Out of 32 examinees, 15 were retained after the first test, including Kalender. There were three walk-outs, and the rest were rejected for lack of power or skill.
Hunter Zee had been watching, and she wasn’t happy about it. The rest of the applicants could die in the following weeks for all she cared, but Kalender had a kid. Even if that kid was under the care of lots of people—among them a Knight, of all things—if that man died, that child would be left fatherless.
So, she did her best to try and disqualify him.
For the second test, examinees would face down a real monster, unleashed from a cage and set upon them. Everyone else would watch from the stands. An iron fence popped out from the ground to protect them. A name was called, and the examinee stepped through a gate, and she waited in the middle of the arena.
It would be Kalender’s first time seeing a monster that wasn’t a slime.
A team of four fully-armed guards carted in a wooden box the size of a car, the thing inside struggling to free itself. A part of the box cracked, and the hissing and screeching of whatever it contained reached his ears.
The examinee in the middle of the arena shifted nervously.
The guards hurried away from the arena, not even bothering to open the box.
Wood cracked and splinters flew.
The box burst open, and out came…a regular-sized cat.
“Don’t just stand there! Kill it, or it will kill you!” Aunt Cage shouted through the fence.
The cat hissed, but its hiss was large and deep, discordant to its apparent size. It sprinted, desiring to close the gap between it and suitable prey.
The examinee snapped back to reality, unleashing fireballs on the ground in the monster’s path.
Fire magic was usually a good choice against living things, which had an inherent fear of fire…but this was a monster.
The cat ran through the flames.
The examinee resorted to stone and water bullets to try and slow it down. She succeeded a little, injuring one of its legs. Of course, it didn’t care for an injury, and though it slowed from a sprint to a limping run, it was coming ever closer, becoming ever hungrier.
It pounced on the examinee.
The examinee fell on her back out of fear.
An all-consuming solid beam of fire flashed across the arena with a heat that pricked at everyone’s skin, and screeched a whining noise that raked at everyone’s ears—and when it was gone, so, too, was the monster.
Aunt Cage lowered her hand. “You are not fighting things that obey what is natural. Next!”
Then came Kalender’s turn, courtesy of Zee’s calling in a favor from Aunt Cage. She hoped that he wouldn’t be able to learn too much from just a sample size of one, and that he’d experience true fear, and eventually back out.
Kalender himself wasn’t sure how to do things. He guessed that the Company went all-out on keeping their tests unpredictable. It may be unfair at times, but it felt like they weren’t basing their passing criteria on whether or not you were able to “pass” a test.
That first examinee from the first test managed to pass, after all, despite not being able to destroy the target dummy.
So, all he had to do was what he could, with the tools and knowledge he already had.
The cart team wheeled in another box, this one much more violent. It kicked, and its leg broke outside the box. Once it was some distance in front of Kalender, the guards ran like hell.
The box exploded. Kalender shielded himself from the splinters with his arm, and he felt a few plink off his leather armor. Looking up, what stared him down was a car-sized lizard with a fiery breath.
That’s a really high level enemy, what the heck. He Appraised it as a Level 10 Salamander. Its leathery hide looked especially thick…a sword might not get through it.
Did the Company fight these things on the daily? The heck.
The first thing he did was pull out his gun and shoot an explosive bullet at it. It was more suprised than anything, but the damage was dismal. (19.85/20 MP)
Kalender started running in a circle around it. It kept its head trained towards him, but the rest of its body looked like it had quite a turning radius.
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But, what can kill it? He didn’t have enough MP to instantly excavate a pitfall. He didn’t have enough MP to simply drown it in water. He didn’t have enough MP to fire off an oversized bullet and smash it in the face.
With no other choices left, he took out two cards from his pocket. He didn’t want to have to use it.
He held out his left arm, the card in-hand having a V-shaped notch on the top edge. He held the other card to his eye, where the card had a peephole through which he can see the other card’s notch.
He aligned the cards. The lizard was in his cardsights. Doing this just with chanting alone would have been a challenge to aim; he wouldn’t have been able to see once the spell ignited, so he had to get the shot on-target at first ignition.
Jyn and Minimine realized what was going on and covered their eyes. Lilia, never having witnessed Kalender’s special attack magic, was puzzled. Page was puzzled, too, but finally remembered—but remembered too late.
The magic circles on the cards activated.
No one saw what happened next. Rather, they were rendered unable to even see, as the blinding white light quietly engulfed the Salamander. Unlike Aunt Cage’s attack, it radiated no heat, and made no sound. (4.95/20 MP)
The Salamander howled and flailed around. The front half of its face was practically gone. Its wounds sizzled, and its flame gland sputtered hot oils.
That said, it still wasn’t dead.
It aimlessly rampaged all around the arena, and all Kalender could do was pelt it with gunfire. His bullets dug through bits of soft tissue exposed by his laser attack. The lizard was still too big, however, and the damage was minimal. (3.15/20 MP)
He stopped firing. It was better to just wait for his MP to regenerate and fire off another laser, though that would take another 15 minutes. For now, the Salamander was tracking him through smell, so he ended up just running around in circles. Good thing not a lot of people could actually see him being dumb—he didn’t have to pay for their healing expenses, r-right?
“What are you doing!” Aunt Cage shouted. She was among the few who had measures to withstand blinding attacks, as one who had a set of attacks of similar type.
“Not enough MP!” Kalender shouted back.
Aunt Cage sighed. At least he was honest. She fired off another plasma beam, delivering the mercy blow to the Salamander. She called for the cleanup crew, and the next examinee—who was still yelling expletives. The mages’ opinion of him had dropped after that one attack.
Miraculously enough, a Priestess of Minimine just happened to be passing by, and offered free healing to those afflicted of light sensitivity and blindness…though, she was saying things like “Did you see the truth?” so her service reviews were mixed.
Minimine and Kalender locked eyes from far away—and she shot him some finger guns.
By the way…
***
Name: Kalender
Age: 17
Occupation: Champion of Reincarnation
Lvl. 3 Human
HP:
MP: 5/29
[Skills]
Available Points: 2
All-Language Fluency (MAX)
Interpersonal Bubble (1/10)
[Companions]
Minimine (Flagged)
Vice-Goddess of Reincarnation
Gratitude: 12
Jyn
Knight of the Champion
Lvl. 11 Human
Devotion: 4,294,967,295 (3: not touching anything again!)
Companion Skills: —
Page Turner
Librarian of Lyrica
Lvl. 7 Human
3 wuz here :D
Companion Skills: —
[Blessings]
[Blessing of Reincarnation: Champion]
…
[Blessing of the ###### God: Like Moths to a Flame]
…
***
Zee shook her head. She saw that, right? That’s…that’s some bullshit magic right there. People who offensively used light magic were rare, and they usually cooperated with ice magic users to accomplish it. That there was someone who could do it on their lonesome, even if only for a second, making a beam that felt like staring into the sun…
No, no, the guy was a father. No matter how powerful he was, that sort of attitude would just get him killed in the Monster Wall. That kid would be left behind.
Still, she even called a favor from madame parking cone to make sure he failed! That was a Level 10 Salamander—and he was Level 2! It just makes no sense!
No, no, levels didn’t matter. She, of all people, knew that. It was all about Skills and expertise—but only if you weren’t a mage. Higher levels meant more MP, and mages had a higher starting MP than most. More levels was always a good thing for them.
That’s why monsters and magic beasts were scary. They all had high starting MP, and they all had high levels from perpetually killing each other.
In a magic-powered fight, Kalender should have lost, and yet, he emerged victorious…technically, but he did, nonetheless. Had he continued to run in circles, it was just a matter of time before he unleashed a finisher.
…But that was against a monster. For the third test, he would be facing Zee.
High noon came. She stood on a pile of the examinees’ bodies—was what it felt like, but really, they were just resting on the sidelines of the arena, filled to the brim with bruises and such.
She pointed her longsword at Kalender. “Come at me, boy.”
Kalender raised an eyebrow. “I thought this was a self-defense test.”
Zee charged. The distance to bridge was 10 meters. Kalender whispered, {Prepare 10 wind bullets} (28/29 MP), as he raised his gun and fired three low-power shots (27.64/29 MP). Zee deflected them all.
Kalender shotgunned the ten wind bullets from different angles (27.59/29 MP), aiming for her chest, her arms, her feet—absolutely everywhere to keep her from being able to block all of them at once. Just a single one of them would be enough to arrest her momentum, and then the rest would topple her.
That’s what he thought, but Zee rolled aside—still a technical win, as she was forced to momentarily stop. She hurried to her feet, only to be met by another two airgun bullets (27.35/29 MP), making her forget, even for just that split second, that she was supposed to charge at him again.
Just when her feet moved, she noticed a second airgun in Kalender’s off-hand.
(26.99/29 MP)
(26.39/29 MP)
(25.31/29 MP)
(24.11/29 MP)
(23.39/29 MP)
…
(23.27/29 MP)
She stood no chance under such an unending and straight-up unfair barrage. How could she, a longsword-wielder, perfectly deflect dozens of bullets shot at her at the speed of thought?
She thankfully didn’t know that Kalender’s second airgun was pre-charged, and only half the barrage actually ate into his MP. That was just double the unfairness and disrespect, really.
Aunt Cage walked up to the sulking ball called Zee. She bent down to make sure Zee heard her. “What did you expect, bringing a sword to a gunfight?”