As the hours passed, the night finally arrived at this matrix, the newly built fort became much livelier when the students built a fire in the center of it and began to cook and talk. The students' morale was low because of the difficulties they had to face during the test, they started to disappear from his mind when they enjoyed this moment of relaxation, being protected by a simple structure was enough to make them feel safe.
I was at the top of the wall with Hilda, Ingredi, Amael, Vonin and another dwarf who still hasn't learned the name, I feel that the chances that these students will participate in my daring plan are getting bigger. Convincing them after they've experienced a good night's sleep inside the fort will be much easier, I turn to Ingredi and Vonin who are focused on judging the viability of my plan and whether or not they will participate in it.
"So? What do you think of my plan?"
The first to come out of his thinking state was Vonin.
"To call it a plan is a big understatement, I think the best way to describe it would be 'how can we destroy a test.' Your crazy and risky plan is to basically challenge all the examiners by ignoring the rules of the test while pretending you're being fair in fighting the tyranny of the elves. I believe he has a lot of students who will join you, even if they think they're going to get kicked out of the test because of you."
"The elves are not only taking advantage of the unfair advantage they are having during this test which has already annoyed many students, but they are also being very idiotic in stepping on pride by wantonly humiliating other students during the test. There is not even a nobleman who likes to be stepped on by another, the elves are behaving in this test as if they had won it, I believe that all students who are not part of the group will want to attack them and that includes me. I completely support your plan and even if we're penalized for it, I'm still going to leave here happy after I beat the shit out of the elves."
Well, Vonin is very excited about my plan and doesn't even care what consequences participating in it can bring, I hope more students and leaders are like him. It will be so easy to finish this test when I have several dozen students sticking to my plan, I will have a small army to conquer all enemies and pass this test.
"Ulric, I'm still scared that when we move students the examiners will make us a target for other students. I feel like a good chance that students who aren't here can join the elves just to attack us, the examiners will probably make sure they fight us by promising that by beating us they will pass the test."
"This is a very good concern, Ingredi, I also considered this answer from the examiners, and to reduce the chance that we are outnumbered against the elves and anyone else who joins with them I came up with a simple solution. Examiners can declare us offenders when we come out of that matrix as a large group, then and just do that until we have an army formed with the majority of students."
"Students are already coming here, in the last few hours five students have already arrived at this matrix. Just wait longer and maybe send a team to call even more students here, the number of students will increase and I doubt that one of them will want to leave after realizing that this is the safest place in the maze to protect themselves from the elves and test examiners."
"Ulric is right Ingredi, before we left this matrix as a unit only the examiners can't do anything against us, but also the problem of the elves attacking us here, even with the advantage of defending a fort the fight won't be easy. Flora is a very powerful mage, even though she is on the edge of the final stage of the gray core the power of her flames is already comparable to strong mages from the green core, this strong will only be able to survive some of her blows if we keep pouring the elemental energy of wizards and warriors to strengthen the structure of the fort."
"Is she that strong? I know her family is betting heavily on her success, but her being able to break the power of her category completely is a very difficult feat to do. I myself can barely hurt higher-ranking people relying on a higher-level strong weapon than mine, and that was when I was in the black core, with every level we go up this feat gets harder and harder."
"This happens because of the special talent she has and the characteristics she has an affinity for. It's a well-known fact that her fire element has a great ability to increase the temperature and bond with her light element, I don't know exactly what and what special talent she has since this is a secret hidden by her family, but she is famous for the white flames she is able to summon because of that talent and affinities, these flames not only extremely hot but also have the ability to burn other people's aura and mana."
"Hitting her flames head-on the aura and mana of her attacks will be devoured by her flames, and it's really hard to beat her without relying on the numerical advantage, but I know your flames have a flaw that isn't well known. The more flames she summons her mana consumption and elemental energy increases in a non-proportional way, the cost of her spell is very complicated to handle, my mother told me the best way to defeat her is to force her to summon a big number of white flames at the same time."
"I had never heard of her weakness before, but if Ingredi's mother is right our fort will be much more useful than I expected. My biggest fear was that she would bombard the fort with her white flames that's why I insisted the mages strengthen the walls with elemental energy and not mana, but if she can't do that the elves will go to great lengths to break through the defenses of the strong, aside from Flora most of their mages don't have a raw destructive power, as far as I know the most common offensive element among them is the wind."
"The fortified walls will be more than enough to stop bullets and wind blade; it looks like the fort we made will be more than enough to discourage the elves from attacking. The best scenario would be for them to appear and retreat without fighting, this would be perfect to convince the students to join my plan and it will give us time to go after more students, it would be a victory without even a negative point since they're none of ours. side would be hurt."
"I doubt that will happen, Ulric. If the elves see the fort they will attack, they might even lose in the end and have to retreat, but I have no way for them to retreat without testing the fort's defense, if they just retreated, they would probably think they might be tricked by a fort. of clay that would crumble if they attacked."
"I didn't think about it before, Ingredi, but maybe we could create a weak layer over the walls of the fort just to give the impression that the walls are going to crumble with the elves' probing attacks. If they fall into the trap and move forward, we may end up injuring or capturing some of them, but that will only do if they attack us with few people, if they all appear at once at most, we might be lucky to hurt a few to slightly increase our chances of defeat them"
"I'll start making this layer of fragile earth over the walls of the fort when my mana and elemental energy are done recovering, Ulric, but I doubt hurting them will help us much they'll just retreat and heal, as far as I know to a life element black core elf in this test, if we don't eliminate it, the elves will have a healing ability greater than ours, battle of attrition won't be a very good strategy for us."
"Do they even have a life element wizard? Don't you even have one of these on our side?"
"I think there are only two life element mages left at the institute, but I think one of them might be here in the matrix, but I'm not sure he's really here Ulric. Most of them go to temples or schools that specialize in training healers, life element mages only go to institute to help their families, or they are interested in using their element for battle, but this is a very complicated matter. To many taboos in the offensive magic of the life element, ingredi must know more than I do about this aria of magic, I only know of some taboo spells of the life element."
"As far as I know Marcus and Luna are not participating in this test. So, we can only find life element warriors, but they also won't help much more than other warriors, they can only heal themselves and not others."
Our discussion was interrupted when a large portal appeared at the edge of the matrix.
"Looks like we have company, I just hope they're not elves."