Slowly, Raze's eyes started to flutter open. The area around him was dark, apart from a faintly lit orange light coming from behind him.
He lifted his upper body off the ground and looked ahead, where he could see a wall.
"I'm still here; we're still in this underground assessment," Raze thought, slowly clenching his fist. As he did, he held on tightly.
His veins were popping on his hand, and he felt like he could crush anything beneath it.
"This is what it feels like then, to reach the 6th stage! The pinnacle of the Initial stage! But I guess from here on, it's going to be tough, just like before, it will be a bottleneck.
"I'm sure they don't separate the stages from Initial to Middle for no reason. Maybe it's best if I speak to Dame about it since he's at the sixth stage."
The whole thing was quite exciting for Raze in a number of ways. When he was going up the star levels as a mage, he had already experienced it before.