Kaios sprinted, Gravistone alloy hovering behind him, even though it lost its property, it was still a durable alloy, ready for Kaios to use.
His senses were tuning to the air around him, scanning for even the slightest tremor in the air. But the Isle took no time to welcome him into the hell of this wind calamity.
The very first gust came, but not as a push, but as a pull. As if it was coiled around his torso, like a lasso of invisible rope.
And then—then it yanked him off his feet, slamming him sideways into a boulder. The stone cracked, as Kaios clashed with it, dust bloomed from it.
Urghh—! Kaios gritted his teeth, but a single sound didn't come, then Kaios locked his body with Gravistone's pull, while the alloy was protecting his body. When Kaios saw he couldn't take himself away from it, he used the alloy to cover his body.
No sooner had he stabilized than another gust came down from above, hammering him flat against the ground. Kaios felt like someone threw a continent plate above him. His ribs cracked, bones rattled under this immense pressure.
The fairy Clement's laughter echoed all around him, even when he couldn't see her.
"Pfft..! Kaios, you looked like a pinned paper sheet! Heheheh.."
Kaios ignored the echoes and flexed his jaw with his right hand, then spat a mouthful of blood.
His body then bounced upwards but this time it was not just repulsion—but something different.
The surface started to quake, then his body launched upward with a sudden sound, scattering dust and pieces of stones in every direction.
It was the property of one of the alloys, Kaios chose previously— the Resonance Alloy.
It had the property of amplifying and storing the vibrations around it. Kaios used it by exchanging his ability to smell, then used this to resist the downward pressure of the air from above.
With the help of this alloy Kaios got up and moved away from this pressure hammer from the air.
After this incident Kaios advanced slowly, while utilizing an ability that he created from before using the Resonance Alloy— Echo Amplify.
It was a simple ability, similar to that of a bat's echolocation, but instead of emitting sound waves, it passively detected vibrations caused by external sources and amplified them, which allowed the user to sense them before they happened.
But it had a glaring weakness that echolocation didn't have. It can't sense something, which was not passively causing the vibrations.
And that's what happened with Kaios next, he was yanked by the vacuum pulls, pockets of air, that suddenly sucked him from a different direction.
The Echo Amplify didn't help Kaios here, as the sudden appearance of vacuum pockets didn't produce any vibrations, excluding the ones from slow suction of air, which Kaios overlooked due to the different directions.
This Kaios first pitfall in the second island arrived, though little later than the first one. As it was a small sign, showing that Kaios was adapting to it slowly.
Kaios was currently standing at the beginning point of the trial, he could hear the ticking of the clock, it had already been 8 minutes.
This was his seventh try, in that time frame of eight minutes, he had failed six times. And in some tries among them, he couldn't even last one minute of the time frame before transporting to the starting point.
In one, he almost crossed half of the island, which was his highest. It took him about four minutes for that, before he was trapped into a vortex chain.
A sequence of multiple mini-cyclones, that seemed to be unavoidable. These took him, and restricted him from anything to anchor himself, before dropping into a pit hole.
This time will be the last. Kaios said mentally with so much determination.
Without any surprise this was not his last, instead it was far from it.
Nine minutes later...
Kaios was slowly approaching the path of hovering platforms. His breathing was irregular, and his tattered clothes fluttered in the small gusts.
If not for his chiseled body beneath, anyone would have mistaken him for a beggar.
As he was closing the distance, his mind went back to all the difficulties he had faced.
In the time of remaining nine minutes he had failed ten times, succeeding in the last or eleventh try.
Sometime he was pushed by the flying debris, another time flung by the upward stream before being slammed by the pressure hammer.
Though slowly he developed a counter to those, making them ineffective for the next time.
As he discovered that, there was a brief gap in between the upward stream and Pressure Hammer. He used those gaps and the help of both streams to cross as much of the path as possible.
Similar to those he discovered that, in the vortex chain, the mini-cyclone required him to land on a specific point of their eye. If he timed that perfectly, he could float on them stabilized, and cross them effectively.
And as this, Kaios overcame the hurdles in the Isle of Gusty Heights, while emerged just before the clock above went overtime— thus starting to decrease his life gradually.
Kaios was moved forward, as he was reminiscing about it, step by step, toward the hovering platforms. And just as he crossed the gateway that connected the island to the first floating stone, something miracle-like happened with him.
All his wounds and scratches began to disappear, his ragged clothes were returning to their previous pristine states. It looked like someone reversed the time of his, taking him to the one before he entered the island.
His exhaustion was also vanished, vigour returned, like he took the vigour serums created by Psion specialists.
With this newfound energy, Kaios became more confident to tackle the future obstacles that would appear on the platforms in front of him.
With this, it will be far easier than the second hovering path. Kaios thought inside as he scanned himself.
He forgot one thing that he promised himself in the very first trial, during his fights with the nightmare— to never raise a flag.
So, with all due he jinxed himself, which was going to bite his ass in next future.
Some hours later, a figure could be seen panting while sitting on the surface of the platform.
This figure was none other than Kaios, who was now drenched in sweat. His face plastered with intense shock, tiredness and fear.
As Kaios was climbing the platforms, while bouncing from one to another, he didn't find anything for 1000th platform.
There were no shifting, no splitting, no hurling, there was nothing till the 1312th platform, but just as he stepped onto he saw something, that would give him the second trauma for the future.
As he stepped on it, he heard a loud sound of trumpet, followed by the deafening echo of air being torn apart, from below.
For Kaios, who was using the Echo Amplify, it was even more intense, so he went to the side to find the origin.
There what he saw, shocked him to the core, he saw a whale— specifically a blue whale coming towards the platform he was above.
But what terrified him was its size, or at least what he could figure from his senses. Because from his point of view the maw which was opened wide to devour the whole platform, was above a hundred metre. So he couldn't even imagine the actual size of that beast.
Kaios froze as this realization struck him, an expression of terror painted all across his face— but in the next second, he forced himself calm.
As he refused to become just a meat stuck between the teeth of this beast. Thus Kaios used all his stored vibrations, as well as amplifying it further as much as he could by using the Psion.
Then he used the remaining Psion from the IR to polarize oppositely the ground below, as for the maximum repulsion.
Then just as the maw of the giant whale was about to devour, then — Boooom...
He blasted off to the sky, with a speed much greater than the sound, reaching that of hypersonic.
The platform shattered as the result, all its pieces sinking to the maw of the whale, as it closed its mouth.
Though— he survived....