Arnetta could feel that the sudden cold was brought about by a foreign entity in her domain of stopped time. She knew no person in her immediate vicinity was strong enough to shrug off the effects of her ability and make her feel the insane pressure she felt at the moment, no one except the ugly spirit.

'Tch! I forgot he controls the mannequin.' Arnetta said to herself. Even though the spirit had broken through her ability, she felt she had nothing to worry about, she had not been swinging the bats continuously for no reason.

Arnetta had recently discovered something peculiar about her ability to pause time, it all happened at the entrance examination when she delivered her last blow to Siris. Initially she had only been glad that she won, but later that day when she reviewed the battle in her mind, she found something strange.

When she delivered her last blow to Siris, although it was on the head and she had hit him all around his body repeatedly beforehand, she was exhausted, injured, bleeding and on the brink of suffocation, how then did a feeble hit to the head knock him out.

After a lot of contemplation, she remembered that just before the crystal she was holding hit Siris' head, she turned off her ability, but that still didn't make sense. So she did numerous tests – mainly on rocks and trees in the forest and plains around Askesis and found out the answer.

To the outside world, the time that passes during the activation of Arnetta's ability was about one third of a second, but to Arnetta, the time she could spend in her domain of paused time flow ranges from as low as a second to as long as a minute, depending on how much physical, mental or spiritual energy she exerts.

And since she and anything connected to her by touch could move freely within the paused state of time all of the momentum, velocity and force gathered during the state of paused time will be exerted forcefully at once the moment time resumes it normal flow.

That is to say, if a baseball is thrown into the air and Arnetta pauses time as the ball gets within the appropriate range to hit it with a bat, and then she swings her bat furiously – without hitting the ball – continuously for about fifty seconds and then does one last swing at the baseball, deactivating her ability just before the bat hits the ball, the ball will be hit with the combined force and momentum of all the swings she performed within the time of paused time flow. That was how she knocked out Siris.

Although the same thing will happen if she just hit the same spot on an object continuously, the former requires less physical exertion than the latter. That was why she activated her ability before she got in close to the mannequin, so she could continue rotating the already fast spinning bats and deliver a fatal blow to the mannequin.

She decided to ignore Eyeball and continue with her attack, the spinning bat in her right hand went for the mannequin's head and the one in her left went for its right side. Just before the bats hit, she deactivated her ability.

Arnetta's face darkened a second later. The instant she deactivated her ability the mannequin jumped backwards, the first bat aimed for its head missed completely and the other one hit the leg instead.

Arnetta had calculated that the spinning force plus accumulated momentum of the bat was enough the break the bones of an average person, but to her surprise the leg of the mannequin simply bent in the shape of the bat. Just like it split its arm before Karmesínrot's sword hit, the mannequin's leg contorted to avoid damage.

The mannequin did a back flip, landed and skid backwards, away from Arnetta, it's leg inflating back into shape. Eyeball giggled creakily and Arnetta shot him a glance of deep loathing.

'Time for plan B I guess.' Arnetta sighed. Her plan A was to see if she could finish of the mannequin in one shot, plan B however was to provide Mr. Herman with the data he required to formulate her training plan while breaking the mannequin down little by little.

For the next couple of minutes, Arnetta continued to attack the mannequin regularly with the bats without using any special techniques or abilities, then she stopped all of a sudden and turned to Herman.

"Have you gotten everything you need, sir?" Arnetta asked in a laid back manner.

"Yes I have, but i was hoping you would want to at least break one of the mannequin's limbs even if you can't destroy it." Herman replied, a bit disappointed.

"Oh... its destroyed already." Arnetta replied, earning confused looks from most of the crowd, even Herman looked at her confusion.

Seeing the reaction from the instructor and her classmates, Arnetta sighed and threw one of the bats in her hand at the mannequin. The mannequin caught it easily, well within everyone's expectations.

"You fell for it!" Siris shouted at Eyeball, and before anyone could ask what it was the spirit fell for, the bat the mannequin caught burst into dust and the mannequin started to decay likewise, from its arm to the rest of its body.

"Wow! I did not see that coming," Herman said. "Another fatality!"

"Clever girrrrl." Eyeball said creakily.

Arnetta glared at Eyeball and proceeded to go back to where she was before stepping to take on the mannequin, grabbing a seat on the porch of the wooden building.

"Okay, who is going next?" Herman looked to the remaining eight yet to take their turn on the mannequin.

"Hmmn hmnn!" Jacquez cleared his throat. "I'll go next."

"Nice! Standby for Eyeball to reconstruct the mannequin, you can help yourself to any wooden weapon of your choice." Herman said, gesturing to the pile the group of students dropped earlier.

Jacquez walked to the pile and picked a long wooden pole that was pointed at one end and round at the other. He sat on the floor, picked up a stone with a sharp edge and started to carve things all over the pole from top to bottom very quickly, so that by the time Eyeball had finished making another mannequin he was done.

Jacquez went over to the space where the mannequin was to be sparred and immediately he got there, the mannequin dashed toward him. Apparently, Eyeball had learned his lesson from underestimating the students and giving them the advantage of the first move.

Jacquez seeing the mannequin running towards him began to grow in size, and by the time the mannequin was halfway to him, he was over five metres tall. The mannequin was unfazed and continued towards him, but unexpectedly, when the mannequin was just a few feet from Jacquez, he jumped.

Shrinking midair, Jacquez's velocity increased and when he was about to reach the ground he stretched out his right arm which increased in size rapidly to about twice the size of the mannequin. Jacquez landed with his arm, while aiming to crush the mannequin at the same time.

The mannequin escaped by a hair breath, sacrificing the whole right side of its body – excluding the head – but even so it hopped back away from Jacquez, putting about a distance of 3 metres between them before it fell down.

Jacquez scratched the pointed tip of the pole on the sandy ground and ran a semi circle around the mannequin before dashing toward it. The mannequin jumped up immediately, it had regenerated its whole right leg and was beginning to regenerate the rest.

It tried to run but Jacquez grew big and jumped again, landing right in front of the mannequin, before the mannequin could react he shrunk and hit the mannequin with his fist. The mannequin flew backwards a feet before hitting the ground, followed by six holes poked into it with the pointed tip of Jacquez's pole in its left bicep, both thighs, chest and abdomen respectively.

The mannequin rolled over backwards and drew back to the place it had lain previously, it's missing right, upper half began to regenerate immediately. Jacquez ran a circle around it and began to close in on the mannequin in a spiral while scratching the pointed tip of his pole repeatedly on the ground.

The mannequin didn't bother to run as it knew Jacquez could enlarge and close in on it in the blink of an eye, so it waited till Jacquez got within its reach so it could execute its attack perfectly.

But unexpectedly, when Jacquez was almost at arms length from the mannequin, he stopped and jumped backwards then smiled and scratched the pointed tip of the pole in his hand against the ground once more.

Jacquez stepped back quickly and the sand around the mannequin in about a two metre radius started to glow slightly green and vibrate.

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