If it was a straight line, the race would only take less than three minutes. But since there were many curves, the whole race took more than twenty minutes.
In the home stretch, Miles put up a challenging fight to fight against illusions and ever approaching Alec, but he was able to win, albeit barely. His advantage was taking the turns at optimal speeds thanks to his brain and hand coordination.
Alec was faster but was bad at taking turns, while Nadia was good with curves but couldn’t handle speed. So although Miles was weaker than them overall, none of the two used as much as serums and weren’t better than him when it came to hand and mind speed.
When the race was over, Miles got to keep the car since Merlin achieved what he wanted. They would also share the prize money. It was part of the deal, and Miles really liked the car ever since he first laid his eyes on it. Merlin also promised another car for Miles to drive against Quintus since this wouldn't be adequate against a car that can break the speed of sound with a half of its speed.
“That's my boy. You did great!” Merlin hugged Miles enthusiastically. This was the first step to his goal. He wanted Quintus’s passive ability, and now he was one step closer thanks to Miles.
“Yeah, yeah. As long as you give me the car.” Miles smiled as he touched the curves of the car. The more he drove it, the more he liked the car. After the last modifications, the car looked sexier and was more comfortable.
“You wait until you see what you will drive against Quintus.” Merlin smiled evilly. Since he was secretive about it, Miles didn’t press it any further so Merlin wouldn’t feel the satisfaction of teasing him. He just shrugged his shoulders and asked.
“Is it already coming along?” Miles looked at Merlin suspiciously. Merlin said he would take care of the car, and let Miles drive a car as fast as Quintus’s. But Miles had his suspicions about it.
It was not easy to bring a car to four times the speed of sound. After all, what Quintus found was an old ground vehicle with twice the speed of sound already. Without a blueprint, it wasn’t easy to produce a car. No company would deal with something trivial. And the Cross family had no one in the market dealing with cars either.
“It is. But it will still take some time, until then you have to get used to the third mind serum and use the fourth one. It would be for the best if you could use the fifth Mind Serum until then.” Merlin started to dream, while Miles shook his head helplessly. It would still take a little time to get used to the third serum and a little more to use the fourth one. After that, he still had to use the last Strengthening Serum of G-Series.
“Let’s go. Your girlfriend will be fighting in the competition today.” Miles reminded the daydreaming Merlin and brought him out of his stupor. It was the day of the Graders Competition. Although Miles failed to join, his friends and some other strong players were participating. So Miles wanted to watch it live.
“Right, let’s go.” He said and took the seat to drive into the military base nearby. Since they were General’s grandsons, they could borrow the Dimensional Device to teleport into Portal World. Luckily the ancient race had thought it thoroughly and everyone could teleport to the main arena through smaller arenas such as the one Miles had fought.
When they entered Portal World, they appeared in separate locations. Merlin was already in F-Circle, so his stronghold was in some other location. Miles donned his hood and medical mask before summoning his ivory car. He drove all the way to the teleporter. When he was there, he was stumped by the crowd outside. With no other choice, he waited in line and after half an hour he appeared in a giant arena.
The arena was so big, just the stadium could accommodate more than a million people. The fighting area was as big as a football field on Earth, and participants appeared at the side of the fighting area, while the audience appeared in the stadium. Miles failed to locate Merlin so he took a seat, and started to watch the fighting area.
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There were three groups namely First Tier where Grace-Rank hunters would compete, Second Tier for Form-Rank hunters, and Third Tier where Extol-Rank hunters would battle.
The most crowded one was the First Tier, while the Third Tier had the least. Miles looked at the participants and recognized a few. Quinn and Hassan were at the First Tier. Sachiru Kai and Sina Azari unsurprisingly failed to win in their preliminaries. After all, they barely entered the Form-Rank not long ago, and couldn’t cope with those at the peak of it.
He didn’t know any from Second Tier, one from the Third Tier. The one in the Extol-Rank was Helez, his father’s aide. Miles had been in the headquarters for too long when he was smaller, so he of course knew Helez. They were quite close back in the day. Although Helez was always a stick-in-the-butt type of woman because Miles was the son of her superior, Miles still liked Helez.
One other particular person drew his attention. The person was at least three meters tall, and its figure was robust. It was cloaked with a black cape with a hood, and not a part of its body could be seen. It was quietly waiting among the other five participants.
It was as wide as a door frame. Looked quite out of place like a sore thumb. Miles thought of Zall and pushed the thought back of his mind. Superpowers were mysterious and some could very well change the body. So, it wouldn’t be too strange to see a giant-like person.
Not long after the time for fights had arrived, and First Tier started the competition. The arena drew a system for them to fight, and two names appeared in the air. Fights continued in the same system and two by two fights were eliminated until the last two stayed.
Quinn and Hassan were unsurprisingly the best Grace-Rank could offer, and they were the finalists. Hassan had a great foundation and was already the champion of the previous competition. While Quinn had many different orbs and a great superpower. Although the fight was controversial, in the end, Quinn won.
Both of them could use energy as much as a Grace-Rank hunter could use anyway, but Quinn had a great foundation and was delaying her level up for years because the superpower she had was peculiar. Thanks to that, her powers and energy density were greater than Hassan’s.
Second Tier fights were even better. Miles was able to see energy at work and realized the government was keeping the truth from the regular people all this while. He watched tens of Grader's competitions yet he never saw people using such spectacular skills.
Because the competition was in Portal World, videos weren’t authenticated. So after being edited by the government, only the parts about superpowers were shown. But watching it live, Miles realized how mysterious the energy was.
For example, there was a participant with the name of Zia Rizvi. His superpower was bone bullets, and he could produce and fire bones in tandem. But with the use of Heart Branch, he could change the shape of his bone bullets to many shapes to give his opponent hard times.
A woman with wind blades changed the form of the power and produced a hurricane made of wind blades and wind needles to make her opponent bleed all around his body.
Other branches were extraordinary as well. A person with Body Branch punched the opponent with a regular seeming fist, but the explosion that followed it sent the opponent to the end of the arena.
While a person with Mind Branch used the needles with him. Floating thousands of needles flew everywhere with great speed and were good in both defense and offense.
In the end, Form-Rank fights ended as well. When Third Tier fights started, it was the cloaked figure's turn for the first match. There was no name nor number showing. When it was your turn, the barriers would open themselves for only the two fighters and the duo could walk into the arena. If one side didn’t, the arena would accept it as a forfeit and the next fight would start.
When two participants appeared in the arena, the cloaked figure fished out an orb. The hand released from the cloak was purple. The hand had seven fingers but it didn’t look unproportional. It was as if it had to be like that.
There were no wristwatches on the hand. The lightning beam pierced through the cloak from the neck of the figure and landed on the orb. The orb melted and turned into a giant mass of liquid. When it was solidified again, the figure was standing on top of the giant squid.
The squid wasn’t alive, but an artificial one. It was floating in the air and its ten tentacles were moving ever so slightly. The figure raised his hand again, and the squid started to move towards his opponent. Before his opponent could take action, the seven fingers turned into metal-like claws and slashed the air from the top of the man’s head to his toes. Seven beams of light appeared in the air, and when it faded, man fell to the ground, in seven pieces.