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The sound was deafening.
Twenty-five hundred teenagers erupted into motion simultaneously, their feet hammering against the plateau's stone surface like thunder rolling across the mountain.
Voices rose in desperate determination—some shouting encouragement to allies, others cursing competitors who shoved past them, most simply roaring wordless battle cries as they charged toward their futures.
Ares moved through the chaos with calculated precision, his steel-gray eyes already mapping the terrain ahead while his enhanced reflexes kept him clear of the most dangerous collisions.
Around him, the mob mentality was taking hold, climbers using bloodline abilities to clear paths, enhancement-type awakeners bulldozing through weaker competitors, ranged fighters creating barriers of ice or stone to slow others down.
'Inefficient,' he thought, watching a fire-user waste precious energy melting a path through a cluster of ice spikes. 'They're all thinking like this is a battle instead of a race.'
The plateau's natural geography funneled the massive crowd toward three main access points to the mountain proper.
Ares could see the inevitable bottleneck forming—a crush of bodies that would trap hundreds of climbers in a stationary mass while precious minutes ticked away.
But he'd spotted something others had missed.
Off to the side was a deep crack in the mountain, like a really steep, narrow valley. It went straight up the side of the mountain, but it looked super dangerous.
Most climbers dismissed it as impassable at a glance. It was a near-vertical wall of loose scree and unstable rock that looked like suicide to attempt.
They were covered in loose rocks that would fall down if you stepped on them. It was like trying to climb a wall made of marbles - every time you stepped, the rocks would roll away and you'd fall.
Ares calculated the angles, the distances, the physics involved, and then deemed it possible. But only if he did it right.
It was suicide for anyone using conventional climbing techniques, but not for him.
He broke away from the main flow of climbers, angling toward the ravine while the majority continued toward the bottlenecks. A few noticed his divergence and started to follow, thinking he'd spotted a secret route.
They were about to learn why following Ares without asking was rarely a good idea.
The ravine's edge appeared suddenly, a twenty-foot drop into a narrow gully that climbed steeply up the mountain's face.
The walls were nearly vertical, covered in loose stone that shifted at the slightest touch. Traditional climbing would be impossible, the scree would give way under any sustained weight.
But Ares wasn't planning to climb traditionally.
He picked up his speed fifteen paces from the edge, his mind running through the calculations one final time.
'Approach velocity: twelve miles per hour. Contact time per step: point-four seconds maximum. Angle of ascent: sixty-five degrees from horizontal. Coefficient of friction for compressed scree: point-seven when properly loaded.'
The physics were sound. The execution would require perfect timing. He could do it!
He sprinted toward the ravine's edge, his enhanced leg muscles driving him forward with explosive power.
The moment he reached the edge, he jumped, not up, but sideways toward the wall!
This was the crazy part: instead of trying to grab the wall and climb slowly, he RAN up it.
His foot hit the loose rocks really hard and really fast.
For four-tenths of a second, the loose stones compressed under his weight, creating a temporary platform with enough friction to support him.
Before they could shift and send him tumbling into the ravine, his left foot was already in motion, striking higher up the wall at the exact moment his right foot's platform began to fail.
To observers below, it looked like he was running up a vertical surface—which, technically, he was.
The key was momentum and timing. Each footstep had to hit with enough force to compress the scree into temporary stability, but not so much force that it drove the stones deeper and trapped his foot.
Too light, and he'd have no purchase. Too heavy, and he'd sink into the loose rock and lose his momentum.
Point-four seconds. That was his window for each step—long enough for the compressed stones to provide grip, short enough to avoid the inevitable shifting that would send him plummeting.
Left foot. Compress. Push. Right foot. Compress. Push.
His insane proprioception—the inner ear balance that let elite gymnasts stick impossible landings—guided each placement with microscopic precision.
Every impact was calculated to hit solid substrate beneath the loose surface layer, every push-off timed to coincide with maximum compression.
Fifteen feet up the wall, disaster struck.
The climbers who had followed him into the ravine were attempting the same technique without understanding the physics involved.
Their heavier, less precise impacts were destabilizing the entire scree field. Loose stones began avalanching down toward him, threatening to knock him from the wall or bury him entirely.
Ares didn't panic. Panic was inefficient.
Instead, he accelerated.
His leg muscles, enhanced to twice normal human strength through the stat crystal, drove him upward faster than should have been possible.
Each step now lasted only point-three seconds, requiring even more precise timing but carrying him clear of the collapse zone.
The scree avalanche roared past him, carrying two of his would-be followers back down into the ravine where the mountain's safety protocols teleported them away in flashes of silver light.
Eighteen feet. Nineteen.
At nineteen and a half feet, Ares encountered his final obstacle. The loose scree gave way to solid rock, but the transition zone was the most unstable area of all.
His next step would either find purchase on stable stone or send him tumbling back down with nothing to arrest his fall.
He had to jump from the loose, wobbly rocks to solid, hard rock. It was like jumping from a wobbly trampoline to a concrete wall.
He calculated the angle, the force required, the probability of success.
'Seventy-three percent chance of making it. Twenty-seven percent chance of elimination.'
He took the step anyway.
His right foot struck solid limestone with a sound like a gunshot. The rock held. His left hand shot out to grab a natural handhold, and suddenly he was on stable ground, twenty feet above the ravine floor and significantly ahead of the main crowd.
Behind him, the remaining followers were either trapped by the continuing scree fall or attempting to find safer routes. None had made it more than ten feet up the wall.
Ares allowed himself a moment to check his hands. Scraped and bleeding from the sharp stone, but nothing that would impair his climbing ability.
The technique had cost him energy, his leg muscles burned from the explosive impacts, but he'd gained a crucial advantage.
He was already on the mountain proper while hundreds of other climbers were still fighting through the bottlenecks below.
'Phase one complete,' he thought, turning his attention to the next challenge.