Caroline took about five minutes to fire all five of her arrows, which made her the third last one of the contenders to finish the first round of her tests.
“Ms. Caroline Baker, ten points.” the girl in a grey blue hood announced with a wide smile, when the last arrow from Caroline landed bounced off the wooden target, just a few hairs’ width away from the center: “Now, everyone, take your time with your bows, but don’t take too long.”
When the first round of tests was done, Marco led the rest of the contenders to another training ground - there were only five contenders left, because all the other five contenders either landed only one arrow or did not land any arrows at all - the points they lost already disqualified them, thus it would be pointless for them to continue.
The next round was hosted by someone who looked quite a bit like Marco, but was more muscular than Marco and was wearing a sleeveless leather vest, revealing his tanned and scarred arms.
“The next round is not about battle skills. But about field processing and butchering skills.” Marco told the rest of the five contenders: “And the judge to hold this round of test, would be my brother Paulo. Paulo, take it away.”
“Alright, folks. ” Paulo walked to the five remaining contenders: “Our club is a hunters’ club, which means our passion is not simply about hunting down game and bringing them to the rangers at our academy student hunting ground. It’s also about actually hunting in the actual fields, and even in special magical realms. In our academy hunting ground, you can just kill your game and bring it to the rangers, the rangers will handle some of the most important tasks for you, just to make your lives easier while you hunt. These tasks include basic field processing, butchering of your prey for long term storage, and your knowledge and experience in safety precautions when dealing with dangerous game. So for this test, each of you would be assigned a simulated game and a set of tools, you are also given a scenario. You are to field process or butcher your game accordingly, keep the scenario you’re assigned in mind. For example, if you’re assigned a wild boar and your scenario requires you to preserve the bristles, then think about making sure the bristles are intact when you process them. In this round, you are allowed to use your powers but there’s a catch, the more power you use, the harsher we will judge you. And you are guaranteed five points if you do not use any power at all. Now, behold your test subjects.”
When Paulo finished his last sentence, members of the club pushed out five wooden boxes onto the training ground. Each wooden box had a number on it.
“Now, come over here and draw your number.” Paulo took out a cloth pouch and said.
Caroline took the first draw because Paulo handed her the pouch first, and she took out a round marble with number “3” on it.
The box with number 3 on it contained a simulated body of a wolf. To say it was a dummy would be a gross understatement, because it not only looked very livelike, when Caroline touched and felt its texture, it was almost just like the body of a real wolf.
The box also contained several knives, a pair of gloves, a pouch of salt, a box of ginger and garlic, a metal tube and a rubber tube and a metal clamp. There was a small piece of paper with texts on it describing her scenario: “You are in a wild hunt and you are at least two days of traveling away from the nearest human town. This is the body of a Swamp Serpentine Wolf - a kind of poisonous wolves with poison glands in their throats and tails. You are tasked with delivering at least one of these poison glands to the town. Its teeth, fur and spine are also worth quite a bit on the market. Preserve as much as you can.”
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“You’ll have twenty minutes to do as much as possible.” Paulo said, “Starting right now.”
Caroline thought for a short minute then looked at each of the other contenders - it looked like each of the remaining five contenders got a different simulated game and a different set of tools, which made sense because this way they would not be able to copy each other’s actions so easily.
Caroline first ran her hands through the simulated wolf body, especially its throat and its long and extendable tail - she could feel that there were indeed two glands underneath. Then, she looked over at the tools she was given and chose a knife with a long straight blade and the smallest knife with a curved edge.
First is the gland in the throat, Caroline used the knife with a long straight edge to create a thin long opening on the wolf’s neck, then pulled the opening apart using her hand in gloves.
The internal parts of the wolf’s body were not as well simulated - they showed a rubbery texture, and there was some red thick liquid to simulate blood but not enough to cloud the visibility. This was quite friendly to the contenders, since per Caroline’s experience blood was one of the biggest source of imprecise cuts for newbie hunters. And even for relatively experienced hunters, blood still made it hard for them to process unfamiliar game.
After pulling the shallow parts of the opening apart, Caroline continued to cut deeper using both knives: the straight long knife for creating new openings, and the small curved knife for separating tissues and to widen openings.
It wasn’t long before Caroline found the poison gland - it was thin, long and had a dark green color. And since the gland looked quite fragile, Caroline decided to carve the whole surrounding area out instead of separating only the gland within the time limit.
The whole process took a bit over twelve minutes, which was more than half the time limit. But now that she was more familiar with the rough structure of the simulated wolf body, she was able to do it much faster when it came to the gland in the wolf’s tail. By the time she was done with the tail, she still had about half a minute to double check.
“Times up, stop what you’re doing.” Paulo was already checking up on all the contenders while they were trying to process the simulated game, and on the twenty minute mark, he walked to the front and announced.
“Number One and Number Four, your processing technique needs improvement, you damaged the parts of value beyond salvaging. So I regret to inform you, you’re out.” Paulo sighed and looked at a young man wearing a thin leather armor and a young woman in civilian style clothes: “Better luck next time.”
“Thank you for the opportunity.” the young man stood up and stepped to the side, while the young woman just threw down her tools and stormed out of the training ground.
“Number Two, you did mostly the right thing. But you forgot that you’re processing a snake with corrosive and volatile poison. Your choice of not using face protection and gloves could be lethal. Unless you are immune to poison, you would have only five points this round.”
The contender with the number 2 box was the oldest looking contender of the five, with a beard and a red tattoo on his cheek, he sighed and shook his head: “Thank you for the opportunity. I got only eight points last round, can I stay and watch even when I’m disqualified?”
“Of course.” Paulo smiled then turned to Caroline: “Number Three, you did the right thing mostly. Can you tell me why you chose to carve the entire part out?”
“I figured I only had twenty minutes, and I don’t have time to perform high precision surgery.” Caroline answered: “And since I have one day of traveling, I thought leaving it in the tissue could help preserve it for longer.”
“You are on the right track. But the best practice is to use salt.” Paulo nodded: “Swamp Serpentine Wolf’s poison gland could best be preserved in salt - it will dry the gland up but still preserve its poison in best condition. Storing it in its own flesh is feasible, but it will still lose its potency with time. You have eight points. Good job.
“And Number Five. Nice job on the Crier Spider. It’s the hardest of all five, and you did everything correctly. Ten points for you.”
“Thank you!” this was a particularly young boy, who had quite noticeable calluses on his fingers: “Thank you very much! I was so nervous, I thought I did something wrong for a moment...”
“Don’t relax just yet! There’s a final round!” Marco stepped in and cut the young boy off: “Ms. Baker, Mr. Srivanti, please follow me.”