UNLIMITED SPEED

Crossing the brown door to arrive inside a nice-looking room featuring luxurious furniture, Noah ignored all that detail to keep his eyes on the 5ft4 lady clothed in the guild's black garment; leading him towards a door directly parallel to the entrance door.

"Walk in," she ordered at the open door, and Noah did according to her words.

A wide cream-painted room around 200m in radius unfolded in Noah's still nervous sight. The place was empty of anything but featured different colored inscriptions running along its corner-less wall.

Stopping after a few steps into the room; Noah turned to face the lady, but a kick tried to smash into his face. Fortunately, his body reacted instinctively by crossing its arms in front of his face and jumping backward.

Unfortunately, a bit of the kick's force managed to touch Noah's arms, and he felt shocked beyond reason to find that the bones in the arm caved in and snapped, causing internal bleeding. However, his healing kicked in.

Landing a few meters from her with a slide, Noah kept his arms crossed while he remained slightly crouched. But his eyes were wide open.

The woman lowered her raised leg to gaze at him with a raised eyebrow.

"Young man do you know why you are here?" Her voice rang out towards an already recovered Noah.

Shaking his head in response he furrowed his brows ready to speak. However, she spoke before his thoughts could be revealed as words.

"Think of this as an audition. The guild has seen your potential and has decided that it wants to nurse you into something greater. However you have to pass the test first," she explained calmly.

"You are the second to last person on the list as only four of you were chosen. The others have I deemed unworthy of being trained by me," she continued raising an eyebrow on Noah's face.

"Yes; if you do pass you will be under my mentorship. But if you fail; I'll make sure to leave you in a worse state than your colleague," her tone took a dangerous dive, and fear ravaged Noah's mind, but he quickly shut down his emotions since the lady vanished before his eyes.

Speed essence rushed into Noah's mind to empower it, but the lady arrived behind him before that ability could be able to fully follow her movement.

Nevertheless, Noah took a step forward when he felt his back tingle, and he directly crossed a distance of 20m in that instant.

An explosion of force occurred when the attack prepared by the lady failed to land its hit, and a shock wave containing power in the higher stage ravaged the space within that room to send Noah flying.

Noah felt his insides tremble violently when the shock hit him, and blood quickly poured out of his nose, ears, and mouth during that event. The urge to submit to the feeling of fatigue rising in his head hit Noah like a ton of bricks, but his healing kicked in before he could go unconscious.

Thankfully, the lady had remained in her position after the attack.

'She's too strong,' Noah concluded inwardly. A mere physical attack had been enough to almost render him unconscious.

"They did say you were stronger than normal, but nothing about your rapid healing ability," the lady started. "You should have a hole in your back. But you are quick. Quicker than most. Let's see if you can handle five percent of me," she announced, then her aura flared dangerously.

Noah stood up with an expressionless face, for the first time in those few seconds he got able to understand where she stood in the third tier, and he could vaguely sense that she was at its very peak.

Glancing at his wrist, Noah saw how his attire in that spot featured long tears, causing him to shake his head.

A deep-yellow magical circle expanded beneath his feet at that action, and an illusory battle armor quickly encased his figure in its light.

The lady moved immediately after he had finished; the whole room trembled violently afterward. Pushing his mind to its max, Noah saw that she also moved in slow motion, at least enough for him to take multiple backward steps in one direction before she arrived there.

'She's fast, far faster than anything I've ever faced,' Noah thought, seeing that she had changed direction to follow him. 'But I'm still faster,' he concluded.

Due to his incredible movement speed, the lady seemed unable to catch him, and Noah almost escaped getting hurt.

Almost.

A powerful sensation of danger ravaged Noah's emotionless mind when he arrived at a certain point in the room. The ground beneath him lit up with a series of blue magical circles, and shockingly, Noah found himself unable to move.

As if waiting for that moment, the lady abruptly sped up, and Noah confirmed that she was almost as fast as him!

Her shorter figure arrived in front of his paralyzed figure, and instead of a punch or something lethal, she pushed her index finger forward towards his stomach.

Noah watched with cold eyes, his armor shatter into shards of light immediately her finger touched it, and very quickly it touched him.

The world around Noah twisted and spun, as his figure literally spun vertically to smash into the wall in the distance.

However, inscriptions lit up on the wall and it received not any damage. Unfortunately the same couldn't be said for Noah.

Feeling all the air in his being get sucked out, Noah watched helplessly as his mouth spurted blood heavily, staining his dead attire and the floor around him. Shockingly no injuries were on the outside, however, he felt a force, unlike anything he had ever felt ravaging his insides, causing most of his organs to fail due to the heavy damage they had sustained.

During that instant, waves of essence gushed out of Noah's core to rebuild his vital organs. Needless to say, this event cost him a lot. 10,000SE vanished in an instant, as his mind threatened to succumb to the blinding pain ravaging it.

Unfortunately, the lady wasn't done with him yet.

Before Noah's helpless figure could bounce off the wall, her figure flickered in front of him. In that slow-mo perception, the only thing Noah could move was his eyes, and he followed the movements of her arms.

This time she threw punches at him, allowing Noah to confirm that she utilized a martial art since, although her attacks were punches, her fists barely contained a quarter of the power that her mere finger had unleashed.

'Ten, fifteen, twenty, thirty...' Noah counted the barrage of fists that landed on his torso during that instant, but when they reached seventy, his mind gave up on him and everything went dark.

For the first time in his life on Cregar, Noah had been overwhelmed, by one person at that.

"Is that all," the lady hissed when she saw that her victim had passed out, and stopped the punches. "I consider that middle stage power," she added, furrowing her brows at the rate at which his body recovered.

"I like him," she grinned seeing that he had started to regain his consciousness only after a minute had gone by.