Gravity Imbalance

Luna was in a large office with thick transparent walls that revealed a frozen seascape outside the office with beautiful azure snow falling serenely. She was together with three other examiners each of them being a male in their late twenties who was also wearing the examiners' uniform.

They all had a holographic display with coloured background before them that revealed how the participants were doing as the exam proceeded. 

They were all intrigued and looks of amazement erupted from their faces when they saw what one of the participants was doing.

Ideally, the participants were supposed to use their sensory skills as a Deva to detect the traps and avoid them, however, they could see a participant who was deliberately going for the traps just to have fun. 

'' Adjust the traps' strength to pearl rank hehe…'' Luna giggled evilly with fascination. '' And introduce the gravity distributor. ''

'' Mmmm! '' The fellow examiners inhaled long breaths as one of them proceeded to change the settings.

He had pale green skin and medium-length emerald spiky hair, thin fingers that were swiping through the hologram, and an average looking face with sparse pale green facial hair. 

'' Synchronizing new adjustment…'' The AI in the equipment that the pale green examiner was operating voiced out in a monotonous voice.

'' One. ''

'' Two. ''

'' Three. ''

—----

'' Boom! '' 

Endra was flung backwards without warning and he crashed on the ground with a thick thud, that wasn't all though, a thick flame pillar about seven meters in height and a meter in circumference zoomed downward at a fast speed that his eyes could barely react to. 

On reflex, a small glyph that shimmered with white lights flew from his sceptre and collided with the oncoming fire pillar.

There was no collision force that one would expect as the flame pillar was outrightly reduced in speed and intensity which gave Endra a chance to kick the ground and use the momentum to jump out of the residual attack's target.

'' Such a sneaky Dharma. ''Zeralf's eyes sharpened warily as he watched the new event unfold. 

It happened that Endra had been acting unrestrainedly as usual until he activated a trap in the pearl rank and the first collision force flung him away while the consequent part of the trap launched the flame pillar.

'' Fuck these examiners. '' Endra blurted out while dusting his trouser that was now dirtied with sand. '' Setting a Pearl rank trap so casually, petty is being polite enough. '' He grumbled.

'' Who was going around activating the trap in the first place? '' Kitasha sent an annoyed glare at him with a creased forehead from afar. 

Even she had to admit that getting in contact with multiple Pearl rank traps would be more than troublesome and it took no genius to realize that the traps had been tampered with knowingly by the examiners, no thanks to Endra's brazen actions.

If Kitasha was bothered, then the other participants were sweating bucket for themselves already and some if not all were cursing Endra's ancestor for giving birth to such an eyesore who had done nothing better than to implicate them. The traps at the marble ranks were already giving them headaches and to think they now had to be wary of the traps at the Pearl rank, their luck was already in the mud.

One would erroneously believe that since Pearl rank was just one rank above the Marble rank, the participants should be able to manage as there wasn't much difference, after all, Zeralf was able to take on Marble ranks Deva when he was still a mortal, however, this was wrong.

The rankings in the Deva's hierarchy system were intricate and different to the mortals' daily arithmetic logic, one plus one equals two and one plus two equals three. For every increase in ranks, there was bound to be an exponential increase more than the previous rank and the increment even varied with each individual.

Assuming a being could break one brick as a mortal, they might be able to break five or more after their awakening and they might break twenty or more at the marble rank.

This would explain why The lord was so keen on capturing the two kids who escaped the attacks of two marble ranks since that was hypothetically impossible.

'' You bastard, you have been acting so insolently and now you've implicated us. '' One of the participants who couldn't hold it anymore voiced out with a tone full of hatred. 

'' Before you finish me, I'll gladly finish you too. '' He started running towards Endra's direction while hurling curses but before he could even reach half the distance between them.

'' Katcha. ''

He stepped on a trap and the ground turned moist making him lose his footing as he began sinking in the soft mud that the hot sand had transformed into, and to make it worse for him, a terrific brown tornado surrounded him and pushed him down till his figure was no longer seen. 

'' Arhh. ''

Some participants dropped to their knees and started vomiting, some were even too weak to throw out and they simply slumped into the desert unconcerned about the traps.

A few seconds after that, cries again followed as more people were further eliminated.

'' Psychology test? ''

'' Testing each participant's will? ''

Both Zeralf and Kitasha thought to themselves with vigilant gazes while observing how everything was playing out.

'' Um? ''

'' Eh? '' 

'' Ahh! ''

Mayhem broke as the participants straight off lost control of their body movements, some were first stuck on the ground before being shot into the air like a paper rocket.

Zeralf had teleported in response to the abrupt situation but as soon as he appeared in another location, he found himself hitting the ground heavily simultaneously activating a trap and before he could think of escaping the full burst of the trap, his body shot into the air again on its own.

As he was blown upward, he almost collided with a bolt of lightning but at the last second, he teleported without having a targeted direction in mind. As he reappeared in another location, he descended downward again crashing with another participant who yelled in pain and confusion.

'' Gravity instability? '' Zeralf's eyes sharpened and glowed as he quickly ran an analysis in his head.

Screams were heard from all angles as some participants were shot in the air making them come in contact with attacks activated by other participants and some crashed on the ground furthermore activating new traps.

Kitasha also crashed on the ground but before the gravity could change and send her forward, she swapped her swords and a long sword that was taller than her if placed vertically beside her, manifested and she held it with two hands.

The sword was two meters in length with a fiery rectangular blade. It had a golden handle with a bright red pommel and a circular scarlet guard. Her breastplate had transformed into a thick fiery set with golden gauntlets and a long flowing lava orange skirt with black designs at its mouth.

'' Kyarrh!! '' She brought the sword down in a vertical swing while gnashing her teeth.

'' BOOM!!! ''

A multitude of explosions reverberated across the desert and many participants who were close to Kitasha stumbled on the ground with agape expressions.

A Series of traps in a hundred-metre radius in all directions from Kitasha's position had been activated and none of the attacks they launched touched Kitasha because the chain collision created a fiery explosive force that deflected the attacks.

Kitasha had no time to admire her explosive power because right now, gravity had completely weakened in her position and she found herself floating in midair again, now, however, there was no attack coming for her so she could focus on getting out of there.

'' As expected of Lady Kitasha. '' Some boys with flushed cheeks admired her from the distance.

Kitasha had done something similar to what Endra was doing but her chain activation had helped her deflect the multiple attacks which made the other participants have twinkling eyes, especially the boys as some even began to have nefarious thoughts.

'' Hmph! '' Kitasha snorted with a stern gaze.

'' Catching up princess. '' Endra roared excitedly from another end unfazed by what he brought upon others as he also prepared to get out of this damn place.

As for Zeralf, he was already far ahead of them constantly teleporting while calculating how the gravity shifted even though most were random in sequence.