Amusing

Ryu watched Empana slowly sink into a state of meditation. Quite quickly, the latter began to struggle, unable to make much progress forward. 

But Ryu could also tell that he was calm and unbothered. Rather than bucking up against the wall he faced, he pressed his palms against it and began to slowly push. 

His effort was consistent and though his progress was slow, he was making some. 

Though he obviously hadn't seen Empana go at it with any of the other barriers, Ryu was pretty confident that whether it was the earlier ones, or the coming later ones, they would all go pretty much the same way. 

Empana wouldn't give up. Rather, he would run out of time. Eventually he would have run into a bottleneck he simply couldn't press past at all, but Ryu didn't believe he would have the time to even reach that stage in the first place. 

'Lizard Demon Race…'

Ryu's thoughts spun as he began to piece together some of the information he had.