"Your turn!"
Tione stormed away, looking back at Roy and Finn with a spiteful grin. She finally understood why the gods and adventurers had mocked her earlier. Now, that same pressure was on those two. Unlike the relatively unknown twins, these two were famous figures; failing miserably in front of thousands would be a massive blow to their reputations.
Finn, observing Tione's thread-control technique, seemed lost in thought. Having formed a plan and seeing that Roy had no intention of going yet, he asked politely, "May I go first, Sprout of Justice?"
Roy didn't mind. "Captain Finn, please."
"Thank you."
Finn stepped forward to the glass tower. He spent a few moments observing, using his palm to measure the distance and position of each tier. Minutes later, Finn made his move.
Under the watchful gaze of the crowd, Finn cupped a marble in his palms and rubbed them back and forth with incredible friction, flicking it into the ninth tier. It passed through the entry hole, skipped the eighth, and landed directly on the seventh.
The crowd immediately grasped the brilliance of the move. Finn had applied a high-velocity spin to the marble. Spinning like a top, it moved far faster than a normal falling sphere; even when it hit a blocked hole, the centrifugal force caused it to bounce away until it found an opening.
Having pre-calculated the positions of the upper tiers, Finn's marble quickly broke Tione's record, penetrating down to the fourth tier! Unfortunately, the force applied to the marble was eventually canceled out by friction. It stopped at the fourth tier, but it was enough to cause a sensation. The crowd erupted; a Level 6 adventurer was indeed extraordinary.
Tione and Tiona stared wide-eyed, shocked by Finn's refined technique. Even Roy and Ryu took a second look.
Finn, ignoring the external reaction, remained fully focused. He realized that relying on spin alone wouldn't clear the tower. Luckily, he had another method—one inspired by Tione. Like her, he tied a marble to a fine silk thread and lowered it into the tower.
The major difference was that Finn was a Level 6. His Dexterity stat far surpassed Tione's. This was the innate talent of the Pallum race: weaker than dwarves in strength, slower than beastmen in speed, and less magical than elves, they specialized in the flexibility of their small bodies.
Finn held the thread with two fingers, manipulating the marble to pass through tier after tier. The tens of thousands of spectators held their breath, not daring to make a sound. Controlling a marble through the upper tiers with a thread was actually more difficult than the spin technique, but its ceiling was higher, offering a sliver of hope to reach the bottom.
Like he was clearing a dungeon, Finn cautiously navigated the thread. After breaking through several tiers, the thread became tangled and segmented by the various holes. Sweat began to bead on Finn's forehead. His body remained as still as an ancient tree, unmoved by the wind. He had to keep his hand as steady as a mountain; the slightest tremor would cause the marble on the lower levels to deviate. The mental strain was immense.
Finally, the marble broke through to the second tier!
"OOHHHHHHHH!"
A deafening roar erupted from the stands. The gods and adventurers were ecstatic. Looking at the tower now, the silk thread passed through level after level of holes, connecting to the marble on the second tier like a constellation in the sky. Finn held the end of the thread as if he held the stars themselves!
Finn made one last effort, but after ten minutes, he couldn't break through the final tier. This was the limit of the thread tactic. Each time the thread passed through a hole, the difficulty of manipulation increased exponentially. At the second tier, there were already seven segments of friction.
"That's as far as I can go," Finn said, lightly wiping the sweat from his brow.
The crowd gave him a thunderous standing ovation. Finn's display of the "Strongest Dexterous Hand" in Orario earned everyone's respect. "Does anyone else want to try?" Finn asked his Familia.
The members of the Loki Familia shook their heads like rattles. Are you kidding? Finn's Dexterity was the highest in the group; if he couldn't clear the nine-tier tower, no one else stood a chance. Riveria might have reached the second tier as well, but Gareth couldn't handle such delicate work.
The situation became awkward. Tione reached the fifth tier, Finn reached the second, and only the Astraea Familia remained. To be honest, everyone thought it was over. No one could beat Finn's score. Even if the Freya Familia were here, the person who designed this tower clearly didn't intend for anyone to win. The only way was to fill the entire tower with marbles until they reached the bottom. In terms of pure skill, Finn had peaked.
Ryu shot a worried look at Roy. She knew the boy's pride. Failure today seemed inevitable, and she feared how he would take it. Failure in the dungeon was one thing, but with tens of thousands of people watching, could a young boy's ego handle such public humiliation? Even if losing to Finn wasn't shameful, Finn was the ceiling of the world's Dexterity stats.
Facing Ryu's concern, Roy returned a confident smile. He had a plan.
Finn looked at Roy with an apologetic gaze; he had gotten a bit too caught up in the moment and had accidentally put the boy in an impossible position. Just as Finn was about to smooth things over, Roy laughed.
"I don't have the sophisticated techniques of Captain Finn, but I have a method that is very simple—any child could do it."
Hearing this, everyone leaned in. You still have a move?
Roy didn't keep them in suspense. He pushed his wheelchair to the tower. The bottom base of the tower was detachable so the marbles could be retrieved. Under Roy's instruction, Ryu removed the bottom tier and coated the surface with a layer of honey. Then, the tower was reassembled.
Roy asked the Ganesha members for a stag beetle. He tied the marble to the beetle with a fine thread, ensuring it didn't hinder its movement, and placed the beetle inside the tower.
At first, the beetle was confused. But when the scent of honey drifted up from the bottom, it immediately locked onto its goal. It crawled through the holes, tier after tier, until it reached the very bottom.
"..."
Looking at the beetle happily enjoying the honey and the small marble sitting on the bottom tier, the arena fell into a deathly silence. Tens of thousands of people were dumbstruck. The Loki Familia felt like they were about to cough up blood. Tione and Finn's methods were so high-end that people had forgotten the simplest logic.
It was as if they had gone to a high-end restaurant where everyone was using silver forks to eat tiny, exquisite portions, and then Roy pulled out some black bread, wolfed it down, and declared himself full. But the rule of the game was: whoever is full first wins. No one cared if the food came from the restaurant or not.
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Danmachi : Starting with an Elf (405 Chapter – Ongoing)
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