Sam held the lightning humanoid in that hold for about three minutes.
He had his eyes closed and his face changed bit by bit with amusement, surprise and interest. He could see a lot of ingenious techniques used in making these creatures. They are just giant formations and the nodes are also condensed out of pure energy.
The only problem is, it is very hard to deactivate these formations with formation techniques. To the point, it would be better to just damage it enough to destroy the nodes and let it disappear. Because the nodes are constantly moving within the body making it hard to mark them down and deal with them.
But that doesn't mean, Sam didn't have any alternate plans other than fighting with brute force.
He let his energy spread into the creature and it obviously resisted.
At that moment, Sam's observation ability is running with utmost focus. He wanted to understand the behavior of this creature and within no time, he got the basic idea.
The nodes are indeed in constant motion, but when Sam injected his own lightning energy into it, the nodes came into a sudden halt, because instead of focusing on motion and stabilization, they need to redirect the energy to give more output and reject the foreign energy.
And in that moment Sam could just do whatever he wants with it, as long as he can identify the location of the nodes, they are just sitting ducks.
A few orbs of lightning energy hovered out of Sam's body and surrounded the humanoid. The orbs started resonating with the nodes within the humanoid and this made the nodes a bit unstable.
And that is all its needed.
The humanoid started glowing and was ready to explode.
Sam turned into a flash of silver lightning and disappeared from the spot.
*BOOM*
The humanoid exploded and no traces were left of its existence.
"Easier than I thought."
Sam muttered to himself as the next wave came. Two humanoids are aiming at him and this time they are a bit more fierce than the first one. He caught a hold of one of the humanoids and used the same trick as before while he dodged the attacks from the second one.
When the first humanoid was ready to explode, Sam kicked it and launched it at the second one.
*BOOM*
With one explosion both of the disappeared.
Even though the current process is taking more steps than Sam just beating them up, he still decided to stick with it. He wants to understand how they behave and how he can tackle them in the coming levels.
When Sam dealt with the third wave, Pearl is already on the ninth wave.
By the time he hit the fifth, she cleared the first floor and moved to the second.
Looking at this from outside the people cheered.
They are so desperate to one up Sam that they are even feeling joy from little things like this. One could only imagine how much of a shadow Sam threw over them.
Sam advanced to the second floor and he met with the three humanoids with weapons. He took the same approach, but this time the number of orbs used to destabilize the humanoids reduced. After he dealt with the first one, he reduced the orbs by two more.
Pearl is finishing the waves faster than him, but Sam is closing in on the time while he also reduced the orbs he needed to finish the humanoids.
On the third floor, Sam is facing the first wave.
There are four humanoids standing in front of him, along with them there are two beasts. These beasts are also condensed from pure energy too and they don't have any specific features. Except for the four limbs, invertebrate structure along with the tail and what looked like a large maw on its face, it didn't even have eyes or other features that would define it as a beast.
The humanoids also looked different.
Their body structure changed a bit, if before they looked like a model of human body, now they looked like a human body wearing an armor and holding weapons.
Their speed increased and they have additional defense with an energy barrier that negated a few attacks before it reached a certain limit and collapsed.
A total of six targets and is feeling pumped.
He must say that the increase in difficulty between each floor is higher than he expected.
But it is still very manageable. He kicked at the face of the beast and threw a punch at the nearest humanoid while dodging the stab of the spear. The punch landed and the humanoid blocked it with the energy barrier.
Sam took the recoil to his advantage and landed in front of another humanoid. He threw three kicks one after another breaking the barrier. The next moment, he extended his palm. Silver lightning energy condensed on his palm as he slapped it on the face of the humanoid.
The humanoid flew across the air and landed.
There is a silver mark on its face and as soon as it stood up, a streak of silver energy flew out of that mark into rest of its body making it stop in its tracks. The energy destabilized the humanoid before making it explode.
Just like that, one proper hit with a contact to its body and it exploded. This is what Sam wanted to achieve while he practiced in the last two floors.
He smiled and turned around. An axe kick fell on the beast that was about to pounce on him. The axe kick of course has his silver energy at the end of it. When the beast halted and started battling with the silver energy, Sam kicked it to the nearest humanoid.
*BOOM*
An explosion destroyed the beast, destroyed the barrier of the other humanoid and destroyed too. All in the matter of seconds. Now, out of the six, three are gone. Only three more remained and it didn't take long for Sam to finish them off.
He is on the track to the next wave and this time the number increased by two more beasts, which didn't make much difference.
The battles went on and the Zeus academy students who were very ecstatic with how fast Pearl is clearing the floors compared to Sam saw as Pearl cleared the third floor too.
This time also they are ecstatic as she finished it before Sam.
But what they failed to notice is that the time difference between Pearl's clear and Sam's clear is not that much. It reduced by a lot when they compare it to the second floor clearance.
They are just too drunk of the small victory to even care about that.
Sam and Pearl went on to the fourth floor to continue their ascension.
Meanwhile, the spectators noticed something else.
Both White and Vidyut are neck to neck as they ascended further. They are on twenty-fifth floor and their score kept on increasing indicating their smooth battle in that floor.
Time passed.
The spirits are high as they awaited a glorious moment for the Zeus academy.
But not everyone is stupid. When people noticed that Pearl and Sam both cleared the fourth floor, but the time difference is very small when compared to the third floor, they understood that Sam is catching up.
Of course, not all of them noticed this change. Only a few, and they are afraid to say it out loud for the rest.
They just hoped that Pearl would increase the time difference in the next floor and they hoped that Sam would slow down.
But the hope is all they had.
The fifth floor was cleared at the same time and the cheers died down.
They went on fast to the sixth floor.
Sam kept on ascending without stop and the kill time for each humanoid that he is encountering remained the same. He just as fast as when he was on the third floor. It might not look like much.
But the prowess of the humanoid on the sixth floor is the at least three times higher than the humanoid on the third floor. Still, Sam managed to keep the kill time the same.
His tricks are and techniques to deal with these humanoids are getting refined.
As he killed his way though the sixth floor and destroyed a whole new model of humanoids, the ranking on the board changed and he finished the sixth floor.
Just a few minutes before Pearl did and the cheers died down. Still silence enveloped the whole area. The small sense of victory they felt was gone and they are at loss.
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