Grandpa Vremya exhaled and lowered his crossed arms. He stared without moving as the group of competitors approached him. “Do you really want to do this?” he asked. “Will you have enough energy to complete the next trials if you attack me now? I guarantee I’ll target all of you one by one, and I don’t doubt I’ll be able to dispatch at least ten of you before I’m done.”
“Talk is cheap,” the soul-seed cultivator said before anyone could consider what Grandpa Vremya had said. “I’ll defeat you right here.” He pressed his fist into his palm, cracking his knuckles. “You robbed me of my gold medal using your wealth; I’d like to see how you’ll escape from me now.” He shot a glance at the other competitors. “I don’t need you to help me. Just don’t interfere.”
Grandpa Vremya sighed and shook his head. “I dislike people who aren’t able to use brains,” he said. “If I’m the first target because of my strength, then obviously, you’re the second; yet you’re still willing to put yourself in a situation where you’ll be worse off because of a bit of anger. It won’t be as easy as you think to defeat me; in fact, you won’t be able to defeat me at all. Your stupidity is giving me extra work, and it displeases me greatly.”
“Oh?” The soul-seed cultivator sneered, and a red gem appeared on his forehead. Fire flickered into existence around his body, and eight tentacles grew out of his back. They were orange-red, practically glowing like iron rods taken out of a fire. “I’ll burn you to a crisp!” He accelerated towards Grandpa Vremya, the tentacles flailing at him from all directions.
A sigh escaped from Grandpa Vremya’s mouth, and he clenched and unclenched his hands. Nine gold discs shot out from between his fingers. Eight of them headed towards the tips of the tentacles, and the remaining gold disc moved to intercept the soul-seed cultivator’s punch. The soul-seed cultivator sneered. Since they were objects created from Grandpa Vremya’s spiritual energy and not an external artifact, there was no way he’d be defeated in a direct confrontation. However, a second later, the expression on the cultivator’s face changed. Nine black holes appeared where the discs were, and he let out a scream as he pulled his limbs back. The tips, where they had made contact with the discs, were elongated, stretched like they were pieces of taffy.
“Gravity!?” the soul-seed cultivator asked, his eyes widening. Not many cultivators practiced with gravity-based techniques. Early on, they were pretty powerless, not directly capable of attacking; not only that, but gravity-techniques required a larger amount of spiritual energy to get the same result. It was possible to compensate for the extra spiritual energy by cultivating deeper, spending more time at each stage of cultivation, but the resources required were astronomical. As such, only large countries were capable of nurturing a gravity-based cultivator. Not many investors would be keen on spending tons of resources upfront without receiving a return for at least five hundred years. Along with the difficulty of cultivating, the chances of failure were too high to warrant such an investment. Yes, gravity-based abilities were strong, ten times stronger than a generic-element-based ability, but that didn’t mean anything when fifty fire-based golden-core cultivators could be raised using the same amount of resources as one gravity-based cultivator. Only eccentrics or the obscenely wealthy would try to cultivate with gravity, time, or space as their foundation.
Grandpa Vreyma snorted and straightened his back. One of the black holes flew into his lower belly, merging with his body. The spiritual energy in the surroundings flickered and rushed towards Grandpa Vremya. Thanks to the increase in energy, the remaining eight black holes grew larger in size. They rushed towards the soul-seed cultivator, causing his face to turn grim. This was his first time fighting someone who could control black holes. He wasn’t quite sure how to smash them apart. If he tried to destroy them physically, his spiritual energy would just be absorbed. All he could do was operate his soul seed at maximum capacity, absorbing as much spiritual energy from the surroundings as possible; however, his face paled when he tried. It wasn’t just the black hole inside of Grandpa Vremya that was taking in spiritual energy. The eight black holes were absorbing them as well. The density of spiritual energy within the competition ground had decreased from average to way-below average. At this rate, there wouldn’t be any spiritual energy left to use. As a soul seed cultivator, the amount of spiritual energy he could control was equivalent to the amount around him. Outside, in the open world, he could use as much spiritual energy as the world could provide. In here, there was a finite amount, and his opponent was absorbing it all.
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The soul-seed cultivator’s body blurred as he rushed to get behind Grandpa Vremya. Unfortunately for the cultivator, his techniques weren’t lightning-based nor wind-based. His speed was just so-so. With ease, the black holes followed the man’s path, placing themselves in the perfect defensive positions to intercept any of his attacks. A dark expression appeared on the man’s face. If he still had access to his interspacial ring, he could take out loads of counters to Grandpa Vremya’s ability. He cursed at the shameless rules of the Bread Games committee, conveniently ignoring the fact Grandpa Vremya would take out his battlesuit golems if interspacial items were allowed. There was only one thing the soul-seed cultivator could do to crack the stalemate. “Help me out!” he said, gesturing towards the surrounding competitors.
“Why don’t you help me out instead?” Grandpa Vremya asked. “In the end, I’m still a nascent-soul cultivator. Even if all of you team up to defeat me, none of you will be able to defeat him even if you all ganged up on him. If all of you attacked me together, there’s a chance you’ll slip past my defenses to injure me.”
The soul-seed cultivator’s face darkened. When he saw the contemplating expressions on the other competitors’ faces, he ground his teeth. “Ridiculous,” he said. “I guarantee over half of you will be disqualified before you defeat me. In the end, we’re all here for first place. Who amongst you are willing to come at me first?”
Grandpa Vremya raised his head. The clouds above were dispersing. During that short time he was dealing with the soul-seed cultivator, the lightning bolts had already taken out eighty percent of the competitors. They were designed to knock out competitors without the strength of an average, newly formed nascent-soul cultivator. The remaining competitors raised their heads as well, still maintaining their defensive techniques in case the lightning continued pouring down.
“Bah,” the soul-seed cultivator said. Now that the stage was shifting, it would be impossible to rally the other competitors to his side. The next part of the trial was unknown, and people were distancing themselves from each other. Who knew if something would drop from the sky or if sections of the ground would fall apart? If that were to happen, the people stuck in the middle of the crowd wouldn’t be able to escape properly, not with everyone else in their way. “We’ll continue this later,” the soul-seed cultivator said, pointing at Grandpa Vremya. “Just you wait, Vremya; I’ll have my revenge.”
Grandpa Vremya didn’t say a word. Did he care about the vengeance of someone he didn’t even know the name of?
“I, Mr. Morgan, never lose to the same person twice!”
Well, now he knew the name of the man. Grandpa Vremya shook his head. The clouds had disappeared, leaving behind a clear blue sky. Without warning, the floor vanished completely, and the cultivators flinched as they suddenly fell. Grandpa Vremya’s black holes turned back into golden discs which reentered his body save for one. That one enlarged, allowing Grandpa Vremya to take a seat on top of it. Despite him urging the disc to fly up, the disc fell at the same rate as the rest of the competitors. A few people tried different forms of flight, but none were able to escape the suction coming from below. They fell to the bottom of the competition ground and disappeared into the darkness, leaving the viewers completely confused. Why had the screen turned black? Did their monitors lose power? A few seconds later, the screen split into dozens of tinier screens, each one depicting a single competitor. They were standing in narrow halls with incredibly short ceilings, giving the claustrophobic viewers anxiety. It seemed like they had been separated and transported into a maze.