Many times it is impossible to overcome a certain obstacle, but many times it is also a matter of mentality. Daunted by the vast mud field, pressured by their new surroundings, wary of traps and taken by surprise by the cursed nature of mud, the cadets seemed entirely drained of energy when they first encountered the challenge.
Yet Nero’s words, mixing motivation with humour, reminding them of their purpose while lightening the mood, managed to reinvigorate them. So what if the mud was thick? So what if it was cursed.
They had dealt with curses before, and they had dealt with difficulty before as well. These things were really not worth being so intimidated over. Thus, with a refreshed mindset, they began to move, their speed slowly yet steadily increasing. Some were faster than others, but that was only natural.
What was unnatural... was how much faster Nero was compared to everyone else!
The weights and the mud were no joke! Normal cadets could, at most, slowly wade through completely unable to move quickly. For Nero, though, that restriction seemed to not exist.
His speed could not quite be called a sprint, but he was definitely running!
The obstacles could slow him down, but Nero was far past the limits of what normal humans could achieve. If he weren’t, then he would never have survived his encounter with the Primal Exarch, let alone the fact that he was much stronger now, not to mention more used to the strength of his body.
The other battalions, having overheard Nero’s speech, also felt somewhat invigorated, but not nearly to the same extent! Not to mention, Nero’s clear lead over everyone else only served to motivate the Enlil battalion, but it dispirited everyone else!
The seniors watched with an expression of surprise as Nero quickly made his way through what most had assumed would take hours for the new cadets!
Upon hearing the question, many were reinvigorated. The senior cadets weren’t the only ones watching - so were the academy professors and some soldiers. If the participating cadets were caught cheating, then they would learn the meaning of regret!
"No, he isn’t," she said with a confused expression. "But he isn’t being affected by the mud either. Does he have some kind of passive ability?"
While the senior cadets tried to figure out what was going on with Nero, they turned to look at the professors. While they couldn’t check another cadets file, the professors certainly could, so if Nero had a passive they would know. Yet they showed no signs of intervening. That meant that he was not using an active ability, nor was he being helped by a passive. He was doing this through raw power!
What they didn’t know was that while technically Nero wasn’t using any ability, he was doing something else!
Ever since his baptism with Vitracil, Nero’s control and sensitivity towards aether had increased drastically. While he was still a Neophyte, Nero used to manipulate his internal aether to give his physical body a boost. He later stopped doing that not only because he was informed of how dangerous it was, but also because as the aether concentration in his body grew, it was no longer possible to manipulate aether within his body so easily. There was more internal resistance!
Now, though, Nero was doing something else. As he ran through the mud, and felt it latching onto his limbs, trying to suck out his aether, Nero firmly held onto all the aether in his body, preventing it from leaving. Thus, Nero avoided the draining sensation everyone else was feeling!
After all, ever since becoming a Neophyte, Nero had realised that if the aether reserves in his body fell below a certain limit, it would adversely affect his condition. Having his aether drained was very much the same as having his own energy drained. Now, though, he avoided that plight!
The extent of Nero’s control over aether went beyond just that - he learned that his natural meditation and synchronisation speed with his own innate card had increased drastically, not to mention that he could more easily affect external aether. Sometimes, he could not help but wonder just how much Vanessa could affect the surrounding aether, since her purification was even more thorough than his. But he quickly put it out of his mind. Right now, such distant things did not matter.
Nero focused, instead, on what was coming next. The mud pit was long, but that was hardly all there was! After a few minutes of running, Nero reached the first wall, and found a few ropes hanging off the top. Clearly, after straining the legs, it was time to strain the arms. He didn’t mind - he was still fresh!
Nero jumped as he reached the wall, managing to rise only slightly outside the mud but even that was a huge achievement. He grabbed on to the rope while letting his body hang limp beneath him. If the wall had any grooves, or even the slightest of slant, Nero would have planted his feet on the wall and would have merely used the rope to support himself while he climbed up on his feet.
On a vertical wall, though, he merely pulled himself up, not bothering with anything else.
Yet despite using his arms alone, his weight did not slow him down. In fact, without the resistance offered by the mud, he moved even quicker. The wall was about 3 meters tall (9.8 - 10 feet), but that was barely anything to him.
In just a few seconds, Nero stood at the top and studied the rest of the course. In front of him the pit continued, but with five shorter walls at an even distance. The shorter walls were 1.5 meters tall, and would require a cadet to pull themselves out of the mud by hand since it was too short to have a rope, but too tall to simply jump over.
Beyond the five walls was a metal pole that he would need to climb, after which there was a horizontal ladder he would need to traverse - or as it was called back in school, a monkey bar!
After that, the pits seemed to end, but there was an incredibly steep climb waiting for them before the end.
Nero turned around once and saw that all the cadets behind him hadn’t even covered one fifth of the way to the wall. He guessed that it would take an ordinary cadet anywhere between one to two hours to complete this course simply due to how much the mud would slow them down. He suppressed a grin, as it seemed like his plan would work.
Instead of climbing down the wall normally, Nero leaped forward, breaking into a run as soon as he landed.
The first short wall was only 20 meters away (65 feet) which Nero reached in no time. Once again jumping up, Nero grabbed the top of the wall and pulled himself up, using the top of the wall as a launchpad to jump forward once more.
The seniors stood there dazed as they watched the cadet go through the course so easily. If they didn’t know any better, they would assume that he was on the verge of becoming an Arcanist, or else how could his body have received so much of a boost?
Even more surprised than the cadets were the professors, who knew that Nero had entered the Initiate rank merely a few months ago. That was too short a time to make any progress! It had to be known that most people never surpassed the Initiate rank, and most of the ones who did usually took years before they reached the Arcanist rank. So how much progress could he even make in a few months?
That question had no answer. All they could do, as they watched him clear one obstacle after another, was silently theorise his limits, and wonder if they had another prodigy on their hands.
A spark of interest appeared in their eyes at that point. If they did have another prodigy, then which one was better? The one from last year, or the one from this year?
One by one, Nero went through all the obstacles, and in less than fifteen minutes stood right in front of the finish line, at the very top of the incline. A single more step, and he would be the first person to finish the course, setting a new record for a new cadet - all without breaking a single sweat.
Yet instead of taking that one step forward, Nero grinned at his seniors who were standing at the finish line, and turned around. He locked his eyes on the Enlil cadet who was furthest in the back. By now, enough time had passed where the difference between the cadets movement speed had created a certain gap between them.
Then, under the bewildered gazes of everyone, he bolted back.
"Is he crazy?" asked one of the seniors. "What does he think he’s doing?"
After a moment, someone answered.
"I think we all know what he’s doing. The question is... can he actually do it?"
Ten minutes later, at the start of the pits, a young girl covered from head to toe in mud, lifted her foot with great difficulty and took one step forward.
Luna was a Neophyte, and she was a quite recently synchronised Neophyte. She had neither the strength awarded by the Initiate rank ascension, nor was she too physically strong on her own. She was, at best, average.
The world was blurry in her eyes as she struggled for each breath, but even through the burning sensation in her chest, she did not quit. She did not want to be the reason her battalion suffered. She did not... she didn’t... she... she was floating?
For a few seconds, Luna was too exhausted and too drained to understand what was happening. When she finally came to, she realised that she was in the air, and that someone had picked her up and slung her over his shoulder.
"Don’t fall," said a familiar voice, but she was too shocked and too exhausted to connect it to that bluehaired cadet who had given a speech that motivated them all.
"What?" she asked, fighting through the fog of her exhausted, oxygen deprived brain to understand what was happening. Unfortunately, she did not get an answer. Fortunately, she came to the answer on her own when the brute who was treating her like a sack of flour began running in the wild.
A shocked, high-pitched scream cut through the intensity of the course, attracting everyone’s attention. When the cadets from the other battalions - heck, when even the cadets from the Enlil battalion - saw Nero running through the mud with a girl over his shoulder and a smile on his face, they did not know how to respond.