By the time more than 2000 applicants had entered, there were only 21 names listed on the tablet.
There were only 10 more people in front of him before it was his turn to enter.
It’d take seconds for all of the students in front of him to enter the freestanding stone archway covered with intricate runes.
Heart beating quickly, he turned back to wish the others good luck before also stepping into the entrance of the relic with his spear and armour already equipped.
After a bright flash of light and a disorienting feeling, Kain felt a breeze on his face.
He opened his eyes that he’d inadvertently closed and looked around.
“You call this an island!”
He was on a small patch of land in the middle of what looked like the ocean. He couldn’t see any other land for as far as the eye could see
The land he was standing on was even smaller than the back of the turtle he had hitched a ride on previously. Maybe only 5 adults could lie down on it comfortably.
In front of him nailed to the “island” was a flimsy-looking rope bridge floating on the surface of the water.
The bridge extended far off into the distance, beyond what he could see, to what Kain assumed was his endpoint.
“Yeah. Real easy!” Kai yelled mockingly at the instructor’s previous description of the test.
He was also confident that there were probably spiritual creatures waiting to attack him on this flimsy bridge.
However, despite the seemingly daunting task, Kain found the prospect of being surrounded by water reassuring thanks to Bea’s presence.
The second he had entered this space and seen the water; he had immediately thrown her into the water as was his habit.
He could sense that her splits had already covered the ocean for miles, her upgrade to red spiritual power being a huge boost to her abilities.
He could already sense Bea running into some white-grade spiritual creatures, but they died within seconds.
White-grade spiritual creatures could no longer even put up a fight against her.
Not wanting to delay any longer in case the time taken affected his score, he began to cross the bridge at a steady pace to prevent falling off.
Eventually, he reached a point where he could no longer see the land he entered on.
He could sense through Bea that her splits had probably already killed over one hundred white-grade spiritual creatures by this point.
However, he hadn’t seen even their shadow. All were killed far before he could even catch a glimpse of them.
Kain now understood why the pass rate was so low, if those aquatic creatures were to all actually reach the bridge, it’d be like fighting a beast-tide alone while on unsteady ground.
“Thankfully I have Bea. In certain environments she’s practically a cheat.”
Bea’s unique abilities rendered having a large number of low-level beasts useless.
However, at some point among the white-grade spiritual creatures, some red-grade ones began to appear. The red-grade spiritual creatures that were weaker still died before they had a chance to actually attack Kain. However, they now got close enough that he could see their bodies.
One of the more powerful ones, a red shark, even got close enough to try and bite Kain. Fortunately, it was still weakened by Bea and he was able to quickly dispatch it with a thrust of his spear into its forehead.
“This won’t do… I don’t want to be a sitting duck”
Kain began to pick up the pace and ran across, even when some of the spiritual beasts arrived at the bridge, they were often far behind him. Moreover, they often died before they could even begin to pursue him thanks to Bea.
Those who had the intelligence to try and intercept him were still quite easy to take care of with a single strike to the head.
However, once Kain was able to spot an endpoint far off in the distance, he received a signal from Bea that some creatures she couldn’t kill were beginning to approach—orange-grade.
“Stall them! Focus on impeding their senses and causing hallucinations. Forget the headaches.”
With her advancement to red-grade and her increased proficiency with using her skills from hunting, Bea was now able to influence what kind of side effects she would induce, whereas previously the side-effects were completely random and subject to the infected’s own constitution.
Fortunately, although Bea couldn’t kill orange-grade spiritual creatures, inducing symptoms was no issue for her.
Kain no longer could afford to be careful with his steps and began to sprint as fast as he could to his destination.
Crash
When he was still a dozen meters away, a large tentacle rose out of the water and slapped in his direction almost knocking him off the bridge, if he didn’t have some armour covering him, he may have had to leave due to a serious injury right at that moment.
“Ugh… I can’t afford to conserve anything at this point” while clutching the ropes of the bridge to stand back up, he injected his remaining spiritual power into his armour to induce the wide-range mental attack skill.
Screeeeeee
The animal that attacked him, which looked like a giant orange squid with a single eye began to screech and flail in pain as its mind was assaulted by both him and Bea.
While it was distracted, he threw his spear into its large eye as deep as he could and then sprinted the remaining distance forward without stopping to retrieve his spear or see if his attack killed it.
Seconds later he collapsed on solid ground.
“I did it! I. DID. IIITTTT!!!!!”
Panting heavily, Kain was ejected from the space.
He appeared in the same position a short distance from the stone arch that students were still entering. The line was much shorter now.
After going through the test, Kain was amazed at the fact that even more than 10 recent high-school graduates could pass. It was a testament to how deep the backgrounds and immense the talents of the students that could enter a top 5 college were.
After all, it’s not likely that any of them had a Bea to drastically reduce the number of attacking creatures before they reached the bridge. And there were even orange-grade spiritual creatures at the end lying in ambush!
‘I wonder where I placed against such monsters,’ Kain thought turning towards the tablet.