However, before he could begin the Tribulation, he had to take care of some pressing matters—matters that could be, thankfully, swiftly taken care of.
He hopped over to the other side of the room, toward the control panel. A couple of button presses and lever pulls later, with the help of his Spirit Hands, the cabinets of pills and various equipment that lined the sides of the room rescinded into the ground. Meanwhile, the ceiling opened up, revealing the blue sky and blinding sun.
The last thing he wanted was to be liable for any damages during his Tribulation. He had already learnt his lesson with the whole bombing the city stunt.
Finally, Alwin opened up the status screen and, using his Spirit Hands, tapped on the Evolution Meter.
Begin Tribulation?
Yes No
Alwin selected Yes.
His status screen closed by itself. An ominous chill filled the room. Alwin had his eyes wide open, anticipating the attacks from the Tribulation—an Ice Tribulation, to be exact. While he didn't know the specifics of the gear and pills he had been handed, they were undoubtedly useful. Simply having them pretty much guaranteed success. After all, he did manage to complete the Fire Tribulation without any assistance.
Alwin's introspection was cut short by a System Screen appearing right in front of him. A light blue snowflake symbol appeared on it. Chunks of ice—the size of a slime—launched out of it straight for his face.
He hopped to the left and hopped to the right, dodging every single one of the incoming projectiles. Even if they did collide with him, he doubted that they would do much to him. This was going to be easy.
Still, rather than only dodging, it would be smarter to weave in some attacks as well.
As Alwin continued his hopscotch routine, it was time to go with the classics. He prepared an assortment of Spirit Blasts, Spirit Scatter Blasts, and Spirit Burst Blasts, launching them out of his Core toward the physical manifestation of the Ice Tribulation.
The blue balls soared through the air, some of them colliding with the horizontal hailstorm, shattering the blocks of ice into minuscule pieces while his own Blasts were reduced to magical particles. The best defense was a good offense—those words had never felt more true. With each Blast, he carved a path through the barrage, thinning the assault. Now Alwin could spend less time hopping and more time attacking.
Those Blasts that managed to go the distance crashed into the System Screen. Globs of liquid mana erupted out of the Spirit Burst Blast while the Spirit Scatter Blasts cracked open, unleashing a pepper bloat of miniature Spirit Blasts encased within. Ripples spread across its surface. And just like that, the barrage of icy projectiles came to a sudden halt.
The moment his Blasts finished their pounding, the System Screen vanished.
That's it? Alwin didn't remember Tribulations being that easy—granted, it was a Tier 1 Tribulation. But that just goes to show how much Alwin had improved since his very first Tribulation.
Time to return the Evolution Chamber back to normal and prepare for the final exam.
As Alwin started hopping toward the control panel, a realization hit him harder than Uchronia's disappointment. The Tribulation wasn't over. If it was, he'd be blinded as his body reconstructed itself into a new form. Darn it. How could he have overlooked such a blatantly obvious detail? Overconfidence had once again reared its ugly head. His seriousness had caused him to be so sure of himself that he assumed that the Tribulation had been swiftly dealt with.
Alwin swiveled on his slimy bottom, scanning the room for any anomalies. Nothing stood out. Just tiled floors with sunlight beating on them, blank walls, and a control panel on the far side of the room.
That was odd. Very odd. If the Tribulation wasn't over, then where were the System Screens? Were they hidden? Perhaps they had some sort of cloaking mechanism? It was an ice-based Tribulation, after all, so the System Screens most likely had properties similar to ice. Perhaps they were camouflaged, bending light through its frosty exterior, making them nearly invisible under the right conditions. Or maybe it was proximity-based—causing icy detonations the moment Alwin wandered too close to them.
The faintest of chills ran down his gelatinous, bodacious curves. It was cold—but not that cold. That was weird. Unless...
Alwin finally looked up toward the sky. Above him wasn't a System Screen. It was multiple. At least ten. Darn it. The warmth of the sun had weakened the cold air it emitted, masking their presence. If not, he would’ve realized it sooner. This new seriousness was going to be his downfall.
The old Alwin would've immediately craned his head to the sky, searching for anomalies—he was weird like that. But, this new serious Alwin never even considered the possibility of an aerial assault. People rarely even glanced up at the ceiling in everyday life, much less during a battle. Instead, he was too busy analyzing possible scenarios, completely overlooking something as simple as looking up.
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A tempestuous storm of chilled wind blasted from the System Screens in the sky, rushing toward the ground. Within it were huge chunks of ice—far larger than the first wave. The projectile blizzard approached at a blazing speed, threatening to turn him into a corpse and preserve it at the same time.
Alwin began dodging the hailstones to the best of his ability. His head was craned up toward the sky, eyes running all over the place in an attempt to track each and every piece crashing to the ground. It was a tough feat. For something called an Ice Tribulation, why were the winds so powerful? They pushed and pulled the chunks of ice with no rhyme or reason as they fell to the ground, making it nearly impossible to predict where they’d land.
He leaped from side to side, compressing his body to its limits as he ducked, just barely dodging the icy artillery, but not completely. When the chunks crashed into the ground, they released a spray of frozen shrapnel that pelted his body. Thankfully, the ice coat provided by Lapis shielded him from most of the damage, while the Ice Resistance Pill reduced the few shards that pelted his face to nothing more than pinpricks.
With the overstimulation of his visual cortex and the constant dodging, Alwin couldn't afford to divert any resources towards creating a bunch of Blasts to destroy the incoming glacial debris. The only moves he currently had access to were Dark Tackle and Devolution. Skills that were literally ingrained in him from birth, where close to zero focus was required.
That's it—Devolution.
If he could melt the onslaught of chill, it'd give him more time to properly prepare and counterattack. But, to melt an object, one needed heat. And who had a blazing passion for battle? Winal the Fire Soldier Ant.
A white light engulfed the room as Alwin’s physical body broke apart and reformed itself. Hard, chitinous shell engulfed his black, gooey form, igniting upon exposure to air. The ice coat, which previously fit him snug like a glove, tore at the seams as his body expanded. Fiery legs burst forth, poking through the light blue fabric. When his transformation was complete, only tattered remains of the ice coat remained. The white frills and blue fabric underwent changes of their own, turning into a sooty black as Winal's flames scorched the fibers into a charred husk—it was made to ward off ice attacks, not fire, after all. Even without the coat, Winal's tough, flaming shell ought to be enough to protect him from the frozen missiles.
However, something felt off. Winal was the byproduct of the old Alwin's childish shenanigans. From this point on, Winal would be no more. There was only Alwin—the new serious Alwin.
Alwin, fully confident in his physical form, forwent tracking every piece of ice and dodging them, instead devoting 99% of his focus toward constructing an array of Blasts to send the hailstorm packing. As the chunks of ice approached him, they began to melt from the heat his flaming hot body was putting out. But it wasn't enough. They were reduced to about half of their original size. Even with the added elemental advantage, every strike by the glacial bombardment caused him to wince in pain.
It was tolerable, barely. He had no choice but to hold on. A single lapse of concentration would cause all of the spells he was creating in his Core to disappear, forcing him to repeat the crafting process all over again.
A rush of Blasts left his Core, traveling straight toward the heavens. Spirit Blasts, Spirit Scatter Blasts, Spirit Burst Blasts, and most importantly, Fire Blasts headed upward toward the source of the frigid calamity. Multiple blue orbs and red flaming ones soared in the air. The Fire Blast being bigger than their Spirit counterpart—from the 5% boost to all Fire Elemental attacks that his Fire Soldier Ant form provided.
They collided with the icy barrage, shattering them into harmless, tiny pieces that fell to the ground. Spirit Blasts ruptured into magical particles upon impact, while Spirit Scatter Blasts released a spread of tiny Spirit Blasts, which crashed into other hailstones, barely making a crack before vanishing into nothingness. His Spirit Burst Blast hardly fared better, releasing a spray of raw liquid mana upon collision with the frozen chunks, dousing nearby hailstones.
The Fire Blasts? They were the star player.
Before even making contact, the arctic assault had already started melting from the heat it put out. The moment they met in a head-on collision, the piece of ice shattered into a thousand pieces that evaporated mere moments later.
Unlike its Spirit-based counterpart, the Fire Blast barely lost any steam. It continued its climb upward, barreling through multiple frozen meteors before finally fizzling out. But that was just one of the multiple Fire Blasts that Alwin had released.
As his Blasts continued to smash into the multiple frozen rocks, less managed to make it past the stream of attacks, resulting in him taking fewer hits. Still, Alwin couldn't let up. Without the pounding the Tribulation had been handing out, he had the mental capacity to make a quick change to his strategy.
Alwin continued to release multiple Blasts skyward bound. However, he focused more of his efforts towards casting Fire Blasts. Due to the more tedious process of creating Fire Mana and the subsequent Fire Blasts, compared to a regular Spirit Blast, the number of projectiles in the air dropped by a huge margin. There were more light blue chunks hurtling downward than there were red hot balls soaring to the sky. But, when they lacked in numbers, they made up for it with raw power.
More Fire Blasts managed to make it out of the icy hellscape with enough power to crash into the Ice Tribulation System Screens. With each impact, dark, charred spots marred their surface. With each impact, fewer hailstones were unloaded by the screens. With each impact, Alwin was closer to victory.
One by one, the screens above were rendered useless. Not even the snowflake symbol could be seen, covered by a layer of soot. Hail no longer poured from the System Screens as they became nothing more than decorative pieces. The moment the last System Screen became moot, they disappeared.
That was great. But he still wasn't evolving yet. Alwin wasn't about to make the same mistake twice in a row. He looked around the room, finding the next screen that wanted nothing more than to deliver a world of hurt. Alwin even included glances upwards. Even though he had just dispatched those screens, there was nothing saying that they couldn't appear in the same place again.
"Good job."
The voice came from behind him, winter-slick and as smooth as ice.