Speed Is King

"El'Taras! EL'TARAS YOU OLD COOT!" Lady Balastiera shouted loudly. "Damn him and his damned one way omnipresent communication skills!"

"Red. Please work with Lady Balastiera here to get my armor done as soon as possible. I will be unavailable for two weeks to train. Lady Balastiera, my life is in your hands." Elliot smiled at her and turned around to train with Gilgamar without even waiting for her reply.

Strangely though, she did as he said rather obediently.

"Strange. What's her relationship with El'Taras? Why is she so obedient to him?" Elliot wondered as he walked away.

But he didn't dwell on it for too long. He had many things to do, and time was running out for him.

Night came and went, and soon it was morning of the next day. Elliot had spent the night fully engrossed in assimilating with the mastery of the Runes he had received from the Red Dragon soul as well as studying the Runes he got from Autumn.

Just as dawn broke over the horizon…

[Ding!]

[It is time for the first Monthly Race to begin!]

[Congratulations! You have been selected at random to participate in the race!]

Elliot rolled his eyes even as he grimaced at the timing of the race.

It just had to come right before he started his training to master The Broken Dragon sword technique which Tyrius created? Damn it all!

"And selected at random? Ha! If I was truly selected at random then I will eat my sword for breakfast!" Elliot snorted.

[The first monthly race will be modelled after a popular game in the early 2000s called Daytona.]

[You will be teleported into a race car already in motion.]

[You will gain control of the race car 10 seconds after teleportation.]

[The race will begin after the three seconds are up.]

[Drive one thousand kilometers and do so with with your race car intact to qualify for the main race.]

[You will be teleported to the real race track after that.]

[Please cross the finish line first to win.]

[This is a cars-only race.]

[Elemental energies are locked down.]

[Good luck.]

[Standby for teleportation.]

[3]

[2]

[1]

Blink.

Elliot found himself within a comfortable race car that had extremely modern and state-of-the-art controls.

A square-bottomed steering wheel, a sleek 8-speed gearbox and racing car seats that hugged his body perfectly.

And by the sound of it, the car had a heck of an engine.

Elliot looked out around him, and his expression turned very grave.

His car was but one in a literal sea of cars! All the way to the left, right, front and back were cars as far as his eyes could see!

He was on a massive road that stretched many kilometers in every direction.

"Five thousand cars. At least. It could be six to seven thousand." He muttered to himself. "Thankfully the cars are spaced quite far apart. Five meters all around. Very good."

However, his voice was completely lost in the ear-drum-destroying din that so many thousands of race cars were making!

Even with earplugs, the sound was still nearly unbearably loud.

Wait, earplugs? He glanced down and realized that he had teleported into the race car with a complete racing suit on, with a helmet, ear plugs, gloves and even racing shoes.

[5 seconds]

[4 seconds]

[3 seconds]

[2 seconds]

[1 second]

[Begin.]

Instantly, his steering wheel came alive and he could sense that he had gained control of a real beast of a car.

Being a being with superhuman reflexes and control, Elliot had no fear at all over the unknown specifications of the car.

In fact, when he focused his attention completely on driving, all the other cars around him seemed to slow down.

He smashed his foot down on the accelerator and the car, which was cruising steadily at sixty kilometers per hour suddenly leapt ahead!

All around him, almost every single car did the exact same thing.

However, there were some that didn't and immediately, chaos erupted as crashes occur EVERY WHERE!

BOOOM!! BAMMMM! CRASHH! CRASHHH!!

VROOOOO-VROOOOOMMM!!!!

Elliot deftly maneuvered his car around the massive crashes that took place and quickly left the starting region.

Around a thousand other cars had managed to do that as well, and every car had their pedals to the metal as they thundered down the road.

Boom!!!!

One car flipped after being fishtailed and exploded against another unsuspecting car somewhere behind him!

Boom!!

Boom!!

Booomm!!

Many, many more cars suffered the same fate before the number of cars stabilized at around eight hundred.

VROOOOOO!!!

Elliot shifted to third gear and his car leapt ahead once more as its engines screamed like so many banshees charging at a horde of delicious looking human beings!

Two hundred kilometers per hour.

VROOOOOO!

Gear four!

Three hundred kilometers per hour.

VROOOOOOOO!!!

Gear five!

Four hundred kilometers per hour.

Gear six!

Four hundred eighty kilometers per hour.

Gear seven!

Five hundred fifty kilometers per hour.

Gear eight!

Six hundred kilometers per hour!

The eight hundred cars ate up the kilometers rapidly as their engines roared with all their strength to quickly approach incredible top speed of approximately six hundred kilometers an hour.

And even at that speed, they would need almost two hours of constant driving to reach a thousand kilometers!

Elliot checked his information panel and realized that there was no fuel gauge.

"No need to worry about fuel huh? Good." Elliot said to himself.

His car was only one of the handful that had managed to smoothly reach gear eight and six hundred kilometers per hour within the few short minutes that passed.

In fact, Elliot was surprised that there were even four others who were able to do what he did.

For one thing, it took a lot of guts to drive that fast.

And for another, at that acceleration and at that speed, they were experiencing upwards of 4 Gs!

No normal person could suddenly experience that and not feel shocked to the point that they let go of their accelerator for a bit.

For them to reach 8th gear the same time as he did meant that they had perfectly shifted each gear and did so at full acceleration!

And that meant that the four of them were definitely not normal.

In fact, Elliot even suspected that they weren't human beings at all.