My Avatar Is Becoming the Final Boss-Chapter 4: Test

Still unsure whether others could see this thing, Ji Minghuan decided it was safer to go home and study it.
With that in mind, he tapped the “X” in the top-right corner. The system panel shrank into a gear icon and moved to the bottom right of his field of vision.
He stepped out from the secluded corner behind the teaching building, and before long, he had crossed the threshold of Lijing No. 5 High School and entered the bustling marketplace. It was peak traffic time, and crowds of people swarmed in like ants. The blaring horns seemed to carry a sweaty odor with them.
Finally spotting a small gap in the crowd, Ji Minghuan darted out like a nimble fish.
Instead of following the main road, he turned into an urban village.
Inside, he found a narrow, damp alley and turned into it. He could see air conditioning units housed in anti-theft cages, and clothes fluttering in the wind from the rooftop. A light rain had just fallen at noon, and puddles still lingered on the ground, with one or two grayish-black cigarette butts floating in them.
Seeing no one around and no surveillance equipment in the alley, Ji Minghuan leaned against the wall.
He raised his right hand, staring quietly at his fingers. “If I remember correctly, this body’s esper ability is...”
The next second, Ji Minghuan’s five fingers curled slightly, and a jet-black binding restraint slithered out from his uniform sleeve like a snake, gliding over his wrist and slowly wrapping around his index finger.
“Just like I remembered,” he muttered to himself, staring at the restraint that seemed to have a life of its own, “this is Gu Wenyu’s esper ability.”
When the character memory loaded, it also naturally brought with it the memory of this ability. In the setup, the time “Gu Wenyu” awakened his esper powers was less than a month ago. His control over the binding restraint was only at a beginner level, and he hadn’t fully grasped the rules of the ability yet.
Even so, the body had muscle memory from repeated training with the ability.
Ji Minghuan didn’t need to consciously control it. As soon as a thought crossed his mind, his body reacted instinctively, and the binding restraint followed suit.
Leaning against the wall of the alley, Ji Minghuan quietly recalled “Gu Wenyu’s” early experiments with his powers. A moment later, he raised an eyebrow, as if he had found something in the memory that Gu Wenyu himself had never realized.
He lifted his backpack with one hand, held it over his head, and let the black restraint stretch out from his sleeve. Releasing his grip, the heavy backpack immediately dropped toward the back of his head.
But surprisingly, Ji Minghuan didn’t feel any sudden impact on his head.
Instead, the restraint wrapped around his wrist suddenly sank a bit, its surface caving downward.
Ji Minghuan scratched his head, eyes fixed with interest on the backpack that had fallen to the ground. “That’s pretty fun.”
Indeed, even though the backpack had just hit him hard, his head wasn’t affected at all.
Just as he suspected: the binding restraint could share the force acting on his body, and during the transfer of that force, it would be weakened to a certain extent.
If Ji Minghuan’s body was a “sink,” and the force he endured was “water flow,” then the binding restraint was like a few small “pools” dug beside the sink—when water hit the sink, it would immediately flow into the side pools, and during the diversion, the soil would absorb some of the water, reducing the total amount.
With that in mind, he realized he could use the mechanism of the binding restraint to move at high speed atop tall buildings without risk. Even if he slipped and fell, the restraint could absorb the impact of landing.
Basically, it acted as a safety cushion.
Of course, this only worked if the impact force didn’t exceed the restraint’s maximum capacity. If it did, and the restraint shattered, he’d probably be a pile of bones.
In Gu Wenyu’s memory, he had never realized this. He once jumped from five meters high without injury, mistakenly thinking his body had become tougher after awakening his powers—when in fact, the restraint had absorbed 90% of the impact at the moment of landing.
That said, his physical strength had indeed improved significantly after the awakening.
Thinking of this, Ji Minghuan blinked suddenly. “Right, so what if it’s not an instantaneous impact, but a continuous force?”
He summoned all his restraints, letting the black bands swirl around him. From afar, he looked like a foreign object trapped in a black vortex.
Raising an eyebrow, Ji Minghuan tried to continuously transfer the gravity acting on his body to the restraints. Then he tapped the ground lightly with the tip of his shoe.
With just that small push, he shot into the air, effortlessly clearing halfway up the wall, reaching a height of four meters.
Then he drifted down like a falling leaf, his body feeling as light as if he were floating in space.
“So it works with gravity too.”
Landing on the soles of his feet, Ji Minghuan retracted the restraints into his sleeves, a hint of surprise flashing in his eyes.
Only now was he certain that the previous move worked not just on instantaneous force, but also continuous force. Which meant—Ji Minghuan could use the mechanism of the restraint to reduce the effect of gravity on his body, making himself lighter and gaining superior mobility.
As long as he let the restraints continuously share the gravity acting on him, and... as the gravity transferred to the restraints would also be slightly reduced in the process, the total “gravity” acting on his body plus the restraints would drop. As a result, his body would feel more than twice as light.
But this also came at a cost.
It was easy to exceed the restraint’s load limit. Ji Minghuan could already feel that after just a short period of sharing gravity, the restraint around his wrist was starting to heat up.
“If I keep this up too long, won’t the restraint catch fire?” Ji Minghuan mused. “If it really does catch fire, could I use it like a flaming whip?”
He paused. “But if I do that, I’ll be the first one it burns.”
After testing the basic rules of the restraint, Ji Minghuan picked up the backpack he had tossed aside.
Standing at the mouth of the alley, he diverted gravity to all the restraints on his body.
With a leap, his figure shot upward, reaching four to five meters high. Then the restraints wrapped around his fingers extended outward, grabbing onto the anti-theft grille of an air conditioning unit. At that moment, he raised his right hand sharply, and gripping the restraint connected to the grille, his slim figure swung forward unsteadily.
Like an acrobat in a circus.
He drew a graceful arc through the air, flying past rows of rusted anti-theft grilles. The buzz of the air conditioner was drowned out by the sound of air being sliced.
As the restraint recoiled to his side, Ji Minghuan fell again. But before hitting the ground, he extended another restraint, tightly wrapping around a construction lift in the alley. Grabbing it, he used the force to swing up again, quickly leaping over a billboard directly ahead—like a storm petrel flying over the waves.
His body, freed from the constraints of gravity, flew through the twilight like a bird.
With just two attempts, Ji Minghuan had completely mastered the technique.
The dusk was blood-red. The pitch-black restraints danced like ink in the air, latching onto one anti-theft grille after another. The school-uniformed boy swung through the cramped alley using the restraints, and at the alley’s end, his thin body dropped from over ten meters high. His jacket flared like a bird’s tail feathers.
As he fell, the restraints converged toward him, like a torrent of black light swirling behind him, crashing down like a rainstorm.
The puddle in the alley grew larger in his pupils, its reflection expanding endlessly.
The moment his soles touched the ground, Ji Minghuan diverted the rising impact into every restraint, precise and flawless like a machine.
He landed smoothly—his knees didn’t even bend.
Instead, the restraints around him drooped lifelessly, like dying snakes, sagging at his feet.
In the dead silent alley, he straightened his back and took a slow breath of the murky air.
Then, eyes downcast, he pulled the burning, limp restraints back into his sleeves, adjusted the slipping backpack strap back onto his shoulder, stuffed his hands into his uniform pockets, and walked out of the narrow alley as if nothing had happened.
Bathed in the glow of the setting sun, his silhouette slowly disappeared into the noise of the city.