Leo was momentarily confused before he finally understood what the test was about. It was about adapting.
Asher knew that no one had ever tried to use their aura techniques without their weapons, so he was seeing how well they could modify their techniques on the spot. This would show exactly how much of a grasp they had on their technique, but also how well they could control their aura.
“I don’t have a -” Before Leo could say that, Asher took out a Bow from his dimensional ring and threw it at Leo. Leo caught the bow and waited for an arrow. The arrow came after he looked up.
He caught the arrow and thought for a while. After figuring out what to do, he imbibed his aura into the arrow and got ready to shoot the arrow. He aimed it away from the crowd toward one of the empty arenas and let go of the arrow.
The arrow flew quickly and raced to the furthest arena. As it sped through the air, it left a streak of shadowy aura behind it, making it hard to know exactly where the arrow was. It looked like a long line of darkness.
Asher nodded at this and flung his hand, releasing a little bit of aura. This aura instantaneously destroyed the arrow in mid-air, making its remnants fall to the ground.
“You pass. Next,” He said.
Marcus was immediately after Leo. He got ready to show off his fist technique. If he didn’t have to use any weapons, then he would be able to breeze through the test since that was how he normally fought.
However, Asher somehow knew that Marcus used a fist technique, so he threw a wooden sword at him. The sword landed on the ground at his feet.
“You have to use a sword,” he said.
Marcus sighed and picked up the sword and tried to imbibe his energy into it as he would to his fist. Once he did, he didn’t know how to swing it. So he raised his arm with the sword high into the air and chopped down like he would chop normally with his fist.
When he released the aura, there was a minor explosion in front of him. Leo noticed that the explosion didn’t do anything to the arenas, which meant that they were made out of strong materials.
“You pass. Next,” Asher said.
Everyone else went on smoothly with their test. Only he and Marcus were forced to use weapons, both for different reasons. After everyone was done, Asher walked to the group that passed. In total, there were 67 people who passed.
“You all are now moving on to the final test. This should be the easiest test out of all of them and isn’t going to impact whether or not you will enter the academy. It will only determine the number of resources you will receive once you start studying here,” he said.
Leo was confused. Since everyone paid the same amount of money, why was there a discrepancy in what each person received?
“I see that some of you think this is unfair. The money that you pay for is solely for your education. It is for what we, the teachers give you – guidance. As for the resources, that comes from the empire itself. We receive a set amount of resources to distribute to the students,” Asher said.
“Since these are limited, we reserve them for the most talented students. This is also going to promote some friendly competition and push everyone to work harder.”
Leo frowned when he heard this. When did the empire become so generous to commoners?
“How do you determine whether a person is talented or not?” One of the students in the front asked.
“Well, you will see. That is what the third test will achieve.” He said.
Everyone waited to see what they were supposed to do. He walked to the people and took out a bunch of colored toothpicks. He handed them out one by one to everyone there. At the end of the process, everyone had one out of 4 colors.
Leo looked at Marcus and saw that he had a different color than him. He had blue while Marcus had green. He looked around for the silver-haired girl. When he found her, he saw that her toothpick was red. He realized what the test could be, but waited to confirm his suspicion.
“Everyone with the yellow toothpick. Come forward.” He said.
After he picked out the first two, he did that with the entire set of people. In total, ten arenas were occupied by two people each.
“Now, you will all spar with each other. I and my colleagues will ensure that no one will get hurt. However, you will use wooden weapons throughout this spar.”
Leo smiled. His guess was right. They were going to make everyone fight each other and rank them based on their strength. He expected this based on the colors of the toothpicks. Since he, Marcus, and the girl all had different toothpicks, they wouldn’t be in the same groups.
On top of that, each matchup was based on how strong each person was. The whole affair was incredibly well-calculated because it was properly seeded. Asher had somehow ranked everyone’s strength roughly based on their aura levels and their display of aura techniques and created a bracket that would let the strongest people come out on top.
He was amazed by this feat. He would have taken at least 20 minutes to come up with a proper solution like that.
As he was thinking that, a shadow jumped from one of the trees and landed behind the group. Leo’s head darted to look at the person who had landed behind them. It was a young lady with long black hair clad in a pitch-black outfit. She walked toward the arenas after she landed.
He didn’t realize that there were other people around him other than Maria and Lisa who were there from the start. The both of them had been observing from the side.
He was very surprised that he couldn’t detect the girl, but quickly realized why. She had as much aura as Asher. He was incredibly surprised that the Aura Knight Academy had 4 4th Circle Aura Knights take their examinations. All of Solhaven didn’t even have a 3rd Circle one.
He had severely underestimated the academy as well as Eldridge. There were more powerful people than he had thought there.
As he was thinking that, Asher was giving each of the candidates a weapon of their choice. He seemed to have an unlimited number of weapons in his dimensional ring. After five minutes, everyone was armed with a weapon and was ready to face their opponents.
The lady in the black outfit got to the arena and stood beside Asher. Asher introduced her.
“This is Selena, one of your teachers in the academy. She will also oversee this competition and make sure no one gets hurt. Now that that’s out of the way, you can start fighting.”