Deliverence
Emery arrived at the Magus Academy's grand hall, and he saw that massive congregation of acolytes have already crowded the place. At a glance, there were at least thousands of them present on the scene.
There were about 3000 acolytes in total waiting for their mission. Even though it sounded like such a huge number, this amount of people was not even one-third the number of the acolytes who came in the first year.
Each year, the academy would take at least 10,000 new acolytes from myriad worlds across the universe. But in the third year, the numbers have dropped to 8,000, and on this particular test, only a few exceptional and outstanding acolytes from the regular class were allowed to take part.
This was not mentioning the fact that the mid-test would be a real-life mission where their survival would be put onto the table. Thus, some of the acolytes who were not confident with their strength decided not to take part in it.