A tall blonde girl left the bridge behind and entered another corridor without slowing her pace.
She advanced at full speed. An ant detached from the ceiling and dropped in front of her, but she did not stop.
Victoria planted a foot on its carapace at the exact moment of impact, using it as a point of propulsion.
Her body rotated through the air with clean precision and landed almost at the creature's back.
When the ant reacted, Victoria was already past it.
As she ran, Victoria kept her brow furrowed.
Something did not add up.
She could not understand the route Liora was taking.
If her objective had been to exit the mountain through one of the four main exits, she would have chosen different corridors.
That left only two possibilities:
The first was that Liora had gotten lost.
Victoria dismissed that option instantly. If she had learned anything during the exam, it was not to underestimate Liora. She was not the kind of person who improvised routes at random or made basic mistakes under pressure.
The second option was far more likely: Liora had another route planned. An alternative path out of the mountain.
Which meant she had to hurry.
To maintain constant tracking and avoid having to stop every time she searched for Liora, Victoria decided to take off her shoes and advance barefoot. Every five seconds, she released a precise pulse of ether into the ground, activating Etheric Radar.
Direct contact with the rock was essential for the technique to function.
At the end of the corridor, a small chamber opened up, barely wider than the passage feeding into it.
Victoria placed her bare foot down and released the pulse. The ether sank into the rock like a silent wave, traveled along the floor, climbed the walls, and returned in ordered fragments.
The information assembled instantly.
Liora was there.
And she was not alone.
There were two more signatures.
Victoria let out a brief smile as she kept moving without slowing down.
This meant a confrontation. One that would delay Liora for some time.
And every second Liora lost was one she gained.
Victoria entered the chamber, and out of the corner of her eye she suddenly saw someone.
A student.
Her eyes widened in surprise.
A black-haired boy, his hair somewhat long, was kneeling at the far end of the chamber, firmly holding an old rifle and calmly aiming at her.
A confident smile was drawn across Jhon's face.
Victoria and Jhon's eyes met.
Without warning, the rifle's muzzle spat fire and smoke.
—————
Emma spotted an ant at the end of the corridor, standing still and watching.
To her frustration, she had been forced to weave past and leave the others behind, ignoring them completely; she could not risk losing the track of Victoria for even a second.
But in this case, the ant ahead was enormous, imposing, filling the entire width of the corridor.
There was no way around it, no way to dodge it; any attempt would be useless.
This would have frustrated, terrified, or worried most students. But for Emma, it was an opportunity to relieve herself a little.
A wild smile spread across her face.
Emma accelerated, closing the distance to the ant.
When she was close enough, she activated her trait, Primordial Strength, channeling it into her legs.
With an explosive jump, she hurled herself at the creature.
Once within reach, she transferred all the force of her trait into a single concentrated fist. And she struck.
The ant's skull shattered with a dry crack, unable to withstand the concentrated force, and its massive body collapsed with a thunderous crash that made the ground beneath Emma's feet tremble.
Emma dropped to her knees, and like a smoker taking a drag after six months of abstinence, she let out a deep, relieved sigh.
She recovered a moment of calm before resuming the pursuit, following Victoria's scent.
—————
Marcus emerged from the corridor and came upon a bridge that seemed to float between two internal passages of the mountain, like a suspended walkway over the void of a massive canyon.
He took a second to study his surroundings.
There were no walls enclosing it; the floor and ceiling vanished on both sides, distant, blurred by gloom and shadows slipping in from faraway cracks.
It was a narrow bridge connecting two parts of the mountain, a dangerous, demanding path that would not forgive a single misstep.
Marcus could not understand how the ants had managed to hollow out the mountain in this way.
Probably over dozens of years—he thought as he resumed his march.
—————
Jhon squeezed the trigger and the bullet tore across the chamber at over 1,000 m/s, a sharp whistle accompanying its trajectory.
He made sure not to aim for the head or anywhere that could cause fatal damage. Just enough to ensure her elimination.
But Victoria reacted with extreme speed, and in an instant she transformed.
A burst of vapor erupted around her. And the bullet struck.
The vapor explosion flared as the bullet impacted the space she had occupied moments before. The echo reverberated through the cave, leaving a brief silence that made Jhon wonder if his shot had done its job.
Then, from the vapor, a six-meter-long golden spear emerged, radiant, launching straight at him and slicing through the air with lethal precision.
Jhon managed to roll aside just in time, watching as the golden spear embedded itself into the wall, sinking into the rock.
He looked toward Victoria.
Through the vapor, the silhouette of Victoria's monstrous form was revealed: tall, authoritative, elegant, imposing.
However, a dent was visible in the torso of her armor, and beneath it, a deep bruise marked where the impact had breached her defense.
Jhon understood what had happened. Apparently, the bullet had struck right in the middle of Victoria's transformation process. As a result, the damage was less than if she had been in human form, but still more significant than if the bullet had hit her fully transformed body.
Even so, Jhon was dissatisfied.
That shot had to eliminate her —Jhon thought with a dissatisfied grimace
Liora had asked him to stay behind to ambush Victoria.
To do that, he had to use an ether technique he had only just learned.
Ether Technique: Veil of Stillness
The Veil of Stillness was a technique designed to go unnoticed, not to fight. Its principle was simple to understand, though difficult to execute: instead of projecting ether outward, the user made it circulate only near their Ether Core.
Normally, even when a Transformer is not using techniques, their ether naturally leaks into the environment. That trace is what Etheric Radar detects.
The Veil of Stillness canceled that phenomenon. Ether was compressed, stabilized, and kept in a closed circuit, without pulses or leaks.
It worked against multiple tracking techniques. But the problem lay in control.
Keeping ether sealed required deep ether control and constant concentration. That was why most Sentinels could not use it effectively.
But Jhon had managed to master it, albeit with significant limitations.
He could only maintain the Veil of Stillness while remaining almost completely immobile, breathing slowly and steadily.
And he could not use the technique in his monstrous form.
In that state, the amount of ether he released was far too high. He was not yet capable of suppressing it. If Jhon used the technique combined with the full power of the shot, he should have been able to eliminate Victoria.
But Victoria proved why her name carried weight, and why the years of training of her clan were no exaggeration.
In a fraction of a second, she identified Jhon, evaluated the threat, and made the only viable decision.
She did not try to block or dodge.
She leapt backward and activated her transformation, seeking the superior defense of her monstrous form before the impact reached her.
When the shot landed, her monstrous form managed to minimize the damage.
Jhon's rifle was lethal against a human target. Even against most Sentinels in base form. But it was not designed to fully penetrate the resilience of an already transformed Transformer.
Of course, if Jhon had fired in his monstrous form—and with it, his rifle had also transformed—the result would have been different.
But that was not the case.
Victoria launched herself at Jhon in her monstrous form and, still in midair, dismissed it to return to human form.
The transition was clean and brief.
A spinning kick followed immediately.
Jhon saw it coming and managed to move aside at the last moment. It was not an elegant dodge. He lost balance, dragged a foot, but avoided a direct hit.
Victoria gave him no room. She advanced at once.
Left punch. Then right. Jhon reacted on reflex, crossing the rifle in front of his body to block both blows.
Victoria twisted her hips and threw a direct left kick to his side. This time Jhon did not make it in time.
The blow landed cleanly. The air burst from his lungs and his body was shoved several steps sideways, sliding over the rock before he regained his balance.
Victoria charged again and summoned her spear.
She stabbed several times at Jhon, who managed to deflect most of them by placing his rifle in between.
Then Victoria retracted her spear, spun it, and in one fluid motion made a horizontal cut at Jhon. He jumped backward, barely evading the strike.
But his back hit the wall.
Jhon finally realized: Victoria had him exactly where she wanted.
He was cornered.
Victoria planted her spear into the ground, set her stance, and prepared to execute her favorite technique.
Ether Technique: Powerful Thrust
She lunged at Jhon, ready to finish the fight.
But at the decisive instant, everything shifted. With a sharp twist of his wrists, Jhon brought the rifle around and aligned it with her.
He knew he could not defeat Victoria in a direct fight. From the start, the difference in close-combat ability had been obvious.
That was why he had never tried to win.
He had fought only to gain time—enough to finish reloading and bring the rifle back into play.
—"Five seconds are over, baby" Jhon said just before pulling the trigger.
Victoria reacted on instinct and jumped to the side, but it was not enough. The bullet struck her squarely in the right shoulder, passing clean through and opening a hole nearly three centimeters wide.
Blood burst out under pressure, splattering across the chamber floor.
Victoria did not scream. The impact destabilized her for a moment, but she clenched her teeth, absorbed the pain, and kept moving. She shifted her weight, nullified the injured arm, and stabbed toward Jhon's torso using only her left.
But the blade stopped dead, a centimeter from his chest.
Because Jhon had raised both hands. The bracelet on his wrist glowed an intense red, the unmistakable sign of surrender.
"I surrender, miss," he said, with a clean, almost childish smile.
Victoria roared with anger before running towards Liora while grabbing her right shoulder.