AN: Here's some guides to help you understand the dialogue.

Italics = Spoken

Underlined Italics = Thoughts

Bold = loud/shinsu techniques

(I had a lot of fun coming up with the original shinsu technique names xD)

Anyway, let's get to this!

One night, two men stood in a large, flat field. While the field was serene and quiet, the peacefulness would soon vanish along with the field.

The first figure, a warrior with a ghostly complexion, said to the other, "What do you intend on gaining from passing this test?"

The other man stated in a confident tone, "I wish for the 77th floor of the tower!"

"That is quite the wish, Urek Mazino. Why do you want that floor in particular?" The man in white, Arie Hon, asked.

Urek Mazino drew a deep breath and smirked, his red eyes flashing with determination. "It's for a friend of mine. I don't think you would know him."

Arie Hon was taken aback for a few seconds, but shortly he began to chuckle. "He must be quite the fellow, to make you do something as extreme as this. Because of the large stakes on this test, I am not going to hold back. Your friend had better be praying for you!"

It was Urek's turn to give a smart remark.

"Who would he be praying to? You regard yourself and your companions as gods. If he's praying to you, I doubt you would grant his wish.

"I intend to beat this test with my own strength. I don't fear anything!"

"I don't think you know what you're up against, Mazino." Arie Hon muttered as he drew the strongest sword in the tower from its sheath.

Arie Hon then held the "White Oar" horizontally over his head, entering a battle stance.

Shortly after, Urek felt a large amount of wind drawing itself to Arie Hon. "He must be reinforcing himself with a ton of shinsu," thought Urek.

"You are very powerful, Arie Hon. However, you should not underestimate me either!" loudly proclaimed Urek, creating his own air current as he reinforced himself.

Before the test even began, the otherworldly peace of the field was shattered, as the two irregulars battled for the most shinsu. The resulting storm killed a lot of nature that day.

Noticing the worsening weather conditions, Urek briefly was worried for the world around him. However he couldn't concentrate on that for long, as a much greater matter had just began, with the ghostly figure warping towards him. Urek tensed in surprise before he quickly jumped away.

As Urek suspended himself in the air as he dodged the master-swordsman's attack, he saw something very disturbing.

Arie Hon was still on the ground, which surprised Urek a little. He had expected Arie to follow him into the air. This was not the disturbing part.

The disturbing part was when Urek came face-to-face with the purest form of the Arie Swordsmanship he had heard legends about.

What Urek saw around him was extremely surreal, and hard to explain with the laws of shinsu.

Urek saw what appeared to be countless blades forming a sphere in the air around him, until they all curved towards him, ready to deliver a quick defeat.

In shock, Urek used "Mazino Style: Reality Distortion" to quickly warped to the ground. I wanted to refrain from using that ability, as it consumes a large amount of stamina.

When Urek finished warping, Arie Hon looked very surprised.

"What in the world did you do? I've never seen anyone dodge the 'Arie Style: Omnidirectional Guillotine' before. The only other target I've used it on blocked it."

Urek scoffed while simply explaining the technique. However, he was using the spare time to come up with a plan to last 10 minutes.

The rules of this test never said I couldn't fight Arie to slow him down. I'm sure I could match him in a fight. If I just dodge only, I'm going to tire myself out, and proceed to die.

(AN: The rules of the test were simple: Urek simply had to endure Arie Hon's attacks for 10 minutes. However, due to the nature of the two opponents, the test quickly became a fight for glory.)

Arie Hon quickly began to attack Urek again, but this time Urek dove straight at Arie and landed a solid punch on him.

Arie Hon briefly reeled from the blow, but he quickly gathered himself and gave an extremely amused grin.

"You decided to attack very early on! A wise decision, Mazino. However, don't expect any breaks from now on. There is still another 9 minutes to go!"

The two Irregulars continued to battle it out. Urek jumped backwards, and shot 30 beams of light-speed shinsu at the swordsman. However, the beams of shinsu were diced into an unimaginable number of pieces as what appeared as the air around the beams attacked it.

Arie Hon then charged at Urek. The force from Arie Hon's incredible acceleration atomized the ground behind him.

Urek attempted to disrupt Arie by using "Mazino Style: Solar Radiation", which began rapid-firing shinsu at him. However, Arie hit all the bullets back at Urek using the White Oar.

Urek recoiled in horror as he realized what had just happened. Ugh! I need to reverse the flow right now! Urek then quickly used Fast-Skip on Arie and the reflected bullets using the shinsu he had been using to reinforce himself. While Arie was frozen, Urek reformed all the bullets into one giant bang using the Shinwonryu to draw them in.

Urek then reinforced himself with the bang, heightening his senses to a new level. However, by now Arie had broken through Fast Skip and began constantly shooting tons of Shinsu around Urek to restrain his movement.

Urek saw this, but realized he couldn't do anything about it. He was forced to fight the master-swordsman at close range, his opponent's specialty.

Arie laughed as he gained the upper hand. Urek was struggling to block all of his attacks.

The ghostly warrior decided to use "Arie Style: Environmental Weapon Forging" to attack Urek faster.

Urek noticed that the shinsu around him started turning into another sword. Arie Hon grabbed the sword and began to dual wield the "White Oar" and the Shinsu blade, thus adding another layer to the already obscene speed and complexity of his attacks.

Urek began getting pushed into the shinsu lasers flying around him. To counteract this, he used "Mazino Style: Reverse Oppresion". Urek formed 4 powerful bangs around himself, one for each arm and leg. He then quickly shot the 4 bangs backwards, using the "kick" from the attack to throw himself toward Arie Hon.

Urek Mazino then quickly baited Arie Hon to attack him with the Shinsu sword. Urek used the same technique to hit the sword out of his hand and grab it, forcing Hon to remove all of his bangs to get rid of the sword. This simultaneously removed the bangs restricting his movement.

While Arie Hon's shinsu manipulation wasn't active, Urek took the opportunity to shatter the ground beneath Hon, upsetting his balance. Urek then used a large amount of Shinsu to create a gust of wind strong enough to throw Arie into the air so he could land a finishing blow.

Urek used Spatial Distortion to reach the Legendary Swordsman and began using a final technique, but so did Arie as well.

"Mazino Style EX: Supreme King's Scorching Fist of Death!"

"Arie Style EX: The Death Angel's Passover!"

Half of the whole floor shook from the connection of the two attacks. Luckily for the floor's sake, 10 minutes had passed, thus allowing the floor and the two combatants to live and tell the tale.

Arie Hon admitted that Urek had passed the test, and was far stronger than him. Arie Hon, true to his word, granted Urek the ownership of the 77th floor, which shortly later became known as "Wolhaiksong's Floor."

This incident caused Urek's ranking at the end of his climb to be #4, one rank above Arie Hon, who was now #5. Urek's display of power shook up the upper ranks of the tower, which had remained unaffected for a large time. Urek tipping the scale of power inspired many others to try and do the same.

While not many so far have been successful, there is a rumor in the darkest bits of the tower that a new Irregular will appear and overthrow the whole tower. Afterwards, Urek wondered what he should do when the rising star appears in the future…