Chapter 14

Soon her 4th challenge began luckily this challenge was based on one's understanding in the laws of fire. She recognized this challenge immediately as she had encountered a similar one in her previous life when she was strengthening her foundations in laws of fire. There were two sets of torches, each set contained 5 torches, while one set of torches was lit and the other set was not, this acted as locking mechanism only when you could light the unlit torches with a flame of same purity and intensity as the lit torches placed next to it wold the door unlock. For some one who had yet to comprehend the laws of fire , he had to observe each flame and unlock its secrets. Robin quickly lit the the torches and proceeded to descend to the 4 th floor to face her 5th challenge. The 4th challenge barely took 15 minutes for Robin to complete.

The 4th floor was once again a circular room and like the first and second floor contained martial art stances but this time it was with fire. Apart from each stance being way more harder to copy physically she even needed to adjust the purity and intensity of her flame just by judging the glow of that lit up the stance, this floor contained 500 stances and under each stance there was puppet sitting in lotus position. Robin knew she will have to fight all 500 puppets but what she did not know was will she fight them all together or in waves, putting this thought in back of her mind she started to replicate each of the 500 stances. While practicing she realized that this martial art could also be used while wielding a weapon of her choice and also this was the best martial arts she had learned that utilized externalized fire Qi. As soon as she completed the 500 stances in 250 seconds, 50 of the the 500 attacked, each of these puppets were 10 times stronger than the one on second floor, but this did not phase Robin as she too had grown a lot stronger than when she was on the second floor. Now that she could externalize fire Qi she could use a lot of auxiliary moves along with the martial arts she just learnt. She defeated the 50 in an instant just by producing flames while doing a roundhouse kick while standing. Another 50 joined the first 50 now and the puppets seemed to have grown stronger than before, but it did not matter and she took them all out with another aoe attack.

Now another 150 puppets joined the fight, and all 250 puppets surrounded Robin, having profound insights Robin knew how to make controlled explosions, all she had to do was compress the fire Qi to the maximum and suddenly release the compressive force allowing the fire Qi to freely expand.

Utilizing this principle she summoned the fire lily petals and implemented her thoughts on the petals , to her surprise the petals just disappeared and on the backs of each puppet a fire lily bloomed and just as Robin gave the command the fire lilies exploded blowing each of the puppet into pieces.

Just different part of the puppet were flying around the remaining 250 puppets stood up and as if some one had hit the rewind button, all the pieces of the other 250 puppets started flying back and attaching itself as it was before the explosion. She could feel that each puppet had strengthened once again and this time each puppet had atleast 50% of her strength. Even though she was stronger than a single puppet , the puppets had strength in numbers. As soon as Robin assumed fighting pose all 500 puppets charged towards her, Robin using her observation haki dodged the incoming flurry of attacks and started to counter and she started to take out the puppets as and when they came. With the help of newly learnt martial art and the fighting instincts she had honed for an entire lifetime, supported by observation haki, she defeated each and every puppet. As the last puppet fell the exit to the floor opened, while she was informed that she had taken 50 days to complete 5th challenge. She now had stayed in the tower for 150 days she now about 32 days left to complete the tower if she wanted to do the bonus content. After some self introspection Robin realized she was almost at an verge of breakthrough and if current her had faced the Ice Man she could easily wipe the floor with him.

When she reached the fifth floor there was a puppet already standing in the center in a fighting stance, as she was getting closer to the puppet, the puppet began to transform and with in few seconds the puppet had transformed to look exactly like Robin.