Touching Grass

Even for Zain, who had his fair share of experience in the virtual world, the scene before him was a first.

A meadow of pure white, going as far as his eyes could see. It was white, and yet it wasn’t blinding, nor was it cold by any means. The sensation of rustling and the earthy smell that immediately came to his nose suggested that it was indeed a grassy field that he stood on, but the usual greenery just wasn’t there.

From afar, Zain could see various dots of human figures, seemingly as confused as he was. Bringing his gaze closer, to his own body, the young man realized his usual clothes had been replaced with a slick bodysuit with a predominant black and red scheme – the latter running on his limbs while the former took most of his torso. And while the other contestants were harder to see, Zain could make out the same kind of clothing for them, but their colors vary a lot – from orange, yellow, green, blue,… but not white.

“Welcome, everyone!” A giant screen popped up in the middle of the meadow, and Bryan soon enthusiastically waved his hand on the other side. “To the first round of the tournament!”

After a few seconds to gather everyone’s attention, the suited man continued.

“As you can see here, you’re all standing on this completely white field. Now, if you all would raise your hand to your face for a moment…”

Following the instruction, a holographic, mechanical-like circle hovered on Zain’s palm, shining the same color as his suit – a bright red. Quickly raising his other hand, he realized it was the same thing.

“This white meadow will be your canvas, and your paintbrush will be your hands!” Before giving the contestants the chance to ask, Bryan announced with excitement. “The first round is a contest of speed! Using your hands, dye the meadow in your color! Just touching the grass is fine, you can even just graze it and it still would count! After the time limit of 60 minutes, the top 16 colors will proceed to the second round!”

“Wait, that’s too many people eliminated!” From somewhere, a voice called out. “We had like 200 people gathered just now!”

“512, but yes. The competition only has three rounds, my dear player,” Bryan, unfazed by the complaint, answered. “So we have to eliminate more than just a few each time. But if you’re planning to win the grand prize, you should be aiming to beat everyone around here, right?”

In front of the foolproof reasoning, the one that complained didn’t have anything else to say.

“I’m glad we’ve come to an understanding. Now… On your mark!”

As the words left his mouth, Bryan disappeared from the screen. Replacing him was a giant countdown number, starting from five.

“Five…”

“Four…”

Zain slowly lowered his body and touched the ground with his hands while leaning forward – the starting pose of a track-and-field athlete.

“Three…”

“Two…”

As Zain’s hands pressed onto the grassy field, the holographic circles on his palms spun wildly, and true to Bryan’s words, the grass under Zain’s hands was dyed red.

“One…”

“First round, start!”

A large buzz echoed through the field, and Zain dashed off as fast as he could. With each step, the young man swung one of his arms downward, swiping over a large area of the meadow in front of him. With each movement of his arms, a crimson crescent field showed itself. The screen, which now had shown the leaderboard of each color as well as the countdown timer, had the color red slowly but surely growing bigger in the pie chart.

However, as soon as a minute had passed, Zain started to notice a precarious situation.

While he had shown progress, his color didn’t so much as gain any significant lead. In fact, his contestant number and initial rank in the leaderboard was 200, but by now, it had only increased by around 60 – good, but nowhere near enough to advance. And it wasn’t hard for Zain to find out the reason, too – the arm-swinging he attempted to cover the largest area he could had backfired. With so many excess movements, he was considerably slowed down.

The young man decided to stop for a moment to figure out another strategy for himself.

“Just running around swinging like this isn’t gonna help…” Zain mumbled. “What should I try now? Light touches as I run? No, that wouldn’t really work either… it’s the act of bending down to touch the ground in the first place that was slowing me down…”

A lone person standing in the middle of an open field was practically asking for an attack. Of course, that was the case for a normal battle, while this was a tournament – a fair-and-square competition, so there was little chance that it could happen…

Not.

Bruce, under the Bryan disguise, was smart in his moves. Never during the explanation did he mention anything about attacking other contestants, meaning that he had assumed it was allowed in the tournament. Naturally, this would attract quite a few greedy souls to take advantage of the situation and target their fellow competitors instead.

Zain was in this exact situation, and so, it was only natural that a couple of ill-looked goons jumped at him. However, with his training and experience in battle, Zain had practically developed an instinctual reaction against any danger.

The goons weren’t even in his vision, but the young man could still perfectly detect their strikes – an uppercut from the left, and a roundhouse kick from the back, and respond accordingly. Lightly turning to his left, Zain caught both the punch and the kick with his hands, and before his opponents could do anything, he’d already thrown them away like a pair of rags.

A smaller screen popped up in front of Zain.

“Look, it was self-defense…” the young man explained as soon as Bryan appeared on the screen. Contrary to his worry, however, the disguised former warden only let out a laugh:

“No, no, it’s fine! I just want to remind you that the clock was still ticking, and you haven’t colored any more land. Better get on to it, my dear gentleman!”

“Hmph,” as the screen disappeared, Zain couldn’t help but let out a snort at Bruce’s response. “Is he that scared of me not making it to the next round? Once a bullhead, always a…”

“Bullhead…” his own words seemed to have struck an idea within Zain. Quickly, the man glanced afar to check on his competition.

There were a lot of ways for contestants to get their respective colors onto the grass. Naturally, the most common method was to swing their arms at the ground every few steps that they took, but it was not an efficient plan. Among the top scorers, most were content with just touching, while others had crazier ideas.

One of them was not too far away from Zain, and the guy was doing repeated 360-flips, always landing on the ground with his hands. Another just did handstand-walking entirely. Another took repeated leaps, with each leap touching the ground with their hands first to gather more force. Everyone had different methods, but Zain had soon seen the key point in all of them.

No matter what you do, maintaining contact between the hands and the ground is a must, and the movement should aid your pace, not slow it down…

“Then this should do,” Zain let out a confident smirk and raised his hand to the sky.

“Wait!” A voice called out to him from behind. As the young man turned around, a dead-tired Mike ran towards him as fast as he could.

“Don’t… do that… yet!” The boy gasped for his life as he scolded his new friend. “The guy’s watching us!”

“He knew who I am already; why bother hiding?” Zain raised his brows, but Mike didn’t back down from his warning:

“And the others too! Who knows if they might see you!”

“… Tch, fair point,” Zain reluctantly clicked his tongue and retracted his arm. “I’ll just do it without Bitleo then.”

“Good to hear…” Mike let out a sigh of relief, before tilting his head in confusion once more. “But what were you trying to do with the suit?”

“… Don’t you dare laugh.”

“O…kay?” The claim only served to put fuel into the fire. “I guess I won’t.”

Zain took a deep breath. It was true that he could have just done it without his nanobots. It would also be a much safer way to protect his other identity. But during the time he had been living with Mitch and Mike, the inner child that was thought to have died within Zain resurfaced again, and along with it, his teenage tendencies returned in the most unsuspecting ways.

At least with the suit, I’d looked less humiliating, damn it…

Taking a deep breath, Zain prepared himself… and got down on all four.

Mike was close to bursting out with laughter, but a death glare from the young man next to him reminded him to shut his mouth if he wanted to live. And not a word was uttered afterwards.

However, Mike’s jaw still dropped to the floor as the boy witnessed the events that transpired.

Shame aside, quadrupeds were known to be faster and more agile than humans. By lowering his center of gravity, reducing his air resistance thanks to a lower height, and distributing his body’s forces among his four limbs, Zain was able to achieve a much higher speed than before. And since his hands were already on the ground, their movements didn’t hinder his speed at all. If anything, they were now his greatest asset in gaining ahead of his opponents, and it showed on the scoreboard.

70. 80. 100. 130. 150. Zain’s rank kept on increasing, and soon enough, he was already among the top 20 contestants, and still with half the time remaining. However, things weren’t so smooth-sailing for the young man, as he soon ran into his greatest adversary of the tournament.

The two men had the same idea, and the exact same pose, when they ran into each other. However, the number 1 player was much weirder with his cat-eared helmet still on his head.

“Never thought you’d be into this kind of stuff, Hero,” Leo chuckled.

“Speak for yourself, Contractor.”