Surprised to see such a good score, Ray covers his mouth with his hand.
His plan of not drawing any attention to himself was not working. At all.
Three people approached him. The first was quite tall with an athletic build, and short brown hair shaved to a buzz. His skin is dark, and his eyes were a bright red.
Ray thought.
'He's strong, really strong'
The boy sticks his hand out to ray for a handshake.
"My name is Malik Thomas,"
He then gestured to point at the other two boys.
"This is Liam Brightmane."
Ray looks at the short boy to the left of Malik, his skin almost as pale as his own his eyes a light blue and his hair a golden blonde.
Ray reaches his hand out to the boy.
"Nice to meet you."
The boy reaches his hand to Ray's and grips tightly, not so much that it would hurt but so that it was firm.
Ray thinks to himself for a moment and then opens his mouth once more.
"Who is this guy."
He points to the third boy that approached.
Malik looks towards him.
"I'm not sure."
The boy bows.
My name is Lucius L. Lucius.
The other three boys laughed.
Malik is the first to speak.
"Are you serious?"
The boy doesn't seem amused.
"Yes, I am serious."
Malik bows.
"I apologize for my insolence, your name just caught me off guard."
Ray and the other boy also apologize.
"What do you three want from me anyway."
Malik looks at the other two boys and then says
"Well i cant speak for the other two but i just wanted to speak to the only applicant who got a perfect score."
The other two nod as if agreeing with his statement.
Ray nods.
"To be completely honest, I didn't think the test was hard at all; most of the questions were open response; I assumed they were just based on reasoning and didn't have a right or wrong answer."
The boys give a confused look.
The pale young boy looks at Ray and then away off into the distance as if not sure about his next statement, then he looks back at Ray.
"True as that may be, a perfect score is no less impressive."
Ray sighs.
"All I was allowed to do as a child was train and study."
The boys all share a look of sadness.
"I guess the rumors about the Valric family are true."
Ray nods his head.
"They believe strength trumps all, I might not be the strongest member of my lineage, but I am probably the smartest, the rest of them didn't take time to study, I guess you don't need to be smart to be clever, at least that's what my dad always said."
Malik frowns at Ray.
"I see."
The boys are interrupted by the sound of a loud bang.
They turn around.
Hey!!!
The professor is standing between two applicants who seem to have been engaged in a fight.
"What were you boys thinking, fighting outside an official duel is strictly forbidden."
The young green haired man looked up at the man.
"I'm sorry, professor, but I couldn't excuse his disrespect."
The tall man, Ray recognized as the man that brought him to the academy, looked over at the other boy.
"Both of you walk away, you have enough to worry about with the exam, the next phase you should not take lightly, if you do, you might die."
The red-haired boy stood up and looked at the professor, almost eye to eye.
"It won't happen again."
The man's serious expression softened.
"It better not, now apologize to him for whatever you said."
He walked over to the other boy and then bowed his head.
"I'm sorry, Lucas, I let my pride get the best of me."
The boy with long green hair looked up at him.
"It's alright, Sam, it's not like this is the first time we've fought."
The older man smiled and then looked around.
"LISTEN UP, the next part of this exam is very dangerous, if you are not ready to risk your lives, you may leave now."
The man grinned.
"You can even keep the tracksuit."
But no one would give up this quickly, before seeing these so-called dangerous beasts.
The man grinned once more, but this time it was clear that he was deeply happy.
"Yeah, I didn't think any of you would leave, but who would I be as your mentor if I didn't at least tell you what you were getting yourselves into."
His smile faded.
"We will now start the hunting phase of the exam, I'm sure you all know, but humans aren't the only problem us heroes face; equally scary if not more frightening are the beasts whose power dwarfs us in comparison."
In this world heroes are assigned a rank for the purpose of one based on merit, which is a representation of one their overall power as a hero and two the things in which they have completed as a hero but the real reason they have these ranks is to represent the strongest monster they would be able to defeat these monsters, like heroes are ranked by stars from one to 4 and then the fifth rank called calamity class monsters, there are likely only a handful of people on the planet that could work together to defeat such a creature.
"Luckily for you, the strongest monster you will be fighting during this exam is a one star, and even then most of you should try your best to avoid such a fight. I know you all have confidence in your abilities, but don't let that cause you to be careless."
"Unless any of you have questions, we can begin now."
No one raised their hand, they were all too focused to let themselves waiver.
The man smiled.
"Good, follow me."
He led them all outside the school to an area that seemed to be fenced off, inside the fence nothing could be seen but forest, but every single applicant could feel the pressure being emitted from deep within the forest.
Ray swallows.
'That must be the one stars.'
The man sighed.
" In this test, you will be awarded points based on the monsters you slay. They will all be worth one point but the one stars are worth 50, this is because they are about 50 times as tough as the others, I can't stress this enough If you come across a one-star monster your objective will be to escape." "You will all be given communicators to use on this test; their purpose is for absolute emergencies."
He paused for a moment and then continued.
"I will only say this once: if you have no way to escape certain danger, press the button on the back of the communicator, one of us proctors will come to get you. Know that once you press this button, you won't be disqualified, but you will be unable to receive any more points."
He then explained to the applicants about the different types of creatures they might come across before sending them in.
"The hunting phase will now begin, I'll see you all tomorrow."
Ray finds himself alone in the middle of the forest.
'Well this sucks'
A few hours have gone by, and countless beasts have been slain.
'At least I got myself some points'
Ray looks down at his communicator, in the middle of the little green screen the number 32 is displayed.
'Damn, I've killed 32 monsters so far, what time is it'
Ray looks at the corner of the screen where it says:
4:32
'I see, we got out here at around nine, so it's been around 7 hours so far, meaning we only have another 12 hours to go.'
Ray sighs.
'Only'
Ray wanders for a bit, he's been trained how to hunt, but this is the first time he's hunted to kill, it pains him to do so but because of his peculiar power he gets stronger every time he kills one of these monsters, his power specifically allows him to enhance his speed by an amount equal to the speed of every being he kills, practically stealing their speed and in a test like this he's killed a lot of monsters , and he's already gotten much stronger, a test like this is perfect for someone with his abilities, their not exactly flashy, but they are consistently good, the ability to seemingly regenerate any injury as well as the ability to become faster every fight, if he perfected his use of his abilities he could become the ultimate hunter.
After a while he stumbles upon a nest of spiders, but these aren't ordinary spiders; from what he can tell they are around the size of a car.
'That's gross'
Ray see's one of the spiders feasting on what seems to be a human-sized fly.
This disgusted him, but he knows he has to kill them for his future and likely for his survival.
He approaches the spiders.
Sneaking his way behind one of the spiders, he grasps his sword in both his hands.
'Here goes nothing'
He slices across the bottom of this spider, slicing two of the spider's legs cleanly off.
The spider loses its balance for a second but not for long, it turns around to face Ray, who is already prepared himself for his next attack.
He lunges towards the spider, attempting to pierce through the beast's head, but it's slightly faster than he is. It strikes him with one of its legs, sending him flying into a tree.
If that wasn't bad enough, the sound of him hitting the tree alerted the other spiders.
And he now finds himself surrounded by spiders, each one of them larger and almost certainly stronger than he is.
'Shit'
Ray prepares himself for the coming battle.
Out here any wrong move could mean death, well for him maybe not if he's lucky.
His regeneration isn't all that fast, but it's never failed to fully heal his body.
'I have to end this quickly'
Ray puts his sword back on his waist.
'No more holding back'
While ray was taught how to use a sword, he has always been much better with his bare hands, so much so that his limbs should be considered weapons themselves.
He gets into a fighting stance.
As he does this, the spiders close in on him, but he was ready for this.
Ray lunges at the spider closest to him upon seeing this the spider attempts to strike him with its legs, but he saw this coming, he ducks under the spider dodging its attacks, and then goes for an attack of his own.
'According to plan'
Ray steps to the front of the spider and punches it in one of its eyes.
This angers the spider, but this moment of hesitation is its demise. Without a moment of hesitation, Ray jumps on top of the spider, putting his legs around where the spider's head meets its body, and he squeezes as hard as he can possibly muster, popping the spider's head clean off.
Every time he slays another monster, it directly buffs him.
He successfully killed the spider, increasing his speed by a great margin. He was around an equal speed to the spider, meaning he's basically doubling his current speed, this also means the next spider he kills will increase his speed by about half, but with his speed doubled killing the rest of the spiders would be child's play.
'That was easier than I thought it would be'
Ray looks at the rest of the spiders.
'Hmm, about 10 left'
He dashes back to his sword, considering his opponents, he probably should've been using his sword all along.
He's much faster than them, but that doesn't mean he can be careless, most of the animals these things hunt are much faster than they are, but it didn't matter.
Ray was a genius hunter; any advantage he had would have led to an absolute massacre, which it did.
He killed the rest of those spiders in no time. Becoming several times faster than he was at the start of this fight.
He cleans the purple blood off of his sword and begins to leave, but before he can take a step he hears screaming, he turns to face the sound, but as soon as he does he drops to the ground.
'I can't move'
His whole body shivers.
'What the hell is that thing'
Despite not seeing anything, he can tell whatever creature he is sensing is many times stronger than he or any of the other applicants are.
'Except maybe that guy' Ray thinks.
Despite his instincts, he runs in the direction of the screaming and what he sees disturbed him.
About 25ft in front of him he sees 4 applicants on the ground and one more in the claws of a beast, the beast had the head of a crow,and the body of a lion with huge wings resting on its back.
'Shit, that's a Gryffin'
While only having the rank of a one-star monster, Gryffin are incredibly strong and easily the strongest species of one-star monsters, and this one is corrupted.
Corruption is something that happens to monsters after they've reached adulthood and killed countless other monsters and humans, at a certain point they start to change, their features becoming more grotesque not to mention making them much stronger.
'This creature is strong enough to be a 2-star monster'
It would likely take a professor to kill a monster like this or at least an upperclassman, but Ray didn't have time to wait for anyone, not that anyone was showing up.
Ray dashes towards where his fellow applicants were lying on the ground, trying his best not to alert the creature.
"Are you guys ok."
One of the applicants turns his body towards him. The boy covered in blood, clearly severely injured.
'If he doesn't get help soon, he will die.'
Ray looks back down at the boy.
"Press the button on the back of your communicator if you want to live."
The boy shakes his head.
"I don't think I have the strength to move any more than this."
Ray frowns.
"Do you give me consent to press it for you."
The boy nods his head.
"Understood."
Ray reaches into the boy's pocket, pulling out the communicator, and presses the button on the back. The machine rings alerting the beast.
Noticing this, Ray drops the communicator.
But he didn't react fast enough, in the time between when ray dropped the machine and when it touched the ground the beast had already dropped the girl it was holding and was standing above him.
'Shit, this is terrible'
Without even being able to react, the beast slices one of his arms clean off.
Ray screams.
This is the most damage he has ever taken, and he was not sure if he could recover from it, but still he has no other option but to keep fighting, if he gives up he might survive due to his power but his fellow applicants fate would be sealed, all he has to do is keep fighting until one of the professors gets there.
He knew how much of a tall task that would be.
He would have to die countless times over to even have a chance at killing this thing.
'What do I do'
He holds his sword in his remaining hand. The pain of losing his other arm was almost enough to make him pass out, but here he was still standing.
"I don't suppose you intend on letting us live."
The monster obviously doesn't answer.
'I guess not'
It lunged at him again, this time he was prepared, unfortunately this was only enough for him to stop the monster from taking his remaining arm.
Just barely.
The monster swipes at him, easily overpowering him.
His sword got knocked out of his hand.
But like when he was in the armory, the sword instead of falling to the ground floats in the air just like before, but this time something was different. He feels his arm pulsing and as he looks down at his arm he notices his new tattoo is glowing like and so is the text on the sword, and before he can react his vision turns black.