"Truly worthy of being named as Absolute defense." Felix grinned one last time before snapping his finger.

The abilities abruptly paused mid-air and broke off into particles. The sand instantly dropped into the ground like it had lost the force controlling it.

Upon seeing so, Felix scratched his chin with a thoughtful expression, 'Will it protect me from harming myself?'

Having nothing to lose, Felix tested it out by punching himself in the nose...bam!

His nose broke immediately and blood started streaming down his nostrils. Yet, the sand didn't budge from its place. 

"I guess I am getting a free pass."

Pained, Felix winced slightly before healing his broken nose.

He then carried on with limit testing as he requested the AI to increase the strength of abilities gradually this time from 2nd stage, 3rd stage, and even a 4th stage!

After half an hour, Felix had thoroughly understood the limits of his passive.

First, the passive's defense was correspondent to the amount of sand used to defend against the abilities.

For example, when Felix tested against the 2nd stage bloodliner's abilities he recognized that his sand wasn't engulfing abilities effortlessly. Instead, it was getting obliterated in the process!

Still, it successfully protected Felix.

Regardless, Felix noticed that after this kept repeating over and over again, the field of sand was actually reducing in size!

So in a sense, Felix was trading the sand to protect himself against stronger abilities.

This theory only solidified when Felix was exposed to 3rd stage and 4th stage abilities. In the case of the former, the sand had manifested a huge thick wall to defend against a meteor-like ability.

Even though it successfully stopped it, Felix saw that the sand field had lost 30% of its body!

As for 4th stage abilities? The entire field had encased Felix in a humongous dome just to protect him successfully.

Nevertheless, the entire field was gone after it, leaving Felix to feel like he was naked.

In fact, without sand around him, it wasn't farfetched to say that this passive was thoroughly useless.

It might not rely on elemental energy since it was passive, but its potential was correspondent to Felix's energy.

Since the more energy he had the more he could afford to generate abilities around him to be used defensively.

Not like he could do it now as he still didn't have a single ability that could generate sand. Felix hoped that he would unlock a sand ability like his poisonous aura.

The synergy between abilities like that and his Absolute Sand Defense would be nuts!

After Felix finished with limit testing, he checked if the sand was able to defend against physical abilities and mental ones. The physical test turned out to be successful as the AI dummies didn't manage to land a single punch on him.

Too bad, the same couldn't be said about mental abilities as he was affected by all of them. 

This meant that Felix was still vulnerable to mental abilities from 2nd stage bloodliners or higher.

Well, it seemed like 'absolute' had nothing to do with mental abilities.

"Alright, let's see the 2nd passive."

Felix requested the AI to create another sand field since this ability needed it as well.

After the field had manifested, Felix manipulated it to his own will since this was the UVR and in the measurement rooms, everything was possible.

He ordered a portion of sand to gather and form a medium-sized ball in his hand.

In few a moments, the ball was hovering on top of his hand while letting some grains trickle on his palm.

Felix narrowed his eyes at the ball and ordered, "Harden!"

Simultaneously, the golden color of sand turned brown and the grains falling down stopped at once!

Felix touched the brown ball and noticed that it was as hard as a boulder!

"Still the same." Felix nodded his head in satisfaction.

Felix wasn't surprised by the effect of this passive since he already fought a Sand Elementalist in his previous life who had it in his arsenal!

Just like he saw, this ability allowed him to harden the soft particles of sand.

Passive like this was clearly part of the limited manipulation type like his poison absorption or Slyvia's *Expanding* passive.

Felix was quite glad about getting it so soon as he knew that most sand element abilities weren't for dealing the most damage but just to seize, control, survivability, and most importantly defense!

However, with this passive, he could totally create a sh*t load of synergies that could kill a bloodliner instantly!

It just depends on which active abilities that he was going to unlock.

"Sigh, I need to reach lesser purity as fast as possible. Otherwise, I will end up against 2nd stage bloodliners without a single defensive ability."

Those passives were really good alright, but right now? They were utterly useless since Felix had no way of generating sand in the games.

He knew that he couldn't achieve much in the 4th game without having Absolute Sand Defense.

His body strength was already down to 3100 BF and against peak 2nd stage bloodliners, he would get absolutely trampled on.

Thus, he was pressed for the Sphinx's essence more than ever.

'Hopefully, Goat's stock won't run out on so soon.' Felix thought one last time before exiting the measurement room.

Although there were still many many tests to be done, Felix didn't have much time now as in one hour, he would be heading to the stadium with his team for the last gathering.

He couldn't miss it since that's when the bloodliners would be chosen in the earthling's team and would be given their positions based on their points.

He didn't wake up so early in the morning for no reason.

...

After logging out, Felix immediately opened Goati's shop website and bought 2 bottles from the lion species, 2 bottles from the snake species, two more from the cat species.

He wanted to buy some from the eagle species but he found that they were already out of stock!

His expression couldn't help but harden at the news.

In his eyes, the eagle species were a must-buy since he found essence in all of the three eagle bottles that he bought previously. 

Meanwhile, the rest either didn't give a single percentage or it was too low to be considered as a worthy purchase.

Now that the eagle species was out of stock, he was left to fend for himself with those bottles.

"Sigh, so troublesome." Felix smiled bitterly and pressed diel on Goati's phone number.

After the call was connected, he paid for the purchased bottles and asked about the eagle species.

"As you know, beasts with wings are hot in sales in comparison to other sand elemental beasts." Goati informed him, "So, you should expect at least a four months delay before I get my hands on some bottles again."

"Four months? Isn't that a bit too long?" Felix massaged his eyelids in frustration.

"Hah! Do you think that my shop is the only one wanting to get those bottles?" Goati complained, "There are tens of esteem bloodline shops in the capital only, don't even mention the rest of the cities. Every shop wants to get a piece of the pie when it comes to bloodlines with flying abilities."

Upon hearing so, Felix could only smile bitterly and said, "I hope you do your best on getting some. And I will be buying every bottle you got."

"You don't have to tell me." Goati snorted, "I am bound by contract to do my best when it concerns your purchases."

"Hehe, I am glad that you have me in your mi..."

Peep peep...

"Well, at least he sent me the serial codes." Unbothered by getting hung up on his face, Felix merely chuckled and sent those 6 serial codes to Bodidi for delivery.

Though, he didn't give him the address of the hotel as he knew that after the gathering, the teams would be required to go back to their own countries.

For the disqualified, their journey to enter the team would begin next year again.

As for the chosen in the earthling's team? They would be given a week or two as a break before gathering again.

Felix didn't remember much and didn't want to squeeze his memory for details when he knew that Mr. Rodrigas was going to explain everything in the upcoming gathering.

Shortly after...

Felix went to the restaurant to grab a bite with his team before departure. This time, the restaurant wasn't as packed and noisy as the time before the competition.

It was probably due to the teams getting broken apart after the fiesta that happened for the flags.

Felix didn't know how the instructors had dealt with members who snatched the flag, but he knew that they wouldn't be stupid enough to kick them off the team or something like that.

After all, the flags were still worth a representative slot in their eyes.

As much as it was irksome and unfair for the original holders to lose theirs at the last second due to the betrayal of their teammate, they could only stomach it and head to the gathering.

Everyone was required to go there even the disqualified teams, and the ESG Organization had made it clear that everything would be explained and fixed during the gathering!