In the alleyway in an unknown part of the city, was a group of youths, their age ranges being around 18 to 25 years old.

There were five guys surrounding another two guys and a girl, a guy with the smaller group was unconscious and had severe burns and bruises scattered around his body, his clothes being torn and singed.

A gentle yellow light was being washed over the unconscious guy's body, barely healing his injuries, the light came from the trembling hands of the girl, with brown hair and hazel eyes, her face filled with fear and denial.

Tears dripping from the corner of her eyes and dripping onto the prone body of the guy.

"Oi oi oii, who said you could heal his sorry ass bitch?!"

A well-built guy with the other group of five guys had shouted at the girl, making her flinch but not stop trying her best to heal her friend.

"Calm down Fred, it seems like healing magic isn't her strong suit so just how bout we let her try and heal him? When he eventually dies, she'd blame herself for not being good enough at healing magic, wouldn't that be real funny?!"

"Fuck!! Boss, you're as cruel as ever ain't ya?"

One of the guys in the group had exclaimed while everyone else was laughing just imagining such a situation happening, and the high likelihood of it.

"Bastards!" The last guy of the three group was standing in front of them, a blue dome surrounding the three of them as he seemed to struggle keeping it up.

Something that wasn't first mentioned was that four guys in the other group, besides the one they called boss were pounding upon the blue dome.

One of them bashing it with as many attacks as he could with a metal rod, another hurling punch after punch into it, a small explosion occurred every time his fists met the surface of the dome.

The other two were just shooting at it with futuristic looking pistols, energy beams being blasted from them.

"Hey, could you just give up and let your shield down? I hate people who struggle despite not being able to change the outcome." The 'boss' had said in a bored tone, tired of waiting for so long before they would kill the three people in the dome shield.

"W-why… Why did this happen.." The guy keeping the shield up was quickly losing Vaes, his shield was one that held up as long as he had Vaes, but it would, of course, be broken through by powerful attacks.

He was nearing the end of his Vaes and had thought back to what lead them to this situation.

They were three close friends from the same school, it was a popular school in their area as it was very focused in magic study along with the normal curriculum.

It produced good students that were excellent in magic compared to a majority of other schools, their students magic status also being much higher than other on average, which also enticed parents to send them there.

Magic status was a powerful thing to have as it seriously made your life much easier and gave you a lot of benefits in society.

All it took to increase in status was to be better in magic, anyone could see the relation of schools that taught magic better than others and a social status that was calculated based on your magic ability.

They were three who were lucky to have been enrolled the school and also had quite decent magic ability amongst the average person.

Gin, who was the one currently unconscious, a handsome, green haired boy. He had an outgoing and relaxed personality on the outside, being someone who you could have lots of fun with or just stay quiet and enjoy each others company with.

Those who knew him closely would know that he had great ambitions, much greater than the average youth, he was extremely hard working and sufficiently talented in magic.

He had been an honor student when he aced the entrance exams at the school and was admired by many students, and was very popular with both genders due to his looks and personality.

He specialized in battle magic, using spells that increased his speed and rate of attack.

He studied many spells and movement techniques to become faster, he a reputation of quickly taking out his opponents, and if they were too tanky to take out in short period of time, he'd whittle them down slowly while dodging all of their attacks.

Early in his first year during an arcane battle lesson, which taught students how to fight using magic and taught battle spells, they were all grouped into threes at random and were to work together to beat of other teams in a sort of mini-tournament.

Gin had been grouped together with a plain and dull looking boy with black hair and was slightly plump, together with a shy, white-haired girl with a petite frame.

The boy was named Harry and the girl, Zeena.

Harry was a fully defensive mage, as his talent and ability with offensive magic was horrendously bad. Since he didn't have any talent for anything else, Harry fully focused on training his defensive ability and his hard work paid off as he was accepted into the school.

Zeena instead was immensely talented in support magic, able to buff her allies with a multitude of spells, she also is very agile and can buff herself to avoid getting hit or attacked by others.

Though her lack of talent with any type of healing magic made her focus on support spells that increased the survivability of her allies, such as increasing their resistance to certain attacks or their speed to dodge attacks.

With the classic combination of offense, defense, and support, the trio became of the strongest teams amongst the first years.

Though at first, the three stuck together only because they are such a good team, they slowly came closer together after fighting with each other and even training with each other for so long.

Nearing their graduation, their chemistry was so strong you could mistake them for siblings despite being so different from each other.

They had graduated at the top of their class and immediately decided to register for the Noraxia Academy Entrance Examination.

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Well, they actually decided it two years ago, when they were starting to get used to each other's quirks inside and outside of battle.

The entrance exam wasn't something you could just register online though, you had to register on the day itself, from 8-12, you had 4 hours to register.

The area of the registration was at the edge of the city, as the trial did need you to go through the wilderness, and as it was the edge of the city, it was equivalent to the slums like in fantasy cities.

It had crime everywhere, people begging on the streets, gangs, delinquents in every school, and dirty and run down buildings.

No ordinary person from the inner city would be able to survive even a day inside the cities "slums" and even those who live there already won't tell you its an easy life, no matter how long they've lived there.

In this world, offensive magic is much easier to learn and control than defensive magic, as the saying goes, it takes a long time to build something up but an instant to destroy it.

As defensive magic had more complicated formulas and theories behind it, those who specialized in it had a much harder time becoming stronger and growing.

Offensive magic, on the other hand, could be as crude as picking up a pencil with telekinesis and stabbing someone with it.

Thus the death rate of humans in the slums was much higher than how it normally is in the other world.

With one person knowing just a bit of fire magic, he could murder tens or even hundreds of people.

Normal people considered the "slums" to be another trial in the examination, and almost everyone considered registering to take it another trial in itself.

The trio who had decided long ago that they would take the exam had to pass through the slums as well.

They had not been cocky and always had their guard up while in the slums, ready to use their spells in an instant. Along the way, it seemed like they had gotten lost and had wandered into an alleyway.

Then they were ambushed by four guys older than them, but while Harry and Zeena had been frozen in shock at the sudden ambush, Gin had already pushed them out of the way and had started to fight with all four guys.

It was actually very easy for him to take them all on, as they were all too slow and couldn't land a hit on him, he instead was striking at them every time he ran past and in a short while they all had been beaten to the ground.

Even though Gin had beaten them all and Harry and Zeena had started to walk towards him after getting out of their shock and watching Gin take all of the young thugs by himself, he felt like that it shouldn't have been so easy.

And then he felt a rush of heat from above him, and instead of dodging out of the way, he had thrown his friends out of the way before a huge beam fire had crashed on top of him.

The fire had condensed until it was human-sized and had started to throw around and beat up Gin, Gin not being able to retaliate at all as the fiery humanoid was much faster and stronger than him.

After a few minutes of Gin being beaten to a pulp, the flaming figure had lifted Gin high into the air by his head, and the flames had receded a died down to reveal

a young man, with red and yellow hair, a cruel and sadistic smile on his face as he looked upon Gins nearly lifeless body.

Harry was filled with fear of seeing how their powerful and talented friend had been beaten so easily but also filled with rage.

His rage overcame his fear and he had cast a shield over his body and had body slammed himself onto Gins assailant, causing him to be thrown back and drop Gin onto the ground.

Since both Zeena and Harry were awful at offensive magic and didn't think they could escape, Harry had cast his best shield around his friends, as a last resort, hoping that someone might come and help them.

That was how they ended up in the current situation, Harry using all his vases to keep the shield up while their assailants bashed on his shield and Zeena trying desperately to save Gins life.

They had already made a call to the authorities but Harry knew they wouldn't get here in time.

'someone… a-anyone!! Save us!!'

---

Nom nom nom, mmmh~ no matter how many times i eat this burger, i never get tired of it, I've literally been eating it for almost every lunch since I've arrived in this world.

Well ever since i started exercising it was actually a very good source of energy and was actually much healthier than burgers on earth due to the very high-quality ingredients.

I've bought two like i promised myself and was currently walking to the location of the entrance exam, it at the edge of the city and thus i had to go through the more dangerous parts of the city.

Eating my burger with both hands as i walked through the bad part of the city.

Another wrapped burger was floating beside me, i planned to eat it right after this one and it was another flavor that i liked, it had bacon and barbecue sauce.

I had turned off the signal on my card that notified everyone near me of my status as it felt like things would be more interesting without it, and i also felt the status wouldn't be of much use in this part of the city.

It was already 7:45 AM, 15 minutes before the registration starts but it lasted until 12 in the afternoon so i had plenty of time.

As i was walking through the slums, i had sensed that an illusion had surrounded me, trying to lead me to a certain place.

I didn't act as if i had noticed but had not broken through it either, just using a spell that allowed me to see both the illusion and the real world around me, both overlapping on each other.

I also had cast a spell that traced back the source of a spell, the direction, and location it was cast from, and not the caster itself.

It was a useful spell in crimes as it still worked when the casters were no longer on the scene and also worked when the caster had not moved from their location.

The spell had told him that the caster was on the roof of the building he had just passed, Al was already executing his plan of action

---

This guy had no awareness at all! He was definitely a rich kid just looking at him,

he was eating an expensive looking burger, totally unlike the junky food we have here.

He had clean clothes that looked like there were made of high-quality materials, but it didn't seem like he trained too much, looking too skinny from where I'm standing.

I also couldn't feel a signal that notified me of his status, so its either its gotta be

low since it couldn't reach me, only those with silver II status and above would have

a high enough signal radius on their card that would reach me.

The boss can handle Those below silver IV so I'll send him his way.

I'm sure he's going to the entrance examination, because why else would someone go to this

part of the city?

Well, the employer won't really care otherwise, unless i target someone who very obviously has no relation to the Noraxia Entrance Examination, like some older people who don't

qualify to participate.

I've already captured him in my illusion and it looks like he didn't even notice it, fucking dumbass! Even though the others who've I've caught were the same, he looked even more oblivious to his predicament, still chowing down on his burger.

Another victim for the others guys and the boss, we're gonna make a killing this time!

We didn't have much luck on the previous examination this year and didn't have as much

victims as today.

Hahaha... that's it you dumbass, walk straight into tha... Huh?? Where the hell did he go?!

The victim of his illusion had suddenly disappeared when had blinked, he had just gone.

Fuck!! Did they notice they were in an illusion and escaped??

"Shit... can't believe i let my victim escape from me..." He kicked a can off the roof, his face filled with annoyance and anger.

"Don't worry, I'm right here" A voice spoke out from behind him.

"Huh?!" Turning around, he was met with a glowing white knife, that seemed to be made of Vaes, aimed straight at his face, just inches away from cutting him.

Behind the weapon was the same person he had thought had escaped from his illusion, taking one last bite of his burger as he wiped his face with a wrist, before unwrapping the other one floating in the air and taking a bite of it.

"H-how did you find me... and even get here so fast?! Did you use teleportation magic?!"

The illusionist had put his hands up, not wanting to be stabbed in the face by the magic weapon, but still being courageous enough to ask Al questions.

"Nope, it was illusion magic, i made you see an illusion of myself following your illusion, while the real me was leisurely heading towards your location, i tracked back the source of the spell by the way."

The illusionists had his face contort from confusion to disbelief, and then become angry and bitter that he had actually been tricked by an illusion.

"What are you gonna now? Turn me in? All I've done is make you go towards a certain location..."

"Well, that location must have some interesting stuff if you wanted to lead me to it, so how about you take me there yourself?"