Bridge tried to slash at the tentacle gripping him, but its rubbery texture kept bouncing the blade off.
His brain worked in overdrive. Using his mind was not his strong suit, but the trainers at the dojo had emphasized the importance of staying calm in desperate situations to find a solution.
Suddenly, his eyes flashed with light as an idea came to mind.
He called out Princess. Due to her young age, he hadn’t expected to use her at all during the test, however her abilities were exactly what he needed at the moment.
He held her firmly since she couldn’t swim, and pressed her paw against the tentacle while directing her to channel as much ice-attribute energy as she could muster into a small area.
Normally, the attacks of a white-grade spiritual creature would be useless, but the strength of an A-level skill allowed her to freeze over a small area the size of her paw.
It was an area so small that it couldn’t even be considered as dealing a substantial injury to the enemy, but it was exactly what Bridge needed at the moment.
The moment the tentacle froze over, Bridge recalled Princess and hurriedly slammed down with his sword at the frozen-over spot.
Thankfully, this time it shattered instead of rebounding his sword.
Finally free, he swam as fast as he could back to the bridge and clung to it.
Lady was still there waiting for him. Seeing that he had expended pretty much all of his energy, she used the last of hers to pull him out of the water and then the few remaining steps to land.
Finished, she collapsed next to him.
“You did great, Lady,” Bridge said with a weak pat on her head before recalling her to the star space to rest.
The next moment he felt the grass he was lying on change to a hard rocky surface. And then the familiar face of his best friend was smiling down at him.
“Welcome back. Congratulations on passing.”
——————————————–
Kain had been monitoring the number of names on the tablet since he had exited the relic so he immediately noticed that the last name on the list was one rank lower, meaning that someone else had exited.
Nervously he scanned for Bridge’s name, this would be at least the 10th time he had gone through this process after seeing a change in ranks.
Fortunately, he did find Bridge’s name this time. Similar to his it lacked a surname and was easy to spot.
Additionally, it was towards the end of the list, at number 42. But no matter, at least he had passed.
“You passed!” Kain repeated with a wide smile as he helped Bridge up.
Bridge also smiled at him as he caught his breath.
“Thanks to you,” Bridge relayed what had happened in the relic and how he had needed to rely on Princess at the end to escape.
Kain was relieved that he could be of help in some way.
It wasn’t long until the final applicant exited the relic and their final rankings were confirmed.
There were 52 successful applicants.
Nobody surpassed Kain’s score until the end and he managed to finish in first place.
Bridge moved down one spot to rank 43.
Both of the twins Addison and Aiden also passed, and were ranked at an impressive 13 and 14.
Strangely, they exited their respective exams at the exact same time.
Their group of 4 met up. The other 2 looked surprised at Kain’s ranking, while Bridge looked as though he had expected it. He had endless faith in Kain.
The 52 future attendees followed one of the senior students to an administration building where Assistant Professor Nightingale was waiting for them in a large meeting room.
They all took a seat while she began to speak. Her voice was much warmer now that she was speaking to officially accepted students of the college.
“Congratulations on your successful completion of the Dark Moon College Exam. I will now begin the information session. Under each of your seats is a registration package. You will be required to fill it out with your personal information.
Additionally, there is a course timetable of all the required courses for first-year students, as well as the available times for open courses you may take as electives. Use that information to register for the courses and times that work best for you and match your goals. Keep in mind though that some required courses are only available at one time and all of them have mandatory attendance…”
Kain flipped through the information package. Thankfully, there were only 3 required courses for first years: Introduction to Spiritual Skills which Professor Nightingale teaches, Wilderness Survival, and Advanced Knowledge for Beast-Tamers.
The rest of the minimum of 5 courses that students must take each year need to be filled with electives. However, Kain doesn’t have a choice. He already knew that his spare time would be filled with the courses for his Evolutionary Planner major.
However, as he flipped through the booklet he was unable to find any Planner courses in the course list provided. He couldn’t possibly plan his schedule without knowing those class times.
“…not be provided. Please fill out the required forms tonight and return them to this administration building by tomorrow at 4pm. That will be all. We look forward to seeing you all at the start of the new semester in 3 weeks. Are there any questions?”
Kain tuned back in to only catch the tail-end of the information session. He’d have to ask Bridge if he missed anything important later on. Firstly, he had a more pressing question that needed answers.
Kain stood up, “Yes. There were no Evolutionary Planner courses in the course list you provided, I was wondering where I could get that information.”
“I’m sorry. The Planner courses are only available to those in that major, so students of the Beast-taming faculty cannot register for them” She looked as though she had expected that question. It seems like Planner courses are a common elective that students want to take. After all, evolving your contract will increase their upper-limit of strength.
Most people hire a planner to help with this, but having some basic knowledge would also be helpful.
Seeing that she was going to leave her answer at that and turn to another student with his hand raised, Kain quickly cut in. “I know. I am a double-major and was also admitted into the Planner major. However, they haven’t yet provided me a courselist so I can’t fill out this schedule.”
He had received his exam score, which was an expected perfect score, and the acceptance offer from Dark Moon’s Planner major, which he had listed as his first-choice program when registering for the academic exam, while he had been condensing his second star.
He had called to accept the offer the night he woke up, but they had not yet sent him any information package. Even if they did it would be at New Beginning’s Orphanage and he wouldn’t have a chance to read it before he had to fill out this timetable for tomorrow.
At his words everyone in the room turned to him in shock. Majoring in both the Beast-taming and Planner majors at a top 5 college was extremely rare. Not only because they were both the two hardest programs to gain admittance to, they both had some of the most stressful workloads. Only a masochist would want to take both on.
The twins looked even more shocked. After all, they were one of the few individuals in the room that had identified Kain as the top-ranked student for the relic. Now he’s saying that was also entering the Planner major?
‘Is he a monster?!’ They shared the same horrified thought.
“That…well…your circumstances are pretty unusual. You can follow one of our senior volunteers after this information session to the administration office for the Planning department. They should be able to register you for courses in advance.
Relieved that his issue was taken care of, Kain sat back down while nodding.
“Ahem, any more questions?”
A blonde princely-looking guy in the front row stood up.
“Yes. I’d like to know how exactly these rankings by the relic were decided?”