"Good morning, everyone. I assume everyone knows what we're doing today?"
As Miss Amy said it out loud in front of the class, everyone's faces were filled with excitement as they all responded at the same time.
"Yes, Miss Amy!"
"Good. That's the energy I like to see from the class. Let's all get in a single file line and go to the arena."
A few minutes later...
As the class lined up in front of the arena's entrance again, all the students were giving each other pep talks to cheer each other up.
Alex was no exception, as Sophia forcefully dragged him along to listen to Camille's attempt to rally their small group.
When it was finally time to separate and head back into the line, his mind thought back to his first attempt on the Arena's second level.
It was so bad, in fact, that he didn't even survive a minute the moment he saw the golem approaching him.
Compared to the first level, the golem was just too fast for any space to maneuver... There was only one way to beat it.
A way that everyone in the class knew—a lesson that Miss Amy had told previously, as Alex stepped forward into the teleporter.
---
As the bright light vanished before his eyes, Alex was transported to an open plain field again.
He quickly started running, heading straight to the first obstacle course, which had a dummy that said 'Light Me."
A light spell instantly flew right by as he already had it prepped up in his mind, giving him a score of 85 as the dummy vanished.
Next, he ran straight to the next dummy that said "Dark Me." Using a ball of darkness, he got an 85 before he continued running to the next one.
This time, it wasn't just a basic six-element. Instead, it stated, "Stone me."
Standing right before the dummy, Alex quickly gathered a water element mixed with an earth element to form a piece of stone in the air.
With the last few drops of mana, he redirected it right towards the dummy. A score of 80 popped up as Alex finally took a seat on the floor.
After feeling his mana was fully recharged from a short meditation, he quickly got up from the ground before slowly approaching the final challenge.
The moment he saw a small shadow in the distance, Alex began brewing a spell. As the shadow grew larger and larger, a ball of stone appeared above Alex's head.
As the stone grew to the size of a basketball, a sudden flash appeared as a flame engulfing the entirety of the stone's outer layer.
The spell he created was an actual fireball, not just a ball of flame or a ball of stone he had done in the past tests.
All of Alex's mana continuously flowed toward his creation as the shadow finally reared its ugly face.
It was the same golem from the first level, but it was running at the speed of all of his classmates' nightmares.
The golem soon approached, less than fifty steps away, leaving Alex with no room to continue, as only seconds remained for him to cast.
"Crap crap crap!"
Unable to complete the fireball fully, Alex was forced to redirect his premature spell right at the golem.
As the fireball flew straight towards the golem, it raised its arm to block it at the very last second.
Fortunately, it still dealt heavy damage as the golem came to a complete stop, with parts of its body falling down onto the floor.
"Nice! Just one more."
As Alex quickly began to retreat further and further back on the road, the golem finally resumed running as it became fully enraged.
The real challenge had begun as he ran for his life, running faster than he had ever done as he didn't dare to look back.
He could feel his heart racing as the golem continuously chased after him. He could feel the ground shaking with every step.
Still, the effort Alex had put into running hasn't gone in vain. It had all gone according to his plan as he finally took one look behind him.
There were a hundred steps between him and the golem, giving him just enough room to cast a spell as the golem had taken too long to resume running.
Water began rapidly flooding into the soil, turning it into mud as Alex used his remaining energy to make a run for it once again.
He kept running further and further back as the golem soon approached where he had stood just a few seconds ago.
At first, the golem tried to ignore the muddy soil on the ground, but it soon realized it had slowed down its foot to a snail's pace.
Alex was now almost back to the same distance he had been when he first saw the golem's shadow, a tiny little dot in the distance.
"Dumbass."
Not wasting any time, Alex immediately sat down on the floor and began to meditate, recovering all of his mana before casting the same spell as earlier.
Even though his mana regeneration had been drastically slowed down, there was still plenty of time for him to gather enough mana to mix earth and water.
With a rock forming as a core, a flame soon engulfed the stone as Alex still had half of the mana compared to the first fireball he cast earlier.
"Weird... Why is it easier this time?"
Alex didn't have time to think too deeply about it as the golem was once again approaching closer and closer.
Although he had run his body dry of mana, Alex's face looked calm—a sense of peace rather than panic.
The size of the fireball had given him confidence—a killer in the size of a school desk right above his head.
"Take this!"
As the flaming rock flew toward the golem, a loud woosh sound echoed throughout the entire plain.
The golem had already raised its arm, bracing for impact once again. But the fireball blew straight past it like a hot knife through butter.
With a loud explosion, a score appeared right into the air as Alex managed to get a 75 this time.
"Whew, thank god that thing died... That could have been so bad."
Alex murmured as he could feel his mana regeneration reach rock bottom. His body's natural mana flow had stopped completely.
"Time to see what other people got..."
As the leaderboard appeared right before him, he was once again nowhere near the top 10,000 students who had done these tests.
To his surprise, Chloe somehow made it past the top 100 with a perfect score—the only one in class who managed to beat the entire thing with flying colors.
Before he could scroll down further to check out his classmate's scores, a light appeared before his eyes, sending him back into the challenging exit.
"What did you get?"
Sophia and Mary asked as they both approached him from the exit. They were both way ahead of him, as their four friends also stood right behind them.
"85, 85, 80, and 75."
"That's amazing, Alex. I'm pretty sure your score is above half of the class now." Evelyn congratulated.
"Thanks..."
---
As everyone walked back into the classroom and settled down into their seats, Alex could see that everyone's faces looked drastically different.
Some looked happy, while a small fraction of them looked extremely depressed, almost to the verge of crying.
"Chloe, Sophia, and Mary, can you three come up, please?"
With all three of the girls heading up to the front, everyone fell into silence as they waited for what she was about to announce.
"I want everyone to give a round of applause for Chloe. She's the first in the class to achieve a perfect score and reached the top 78 on the leaderboard."
Everyone in the class started clapping, their face barely looked surprised, as if everyone in the class had known Chloe as the overachiever.
After the claps died down, Miss Amy pulled out a keycard and snapped her finger as a screen displayed on the board.
In the video, they could all see Chloe approach the first dummy. She immediately cast a spell that threw a bunch of small light spells in the shape of a marble ball.
It flew so fast to the dummy that Miss Amy pulled the video back to slow it down for the class to see what actually happened.
"Remember, a bigger spell doesn't mean more damage. Condensing the element into a smaller area can be more effective.
This also means draining more mana... But practice can reduce ineffective mana usage, as seen by how many Chloe was able to cast."
As the video continued, Chloe repeated the same strategy for the next two dummies, getting 100 in all three.
The easy part of the test was out of the way, and everyone held their breath as the final challenge approached.
Alex could feel some of the classmates who looked depressed earlier looking away as if they didn't want to face their fear again.
He didn't pay much attention to them as he shifted his attention back to the video. As the golem moved closer and closer, a spell began to take shape above Chloe.
It wasn't just a singular spell. Rather, hundreds of wind blades all over the sky, all aimed right at the golem's face.
As she directed it right into the Golem, Miss Amy suddenly paused the video before it hit.
"I want everyone to notice something a little different here. So you all can see that Chloe cast a bunch of small spells, right?"
Everyone in the class nodded in agreement.
"But look, as the wind blades flew closer and closer, they all merged into one rather than breaking to reach each other's momentum.
She had managed to control all of these spells as they flew towards the golem, not just using the last bit of mana to direct them towards the golem."
As soon as Miss Amy raised her point, some of the class, including Alex, started to blush as they felt a little called out.
They all had directed their spell without actually attempting to control it afterward. In their mind, they had already spent most of their mana casting it.
"Now, as all these wind blades merge, it is an actual resemblance to the Tempest blade."
The entire class fell into shock, as they had just recently learned about it during class, a tier two spell meant for level two mages.
As the video resumed, the class wasn't given any time to react as the merged wind blade pierced straight past the golem's arm.
Before it could fully pierce its head, the score already popped up, showing the final challenge's score to be 100.
"That's the creativity combined with a strong mana pool that everyone should be replicating... Rather than using a strategy to exploit the dumb golems."
With everyone clapping for Chloe again, she shyly stepped back down before sitting down next to Alex.
"That was amazing," Alex complimented, his face still looking a little embarrassed by Miss Amy's callout at the end.
"Thanks..."
"Now, for our next person to applaud: Sophia and Mary are the only people in the class who managed to get 90 in the golem fight."
Everyone still clapped again as the score was still very impressive, albeit just not as crazy as Chloe's performance.
"Ahem, besides their impressive score, I want to tell everyone that this will be the last time I'm going to bring you all to the arena."
As Sophia and Mary sat back down in their seat, they were shocked by the announcement Miss Amy had just dropped.
"I know you might be a little disappointed, but now you can spend your own time and try the challenge yourself."
"How do we do that?"
One of the students asked the question on everyone's mind, as he didn't even bother raising his hand for it.
"Just use your ID. It should have been given when you entered the school... Go to the front desk and tell them what level you want to enter."
Seeing that everyone seemed to understand the instructions, Miss Amy quickly took out the textbook.
"Now, everyone, please open your textbook and flip to chapter 3..."
---
As the class ended, Alex's classmates were already grouping up with one another. They all had one destination, which was to visit the arena once again.
"Alex, you want to come with us? We are about to check the arena out right now."
Chloe asked as she came back from being with the rest of her friends, which now included both of his sisters.
"Sure."
As Alex followed the six of them out of the classroom, the school's exit was filled with students from other classes.
For a second, a particular memory hits him—a child who was lost among a bunch of blank faces.
He quickly shook his head, kicking the memories away as he followed Sophia and her friends down the sidewalk.
A few minutes later...
When the seven of them arrived at the arena entrance, hundreds of thousands of people were standing at the front.
Most of them were at the twenty different front desks, lining up for the arena challenge services, and some even needed to head to the back just to line up.
They were wearing different-colored robes, indicating various mage majors as they stood in the main lobby chatting with each other.
Some of them were also much older, ranging from fully grown adults to even someone in their sixties with a white beard.
Their towering height made the entrance a little intimidating, but they continued forward as Sophia held Mary's and Alex's hands tightly.
"What do we do now?" Mary asked curiously as the line looked way too long for them to try any other area levels.
"Let's go explore the building... I heard there's a shopping area and even a tournament happening in the back."
Everyone quickly agreed with Evelyn's idea, leading her to lead the group as everyone followed right behind her.