One hour after the start of the exam, two people were in a large room located within the royal knights headquarters. One was a brown haired young woman who was sitting near a bench, polishing her spear, while the other person was the fiery red haired Victor, who watched her from a distance as she worked.
'I should probably introduce myself.'
Victor was certain the woman recognized him from when he was spying on her a few days ago. It wouldn't hurt to try to make amends and, if possible, recruit her to his cause.
With confidence, Victor walked towards her and spoke, "I'm sorry for following you last time. It's rare to see new A-Rankers. Nice to meet you, I'm Victor."
The woman didn't pause as she continued maintaining her spear.
"It's odd to see another A-Ranker take this test. What's your reason for doing so, if you don't mind me asking?"
Victor was being unusually polite compared to his usual self for two reasons. First, he didn't know how strong she actually was; between A-Rankers, the disparity in power can be huge, so it's best not to risk it. Second, he was also trying to find out why she was trying to become a knight in the first place. Anything the royal knights could offer, so could noble sworn knights, so he hoped he would be able to convince her to change sides, effectively weakening the strength of the royal forces.
Still unresponsive to his presence, Victor grew annoyed. He never had a good temper to begin with.
'Does she really think she can ignore me?'
"I don't know who you are or where you are from, but that kind of attitude won't help you last long here. If you aren't willing to connect with others, why are you even bothering with this? Don't you care about making a good first impression?"
The woman chuckled, "That's rich coming from a stalker."
"I apologized for that!"
"Don't care. Go away."
It had been a while since Victor had been treated with such disrespect. Only an A-Ranker would dare to treat someone like this, but besides watching her for a while, he didn't cross any lines. Why was she so antagonistic towards him?
The temperature in the room suddenly skyrocketed, and a few pieces of wooden furniture caught on fire from the sheer heat he radiated. If it were anyone else in this room, they would have immediately caught on fire.
Noticing his unintentional effect on his environment, his eyes widened. 'Shit. Remember what Teach said. Control the fire, don't let the fire control you.'
Victor took a deep breath, and the room's temperature began to stabilize. The woman was unfazed by the indirect attack as it wasn't enough to hurt her; at most, it made her feel hot.
"Fine. Be that way. You better not regret it when I wipe the floor with you in the tournament."
Victor scoffed as he turned away, planning his next steps. An A-Ranker in the tournament would be unexpected and might ruin their plans, even if he wins. It would not have as big of an impact if he had a very close match against his opponent.
'I gotta let Sigurd know. Fuck, this complicates things.'
…
Tens of arrows flew at frightening speeds, some headed straight toward their target while others curved in the air and approached from different angles.
Their target, Sol, twisted his body in incredible ways thanks to [Precise Coordination], dodging the arrows and deflecting those he couldn't.
The source of the arrows was a squadron of level 95 elves that immediately attacked Sol while still running down the stairs. Needless to say, he was initially surprised as the enemies normally waited until he approached first.
Spikes of earth rose from the ground, killing one of the elves, while the rest dodged in perfect synchronicity. As they dodged, more arrows were released toward Sol in an endless barrage.
"[Guard Current]!"
A big stream of water came from the side and blocked most of the arrows as Sol jumped over it and closed the gap between the elves. Sending a [Mana Slash] towards the group further away, he continued the sword's trajectory and slashed into a nearby elf. Now within melee range of all the elves, it was easy to finish them all off one by one, and not long after, he was the sole survivor.
'This is getting a bit hard… I wish I could go all out…'
If Sol truly went all out, the fights would be child's play, defeating these enemies in an instant, but he knew how illusions worked, courtesy of his father. He knew that whoever controlled the illusion was able to watch him and his every movement within the illusion, which meant he had to keep up his own illusion of being a water earth swordsman.
In fact, even with his limited skillset, there was a way to abuse the fights and win easily, but Sol opted not to do so. The tower was made entirely of stone, which meant he could use [Burrow] and travel all the way down, evading all the fights. The problem was that if his suspicions were correct and he was being watched, then he doubted he would pass the test if he did so. Another option would be to use [Burrow] and get the jump on every enemy on each floor, but he believed it would also be received poorly. This was why Sol, at most, used that skill to quickly dodge attacks or to approach and attack, but he never stayed underground for more than five seconds at a time.
'Will this self imposed restriction on [Burrow] even matter? I'm losing out on time…'
It was approaching close to two hours since the start of the test. Sol had no way to track the progress of other applicants, so he didn't know if he was doing better or worse than them. He could only hope that he was in the lead of the pack and hopefully the first to finish. Little did he know that two had already finished long before him, but they were anomalies compared to the rest of the applicants.
"Arghh! Whatever. I'll just go even faster!"
The best solution to his own made up problems was sometimes the simplest. Sol stopped comparing his progress to other applicants he had no way of knowing, deciding to focus on the task at hand and put even more effort into beating his enemies.
'Limited skills? I'll just have to use them even better than before!'
With the plan of "trying harder" in place, Sol ran down the stairs toward the 9th floor.