Jude passed the first gate with much fanfare, and once he reached the other side, he found his breath taken away.  For nearly a month he had stayed in the outer regions of Geonar, but rarely did he venture outside as he was trying to complete his new staff as quickly as possible.  The outer city had been a beautiful place and far cleaner than he would have expected for this level of society.  But even that didn’t compare to the glorious nature of the city beyond the first wall.

Within the first, the city began to shine.   The architecture was more stunning as everything seemed to be carved from stone.  The level of detail was surprising, and the beautiful white stone was alluring.  Jude thought the outer city was clean, but this place made it seem dirty by comparison. 

The main streets were fitted with large black granite stones cut into perfect rectangles of one by three meters.  The black stone roadways contrasted exquisitely with the surrounding white buildings.  Plants of all kinds were growing everywhere with absolute care, bringing life into the stark contrast.  Many of these plants and vines bloomed with gorgeous flowers and brought in a calming scent across the air.

Jude didn’t see any of the other contestants who had passed and knew that they had already proceeded on ahead.  He too made his way forward following the main street towards the next gate.

Along the way he clutched the red coin and found that it had some abilities.  Concentrating on the coin allowed a mental link to form with it.  Inside the mental link Jude saw his name, class, points and a few more details.

He wanted to curse the scribe who gave him this coin; he hadn’t told him anything about how to use it.  The whole registration was like going to the DMV, unhelpful and annoying.

Jude reached the next gate after about an hour of walking.  He probably could have made it faster, but was constantly looking around and gawking at everything he had seen.  This place was so different from what he was used to.  Longdale alone was already enough to be a culture shock.  This, however, was like nothing he had seen in his previous life, except for movies and video games.

The crowds at this gate were significantly smaller.  Jude guessed that the pass rate of the first gate was 50% if not less.  But since he didn’t arrive here at the same time as everyone else, it was hard to judge.

The crowd was still big enough that there was no orderly line.  He didn’t want to be bothered by the people who passed the test behind him, so he pulled up his hood and blended into the crowd.  Jude looked up to the testing stage and saw the contestants trying their best to overcome the trial.  He was expecting the second set of tests to be much harder than the last, but what he saw made his eyes twitch.

The first trial looked like it came straight from a side-scroller video game.  Large square rocks were slamming to the ground and raising back up into the air.  Large barrels rolled down the path that was on fire.  And pits filled with spikes that you had to jump over.

The second trial, Jude wasn’t sure about as it took place inside a nearby building.  The only thing he could tell when the door was opened was that it was very dark inside.

The last trial suppressed Jude the most, but not because it was overly dangerous or mysterious like the other two.  This test was composed of a table with numerous weapons and other items.  Jude wasn’t sure, but he guessed that you had to find the right item.  Perhaps some of them were cursed?

Jude was beginning to understand why these tests were setup the way they were.  The first round of trials focused on combat: attack, defense, and control.  This second round was focusing on situational awareness.

More people slowly filtered in behind him and Jude did his best to ignore the conversations. It wouldn’t do any good if his pride got puffed up.  After all, pride goes before destruction and a haughty spirit before a fall.  The best way to avoid that was to not listen to the surround—

“That guy totally cheated,” one conversation broke through Jude's train of thought.

“Cheated?  How can you cheat those tests?” another asked.

“I don’t know how I would do it, but I heard that he has a unique class.  Maybe he was able to find a loophole with it.”

“That’s true, I didn’t even see a spell being used on the last trail.”

“No way!  The stage registered a spell, so there had to be one.”

“Stop trying to defend him, it’s not like if he wins you win.”

“After experiencing the trials so far and seeing those ahead, how likely are you even to make it to the final competition?  I might as well root for someone who has the chance to win the whole thing and comes from the same roots as us.”

“You have no spine at all!”

Jude stopped listening.  From there it devolved into name calling.  But he was surprised that people thought he cheated.  As far as he understood the rules, he did not cheat.

A while later the it was finally Jude’s turn to take the first test.

“Rules?” Jude ask the official.

This official was a gruff old man who grunted back, “Don’t get hit and make it to the other side while staying on the path.  No teleportation.”

Jude pulled down his hood and took out his sword before stepping up to the stage.  By now, everyone still waiting to take the test had seen Jude’s earlier performance, so the crowd focused intently on him.

The easiest way for Jude to pass this test was to use the version of that he created inside the sword.  He didn’t want to reveal that he could use magic not only without saying a chant but also without using keywords to activate them.  But it was better for him not to say the keyword as even more people would suspect him of cheating.

He looked ahead and saw the large square rocks falling, rolling barrels, and spike pits.  Timing was crucial in this test, one wrong move and you could be squished flat, skewered or set ablaze.  There were two safe areas’ along the path, so Jude took a moment to get the hang of the rhythm and then cast .  Faster than most could see, Jude was now at the first safe spot.

“He really is a cheating bastard!” someone called out from below.

But Jude still seemed to have more fans than critics and they lashed out against the man who called him a cheater.

“It’s not cheating if you have skill!”

“None of the anti-cheating measures engaged, so he can’t be cheating!”

“Don’t call someone a cheater, just because you lack skill!”

The gruff expression of the official administering the test for Jude didn’t change.  Jude wasn’t sure if the old man could see through what he did, or just trusted the system to find cheaters.

A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.

But Jude cast all these thoughts out of his head.  The first part was easy as he was able to complete it in one go, but the next part would require him to make several stops before getting to the safe area.  And because he didn’t have a side view of the whole course, he was limited in his ability to study it.  But he wasn’t too worried, he did have good reaction time and didn’t have a cool timer to it.

Jude performed several narrowly avoiding being crushed by the pounding stone blocks.  The deeper he proceeded the more complicated the rhythm became. The fire barrels started in this this area, but could easily 3D maneuver around.  It didn’t take but a few seconds for him to reach the next rest area.

Beads of sweat were forming on his brow, from a distance it looked like he was easily passing all the obstacles, but in reality, it took a great deal of concentration.  At first, he thought it was silly that he was stuck in a live action side-scroller, but now he was thankful that he didn’t have to worry about another axis of danger.  Two was more than enough, especially since the fire barrels rolled both ways.

The next area added the spike pits, but for Jude, this ended up making it easier.  The addition of the spike traps ment there were less falling blocks to worry about, and the fire barrels were limited as well.  For a normal wizard, all this exercise would have put them on the brink of despair, but for Jude, it was a walk in the park.  After all, he still had the bonus stats from all his other base level classes, even if he didn’t have the skills.  The bonuses weren’t high, but still enough to keep him from worrying about exhaustion.

Several later, and he was at the end of the course.  But he was startled to find the old official was already here waiting for him.  The course was a hundred meters long, and Jude covered it in 30 seconds.  He was only able to do this because of the super speed of .  But somehow this old man had covered the same distance.  Jude wasn’t sure if he used some sort of magic, or his stats were just that high that he could run that far without a sweat.

The old official grunted and said, “Good job, I’ll give you full points since you barely made it in time.”

Jude was stunned yet again, “There was a time limit?”

“Oh, I forgot to mention it didn’t I?  When you get to my age, things tend to get lost.” The old man smiled, but the wrinkles on his face made him look more like a jack-o-lantern.

If there was a time limit, and Jude just made it, did that mean there were others that were faster than him?  This was the inner city, after all, Wizards that lived here were a higher grade than those who lived outside.  The only exception would be mage classes outside the kingdom.

The old man lead Jude to the next trial and it was a pair of large closed doors.  The doors opened to a dark room that Jude could not see through.

“There is a time limit of one minute.  You fail if you take two minutes.  Each time you are hit, ten points will be deducted.  Each second you are late, ten points will be deducted.” Explained the official.

Jude couldn’t help but ask, “Are there any other rules?”

The old official looked offended, “Of course not.  Now in you go, your time has already started.”

Jude didn’t waste any time being irritated at the old man and went headlong into the dark room.  As soon as he entered, the doors behind him closed shut making the entire space pitch black except for a few flashes of light meant to disorientate those who entered.

Jude already had activated so the lack of vision didn’t bother him.  Several spells were being launched at Jude, but he was able to easily avoid them.  He quickly realized that the whole place was made with a large Foundation using .

Jude was already well versed in the workings of magic, but this was the first time he had seen such a large Foundation.  But from all his experiences, the design seemed a bit crude and was quickly comprehended by Jude.  Part of it was made to create the flashes of light that would not only disorientate people but would also snuff out light based magics.  Next were attack spells that used earth-based magic.  All it really did was randomly fling around stones of various sizes.  The last part was fake walls, if you did somehow manage to see, you would find a maze of walls.  Some of them existed, but most did not.

As soon as he comprehended the Foundation he got a notification that went up to Rank V granting him .

Jude nearly laughed out loud when he saw this, couldn’t he already do this with ?  So he tried out the new magic, just to see.

When he activated , a whole new world opened up before him, and the Foundation’s mechanism's all froze.  From Jude’s point of view, the whole place changed into something that looked more like a Modicuit that the real world.  But now he was in the spaces itself rather than an abstract view that could easily move.  At the same time he instantly knew that no one was directly controlling this Foundation and because of that he could force his way in and take control himself.

But he resisited the urge; he didn’t want to break the trials, more people still needed to go through it.  It was also the same reason he didn’t use .  A stronger Foundation might be able to withstand his skill, but he wasn’t sure about this one.  It was too spread out and too quickly made to be considered a high-quality Foundation, at least from Jude’s perspective.  If the one who painstakingly created this Foundation found out that Jude thought this way, he would be insulted.

The other reason why he didn’t damage the Foundation was that he didn’t need to.  Simply activating his was enough to grind it to a halt.  He also knew the direct route to take to pass the test, so what other reason was there to play around in here?  After all the old official might have ‘forgotten’ yet another thing, and Jude would rather get these trials over with.

Jude exited the building from the other set of doors on the opposite side of the building.  It took him a grand total of 15 seconds.  The people were flabbergasted at the results, but Jude continued to ignore them.  Instead, he looked at the old official and waited for his response.

“I forgot to mention that you can easily die in there, but I guess you didn’t need that information.” The old man laughed.

Jude didn’t know what to think of this old man.

“That’s fine. Show me the next test please,” Jude responded.

The old man took Jude over to a set of tables with hundreds of items on them.  Then he explained, “Half of these items are cursed and half are not.  You have ten minutes to identify at least 20 and at most 75.  Each correct answer is worth 10 points.  But be warned, some of these curses can kill you.”

“And how do I identify them?” Jude asked.

“Ah yes, I forgot about that.” The old man said.

Of course you did, Jude thought. But at least I found out what he forgot this time.

He continued to explain, “There is a plate in front of each item with its name and two squares, a black one and a white one.  Insert mana into the white one, and it will be registered as clean and insert mana into the black one, and it will be registered as cursed.”

Jude nodded and proceeded to sweep his gaze over the multitude of items.  They were standing between two large tables about ten meters long and a meter and a half wide.  The items ranged from large two handed swords to things as small as stud earrings.  Each item was laced with magical properties.

Typically, a Wizard would use to figure out if an item was cursed or not, plus reveal its stats.  It was a Rank I magic spell in and typically in high demand by all people.  But that didn’t mean that things couldn’t go wrong when you identified a cursed object.  Typically, one out of ten items were cursed, but Jude knew that those who were skilled in could curse items.  These curses were designed to protect the objects and could target an being cast on them and retaliate.  Because of this Jude knew that there were other ways to identify objects safely, but he didn’t know what other Wizards.  

Of course, this was all meaningless to Jude.  He no longer had and didn’t care that he was now missing it.  He had a much superior magic after all.

Jude didn’t feel like manually going through all the items, so he cast and combined both and .  The magic spread out across all the items and Jude could instantly tell which items were cursed and which weren’t.  Since this didn’t have anything to do with his actual combat ability, Jude decided to go flashy.

Since his spell already covered the whole area, Jude was able to easily insert a little bit of mana into the squares identifying them.  A scoreboard nearby went from zero to seventy-five so fast it was like watching milliseconds go by.

The crowd of contestants watching was absoultly shocked.  Not only did Jude get a perfect score, but he did it at an insaine speed.  Not only was he fast, but he scored all his points on the most dangerous of items, the cursed items!  Seventy-five cursed items were identified and zero regular items without a single mistake.

They didn’t know how he did it.  They couldn’t even comprehend how he did it.

Silence filled the air until the old official finally coughed and said, “I forgot to tell you.  Each cursed item you successfully identify gains you bonus points.”

Of course he did… Of course.