"...What do you want? Come out."
Magnus could feel the intent in their stares. It was violence.
"You still won't step out of there? Cowards, I can feel your presence even if I don't have a sixth sense."
Several figures appeared out of a few angles, glaring angrily at Magnus. He could feel their emotions of resentment given his mocking tone.
His heart was beating in his chest as he realised the true power levels of the people in front of him.
'A bunch of 2-star threats,'
A group that was beyond his abilities as a whole.
'I need to pick them off, one-by-one to win, or simply run.'
He instantly had Klaris summoned by Javelin to help in keeping a lookout. The pair split up, hiding from the people that showed themselves to Magnus.
Whoosh!
A fist flashed by Magnus' face as he dodged to the side, reversing gravity as he went.
'Stay away!' He inwardly screamed as a wave of reversed gravity welled from his body, making his enemies step back for a moment.
The man who nearly hit him was sent flying backwards and into a wall. The man re-emerged from the small dust cloud he created without any wounds at all.
"Tsk," Magnus clicked his tongue.
His Blessing wasn't so good at fighting enemies stronger than him.
Whooosh! Whoosh! Whooosh!
Three fighters approached him the moment he blinked. When Magnus realised it, one of them landed a hit into his stomach, sending him flying into the sky.
'At least I can do this,' Magnus thought, as he grimaced from the pain.
If he hadn't lessened the gravity around him and pulled himself away, that punch would've hurt so much more.
Magnus then looked down on the men that were pursuing him with a triumphant smile,
"Did you all forget that I can fly?"
Bang! Bang bang!
Magnus instantly unsummoned himself upon seeing a fighter draw a gun. The shots missed him by a few milliseconds.
He disappeared from the air and reappeared near the hiding Javelin.
To his enemies, it look like he teleported.
"He can teleport too? That's bullshit!" One of the men yelled out, "Sir! There's no hope for this task! Let's stop wasting our time with this sneaky rat!"
"It's not all hopeless," Another man spoke, presumably the leader. He turned to face Magnus who was just about to set off into the distance.
"Hey kid, do you want us to stop following you wherever you go?" The leader asked.
"...What if I say yes?" Magnus asked back.
"Then let us beat you up. We need it because our employer tasked us to do so. We won't kill you. Just a few bruises and a black eye." The leader said, as if conducting business, "Save us both the trouble."
"...Then what if I say no to the earlier question?"
The leader's eye twitched.
"After all, you can never catch me if I really wanted to run. I just wanted to know what you wanted, that was all." Magnus added with a laugh.
"You..." The leader had no words. "It is best if you reconsider—"
A light flashed.
Magnus was gone.
He didn't even let the leader finish.
The rest of Valentine's guards shuddered when that happened. They backed away from their leader. Slowly.
Steam could be seen rising from the leader's head.
"That bastard deserves a little more than a beating," He growled.
.
.
.
Magnus returned to his hotel room laughing.
"They had no chance," He cackled like a witch again, "Absolutely none. Catch me? If they can! Haha!"
He spent the next minute or so patting himself on the back for his victory. When he was done after getting a stomach ache from all the chuckling, he breathed,
'Alright, time to open the letter.'
Magnus held the cylindrical container used to hold his letter and popped the cap off. From it, he pulled out a rolled piece of paper.
He unfurled said paper and began reading.
[[ Dear Mr Magnus ]]
[[ We have acknowledged your skills, and your talent. Though you do not qualify to study here at the moment, it can be said that you are worthy of participating in Archaeon University's entrance examinations that will be held when the tutorial Trials of Earth has ended. Please do your best in surviving, young Earthling. ]]
[[ We look forward to having you at our university in the near future. ]]
Magnus smiled, this was neither the best possible result, nor was it the worst. That, and it seems like they were now sure of his identity as an Earthling.
"I guess that means I won't be getting that 2.5-star prize." He muttered as he placed the acceptance letter back in its container. "Well, a 2-star reward is good enough."
.
.
.
Magnus, knowing that there wasn't anything happening any time soon, decided to grind out some riches.
He visited a commercial pocket world called Hevis. It was a world without any human life. Only monsters and beasts roamed the lands. Some were more intelligent than others.
Floating at the edge of a cliff, Magnus scanned the small town that the Thareans built to aid any visitors and boost productivity in the area. It lay in the distance, far below him, and sat beside a river that spanned the entire valley that surrounded it.
"The time conversion here is 1:1." Magnus pursed his lips as he turned around to go exploring. "The Spirit Energy here is also very thin..."
The areas he traversed all looked empty to him. The monster populations were thinned down to the minimum, and all that he fought was the rare one that approached him.
Most of the monsters he killed were 1-star threats. They were slime-like beings with corrosive spit. He stored their shattered cores inside his Storage Scroll.
At a certain point, he switched with Restiel because his scythe was a great weapon to kill those slimes with. Moreover, Restiel could fly much faster than Magnus could float. It allowed him to cover more ground in a shorter amount of time.
The time limit on the Pocket World Entrance Scroll was only 3 days, after all.
Larger and larger slimes appeared as time went by, and Magnus was eventually shocked when he saw one the size of an Olympic swimming pool. The Slime's core had a radius of around six feet.
It was gigantic.
Magnus wanted to kill it.
Well, he tried to at least. If not for the shower of acid, he might have been able to dive into the slime and slice its core into two.
But after experiencing several near misses and singing a few feathers, Magnus had Restiel back off. The acid shots that this slime sent out were the size of a car. One single shot and Restiel would lose his life for sure.
Escaping from that brush with death, Magnus decided to backtrack a bit more.
He looked for slimes at around the level of a 2-star threat. Once he found them, he went around killing as many as he could using Restiel's massive scythe. He sliced and diced for hours on end, and only earned scraps of Divine Energy in the process.
'Farming skeletons is a better choice,' Magnus slightly regretted his decision to come here, but this was all a part of his plans.
He had to experience as much as possible to have more options to steal from, after all.
When his time ended, Magnus went to visit a shop and sold his slime cores. He earned a total of 200 dollars from it, which was good enough.
He visited two more Pocket Worlds of similar nature and earned a total of 650 dollars. It was a small amount, but with that, he discovered a few places he could visit when he got stronger.
All three worlds had some kind of resource to hide, and Magnus had caught on to such a fact. If he could find those treasure-like resources in real life and then clone it repeatedly through Mirror World Thief, he would reap the rewards.
For now, though, there was a more... exciting task at hand.
[[ 2-star Weapon Scroll ]]
[[ Tear to receive a weapon that most fits you. The weapon will be chosen based on your achievements and history. ]]
There was the reward that signalled the end of the month-long Trial.
Just then,
Poof!
[[ Hey guys. It's me once again. Things are going to change from now on. The tutorial has ended. ]]
[[ The true Otherworld Trials will begin now. ]]
[[ Trial Title: Hunt a Tharean Monster ]]
[[ Objective: To find, hunt, and retrieve the main body part of a Tharean Monster. ]]
[[ Description: Tear this scroll to get transported into a different version of Thare. You will be transported to a time long passed. When the Otherworld Trials had yet to begin. Find your target, hunt it down despite the chaos of the Ancient Era, and triumph over adversity. You have one day. ]]
[[ I have to change my style from here on out. I hope it helps to understand things better. See you all in another world once again. Please, survive. For Earth! ]]
[[ -The Jester ]]
Magnus gulped, "Ancient Era? Adversity? Monster hunting? I've done that before... But I have a feeling this will be different."
Nonetheless, he tore the Scroll without any care.
"Let's see what's so different about this Trial."