The instant Ryuk stepped onto the golden coloured gem-like platform beneath him, his eyes flashed faintly when he felt the hardness of it.
"It's very solid," he silently whispered to himself.
Judging from the hardness, he felt like it would require an Eternity-stage attack to even crack the surface.
That easily made it the hardest ground he had ever stepped on until now.
The sound of shimmering rang out as he turned to his front, watching as a golden gate shimmered into existence exactly 50 meters ahead.
The 10-meter gate creaked open, flooding the room with golden light as his eyes faintly squinted from the sudden light, but then—
The sound of heavy footsteps rang out, each step powerful enough to make the entire ground beneath him tremble with vibration, until finally... the figure stepped out.
But he was wrong—for it wasn't just a figure.
It was a total of three humanoid colossals.
Each stood at an equal height of 10 meters, towering five times above Ryuk's size, their singular golden eyes fixed on him.
An instant later, Ryuk felt a faint pressure slowly begin to fill the room, seemingly increasing gravity even more, resulting in a sluggish feeling.
The air around their humongous, pitch-black bodies—bodies that looked like they'd just been struck by lightning—shook under the weight of their aura.
Golden lightning faintly flashed around their muscular forms, and the wavy golden hair danced on their heads.
But the most eye-catching feature was their faces—wide maws curled into condescending grins.
The name appeared in his mind.
But then, his eyes faintly flashed with caution.
"They're Fallens, with the same form as Old Jack... yet they're nothing like him," Ryuk thought silently to himself.
He had seen Old Jack's Fallen form before—a five-meter grinning devil.
But these were double in height, and the wave of aura they radiated was far, far more suffocating than Old Jack's.
If he didn't know better, he'd think Old Jack's Fallen form was nothing more than an imperfect copy of the True Fallens standing before him.
A voice came from beside him, awakening him from his thoughts.
"The first Combatant test is to kill a total of three Fallen Guards and remain standing on your feet at the end of it," Radiant Aveia said to Ryuk.
"If you succeed, you will be promoted to the Fallen Guard position and obtain a Combatant Warden Seal Card that will allow you 5 years of stay in Ammamora."
Ryuk's eyes knitted together as he asked,
"So, I have to defeat three Fallen Guards just to become one?"
Radiant Aveia nodded.
"But wait, shouldn't it just be one then?"
"Why should I fight three just to become one? Sounds like overkill." Ryuk muttered with a suspicious gaze, but all he got was a condescending grin.
"The 'righteous' way to be a Fallen Guard would be to defeat just one Fallen Guard."
"That's truly logical, but Ammamora's thoughts differ," she said, drawing his attention.
"We already have enough Fallen Guards. We're not lacking them."
"So, if you defeat just one, you'll only be equal to the average Fallen Guard."
"And giving you a five-year stay just for that? That's a waste of resources, no?" Original content can be found at novel※fire.net
"We can give that to any of our existing Fallens, and won't need to deal with the headache of allowing a foreigner in."
"But—if you defeat three of them, then you're worth three Fallen Guards."
"At least that gives you some value. Something worth the headache."
"You understand?" She asked, watching him nod once.
"Good. Also, you have a maximum time limit—three hours."
"If you can't kill them in that time frame... you've lost."
He looked at the unmoving, towering Fallens. They hadn't taken a single step or a word since arriving, standing still like statues.
That compelled him to ask,
"They're not real, are they?"
"You think we'd let foreigners kill our Fallen Guards just for a test?" she replied, raising a disbelieving eyebrow, to which he shrugged
"If you wish to quit,"
'Which I can bet you'll be doing soon...' She continued in her thoughts.
"Then you only need to scream out the words at the top of your lungs, 'I'm a quitter' three times, and the test will end."
"Good luck," she added—and in an instant, she disappeared, leaving only Ryuk and the three Fallen Guards in the wide hall.
"Tch, I'm a quitter!? How nice of a choice of words to surrender," Ryuk silently muttered as he turned back to his opponents.
But what he saw was an object twice his size rapidly magnifying before his vision, amidst a crackling storm of golden lightning.
The gigantic edge of a hammer slammed down with crushing power on Ryuk, an attack with enough magnitude to reduce a city on Endearth to rubble.
Yet when it struck the golden ground, it only left a tiny cobweb crack.
'It truly is the hardest ground I've ever seen...' Ryuk silently confirmed, now standing ten meters to the side, gazing at the cobweb-like fracture.
He had dodged the sneak attack, seemingly unruffled, but he was given no breathing room.
His clothes whipped violently, wind tearing around him as a pillar of golden lightning pierced forward from behind.
Ryuk turned his head, eyes piercing through the beam of lightning, and in the next instant, his figure spun—
The air around him exploded in a circular shockwave, and his right hand reached forward, towards the golden lightning,
_________________________
In another part of the void where golden particles floated across the space.
There stood Radiant Aveia, standing upon what looked like a glass floor.
Her eyes stared down through it like glass, watching the scene below—Ryuk stretching his hand toward the pillar of lightning.
"And here I thought he would last longer..." she whispered, but undisturbed, as she watched his fingers reach toward the golden beam.
But then, her disappointed expression was quickly replaced by one of absolute shock.