Five seconds, ten seconds, fifteen seconds...

Armad was alarmed. It had been fifteen seconds since the shadow had started approaching him but he still didn't see the person behind it. If the shadow was this long then how tall would the person behind it be?

As he thought about it, an elderly man appeared behind the shadow. An unsheathed red blade hung from his left shoulder.

Surprisingly, despite the long shadow, the man wasn't all that tall. He was around six tall, a few inches taller than Armad. But the shadow was his own. No doubt about it. Armad looked at his own shadow and realized how it was considerably shorter.

A shadow Bender, Armad thought.

At the first attempt to read the man's pol, Armad's heart pounded because he couldn't see it.

He had long learned how to assess a Bender's pol and determine its exact number. If a Bender didn't surpass him by at least two times then he could always read them. The fact that he couldn't read the man's pol could only mean one thing: the gap between their powers was simply too great.

As this shocking truth reverberated in his mind, he heard a voice in his head. "If you want to pass through here then you must defeat me to prove you are worthy."

It was just a voice, but because of the pol behind it, Armad felt as if he was suddenly carrying the weight of his entire village on his head. He sweated. If the voice had continued speaking, he would have fallen on his knees from the sheer weight it carried.

The voice belonged to the old man standing in front of him. And despite the power he exuded, his face was expressionless as if he was conversing with a stone.

Seeing he had Armad's attention, the old man went on, "in all my hundreds of years as a guardian of this path, you have the lowest pol among all the travelers that have come here."

That wasn't surprising since Armad had only 51 years of pol at the moment.

The old man continued, "the rule is simple: you either defeat me and pass or you fail and you die. It's all up to you. But since I haven't seen anyone for so long and I want to stretch my arms a bit, I'll lower my Pol down to just one hundred years."

Instead of this to calm Armad down, it only made him warier of the old man. He knew the gap between 51 years and 100 years, especially considering how fewer people ever awaken to 100 years. And that was just the tip of the iceberg considering the actual pol controlled by the guardian.

"I'm ready whenever you are," the guardian said.

Imagining the gap between them wouldn't do him any good, so Armad looked at it simply. If he lost and died then his mother died with him. As he concluded that, he decided on winning. The cost didn't matter.

Armad withdrew his blade and released his pol into it. Lightning flashed on the steel and a booming noise came from the air expanding around the blade.

The essence board in his core flashed blue with the usual information.

<Lightning blade activated>

<You have charged the blade in your hands with lightning, enhancing both its speed and cutting ability. Guarding against it with steel is useless>

<cost: 0.75 years>

<Core-collapse: 3.5%>

<Core regeneration: 92% per minute>

The old man responded by unsheathing his blade and letting a furious flame out. He was a fire Bender. Armad narrowed his eyes at the revelation. He thought the man was a shadow Bender from his earlier demonstration. Did that mean the guardian could cross over?

Armad ignored it and attacked.

His sword flashed even brighter and his eyes carried no fear of his opponent. The red headband on his forehead flew in the air as he ran.

He spread his hands: the right hand clenched into a fist and the left holding the lightning sword.

If an ordinary human saw Armad currently with a lightning sword in hand, they would mistake him for an angel of death.