Time: 2 hours and 59 minutes before the individual examination was over.
Kaze found himself in an unfamiliar location right after the teleportation happened. He was now surrounded by tress and greenery, somewhere in the middle of the forest. Right behind him located a random wooden cabin. The school decided to add small location markers like the cabin behind Kaze to add variety to the examination scenario. For example, waterfalls and small caves were also considered an addition to the grounds.
"Hmm, so the exam has already started," Kaze sighed, taking out his map.
Judging from the rough estimation of the map he had, it wasn't easy to determine where his location was at yet. In order to do more scouting, it was crucial that he had to move around even though this meant he would have to encounter other students. The school purposely didn't include the function for students to locate where they were by imbuing the map with magic temporarily, for it would cause more troubles like trap-camping or ambushes.
The cabin was the only location that stood out to Kaze as of now. While the map had multiple buildings marked around him, it did not serve to tell which was a cabin or other sort of buildings. Due to this, Kaze decided to observe the cabin first. He might be able to find a few jewels hidden inside it too.
As expected, Kaze came out of the cabin with 30 points worth of jewels, not too bad for someone who just started right off the bat. It was only pure luck that he spawned next to a location like that, because he didn't know what sort of danger that he could encounter if things went wrongly.
"For now, let's start looking around," Kaze smiled, the jewels disappearing into his bracelet and accumulating his points.
On Lunaria's end, she found herself within a denser part of the forest, which placed her in a slight disadvantage. Although it did help narrow down where she was on the map as there were only a few places which were marked as dense forest area, she was unable to move freely due to all of the leaves and bushes in the way. This was why most people chose to avoid the dense forest no matter what, even if it meant missing out on some big rewards.
"Hmm, no using fire magic to burn the forest," Lunaria mumbled, remembering one of the rules. "If we did, we would have to put it out before the fire went out of control. Let's not take that route then,"
Unsheathing her sword, Lunaria skillfully wielded it such that she was able to chop off some leaves and branches so that she could make her way through. It was tough cutting wood with a sword since that wasn't the original use for a sword in the first place, but for someone of Lunaria's calibre it was nothing. With a simple wind magic enchantment onto her sword, she could effortlessly clear her way through with minimal effort. Lunaria also did not forget to look out for jewels or challenges while she was at it, although it was mostly a lost case due to how thick the shrubbery was.
With her precise control of her magic power, she was able to quickly get out of the vicinity of the dense forest. Even if what that came after was more forestry and didn't help with showing her location on the map, it still enabled Lunaria to not be bothered by her surroundings and concentrate on gathering points.
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"Yuuji-sama, we would like to team up," one of the students who spawned near Yuuji decided to enter into a negotiation as soon as the event started. "It would be more beneficial and covers more grounds."
"Mm, I'm on board with that," Yuuji nodded with a smile. "I don't think this is counted as cheating. After all, they would have explicitly stated for us to not team up if they didn't want this to happen. Most of the students would have chosen to cooperate with whoever they could find nearby as well."
"Ohh, we have Yuuji-sama with us," another student with a shield and sword sighed in relief. "How should we move about?"
"There's three of us, so maybe we can try to walk around and scout the area first," the sword student suggested. "Yuuji-sama, anything you want to try out?"
"No, scouting comes first," Yuuji quickly agreed. "Let's move. Try not to reveal yourselves to any student upon encounter, we don't know who is hostile and who is willing to cooperate."
With Yuuji forming a temporary team to move together, the other students of the year all made their move too. Time was running out fast, even with 3 hours they might not be able to achieve the full 500 points due to the enabled point snatching at the final hour. Hence, everyone knew that they had to gather as many points as possible during the first 2 hours.
To prevent students from stepping out of the examination zone, a barrier had been placed in a circular formation around the entire examination area that would stop students from leaving once they arrived at the edge. What's more, the barrier would gradually shrink every 20 minutes for the first 2 hours and 10 minutes for the final hour. The circle would stop shrinking once 20 minutes were left to the entire examination, leaving enough space for the students to fight among themselves for the points.
The way to get points from one another was to tap a bracelet with another person's bracelet. Once the bracelet had gathered the percentage points from the loser, there would be a cooldown of a minute before they would be allowed to attack the same person again to prevent the abuse of the system. What's more, once a person has had their points taken three times, they would be forcefully teleported out of the exam grounds even if their time wasn't up. In the event of a fight that resulted in people being too heavily injured to continue, they would also be teleported out to the original gathering area with the others where the school's medical team would tend to them.
It was hard to say that lethal cases could be avoided even if one were careful due to unforeseen circumstances and lack of experience, thus the school had to take everything into consideration. Even then, they couldn't rely on the system itself to determine how one was in danger or critically wounded. To make up for this issue, the school had also sent tiny minion familiars to fly around the entire forest area as a way of surveillance. A specific team of mages and tamers who were capable of using surveillance magic and the like were set up alongside the medical team at the same gathering area, allowing them to use their magic efficiently.
Once there had been an emergency or failure of magic activation detected, a few teams of adventurers who were hired for the sole purpose of ensuring the examination went smoothly would be deployed to help the students by teleportation magic as well. This way, they didn't need to waste time travelling back and forth or wasting time with a map. It was clear that everything wasn't cheap to arrange, but it was necessary and had support from Tristania's Department of Education so it was manageable. Assisting during the individual examination was issued as a quest to the adventurer's guild as a result, making it both available to the public and saved time for recruitment. This type of request was known as a special quest, something out of the norm and time-limited that rewarded adventurers who took part in it.
Over at the main base located at the main gathering area, most of the internal organising was done for the examination there. They had the adventurers, medical team and surveillance all gathered close to each other, allowing for easy communication between different departments. As the school needed all the help they could get to organize an examination on this scale, school was closed for the day with all teachers gone.
Even though the school encouraged the students to self-study, most of them came over to watch the event unfold. It was normal for days like these where seniors would check on promising juniors who were in the exam. Screens that displayed what the scouting minions saw were displayed over at the area where the seniors sat and watched, giving them the entertainment they needed to last 3 whole hours.
Back in the examination grounds, Chris had somehow managed to find Irene and the couple teamed up to help each other. With Irene's scouting ability, she was able to help secure them a few jewels as they traversed the huge forest area.
"I know that we already have a map and the scale of the forest, but this place is insane," Irene complained, catching another jewel stuck to a tree. "How long have we walked?"
"It's only been a while Irene, we still have a lot of time left," Chris laughed at his girlfriend's lazy mood. "You should move around a little more next time."
"Hey, I'm the one doing most of the work here so you don't deserve to complain," Irene puffed her cheeks at his words. "What are your points now?"
"95. We are definitely better together," Chris nodded after checking. "I don't think I would have been able to find all the jewels by myself."
"Hmph, at least you know how to appreciate me," Irene made a smug smile and tossed the jewel to him. "You can have it. I'm at 110."
"If our location on the map is correct, we should be arriving close to a river soon," Chris pointed further down the forest. "Do you think we should take a detour? Most students would probably have checked the stream already."
"I'm fine either way. Just make sure to do your job properly of protecting me," Irene gave his giant sword a slap at her words. "I can't guarantee that we won't have to fight with the other teams for the jewels or monsters."
"Ou. Let's check the river stream then," Chris nodded once more. "I will wait for your signal."
The two moved on to check the river as suggested. Since it was a good choice to get some jewels that might have been missed or complete some challenges, they decided to take the risk.
Irene set one hand to the dirt floor once they were able to hear the sound of water. Closing her eyes, Irene slowly turned down the sound of the water and focused on listening to the details of the forest instead. At the same time, her magic activated and allowed her senses to increase several times the normal sensitivity to detect any abnormal vibrations or sound. This was one of the few magic techniques that Irene possessed which allowed her to be a scout as well, considering its use. The only shortcoming was that she needed to make contact with the ground to use it, meaning she could not move and needed to rely on someone to watch her back for her.
"…! Someone's here," Irene suddenly opened her eyes when she detected faint movements with her technique. "Up in the trees."
"In the trees? Is it an ambush?" Chris whispered back, removing his sword from his back. "But we can't have friendly fire yet."
"I don't know. Whatever the case, from the way the sound is transmitted, I am certain the person is hiding there," Irene gulped. "Should we move away?"
Just as Chris was about to respond, a rustling could be heard from the nearby bush. He immediately turned around from pure instinctual reaction and jumped back, protecting Irene behind his back.
From the forest came a few more rustling sounds, noting that the two were already cornered. One by one, the opponents started to reveal themselves to the two. It turned out to be a wolf pack that was artificially produced by the school to be used for the examination. They knew this based on how the wolves that showed themselves all had magic signals coming from them, meaning that they were being set to remotely move around with a magic core inside of them. If it were normal wolf monsters, the magic signal would vary and their movements would not be so straightforward.
"Tch, no point in worrying about whoever is above now. If we don't take them down, I'm afraid we would have to run," Chris smiled wryly at this.
"I got your back, just face forward," Irene nodded, standing up and removing her blade to fight.
As if sensing their preparation to fight, the wolves launched themselves at the duo one by one in a coordinated pattern. Even though they were artificially produced, that didn't mean they were weak. The wolves still had quite a bit of fighting power in them, especially when working together as a pack.
"Hwargh!!" Chris swung his giant sword in a diagonal slash forward.
There was no need to act secretive anymore with all the wolves that showed up, so their plan was to fight through them quickly and escape before being found out. He enchanted magic in his first slash, empowering the sword with wind magic that allowed him to create a giant wind blade being directed at the front few wolves. The magic was dodged by a few, but two unlucky wolves received the brute force of the magic head on and split into two as a result, their cores dropping to the floor along with their bodies.
Irene assisted by throwing a few daggers at the wolves close by. With how thin her daggers were, it made a high-pitch whistling noise as it travelled through the air before striking one of the wolves. It wasn't enough to cause it to fall, but it certainly damaged it. This didn't deter the wolves from attacking them, for they continued to pressure Chris and Irene.
With another loud grunt, Chris deflected the attack from the wolf charging right at him and returned the favour to it. He allowed his sword to continue swinging based on the momentum from deflecting the attack. This charged up the destructive power that was capable of being released on the wolves due to the swing and Chris threw another wind blade at the wolf. Successfully decapitating it, Chris moved on to mow down the wolves one by one.
By the time the two were finished, they barely broke a sweat. The wolves were meant to be low-level monsters that could be easily defeated, but it would have been a little more difficult if they surrounded a single person. What this meant was that they wouldn't be rewarded as much for defeating them, but it was still worth it for the points.
"Do you think we scared off whoever that was in the trees?" Chris muttered softly to Irene, still holding up his guard to prevent their rewards being stolen from them.
"I doubt so. We didn't make such a big mess but they would not have judged us to be threats," Irene whispered back. "We should get out of here."
Rena watched as the two gathered the fallen monster cores and ran off into the woods to cover their tracks. Lowering her bow, she allowed the two to leave while breathing a sigh of relief. While Irene might have detected her, it still wasn't enough to reveal her exact location. After all, she was an elven warrior who trained over decades to hide herself within the trees. As if she could allow someone who was way younger than her to find out where she was even with the help of magic.
"Mm~ I did get to see something interesting after all," Rena smiled to herself. "I suppose it would be interesting if I have to face the two in the final round."
As she said so, she imbued her arrow with wind magic and fired it in a direction without needing to look. The arrow whistled through the air, taking a faraway goblin by surprise. As it crumbled to the floor, the core inside of it shattered and more points were added to Rena's total score. She had been able to accurately fire her arrow at a goblin such that she was able to even pierce through its core, which should have been hard to pinpoint and even harder to aim at.
"Alright, that makes this 150," Rena nodded. "It is a little cowardly to have to camp up here, but it is the best course of action when so many people are moving around actively."
All she had to do was to fire arrows at whatever monster that came within 50 metres of her location. While she was perfectly capable of shooting up to 200 metres without the use of magic, Rena wanted to be able to secure the kill so she didn't have to make the shot twice. That would risk giving up her position and needing her to waste more arrows. The monster's bodies despawned once their core had been destroyed, thus leaving no trail of the monster around the area other than her arrows.
One downfall about this event was that range attacks like hers would quickly fall off in the later rounds, hence why Rena wanted to make up for it early on. She could always find jewels to make up for the loss in points later on as students were allowed up to 400 points worth of jewels for the entire round. It wasn't like she needed arrows desperately to continue the examination, but Sniping Rangers like herself favour the long-range game. She was going to turn the situation to her advantage if she wanted to rack up the points as quickly as possible, even if it was a little overkill.
- - - - -
Somewhere beyond the forest, far away from where the students had their examination, two figures met.
"What are we doing this time?" One grunted, looking around carefully. "It's risky being so close to the capital."
"Relax, I promise we will be gone soon," the other chuckled lightly and flapped its monstrous wing in excitement. "The fruit of his experiment will emerge soon."
"… Ah, the Tauzenpod," the first person gruffly muttered. "Are we unleashing it?"
"More like, it was an accident it escaped," the second walked towards the entrance of a huge hole in the ground. "I have already given it what it needs to adapt."
In response to his words, the ground rumbled beneath their feet as a certain creature crawled out of the hole. Both had different reactions towards the creature, one with a face of surprise while the other with a face of glee.
"We shall see what data could be gathered from the experiment this time," the second raised his hand and casted magic.
Red sparks flew through the air and blasted at the creature. With a hideous roar, the creature's body began glowing red as a result before it charged away from the two. Its footsteps left marks the size of small holes into the ground, showing off its size and raw power.
The two began following it from a distance away, not wanting to be accidentally detected when the main star of the show was the said creature. Its cries left the forest draped in a shade of terror, terrified of what sort of monster that had emerged from the darkness of the ground as it made its way to the forest of Czech.