electricity surge through him.
He felt every part of his body simultaneously get stung at what felt like several times a second, desperately trying to hold on for dear life, but eventually his hands slipped, and he fell to the spikes below. He thrust his hands downward in an attempt to brace himself for the fall, feeling the heat from the palms of his hands, moving them downward and moving his body heat to his hands. The fire sprang to life, and he blasted out of the spike pit, hitting his leg against the cold metal, and hitting his head against another chuck of metal.
"Uh, you okay?" a calm voice asked.
Ulrich got up, waiting for his eyesight to come back.
"You got brain damage?"
His eyes started working again, and he was met by a man with shaggy long hair and a blue checked shirt, a simple white shirt relaxing underneath.
"Never seen you before, you okay?" He asked.
"Yeah?" Ulrich replied, trying to get rid of the pain in the back of his head.
"Okay, cool. Meet you at the ending." The man gave a thumbs up and ran past the walls of spikes, and Ulrich looked back to see how that girl was doing, and a man in a leather jacket was jumping onto the bar, grabbing her, and managing to clear the other bars with one hand, collapsing into a heap as soon as he hit the ground. The girl touched him, and he made some kind of gesture implying she should run, which she did. She caught a glimpse of Ulrich, running away faster with a look of fear. Ulrich ran too, through the narrow walls of spikes towering over all of them. He kept running, until he bumped into a guy not moving, just blocking the way.
"What's up?" He asked, smirking. His muscles took up basically the whole hallway, and Ulrich wished his black tank top had the same quality.
"You wanna get past?" He continued.
"Uh, yes? Where's that girl, actually?"
"Small blonde one? She killed two of my goons, so I let her go."
"Excuse me?" Ulrich asked.
The man laughed towards the grey metallic ceiling when he heard that, unleashing the outlines of yet more spikes between his knuckles on his right hand.
"Survival of the fittest, boy! If the universe wants them dead, then let it happen!"
He swept away his fringe, revealing the scar on his forehead.
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"And now, brother of the scar, if you wanna get past me, then defeat me!"
He unleashed a punch overhead, punching the ground as Ulrich dodged backwards, using a small flame to adjust himself upright. The man lunged towards him, and Ulrich let a fireball out of his hand, which caused him to take a step back. The man charged like a bull once again, his claws in front of him, and Ulrich let a small burst of fire out of both of his hands underneath him, leaping over him, feeling his black sneakers graze against his hair, but managing to land on his feet, as the man turned around with a look of angry disappointment strung over his face.
"Aw, come on! Do you not wanna fight some more, little man?" The man took a step forward, and then suddenly stopped in place. His eyes bulged open, and Ulrich saw blood appear across his midsection. His top half fell forwards and his bottom half fell backwards, and Ulrich watched as the black man who grabbed his arm casually sauntered past him with his hands in his pockets.
"T-Thanks." Ulrich spluttered, heavily concerned by what just happened.
"It's what I do." The man shrugged, breaking into a small jog as he walked past. Ulrich also ran, picking up the pace when he heard something click in the distance, causing the spikes to get closer together. The walls closed in on several people, many getting stabbed on the spikes by others, one girl in a pure white shirt making sure to jump on somebody ahead of her and push them onto the spikes. Ulrich started moving faster to make sure she didn't see him. The wall of spikes stalled for a few seconds, and when Ulrich managed to get out of the wall, he saw a muscular man with the outline of some kind of boot around his foot, while another man on the inside of the spiked wall was holding them back, his arm seemingly being coated in rocks. Both were sweating, with looks of intensity on their faces as multiple people were able to get out of the hallway.
"Oh, wow. Always great to see a good Samaritan sneak through the cracks."
Wedding Girl's bored voice broke through the struggle, with a small click being heard from behind Ulrich, followed by screaming and metal being crushed. He turned around, and the spikes were replaced with a metallic red wall, which briefly masked the crimson oozing out of it.
"Well, congratulations on getting past the halfway point, all seventy-three of you. Vanessa, you might want to watch out behind you."
A girl near the back with short brown hair looked behind her, screaming at the arm behind her, a tall Asian looking man dashing in to hug her just as she was about to let out her first wail.
"Oh right, he also made it." She sighed. "There goes that plan." Another click was heard, and several robotic looking objects made their way onto the corridor in front of them. Grey and metallic, but sleeker grey metal. Hovering above the ground ever so slightly, with bulky heads housing a single red dot.
"Are those robots?" Ulrich asked.
"Don't know what else they could be." The man in the checked shirt replied, his hands in his pockets.
"Alrighty, contestants!" Wedding's bubbly hell voice returned. "The final challenge is to get through the minefield of robots. Have fun, everybody!"
A couple people started running through the field, and the robots extended their arms, grabbing the victims. A whirring sound was heard from them, five of them exploding on cue, the blood splashing all over the floor in a terrible display of interior decorating.
"Big deal." Checked shirt man muttered to Ulrich, sweeping some of his unkempt hair out of his eyes. "We just wait until everyone else dies."
His logic was pretty sound, most people waiting for the rest to make a move, until the advancing wall of spikes came back, the smell of dried blood radiating from it.
"Well, there goes that plan. Try not to die, everybody." And with a shrug, he was running.
Ulrich also started sprinting, giving himself a small boost by shooting some small sparks out of his hands, which almost put him right in front of a robot's extended hands. He fired a blast out of his left hand to barely dodge it, and a stream of pure black energy bounced off it as he did. He heard some kind of swearing from the direction of the stream but was back on his feet and running through the hallway. There were three people ahead of him. One was the black man, baiting the robots into extending their arms before cutting them down with what seemed to be the outline of a sword. Next to him was a neat looking woman with a giant metal hammer smashing any robots in front of her, followed by a man with a green baseball cap spurting what seemed to be a hardened white substance out of his wrists, going through the robots eye and letting the sound of metal ring through the hallways as it dropped. Ulrich didn't focus on killing any robots, his only goal was not dying. He took all the body heat from his arms and his chest, moving it all into his hands. He focused for a brief second, and felt the heat radiating off his body as he launched forward with the force of a missile. And afterwards, he was at the end of the hallway. No more robots, so he slowly made his way to the end.
And at the end of the long hallway, was a white room in the back, a banner with a sloppily written 'congratulations!' across the top in bright pink letters, and Ulrich walked past. His knees were uncontrollably shaking, and he eventually lost his ability to stand, falling to the floor.
The back of the room revealed a secret compartment, where wedding girl was waiting, alongside the short haired girl, only she was wearing a nice navy coloured suit.
"Valentina Nova-Vico, Cyrus Holden, Odebode Haruna, and Ulrich Hart, welcome to the next round!"