Unholy Player

Chapter 480: The Improvement

Zephan, hearing his words, laughed. "I just didn’t hold back."

The way Adyr had been holding back, and the lack of proper stance before his punch, had clearly not escaped his notice.

Next, the Lunari Elders also wanted to try, unable to resist the chance to measure themselves. They punched the wall one after another, getting 0.3 and 0.4 as their results. That simple display let everyone see the gap between their ruler and themselves in terms of sheer physical power output, laid out in numbers.

When they were satisfied with the tests, it was time for the main course.

Adyr turned back to the head researcher. "So how will we try our skill combinations?"

The walls were strong enough to withstand their most powerful attacks, but their bodies were far less resilient; fully unleashing that power would tear them apart.

Fortunately, the head researcher had an answer for that, even if it sounded a little crude and amateurish, more like a field improvisation than a polished protocol.

"Just throw your skill inside and run." The solution was that simple. Blunt and practical.

After that, they all stepped out into the corridor, leaving only Zephan inside the room with the door still open.

From the doorway, they watched him walk to the center of the empty chamber and gather his power.

There was a silver spear in his hand that he pulled out of nothing, about half his body length. With each passing second it grew brighter, light spreading along the shaft and concentrating at the tip until it became hard to look at directly.

One by one, the people in the corridor had to turn their eyes away or narrow them to slits.

Soon the brightness reached a point where everything around it seemed to dim. The rest of the room sank into shadow, making it look like the spear was drinking in all the light.

That was enough to show it was fully charged. Feeling the change in his grip, Zephan released the weapon and let it hang in the air, then turned his back on it and walked toward the exit at an unhurried pace.

As he crossed the threshold, the heavy door began to close behind him with a mechanical grind, sealing the glowing spear inside.

"Are we actually safe standing here? " Henry asked the head researcher in a low voice.

He did not feel comfortable with the idea of waiting there while a nuclear-level power was about to detonate in the room before them, separated only by a few meters of engineered material.

The idea of evacuating the entire building before it was too late passed through his mind.

"According to the data, we are safe," the head researcher answered. He did not even lift his head from the tablet in his hand, eyes glued to the incoming numbers, as if brushing the question aside so he could focus on the readings.

"You tested the room before, right?" Henry asked again. The uneasy feeling in his chest only grew heavier.

This time the head researcher finally looked up at him, speaking in a slightly irritated tone. "How could we have tested it? We just finished building it yesterday."

"You..." Henry was about to curse, but before the words slipped from his mouth, a low hum came from the door of the room, and then the corridor began to shake.

It was not only the corridor. The entire building was trembling as if an earthquake had struck, the floor vibrating under their feet.

The lights in the corridor flickered as the ceiling and wall plaster began to crack and crumble in thin lines, dust drifting down in small showers.

"Ah, looks like we miscalculated a little," the head researcher murmured, trying to keep his balance through the shaking, one hand braced against the wall.

The room was indeed containing the blast inside, all that power trapped within its reinforced shell.

The issue was with the floor that supported the room. It was shaking along with it and transferring all the vibrations into the corridor and the rest of the building like a giant tuning fork.

Fortunately, it did not last long.

Soon the tremors faded, leaving no visible damage on the walls or the structure. Only a lingering sense remained of how close they had come to disaster.

Then the tablet in the head researcher’s hands started to beep, giving a warning sound it had not produced before.

"Oh my..." He lowered his gaze to the screen, his hands trembling as he caught the numbers a single man had produced and read them aloud. "It’s 220..."

The power exceeded the reference set by a 20 kT nuclear warhead by 120 percent, making them wonder whether there was something wrong with the mechanism they had designed.

Adyr also turned to Zephan in surprise. "Did you improve it?"

Back when Zephan had used his attacks on the Blood Dragon, the power had not been equal to the nuclear warheads they used; it had been weaker.

"I figured out a few tricks over the last few days." Zephan accepted it with open self-satisfaction.

It had not been as easy as he made it sound. He had spent the entire last month focusing on ways to strengthen his main attack.

He added new Spark skills he thought would combine better with his core skills and swapped out others, hoping the result would be stronger.

In the end, he had arrived at this improved version, pushing the power to more than double, almost reaching triple its original level.

"I should ask you for some tips later." Adyr responded half jokingly but mostly seriously.

He knew very well how challenging it was to combine skills to create something new and stronger.

Even with all 4 Paths under his control and all the Sparks available to him, putting together his current skill combination had taken him a long time, and it still was not perfect.

He had many talents and was skilled in many areas, but in that moment he realized he was not as good as Zephan at this particular field, and asking for a few pointers did not sound like a bad idea at all.