Kill the Sun
chapter-564

Nick ran around the room for a couple of minutes before he ran towards the goal.

The goal was just a yellow spot on the floor, a wall, or the ceiling, and Nick just had to touch it.

After touching it, the next goal immediately appeared in a random place inside the white world, and Nick charged at it.

This was not the real test yet.

The place where the yellow dot appeared was completely random every time.

Nick practiced until only five minutes were left on the timer.

Then, he recovered his power.

'10, 9, 8…' Nick thought as he readied himself near the current goal.

'0.'

Now, as soon as he touched the goal, the true test would begin.

Nick took a deep breath and focused.

Then, he hit the goal before immediately finding the next goal.

BANG! BANG! BANG!

Nick exploded forward, jumping from wall to wall with all of his power.

BANG!

Nick slammed his hand onto the goal while searching for the next goal.

Funnily enough, the next goal appeared barely two meters beside him.

This was quite lucky, but it actually didn't matter.

This test would go on for an entire minute.

With Nick's speed, he would catch around a hundred targets in that minute.

With 100 random targets, his luck was bound to equal out.

Plenty of lucky coincidences and plenty of unlucky ones.

For an entire minute, Nick charged back and forth.

Finally, the goal vanished.

The minute was up.

'103,' Nick thought as everything returned to white.

A moment later, his score appeared.

'Seven,' Nick thought. 'Same as my speed score. Seems about right.'

'Let's get to the next one.'

"Strength Test," Nick said.

BANG! BANG! BANG!

Ten cubes of metal appeared all over the room.

All of them looked the same and had the same size.

However, they all had vastly different densities.

'One cube, one point, I assume,' Nick thought as he approached the left cube.

He carefully grabbed it and lifted it.

It was extremely easy to lift.

For a normal person, this weight would be equivalent to 20 kg.

Sure, there were people who couldn't lift 20 kg, but all of the people here were athletes with trained bodies.

20 kg wasn't a lot for an athlete.

The scoreboard went from a zero to a one before Nick went to the next cube.

'As expected,' Nick thought as he lifted the cube to his chest. He didn't need to lift it over his head. 'This would probably be equivalent to 60 kg for a normal person. Athletes specialized in running or jumping might not be able to lift that.'

Then, Nick went to the third, and he had to slow down quite a bit.

It was no longer easy to lift the cube, but Nick still didn't have any issues.

'That's probably something like 100 kg for a normal person.'

The scoreboard counted to three as Nick walked to the next stone.

'Around 130 kg,' Nick thought as he dropped the cube after releasing a deep breath.

Things were becoming quite challenging.

Nick went to the fifth cube, and he took quite some time to finish the lift.

When Nick went to the sixth, he mentally prepared himself for a while.

As he lifted the cube, his arms started to shake, but he still managed to lift it in a relatively smooth motion.

The scoreboard went to six, and Nick approached the seventh stone.

He wasn't sure if he could lift this one.

Nick took several deep breaths and gritted his teeth.

Then, he went down and violently pulled upward.

Nick's entire body was shaking, and the cube barely moved upward.

But it did.

After over a second, it only reached a height of ten centimeters, and it started to slow down.

Nick didn't have issues with straightening his legs, but his arms couldn't pull the cube upward.

He was barely able to keep it steady with his outstretched arms.

Sadly, that wasn't enough.

He needed to pull it to his chest.

Nick's mind started to distort, and his vision began to blur as he pulled.

The cube moved upward.

It was moving!

More!

Just a bit more!

Then, Nick lost all of his strength and dropped the cube.

His muscles just gave up.

He looked at the scoreboard, but it didn't count up.

'I have to try again!' Nick thought as he prepared himself for another lift.

Some seconds later, he tried it again, but this time, his muscles gave out even earlier.

'Nah, I can't lift that,' he thought. 'Six points it is.'

"I'm done," Nick said.

The next moment, all the cubes vanished, and Nick took some time to regain his strength.

"Zephyx Recovery Test," Nick said.

A moment later, a huge barrel appeared in front of Nick.

Zephyx recovery was essentially stamina for Extractors.

It was basically cardio.

The more often an Extractor lost and regained their Zephyx, the faster their Zephyx recovery became.

Up to a limit, of course.

But for Nick, things were different.

Nick imagined the Shell around his Zephyx Synchronizer.

His Shell was very different from other Shells.

'Most likely, my Zephyx recovery is better than any Zephyx recovery achievable by training alone.'

In a way, Nick was cheating, but that wasn't entirely true.

He was just built different.

"Start," Nick said.

The next moment, the barrel started to shine red.

BANG!

And then, a red laser shot at Nick.

Naturally, the laser was made of very concentrated light, which meant that Nick didn't even see the laser move.

Light was moving quite a bit faster than him.

Light was also moving faster than Eternals, and it wasn't even close.

Naturally, Nick's new Barrier activated immediately to block the attack.

The laser gained power before reaching a stable power.

Nick closed his eyes and felt his Zephyx.

It wasn't reducing.

He was recovering more Zephyx than he was using.

After a couple of seconds, the laser gained a bit more power.

For Nick, nothing changed.

Then, it increased again.

And again.

Finally, Nick's Zephyx started to very slowly decrease.

And then…

The laser stopped, and the barrel vanished.

The next moment, a scoreboard appeared, and it said ten.

Nick wasn't surprised.

His Shell was very different.

"Overall Test," Nick said.

This was the last test.

In this test, one needed to use everything.

The world transformed.

Walls appeared everywhere, similar to the agility test, but there were also new things.

There were breakable walls and some straight corridors.

If someone had high speed but bad agility, they could decide to take a longer but straighter way instead of a short, curvy path.

If someone had a lot of strength, they could break through the walls.

However, the walls would immediately rebuild after the person passed through, and it would become harder.

Usually, running through the walls was the fastest way, which was why almost everyone started with that.

Then, at some point, the walls would become so hard that one couldn't break through them anymore, and one would need to take a different path.

Additionally, breaking through many walls would cost a lot of Zephyx.

Lastly, this test would continue for ten minutes.

Over such a long time, Zephyx recovery would also be very important.

All four base categories were important here.

Nick got 30 minutes to look around again and did just that.

When the 30 minutes were up, Nick readied himself.

This would be the last of the fitness tests.

He took a deep breath.

And then, he hit the yellow goal.

BANG! BANG! BANG!

Nick immediately charged through three walls and hit the next goal.

BANG! BANG!

Another two destroyed walls.

For the next two minutes, Nick just destroyed walls to get to the goals.

But then, things started to become difficult.

Nick's speed dropped drastically while charging through the walls, and he also started to lose Zephyx.

When Nick lost almost 5% of his Zephyx with a single punch, he decided against breaking more walls and focused on his other two aspects.

Sometimes, a straight path directly led to the goal, which made speed very important.

Sometimes, a squiggly corridor would lead to it, which required agility.

In the first instance, agility wouldn't be important, and in the second one, speed wouldn't be important.

However, since Nick was good at both of them, he never needed to choose.

He just took the quickest path.

When only a couple of seconds were left on the clock, Nick changed his tactic again.

BANG! BANG! BANG!

Nick charged through the walls again.

His Zephyx was dropping rapidly, but that didn't matter.

DING!

And finally, everything vanished.

The test was over.

Nick was quite exhausted, but he felt good.

He already knew his score before looking at it.

It was the only logical score.

After a while, Nick looked up.

Ten.

Obviously.

Nick was amazing in every single category.

There were people who were better in singular categories, but they would be worse in the others.

'7, 7, 6, 10, 10," Nick thought. '40 of 50.'

'I'm fine with that.'