POV Arabella

We only had time for greetings as the evaluator approached us quickly and asked us to start. "Okay, this should be quick," Adam said. I wondered why and looked at Luana questioningly. "We had a bit of trouble before, but Adam and Horus were able to handle it by using their connections. The evaluator is basically just doing the bare minimum needed as he wants to redeem himself from his previous mistake." Her words made me smile a bit. One thing I did miss about my previous life was the connections that made everything so much easier.

We were taken to a special area of the arena. As we stepped inside, iron gates rose from the ground to limit us to a single area and so our opponents wouldn’t be able to escape and cause any damage to others.

"You will be facing 12 first-rank wolf type monsters. Your goal is to eliminate them as fast as possible while receiving as little damage as possible. You have a maximum of 5 minutes and I wish you all good luck," the evaluator announced. We waited until Horus quickly organized us by putting Rich in front, then him, then the healer, and at the back were Luana and me. After that, he gave an affirmative nod to the evaluator.

A door was opened from the arena wall and 12 monsters rushed out. I wondered what we would have faced if the evaluator wasn't being nice to us. "Get here, you furry bastards!" I heard Rich yell, and the next moment all of our opponents focused on him.

That made me smile and I started to pull back my bow and shoot the wolves I had a clear line of sight to. Luana was doing the same but she was even more efficient than me. I also didn’t see the need to give it my all as one-fourth of the wolves were already dead before they reached our tank.

To my surprise, Rich didn’t focus fully on defense but also used his long sword to kill the monsters with one strike. He didn't seem to have any specialized tank abilities but his defenses seemed strong enough and he didn’t even move a single inch backwards, which was decent.

The monsters who did get past him didn’t charge at Horus, they turned around and tried to attack Rich’s back. They never made it as Horus made quick work of them as they weren't even paying attention to him. I was also helping but I was quickly running out of targets. Just two shots later, all the monsters were dead and I don’t think Adam had to even cast a single healing spell.

"Now that was impressive, 17 seconds to finish the test. I do believe that you will go quite deep into the dungeon and I wish you the best of luck as you have all passed the required test to enter," announced the evaluator as the gates started to descend.

Groups of people rushed the dead monsters to start harvesting and clearing everything away. The three students were incredibly happy and congratulating themselves, but I saw Rich looking at my bow, so I approached him.

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"I paid quite a lot for it but it was worth every single core. The design is new but it fits my style quite well. I noticed that you didn’t use any specialized tank ability, did you not see a need to use any?" I explained and asked. "The bow design looks quite interesting," he said with a smirk, but I didn’t understand why.

Then he continued and I grew a bit concerned. "I mean, I’m not a specialized tank but I can absorb quite a lot of damage and do quite a lot of damage as well. I honestly don’t know why I keep getting the tank role, it's actually kind of funny."

I had no idea how to process that information. It seemed I wasn't the only one either; the shock had our other party members rooted to the spot. "But during our raid, you were a tank. I don't understand, are you saying you're not a tank?" Luana managed to get out, her words tumbling over each other in her confusion.

Rich looked at us, clearly bemused, and then began to chuckle. "You guys worry too much. I have the main ability needed for a tank - attracting the attention of our enemies. I can also withstand a lot of damage, so I won't go down easily. That should give each of you enough time to finish off whoever we're up against. I really don't think you guys need to worry. While I have little experience fighting with others, I believe we'll gain plenty of it in the dungeon."

His words weren't exactly comforting, but we didn't have any other options, and his reasoning seemed acceptable enough. Still, I could see that we were all a bit worried.

"OK, we can discuss everything later. Right now, let's get to the portal station and head to the Academy Island. There, I can give you all a lecture on the dungeon, hopefully quickly enough for us to get some sleep before we need to leave tomorrow morning. The trip to the dungeon will take an entire day, after which we won't have much free time if we want to get a proper night's rest before we enter the dungeon." Horus explained.

POV Rich

I was surprised about their reaction when they found out that I wasn’t the dedicated tank, but I guess it made sense and I was glad I told them so early. It would have been trouble if they found out later.

I couldn’t believe the coincidence that the Archer and our last party member had one of my bows, and not just any bow, one of the second ranks I made and the one that had the iron oak as one of its materials. The way I saw her look at her bow, it might be a good idea not to demonstrate that I also could shoot. It shouldn’t be a trouble to keep to close range weapons and my throwables.

The trip into the Academy went fast but the amount of security before the portal station was ridiculous. Luckily, we've been able to get through it without any problems and when I stepped through the portal, I found myself to be in a large underground room where I found the walls to have small holes and many people moving behind them.

I instantly recognized this as a kill room but I was surprised how normally everyone else took this. My party members were moving fast and I didn’t mind keeping up with them as I really wanted to get out of this place. They really took their security seriously here but once we were above ground, things calmed down by a lot and even sometimes it was hard to see any guards as there were so few around.

It was a sudden change but I was quite glad about that. “Welcome to Academy Island. This entire island is owned by the academy and the Verdia city-state alliance. We are in the East Shallow and as you can see we have crystal blue waters and white sands for relaxing after studying,” Luana said.

The place here was beautiful with palm trees and beautiful lush grass and of course the water and sand. It seemed like we were in a big coastal city with paved streets and beautiful buildings that were professionally maintained. Soon we were surrounded by stores but we quickly moved away from here and I listened as Luana explained to us the more interesting sites.

Eventually, we made it to the proper Academy where hundreds of students were walking around and I would guess thousands were in class studying. We were going to one of the smaller buildings where Horus had reserved a small classroom which he could use to educate us on the dungeon that we will be delving into. I was now kind of curious as to why a dungeon would need such a long lecture, but I guess I was going to find that out quite soon.