Tus waved the feather and a blade of wind hit the captains’ eyes.

The attack didn’t do much damage as the three layers of veils mitigated a lot of the damage. It also had squinted its eyes in concentration, so only a moderate cut with golden blood that had purple specks was the result. However, the captain was temporarily blinded, and the swords went off course from their initial path.

Both of them hit a leaning tree that was behind Tus. The tree wasn’t harmed in the slightest, and instead, the rebound caused the swords to fly out of the captains’ hands as it wasn’t expecting it. The captain was stunned as its’ body also turned from the rebound.

Blinded and stunned, Tus took the chance to move behind it, and kicked the back of the knee of two of the rearmost legs. The captain lost its balance and fell down onto its back while groaning.

Tus hastily swayed the feather as fast as he could at the captains’ legs. He did it as close as he could without actually touching its skin. The veils were pierced and several cuts appeared on the creatures’ knees and ankles. Coincidentally, the Achilles heels of three legs on the captain were severed.

The captain quickly came back to its senses and shifted its body as it gave a muffled scream in anger. Tus quickly retreated as a blindly thrown shield flew past.

With its chest heaving, the captain used a hand to unsuccessfully wipe the blood from its eyes. It turned its head where it sensed where Tus was and the skin around its suddenly ripped apart.

‘Aren’t you giving your life up too easily?!’

When Tus saw this, he immediately started running away as fast as he could. He weaved between the trees like how a dragonfly flies over the surface of water.

The captain took a single deep breath and gave a cry of indignation. Along with the cry, its body shriveled into dust as an arm sized golden beam shot out with the momentum of a shooting star.

Tus looked back for the second before it was about to hit his back and he cursed underneath his breath.

He performed a dive with the beam nearly in sync with him. As it was going at such a high speed, the slight delay caused it to fly that much further ahead of Tus. It struck the ground three feet away from him and exploded in a bright gold.

Boom!

The blast, full of golden light, expanded as a semicircle across the ground. There wasn’t any heat, but only light followed by a heavy shockwave. Tus was only three feet away and the shockwave smashed him like a truck.

He was blasted away fifteen feet before he collided and slid across the ground.

Tus laid on the ground and was covered in blood that oozed from his old wounds and new ones. His body twitched from the shock and he wasn’t aware of his body or his surroundings, but he still remained conscious and moderately clearheaded.

‘This trial really sucks. They can use internal energy, standard weapons, and they can spit bombs from their mouths. What do I get? A feather that can fling light breezes…’

Before he could complain further, the overseers’ voice boomed in his head, ‘Congratulations on making it through ten waves. As you have done it so ‘skillfully,’ you will be granted a grace period that lasts until thirty minutes are away from sunrise.’

Tus couldn’t believe what he heard, ‘There has to be something wrong here.’

The voice continued and proved his conjecture to be correct, ‘Once the grace period is over, you will directly face a T’Mnemoric that you would classify as a ‘commander.’ If you can’t defeat it in thirty minutes, you will be judged as having failed the trial!’

“Isn’t it that I have to survive until sunrise?” Tus tried asking aloud, but it only came out as a wisp of air.

……

The Camp in the Grassland.

Ruia and Worill were in the center tent where Tus resided. Tus was laying down with his body being wrapped in bandages by Ruia.

Ruia heaved a sigh after she was done and said worriedly, “If this keeps up, I’m afraid he will die from blood loss. Even though his body recovers three times quicker than any other race that I have seen, but whatever happened caused over thirty bones to fracture and the loss of over a liter of blood.”

When Tus’s soul entered the other world, this one didn’t change at all. Eventually Worill checked on him and found that he was wounded. He brought Ruia over and they watched over him. The wounds seemingly appeared randomly, but they were taken care of appropriately by just using Ruia’s internal energy. That was until Tus convulsed and blood rushed out of every part of his body.

This caused Worill and Ruia to have a great deal of terrifying surprise. The amount of damage done to Tus was too much to deal with by just the use of Ruia’s internal energy. Worill ran around like he was prodded by electric tazers, gathering medicine and bandages to assist Ruia in the healing process.

“We can only wait until he passes this trial…” Worill said solemnly.