The Ninth Round 2

All color seemed to have lost its meaning.

White. Endless white.

Within the space occupied by the last eleven Trial Takers, eleven Nuclear Bombs detonated simultaneously high in the sky.

Extreme light and heat poured their energy toward the small plaza as if bringing about the end of the world.

Dig deeper! Deeper!!

His eyes nearly split with strain.

An Awakener from the South Africa War Zone frantically dug into the rock below.

His hands and feet moved so quickly they became phantom-like blurs.

This was the hardest he had ever fought in his life.

The instant he heard the order, a fear called death nearly tore his sanity apart.

He had thought that by relying on his Rock Talent to burrow into the earth, he could cleverly avoid the damage from the previous rounds, and that this round should be the same.

But he had never expected this.

The drilling missiles he had imagined never appeared, nor was there any warning of earthquakes or magma.

What appeared was the strongest weapon of war in human civilization's history—

Nuclear Bombs!

The heat rapidly rising behind him seemed ready to melt him.

If not for the brief reaction time between the nuclear bomb's detonation and the dispersal of its damage,

he would have long since been completely dissolved into elementary particles by the light radiation produced by the explosion.

His psychic energy circulated as if his life depended on it. At that moment, he wished he could turn entirely into rock and sink straight into the depths of the Earth Core.

Too hot! It was far too hot!

He had no time to dig deep enough to hide. The scorching heat from all directions rapidly vaporized the surface rock.

Dead silence.

It was as if sound had vanished at that moment.