The announcer who had quite a sour look on his face, prepared himself to announce they had a winner.
"Looks like someone has been able to pass the fifth level, everyone applauds him," he shouted acting like he was happy that such a thing had happened.
As he said that, the line full of people disappeared without making any noise as if they didn't care about this little challenge anymore which was normal as the reward was what had attracted everyone around.
In his mind, he wasn't as this was simply a way for him to make money. He didn't expect that someone was actually going to beat it.
Even he had difficulty beating this challenge as he didn't even succeed when he tried doing it most of the time.
"You did it!" said Emma, running up to Aiden.
Aiden who had a stern face as he cracked a little smile, happy to have done it.
This challenge certainly wasn't easy at all.
It required you to dodge projectiles without being hit more than five times. But that wasn't the worst part, he had dodged those projectiles without seeing, hearing or looking at them.
It wasn't hard to understand why no one had won it before.
Even Emma hadn't been able to do so.
'But that's only the first step,' he thought as his smile disappeared as quickly as it appeared on his face.
He knew that he shouldn't rejoice over accomplishing something like that.
He was supposed to surpass the fifth level, that's what he should have thought.
But, still, even if that was how he had been supposed to act, he was quite happy with himself.
'It seemed like the past month of training hasn't been for nothing,' he thought as he couldn't imagine himself without the training he had gone through which had helped him in many ways.
First, he had improved his confidence in himself as he just wasn't sure of himself after realizing that everything he did was somehow connected to his past life.
Secondly, his training improved his general abilities which made him able to dodge the last projectiles, the ones where he could only rely on his instincts.
"How did you do it?" asked Emma over and over again like an impatient child.
This caused Finrod to raise an eyebrow, as he hadn't seen Emma act like this with anyone, well except Gerald.
However, before Aiden could muster any type of answer, the announcer handed something to Aiden, still with a sour look on his face.
"Here, that's the two VIP Entries," he said, mustering up the best fake smile he could.
Aiden just took them out of his hands quite happy with what he had received.
Because just like Gerald had said, this would make him able to buy more things or stuff that would be out of his budget.
It really was something that was great which was why everyone had tried to win them.
It would also make you able to meet powerful people, but that wasn't something that Aiden really cared about.
Why would he care about other people when he was going there to find something that could make him stronger?
After taking the two VIP Entries, Aiden left behind the announcer, who looked devastated, with Emma and the others.
Before Emma could ask her earlier question, Aiden wanted to know something which caused him to ask a question.
"At what point were you unable to continue?" he asked looking at Emma, as what Finrod had done didn't even interest him.
"Well, I don't really know the level at which I stopped, but I can't tell you that I couldn't see, hear, and feel. At this point, I wasn't able to do anything, in fact, I was wondering how did you even achieve something like that?" she asked Aiden as she really had no idea how something like that was even possible.
Face with this question, even Aiden wasn't sure how to respond as all he had done was basically trust his mind and his instincts.
Without anything else to answer, he simply said: "I trusted my instincts, I guess."
Emma was obviously quite sad hearing this as she expected a detailed answer.
"Are you sure that's it, you didn't rely on a skill of yours?" she asked trying to see if she could make him remember something that he might have forgotten.
"No, I didn't rely on anything, I'm telling you, only my instincts and my mind were at play there."
It was the truth, it was his mind that sent him weird signals for him to dodge the projectiles in the trial.
He hadn't seen or heard any beeping in the trial that also indicated something like that.
'Wait,' he thought opening up his Status and making sure that he had obtained some sort of ability during the trial.
'Status'
[Aiden Nightshade]
[Level 14]
[Health: 150]
[Mana: 10]
[Race: Human]
[Body: ???]
[Class: None]
[Strength: 5]
[Agility: 4]
[Dexterity: 4]
[Defense: 1]
[Stamina: 3]
[Charm: 5]
[Unallocated Stat Points: 0]
[Equipment]
[Shadow Strike Dagger]
[Return Stone]
[Skills]
[Shadow Strike Lvl.1 (Active Skill), Cost: 3.5 MP]
[Shadow Steps Lvl.MAX(Passive Skill)]
[Dagger mastery Lvl.3 (Passive Skill)]
[Gentle Touch Lvl.1 (Active Skill), Cost: 0 MP)
[Mind of an Assassin Lvl.1(Active skill), Cost: 0 MP]
[Sixth Sense Lvl.1 (Passive Skill)]
Looking at it, he made sure to double-check all the information that he was seeing, starting from the top to the bottom of his 'Status'.
He started with the stats which looked the exact same as before. It seemed that nothing had happened to them.
Then, he looked at his equipment, already kind of knowing that nothing would have appeared there.
It was now time to look at his skills, the place where the change would have most likely been.
Then, as he read all the skills which he acquired, he nodded, but then a confused expression appeared on his face as he got to the last skill on his 'Status'.
'Sixth Sense? What's this? I'm sure that it wasn't there before,' thought Aiden as he looked at his last skill on his 'Status'.
It was something that was completely new that appeared at some point during the challenge.
That was most likely the case because if it had appeared before he would have noticed it for many reasons.
The first one being the beeping noise and the second one being the pop-up message that appears every time he created a new skill of his.
It was almost certain that he wouldn't have missed something like that, especially while he was fully focused on his training without any time for distractions.
It was also quite obvious that the reason why he hadn't seen it being created was because that he had been in the challenge when it happened.
With his hearing and sight restricted, it was normal that he hadn't been able to hear the beeping noise or the message from the system.
It just made sense, this skill must have been created while in the challenge.
But now that this was solved, the question that was even more important was could this skill even do?
He could see that it was a passive skill just like some of the rest of his skills, which meant that he couldn't activate it like he wanted as it was simply always activated.
'System, what is this new skill of mine?' asked Aiden inside his mind to the System, remembering that it would most likely answer him.
But then, as the system was about to respond, the voice of Emma brought him back from his thinking.
"Aiden, Aiden, you there?" she said over and over while tugging on his shirt.
In fact, the most surprising thing there was that he hadn't come out of his thoughts before.
Seeing Aiden look down at her, she knew that she had gained his attention once again.
Not wanting to lose it, she quickly repeated the question she had asked earlier.
"So, are you sure that no skills were involved?"
But, she didn't even receive an answer as Aiden was once again in his thoughts not caring about his surroundings.
Well, he did care about his surroundings but he knew that he was safe at the moment with Emma, Gerald, and Finrod around him.
Well... apart from Finrod, he knew that he could trust those that were currently surrounding him, or even more protecting him, clearly thinking of Gerald as this was his sole purpose of being here.
The reason why he hadn't paid attention to Emma's question was because his question was also being answered.
And the answer from the system was a lot more important than whatever Emma was even going to say.
It was an answer which was going to reveal to him what the effect of this skill was going to be.
Then, waiting for a little, the usual beeping sound resounded in his head.
It seemed the system was ready to give him an answer.
Beep
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