"How do you think you did?" Zhern asked.
"Not very well. The examiner laughed when I told them my wacca poison resistance, I only hit a singular atom at 100 feet 55 times and took forever to do so, I could only pierce 100 moving targets if they moved less than 20% the speed of light, I could only hit a 1-foot wide target within 1.2 lightyears without teleportation, I failed to punch through something between moon-eater and planet-eater armor, and I could only shoot 6 shots in 5 microseconds.
"I also only managed to hit 63 moving targets with individual arrows from a single draw of my bow and could only shoot 11 arrows across timelines due to the power that needs and how much wacca I'd used in all the prior tests. Not to mention how bad I did in scouting. It took me a whole second to find a fist-sized object hidden in the solar system.
"Anyway, how did you do?"
Zhern chuckled before saying, "You'll be fine. But yeah, I was apparently way over prepared to be a defender. Even if I fail these general exams, they said I'm going to make it in."
"They didn't say anything like that to me," Lroni grumbled.
Zhern shrugged as an adult finally transmitted into the rooms, each holding 100 examinees. Most faces between the different rooms were the same, but they were occasionally switched out for another when someone didn't have enough bodies. "Alright," the stern man said, "your goal is to get as far into an obstacle course as possible, without any form of teleportation. If you get touched by any obstacle, no matter how light the hit, you will immediately be transmitted off the obstacle course.
"Yes, this includes the defenders among you. The obstacles are meant to serve as stand-ins for various monster attacks, just with their lethality set to that of a system-eater. The only thing that matters is how far you get, not how long it takes you to get there; however, some attacks will not let you stay nearby for long, so even beyond dodging, speed is needed. Begin when you're ready."
With that, the man conjured a light year-long, roofless hallway, 30 feet across, before disappearing. A few kids tried to go around, only to find themselves transmitted back to the starting room, while others, mostly impulsive future strikers, sprinted down the hallway.
Most were blindsided by a sphere appearing out of the wall and slamming into their sides, immediately making them disappear. When the sphere disappeared, presumably resetting into its previous position in the wall, only one kid was visible as they ran down the hallway, in exactly one of their timelines.
Lroni and Zhern looked at each other. Lroni raised her fist, back of her hand toward her friend, and he raised his fist to touch the back of their hands. Lroni then conjured a table, a chair for each of them, and a deck of cards and dice. They began playing a game they'd made up a couple years back.
Slowly, the crowd thinned as they played, with Lroni winning twice as often as Zhern. Over time, the examinees made it further and further into the obstacle course. "What are you doing?" an older voice asked from behind Lroni.
"Playing a game while we wait our turn," Zhern answered as Lroni turned to look at the person interrupting them.
Behind her stood a 5'3" boy with straight, red hair down to his knees. "Are you unconcerned about the obstacle course?"
"I'm scouting it out while we play," Lroni said, before turning back to the game. Zhern played a card with a skull on it in 3 timelines, with the 5 others playing a card with a sword on it. Lroni winced as she played a card with her dad's face on it in response.
"Nice, rare to see another examinee that actually cares about scouting. What are you two?"
"Archer," Lroni said as they put all the played cards in their respective discard piles.
"Defender," Zhern said as Lroni played a card with "SE" on it in one timeline and a card with a "+1" on it in each other timeline.
"Nice. What kind of archer?"
"Archer. I will not sacrifice any aspect of archery by specializing," Lroni said as Zhern responded by surrendering. They swept up their cards and began shuffling their decks.
"A noble goal. So, just going to wait until everyone finishes up before you go, so you can better memori- oh, they just reached the end of my scouting range. I'll talk to you later, then," the boy with long, red hair said before taking off down the obstacle course.
Lroni was confused for a few seconds as she said, "He made it this far with that short of scouting range?"
Zhern shrugged and said, "I don't even know how to scout, it's not really needed for defenders."
With the distraction gone, they got back to their game.
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After a full minute of playing, Lroni said, "Wow. That kid's doing pretty well. I expected him to die really early, if his scouting range was that short. He's staying a steady distance away from first place, and hasn't gotten close to getting hit yet." Then, she played the same cards that won her the last game.
You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.
Zhern smugly played the card with her dad's face on it in each timeline and said, "He seemed fine to me, if a little rude for interrupting us."
Loni gained a disappointed face and said, "It just seemed like he was going to get preachy before he ran off."
An explosion rocked their rooms as the final examinee from their timelines, a 4'3" girl with short, black hair rocketed down the obstacle course, propelled by enough speed wacca to flatten a moon and surrounded by tons of wacca flows that neither Lroni nor Zhern knew.
"Finish this game before we go?" Zhern asked, holding an arm out between the explosion and the table, a translucent green barrier blocking the shock wave from interfering with their game.
"Sure."
It was a slog of a game, Lroni only losing due to deckout. Then, they were on to the obstacle course.
Near the beginning were tons of traps that Lroni could simply stop with external speed wacca to prevent them from touching her and Zhern: The initial black sphere, a spray of black liquid, whips from the walls, hundreds of small pieces of shrapnel, etc.. It wasn't until 20 miles in that Zhern had to step in, having had superior training in use of external speed wacca thanks to his deflection training.
"Ok, this is where things start to pick up. 27 others have made it through. 30kc, meteor-eater-sized feline comes from the floor and will continue chasing us for the next 50 miles while using speed, sharp, and heat wacca, with supplemental gravity wells and a range of 300 feet. Other obstacles still exist along the way, but they're static, like we're supposed to avoid them while running at speed," Lroni said. Before each trap, Lroni would explain exactly what was about to happen
Zhern nodded. His job was to figure out the best way to block or deflect the incoming attack. "Anyone succeed in pinning it down?"
"That kid that interrupted our game locked it down with about 40kT speed wacca."
"As long as this kind of trap isn't common, it should be fine. I'd like if you could supply at least 10kT of that straight down as it comes out of the floor. You good on reserves for that?"
"Yeah, I still have around 157kT left. There's a trap ahead that will require 50kT, so can we reduce that to 5kT?"
Zhern winced. "Call it 7, then."
Lroni nodded, followed by Zhern, as they entered the invisible activation range for the next trap. Instantly, Lroni activated the appropriate amount of speed wacca as exactly what she described came out of the floor, giving them moments to react. Zhern responded to Lroni's speed wacca with the appropriate amount himself, pinning the beast to the floor.
A spike of sharp wacca flew out from the beast's claws toward Lroni, and Zhern created a dense gravity well to pull it off course as they ran. 30 feet from the beast, a wave of heat wacca blasted down the hallway, and Zhern created a half-dome of tungsten to catch and deflect the wave back at the beast while preventing further heat attacks.
A spike of sharp wacca pierced through the dome as a black hole formed in front of them. The spike seemed to speed up as their bodies were affected by the time dilation of being near a black hole, and Zhern quickly flattened a tunnel of space back out, allowing them safe passage through the black hole, where it no longer affected spacetime.
As they passed through the other side of it, he allowed the black hole to become whole again, engulfing the spike and making it disappear before the black hole itself disappeared. Just before exiting the beast's range, a massive swarm of small black holes threatened to simultaneously knock them off-course and shred them to pieces while a wall of sharp wacca blocked their passage.
Zhern winced as he flattened a small area of space around Lroni and himself and created a white hole in front of them, clearing a path through the sharp wacca.
From there it was a walk in the park until the next major obstacle.
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Frank watched Lroni and Zhern breeze through the obstacle course. Well, he watched all participants in all but one of his 21007 timelines to transmit them out if they get hit and the wards fail. Not that they had in 7721 years, but he wasn't going to let another kid fall to a defective ward on his watch. The last of his selves sat in a room, surrounded by other examiners.
"Anything good?" asked a flat woman with armpit-length, brown hair.
"No, Mejoy, nothing's changed in the last second since you've asked," a young man with no hair.
"Hreat, don't be aggressive," Frank said. "I do think we'll have at least 4 people break the record, though."
All 24 other heads in the room spun around to face the ancient man. "Oh? Do tell," Mejoy said.
"Mykil's kid and her friend, who was also trained by him, will almost definitely break it. That Bevin kid has already broken it, though I don't suspect he's going to get past the obstacle he's on. Finally, Morla is a few miles behind Bevin. If she can keep her speed up, she's going to catch up to him. I don't know which of those four will go the furthest, but my bet's on Lroni. I'd say Zhern, but he's probably going to reach his limit protecting Lroni."
"I bet it's Bevin. He's got everything anyone needs to set the new record," a short man said.
"Oooo, we're betting? I bet on Morla! Her poison resistance is insane," Mejoy said.
Frank chuckled at that, knowing she didn't know Lroni's. He tuned out as the betting began and watched them exit the final obstacle that was identical across all timelines. Now, they'd have to multitask to press onward, reacting to more and more differing obstacles. Surprisingly to him, they didn't slow down as they entered the first set of differing obstacles.
They weren't individually as hard as the others, going back to single-digit-thousand times the speed of light whips and rods, but the differences between timelines should have at least slowed them down. Not only did they not slow down, they sped back up.
"I wonder why they made these next miles so much easier," Frank heard Zhern say.
"Maybe they overestimated how hard making the timelines different is. It won't be another 78k miles until it looks like it'll take any real wacca usage," Lroni responded.
"Good. You were getting too close to your limit for my comfort."
Lroni shrugged. "I still had 12kT left after the meteor swarm, and I knew you'd keep me safe."
Frank chuckled as he saw Zhern turn his face away from Lroni. He tuned back in to hear the final bets. He was a little early in tuning back in, as there was a factor he didn't know about.
"How's Yezik?" Mejoy asked a tall, well-endowed woman as it came her turn, the last turn, to bet.
"He's made it, surprisingly. Just barely, 3 feet over the minimum distance." Mejoy sighed in relief and the woman continued, "Anyway, I bet on Morla. Her poison resistance and her speed should let her get very far ahead of the others."
"So, 8 for Lroni, 13 for Bevin, 4 for Morla. Poor Zhern, getting no bets," Mejoy said.