Examination

Leo runs through the gate, just barely in time to line up with the blue cloaks before the exam starts. Within minutes, music started playing and the line started moving. Everyone took their turns stepping into a magic circle at the front, all disappearing one by one. Leo’s turn arrives after a brief wait, the mage instructs him to step into the circle. In a blink, he teleports into a seemingly endless space, with other contestants barely visible in the distance.

“This must be the solo examination”- Leo thought to himself.

A table appears seemingly out of nowhere in front of Leo, with a stack of paper on top of it. A prompt with all of the questions and rules floats in the air, a small distance above the table. Then a voice informs Leo that he has 60 minutes to complete the written exam. “Phhft”, a floating timer materializes on the side of the table, after a small countdown, the timer starts ticking. Following the prompt, Leo pulls out his wand and writes on the air. The floating letters then shrink and travel to the paper.

Finishing the writing portion, the table and everything that appeared has now vanished in front of Leo’s eyes.

“The next portion would be the magic exam.”- Leo prepares himself.

Four straw dummies appear in front of him. A new prompt appears on the air, telling Leo to hit the dummies with his magic. Once the timer starts getting low, Leo closes his eyes and takes a deep breath.

“O great holy mother, please grant me your blessing of fire. COME, FIREBALL!”

A small beam of light concentrates around his wand and within milliseconds, combusts into a burning fireball. It then immediately launches in the direction that the wand points at. “Whiz”, his first shot misses the dummy. Undeterred, Leo casts again:

“FIREBALL!”

The second shot hits the dummy, burning it. More dummies appear around Leo, the prompt now instructs him to alternate his magic spells to hit the dummies. Following the direction, Leo alternates between fire, ice and divine magic to hit the dummies. Soon, after around 30 minutes, the timer reached 0 and the solo exam was over. Leo immediately falls down on his butt in exhaustion.

“It certainly looked a lot easier... to use magic in Skyrim...but I guess... that’s only possible in video games.”- Leo pants, trying to catch his breath.

“Well done participant, you now have 2 hours to take a break to recover your mana for the next portion of the exam.”- A disembodied voice enters Leo’s head.

Once again in a quick blink, Leo was back on the school ground, this time in the school yard with other contestants. Looking up, he noticed a giant floating timer in the middle of the school yard and the words “Team examination” below it. Leo spent the next hour eating the meal he was given from the cafeteria. It was quite an elaborate meal, provided by the school free of charge to all of the examinees. He then did some meditation to recover the mana used in the solo exam.

Satisfied with his regained mana level, Leo stood up and looked at the timer.

“1 HOUR AND 3 MINUTES.”

With the extra hour he got left, Leo goes to explore the school. The examinees are limited to only one area of the school, but there are plenty to be seen. The walls of the hallways are filled with paintings of mages of Ataxia, many Leo recognises from his book and many he doesn’t. Some paintings even depict great battles and mysterious magical beasts of the past. Distracted by the drawing, Leo bumps into something again. A loud “BOING” sound can be heard and he fell backwards.

“Not again!!!”- He thought to himself.

“Sorry… I didn't mean to bump into you.”- He uttered.

Leo braces himself for hell as he stands up, expecting to be yelled at like he did this morning. To his surprise, he sees a girl taller than him, she has light-brown hair that is shoulder length. But the most important thing to Leo was that she packs quite the bahonkers. She didn’t look angry, instead she even seemed flustered.

“No no... it was my fault for not looking.”- She shyly replies, avoiding eye contact.

Leo is excited at the aspect of how different this encounter went compared to his previous one. He realizes he struck gold and immediately took his opportunity to introduce himself.

“No really, it was on me. My name is Leo, what is your name?”- He smiles as he looks up at her.

“Um… Uh… My name is Natalie... Natalie Encia.”- She replies.

Leo can’t help but blush at her shyness and gave an ugly ass grin. He notices that she is also wearing a blue cloak and brings up the topic to her. There was some hesitation, but Natalie eventually seemed to be comfortable enough to keep up a conversation with Leo. They ended up talking for around 20 minutes, with Natalie seeming to still be dodging some of Leo’s questions. Suddenly, a loud horn sound can be heard, directing their attention towards the middle where the timer reads: 10 minutes left. Natalie quickly said her goodbyes and took her leave, with Leo waving goodbye and heading the opposite direction.

By the time Leo reaches the yard and looks up, the floating timer reads:

“5 MINUTES.”

“Please for the love of god, let me be paired with Natalie for the team examination.”- Leo prays to the unknown gods.

As the timer ticked down to 0, Leo once again enters the magic circle along with the blue cloaks. He was teleported into another empty space, this time different than the last. The magical space has many obstacles in the forms of rocks, varying in sizes, scattered all over the place. Many trees and water streams filled up the place, making it feel like a mini forest. Leo looks around, seeing 3 other examinees, all wearing blue cloaks like him. To their surprise, a giant stone golem materializes in front of the group.

“You are given 15 minute to strategize, work together and defeat the golem.”- A mysterious voice informs them.

One of the group members calls for everyone to gather, bringing their attention back to the exam. The group is composed of 2 males and 2 females, and they decided for Leo, along with one of the girls to be the main damage dealers in the back. The other two would serve as the defensive casters in the front, distracting the golem and preventing its attack.

“There is no time to waste!”- says one of the girls, gesturing to the others.

The group members then split up into formation, with two hiding behind a boulder in the front. Leo and the other member hid behind the tree in the back as the timer hit 10 seconds. With every timer tick, the members hold their breath in nervous anticipation. A horn sound can be heard as the golem’s eye glows and it stands up, towering over the field.

“NOW!”- One of the group members shouts.

“Bless me with your nurturing miracle, Earth Mother. Protect me from all danger, Ionus.”- The girl in the front chants.

A loud rumbling sound can be heard. Within seconds, a giant wall the same height as the golem pops up from the ground. That seems to catch the golem’s attention as it turns and attempts to break it with its fist. As the golem’s fist approaches the wall, a loud sizzling sound can be heard behind the wall.

“O great holy mother, please grant me your blessing of fire. COME, FIREBALL!”- Leo and the girl shouts in unison.

A hole forms from the wall, leaving enough room for the fireball to go through, hitting the golem. The attack seems to be ineffective as the golem immediately resumes punching as the hole in the wall closes. Surprised by the result, Leo takes a few seconds to think and then gestures to the girl to use the next attack. Suddenly, the noises stop and silence fills the whole space, followed by a massive vibration along with rumbling sounds. “BOOM”, the sound surprised everyone as they all looked up in shock. The golem had jumped over the wall and was falling towards them.

“Grant me your blessing, goddess Sylvia. GREAT TYPHON”- The guy in the front chants.

A giant gust of wind formed around the group, pushing upwards and preventing the golem’s fall from crushing everyone.

“EVERYONE NEEDS TO MOVE OUT OF THE WAY, I CAN’T HOLD ON FOR MUCH LONGER!”- He shouts.

The group starts running for their life away from the golem’s landing zone. Just as he barely got out of the zone, Leo turns around and casts fireball again. This fireball was a lot bigger, landing a direct hit on the golem’s left arm. Just like last time, the attack doesn't seem to be doing any damage.

“The golem has to be fire resistant!”- Leo says.

The girl next to him cast a spell, drawing small streams of water from the nearby ponds, pulling it up to the sky towards the golem. Leo then casts Ice Spear, turning the water stream into icicles. The icicles pierces the golem’s outer layer, doing damage to it. As the group make the realization that ice works on the golem, one of the front member shouts:

“FREEZE IT!”

The girl next to Leo gathers all of her mana and casts a spell. All of the water within the area floats up, moving towards the area under the golem. With impeccable timing, the wind gusts expire, causing the golem to fall down into the water bubble.

“Sleep eternally in the cold embrace. INSTANT FREEZE.”

Leo casts his ice spell, freezing the golem. The frozen golem falls towards the ground, breaking apart once it comes into contact with the ground.

The group gets hype and cheers in celebration of their victory. The laughing soon stops as the group look over in horror at the golem. It's reforming itself through an unknown force. Almost instantaneously, the golem returned looking like it hadn't taken any damage . As the group braces themselves for round 2, a voice can be heard saying:

“Nice work examinees, you did well holding out against the challenge. Your test is done.”

The golem, along with all of the objects in the space starts fading away. The group members collapse on the ground in relief as they congratulate each other. After a few minutes, Leo was teleported back into the school yard along with all the examinees. With almost everyone exhausted from their team exam. Another timer shows up in the air, this time it's counting down from 5 minute. The text below states:

“Calculating results, please head to the front yard for your results.”

Leo gives a sigh of relief, and starts walking towards the front yard.

After a short walk, he enters into the school yard filled with people, all of them examinees. A giant floating board can be seen with all of the names, all ranked. Out of all 1000 examinees, only the top 400 will be accepted based on their performance. Leo looks up in nervous anticipation to search for his name. To his surprise, he found his name glowing in red at rank 336 (The examinees’ name will glow red only to them to help with the name searching process). He yells as he jumps up and down.

“Um, can you peasants not block me from seeing the result?”- a voice coming from behind him.

“Oh sorry, I just got so excited. I didn’t expect to pass this exa...”- Leo paused as he looked behind him.

Leo could never be mistaken by the voice he heard. Even more obvious was the intense bright red color coming from her hair, it was Amber.

“IT’S YOU AGAIN!!!”- They both shout at each other.

With no time to waste, the two explode and enter a full on argument within seconds, drawing all the attention to them.

“How dare you talk to me, THE TOP SCORER OF THE EXAM, like that you duffus!?!”- Amber shouts.

“YOUR SCORE MIGHT BE HIGH BUT YOUR CHEST WILL FOREVER BE FLAT!!!”- Leo shouts back.

It seemed to land a critical hit on Amber as she paused. A strange tension seemed to be forming as it suddenly got a lot hotter around the two. Amber pulls out her wand, casting a spell. Everyone looks up in terror as a massive meteor forms in the sky above them. Yep, this girl just casted a high tier spell called Great Meteor Strike.

“ARE YOU TRYING TO KILL US BOTH???”- Leo screams in a panic.

“I don’t care about you duffus, as long as I take out the VIRGIN LOSER!!!”- Amber says.

The crowd starts screaming as the meteor starts falling towards them.

“I’m not really... REALLY going to reincarnate the third time because of a FLAT CHEST, LOUD MOUTH TSUNDERE!”- Leo thought to himself.

As Leo braces himself for the inevitable, the figure can be seen walking up to Amber.

“BONK”, a familiar sound can be heard.

“I leave you for a moment and you already caused so much more trouble again.”- Nia says after hitting her sister on the head again.

The giant meteor disappeared and that stopped the panic as everyone let out a loud sigh. Nia quickly leaves, pulling Amber away with her. After a brief moment of shock, Leo finally turns around to confirm the rankings:

“ 1ST AMBER ZAUBEREI

2ND CROZIN ALREAS

3RD NIA ZAUBEREI

…. “

“I guess her talent does match her ego. Although she could use some shutting up.”- Leo disappointingly thought to himself.

Leo leaves the school grounds, heading home with the good news of him passing the exam. Within a few days, Leo can be seen leaving home again. This time is different, he is moving into the Royal Magic Academy’s dorms. It’s an exciting aspect for Leo, as he hasn’t gone to school for months ever since his death. With his trusty book and cloak, along with his wizard hat and wand, Leo walks confidently into the street (while watching carefully for traffic).