After cutting down the black-mist knight, Thea didn't relax for even a second.
She continued carefully up the mountain, every step alert and ready.
The climb after that was… uneventful. Too uneventful.
By the time she reached halfway up, she had already figured it out.
This "trial" probably wasn't meant to make apprentice wizards hack their way past armored knights.
More likely, it was a test of reaction and instinct — who flinched, who ran, who survived.
In other words, a selection for those who knew when to flee and ran fast enough to live.
Merlin, bless his ancient genius, clearly hadn't accounted for a descendant like her — someone who solved problems with a sword to the face.
If the old archmage could see how she'd just punched her way through his sacred trial, he'd probably cough up blood in his grave.
That knight's skill was no joke, though. Even in the modern world, he'd count as elite.
Thea could imagine Merlin's medieval kin scrambling for their lives back then.
People loved to say "ancient warriors were stronger," but that was nonsense.
Every craft improved with time. Swordplay too — sharpened by generations of refinement.
Well, unless you had "true energy" or "chi" or whatever — but clearly that didn't exist here.
Otherwise, Ra's al Ghul would've ascended to heaven ages ago after eight centuries of training.
Finally, she reached the top.
"Whew…" She exhaled, stabbing her sword into the ground.
The climb had no more enemies, but her nerves had been taut the entire way.
She wondered how many of her medieval ancestors had puked their guts out running this far uphill.
Hopefully, Trial Two wouldn't be worse.
The mountaintop was no peak — it was a flattened plateau.
A vast stone plaza stretched before her, and at its far end loomed a grand palace — distinctly British in design, though weathered and ancient.
The front gates towered ten meters high, flanked by massive, half-broken statues of armored knights.
Thea didn't rush forward.
Charging headfirst into unknown magic doors? That was how people died in movies.
And honestly, those doors looked too heavy for her to even budge.
Then, with a low groan of ancient hinges, the gates opened on their own.
Thud… thud… thud…
Each echoing step made her chest tighten.
From the darkness within, something enormous emerged.
Horns curved from its head.
Eyes burned red-gold like molten iron.
Four legs, two wings, a body armored in scales that shimmered like flowing magma — and a tail long enough to flatten a building.
"A red dragon? A fire dragon?"
Whatever it was, Thea knew one thing — she couldn't win.
Not her, not even Bane on a triple dose of venom.
She stared, half in awe, half in despair.
Was Merlin's "wizard selection" really… dragon slaying?
No wonder half the medieval peasants never made it past level one.
Or maybe, she thought grimly, the system had decided to "scale up difficulty" just for her.
Because she didn't follow the rules in the first round.
She glanced down at her sword.
It didn't look remotely like it could slay a dragon.
Maybe it was another agility test?
Dash between the fireballs and sprint through the door behind it?
But the dragon wasn't even standing — it just sat there, crouched like a bored cat guarding the entrance.
Her mind spun through every theory she could think of — from video game mechanics to fairy-tale logic — and none of them fit.
Then the dragon moved.
Without warning, its jaws opened.
A fireball the size of a dinner table exploded toward her.
"Oh, come on!"
Did Merlin expect every wizard to be a dragon-killing hero before even learning their first spell?
Was this the medieval version of "if you want to study magic, first go slay Godzilla"?
She dove aside just in time.
Flames roared past, searing the ground where she'd stood.
Another blast followed, and another.
Thea ducked, rolled, sprinted, every near miss making her curse louder.
Fine. Fighting this thing head-on was suicide.
But she wasn't going to die without thinking first.
When the next fireball hit the ground, she noticed something strange.
The flames burned — but the ground underneath wasn't charred.
No oxygen-depleting combustion.
No heat shimmer.
Fake fire? Illusionary magic?
She crouched low, edged closer to one of the fire pits, and waved her hand over it.
Cool.
No heat.
To double-check, she touched the edge with her sword.
No damage. No temperature change.
"Well, well," she murmured. "So that's your game."
She tapped the sword against the edge again.
The collision was real — solid resistance.
Not illusion, exactly… but something like a construct.
A simulation.
Thea's eyes lit up.
"So it's not about strength — it's about imagination."
She grinned.
If the trial responded to thought, then… anything she pictured could become real.
She closed her eyes, thought hard — and whispered,
"Beretta 92F."
A pistol materialized in her hand.
Solid weight. Metal cold against her palm.
She aimed, fired.
The recoil, the sound, the bullet strike — all perfect.
"Got it."
This wasn't a combat trial at all.
It was a creativity test.
Defeat the dragon by whatever means your mind could conjure.
So that was it.
Merlin's idea of "testing a magician" wasn't power, but imagination.
"You think a dragon's scary?" she said with a smirk.
"Let me show you what my world can do."
First, she pictured the classic option: a Terminator.
Not the cheap model either — the governor edition.
A towering, muscled cyborg appeared beside her, hefting a Gatling gun.
"Go get 'em, big guy."
He charged forward, roaring, the minigun spitting endless bullets.
The dragon snorted, unimpressed, and launched a volley of fiery orbs.
The Terminator didn't even last thirty seconds before melting into light.
"Figures."
Thea wasn't discouraged.
If at first you don't succeed… scale up.
She took a deep breath, closed her eyes, and imagined the largest, most unstoppable weapon she'd ever seen.
A Jaeger.
A red giant, one hundred and fifty meters tall, forged from steel and fury —
Crimson Typhoon.
The ground shook as the mecha rose behind her, triple-armed and gleaming, each hand gripping a saw-edged blade.
When the dragon looked up, its molten eyes widened.
Even in its magically reconstructed memory, it had never seen a creature like this.
A titan? it thought, bewildered.
Then Crimson Typhoon moved.
A thousand tons of steel thundered forward.
One arm seized the dragon's throat, pinning it to the ground.
The other two came down like guillotines, blades flashing red.
The first strike carved through scale.
The second smashed bone.
By the third, Thea wasn't even bothering with technique — just raw satisfaction.
"Now that's what I call problem-solving!"
If this was Merlin's imagination test, then she'd just aced it —
with extra credit for style.