Chapter 55: Beginning the speed test
Beast Slayer’s disdain was clearly hidden from those who surrounded him though, as he made sure to keep his presence hidden and unknown from the excited and exuberant Altered still in the testing centre.
As his older brother, he would naturally get compared to Kye, and he even had all the spotlight for himself after he awakened and for the few years after that. His Soul Ability made his whole family basically focus on his development solely, since having someone with his potential would naturally create an incredibly powerful heir for the Renfield family.
However, things quickly took a downturn when his younger brother, Kye, reached 16 years of age and was eligible to enter the Beast Domain.
From the get go he showed more promise and potential than Beast Slayer ever did, with the only thing Beast Slayer holding over him being his incredibly powerful and overpowered Soul Ability.
But even considering that, Kye was just better than him on all facets.
His capability to learn the family’s techniques was just unmatched by Beast Slayer, and within just 6 months of being in the Beast Domain, Kye had overtaken Beast Slayer in his understanding of the technique.
His fighting skills and adaptability were also off the charts, which made Beast Slayer seem subpar in comparison, even though he was still one of the best prodigies on the entire planet.
That was just the difference between the two brothers.
If Beast Slayer’s Soul Ability wasn’t practically doomed to be downgraded after he ascended to the second layer of the Beast Domain, his family might have still paid attention to him and allocated resources to him to help him further develop.
However, everyone knew the chances of that was abysmal.
Hence why the intense disdain and rage ran deep within Beast Slayer whenever the topic of his brother and family even came up, let alone seeing him in person.
Thankfully for him though, he was too focused on observing Nick in secret to worry about his brother, quickly dropping his image from his mind after he watched Nick enter the speed testing chamber after his number was called.
***
Nick stood in front of the entrance to the speed testing chamber with his chest starting to tighten from the adrenaline rush he was feeling.
He could see the motionless environments on the other side through the transparent door.
Naturally they would only stay motionless while they were out of use, the moment Nick stepped through the door and began the test though, things would quickly ramp up to the extreme.
This was the marvel of space folding technology. The simulated environments could be over a hundred times bigger on the inside than they were on the outside!
The combination and potential of technology and abilities granted by the Beast Domain was truly endless.
He closed his eyes, regaining his focus and reeled in his emotions as he did his best to ready himself for the test.
His legs felt ready to explode as he warmed up with a few light jumps and stretches.
Soon, his expression locked into a deadpan, and he quietly voiced.
"Begin."
The door sprang open, allowing Nick to sprint straight in without so much as a second though, as the clock had already started ticking.
Immediately, he was met with trees starting to sprout from the soil, and birdsong quickly filled the hall. He was met with the first test, a simulated forest glade.
He sprinted forward, leaning slightly and letting his legs propel himself off the ground.
Very quickly, he propelled himself through the still growing environment with remarkable precision, under arching branches, past low handing saplings, vaulting over fallen logs, sliding under roots.
His path forked in all sorts of directions, and the exit from the environment was no longer in view.
The goal of these speed tests wasn’t just to simply test how fast he can go in a straight line, but to test how fast he can be in all different types of environments, all simulated to be as accurate as possible to a real place in the Beast Domain.
However, something quickly started to irk Nick.
’Doesn’t this seem a little... too easy?’ He questioned to himself.
In fact, he even started to get the feeling that he was overdoing some of the parts... which just seemed absurd!
Was it really possible to be too good at a test?
’I guess so...’
He slowed down, shocked that he even needed to do so.
In fact, he realised quite early that his body was moving faster than his mind could keep up with, making his coordination between the two quite sloppy.
It made him cause quite some simple mistakes early on, like overshooting a tight angle over a long overarching branch, causing him to get too much air time and waste a few seconds in the air.
Other similar moments occurred before he realised that his speed was... weirdly fast.
The most shocking part of it all though, was that he hadn’t even activated his Sabertooth Wolf Beast Armament yet!
’This is just way too weird! What the hell is going on with this!?’
He knew that thanks to his addition of his speed augmentation Beast Armament, as well as his increasing number of Soul Seeds, his speed had increased over the past week or so.
But this? This was just ridiculous, and it couldn’t be explained by the meagre amount of Awakened Soul Seeds or even the Mutant Soul Seeds he’d acquired either.
’Have I always been this fast?’
Now that he thought back to it, when facing off against a Beast he nearly always activated his Sabertooth Wolf Beast Armament, which naturally made him faster than the beasts he was facing up against in that time frame.
The only time he wasn’t as fast was up against the Whiteclaw Snake King, but that was a damn Radiant Beast of all things!
’Wait a minute, that’s right, its a Radiant Beast, but even with my speed augmentation Beast Armament I should never have been able to escape from its grasp!’
Nick felt stupid for not even considering it up until this point, but who could blame him. It’s not like he had any frame of reference to compare himself against!
That was his first time facing off against a Radiant Beast, he hadn’t even faced up against a Mutant beast at that point, so he just assumed that was how fast they all moved at the time.
But maybe it was him that moved weirdly fast instead?