Admission Test II

The dark-bodied boy went back and took a seat cross-legged on the floor.

Meanwhile, it seemed that the 4 couldn't wait for much longer, and were eager to compare their strengths.

Magnus noticed that one of the four was the purple-haired boy, who grinned somewhat scarily, and waited for the other 3 to go first before he went forward.

Magnus inspected the other 3,

One of them was a lime-haired girl, who had a sort of aura around her, which he presumed to be mana, as he could feel a sense of familiarity in that Aura.

Another one of them was a spectacled boy, who was much taller than everyone else, at around 2 meters tall, he stood out with his tall and lanky stature. However, something about the boy stood out more than his height. It was his pair of legs, they were in the shape of an animal, like a horse. The boy was a centaur. Although it was an age where something like that wasn't unreasonable, it was still rare to find members of the centaur race on Earth.

And the last of the 3, was a person with hair that stretched down to their feet. Their body seemed very frail like they would break into pieces if they were even touched. Unfortunately, Magnus couldn't see their face so he couldn't tell what he or she looked like.

Whoever they were, they had unusual characteristics. Their long hair was colored in the color of the rainbow, and the order of those colors kept changing every second.

The noiseless room suddenly was filled with the sound of hooves stomping, the centaur boy was running at full speed towards the machine. He was going to give it his all.

*BOOOM*

There was a large booming sound as the boy slammed into the device with full force.

Everyone's heads turned up as they looked at the display at the top. It had updated, once again, everyone had moved down by one, everyone except 1 person, the person in the first place hadn't changed. The centaur boy was now in second place.

"Ah."

The centaur boy grunted as he found out that he hadn't taken first place. His expression somewhat gloomy, he went back to the crowd.

The woman whispered to the middle-aged man again,

"All of the stars are incredible this year, and we even got 7 of them, however, if that boy in black really is who we think he is, then no one else has a chance do they?"

The man replied, "I'm sure that boy is who we think he is. He is our biggest gain this year, the six other stars probably won't be that important."

The woman nodded in affirmation.

Magnus then looked at the remaining 3 people stars who were just standing still, waiting for each other to make a move.

Slowly, most of the regular applicants had come and done their tests, and the rankings shifted by a lot, however, the First and Second place didn't change.

Finally, the person with long hair walked forward, extremely slowly. The rest of the 7 looked at them.

Slowly, the person pushed their hair, which blocked their face, to the back, which let everyone take a proper look at him. The person wore a mask that blocked the top of their face, but their features were undoubtedly feminine.

She then pulled her fist back, and it seemed like she was charging it to strike the machine. Slowly, colorful auras started surrounding her fist. The auras were really opaque, and couldn't be seen unless you focused your eyes. Her spotless skin was visible through her sleeves and after taking a deep breath, the girl slowly walked forward with her fist pulled back behind her.

The air around her fist was slowly starting to distort, it seemed like she was using some sort of skill. She leaned forward and punched the device.

*CLAAAAAAAANK*

A ringing sound reverberated throughout the hall, but there was no backlash, no smoke, no particles, nothing.

This time, there was no response from the ranking device. After 10 seconds of silence, the rankings changed once again.

The girl had taken second place now.

The middle-aged man heard the woman behind him ask another question, he felt her to be quite annoying, however, they were of the same rank, and he wasn't allowed to be disrespectful to her.

"Hey, it took a while this time. It's supposed to be instantaneous, what happened."

The man, although annoyed, responded to her, "It means that the levels of strength between First and Second place are the same. The device then evaluated her aura and mana when compared to first place, and then placed her in second place."

"Oh, I had thought no one would be able to measure up to him, how mysterious."

The man slightly nodded his head in response.

"It seems like we have underestimated the group of students this year, they might be a lot better than we've given them credit for."

Magnus was pondering on when it would be the right time for him to come forward. He ultimately decided that he would do it at the end so that he wouldn't have to see his ranking change after he got it.

In the time before the girl had stepped forward and taken first place, Magnus had taken a look at the stats of all of the people he was curious about, firstly starting off with the two invigilators at the front.

[Activating Appraisal Function]

[Appraisal Failed.]

[Activating Appraisal Function]

[Appraisal Failed.]

The appraisal failed for both the middle-aged man and the beautiful woman.

<Informing Host, from now on, if the Host tries to appraise the status of someone with a status much stronger than the Host, the appraisal will fail. Advising Host to maintain peaceful and friendly relationships with said individuals, as Host has a 0% chance of defeating them in battle.

Unfortunately, though, the system had immediately responded to him saying that his Spirit stat was insufficient to do so.

Therefore, he decided to check the stats of the other 6 people, who he felt were on the same level of strength as him.

On average, pretty much all of them had similar stats to him. However, all of them specialized in a thing or two and had their own unique skills and traits.

For example, the girl with green hair had average strength and agility, but her mana and spirit stats were higher than average. The average here was between the 7 of them of course, as even her 'average' strength and agility were far beyond the regular person's reach.

All of the seven were powerful, however, there were 3 people that stood out to him from the seven. The girl with rainbow hair, the centaur, and lastly, the jet-black skinned boy with white eyes.

The reason the rainbow-haired girl and the black-skinned boy stood out to Magnus, was that the only thing he could see with the Appraisal Function was their stats when he could see everyone else's statuses just fine.

After once again asking the system why he couldn't see the rest of it, the system replied that his mental power, or in other words, his Spirit Stat, was, although not significantly smaller, was still pretty low compared to them, thus not allowing for a proper and complete appraisal.

After finding out for the second time that his Spirit Stat was insufficient, he had asked how to increase it, and the system had replied that he would find out in due time.

Not bothering to worry about it more, Magnus checked the stats of the 3 of whom he could only see the stats.

The rainbow-haired girl's stats were high, abnormally so, with her mana stat, which was her highest, reaching 90. Magnus was surprised to see it, all of her stats were higher than his base stats.

And the black-skinned boy's stats were even more abnormal, Magnus wondered how they had gotten so strong. The boy's stats were just a tiny bit higher than the girl's. But one thing he had noticed was that the boy lacked the Mana stat, and instead had the Energy stat, just like him. That made Magnus curious about what other energies existed.

And lastly, the last person who stood out to Magnus was the centaur boy. However, it wasn't due to his strength. In fact, going by the stats, Magnus was even stronger than the boy.

However. The boy had an occupation. So far, Magnus hadn't seen anyone with an occupation, including him, but this centaur boy had one.

His occupation was: 『Succesor of the Minotaur.』

That made Magnus curious about what his story was and if he had any secrets. Magnus had asked the system about how to get an occupation a while ago when he had first checked his status. It had replied that there would be a process of doing so in the future.

Magnus was irritated about the System's cryptic way of giving out information. But he knew that it was probably doing that to save him from 'his soul exploding'.

However, even though they were the main people Magnus was curious about, there was still one last person of the seven, so far, he had checked he hadn't checked the status of yet.

The last of seven, who was actually standing just a couple of meters away from Magnus.

Magnus looked towards him, it was a man of Asian, or rather, Oriental descent. Since the country of Solaris was a western one, it wasn't common to see an oriental person. Unlike the other 5, just like Magnus, the man had no distinct characteristics or features about him. He looked like the average Asian boy. He had black hair and eyes, similar to Magnus.

And yet, Magnus felt something about him, it had nothing to do with the other 5, they probably couldn't feel it, this was different, his instincts, which had never been wrong, was telling him, something was special about that boy.

Then, the boy, as if noticing Magnus's gaze, looked over at him. and let out a bright, cheery smile. He stepped over towards Magnus, and Magnus started to get vigilant, was he trying to start something? Did he want to fight? Could Magnus win? He was about to check the status of the possible opponent before the Asian youth said,

"Woah there, calm down buddy, I don't want a fight."

"Yea? What do you want, then?", said Magnus, still a little suspicious, but easing up a bit.

"I just wanna be friends. And judging by the look on your face, you don't believe me."

*Siiiigh*

Magnus just sighed in response.

"Hey buddy, be honest with me here. I know the type of person that you are, after all, I'm the same. We're fundamentally different from the rest of the people here, sure there might be some talented people here, and a few geniuses and all that, but even so, they're nothing, aren't they. You don't feel much of a sense of competition when compared to even the other 5, not to mention the thousands of students trying to join.

Alright, let's be honest here. Us two, we're different from the rest of the people here, I'm sure you can feel it too. We're different from the people here who have come so far using only their parent's and other's resources.

I can see it in your eyes, we are the same. Sure we may have been brought up differently, but you and me, we're the same. There are no stopping people like us, we don't need things like support to achieve anything."

"I don't know what you're talking about."

"Is that really true though? Remember, I asked us to be completely honest here, of course, I have no ways of stopping you from lying if you wish to do so, but I would appreciate the truth."

Magnus wasn't sure what to think about this stranger, who seemed to at least have no hostile intentions, so he decided to humor him for now.

"Fuuuuuu. Alright, continue."

"You're strong, I can feel it. Not in the literal strength, I can easily destroy your current state, not to be presumptuous or anything of course."

Hearing this, Magnus's eye's widened. He immediately stepped back and pulled open the status of the man in front of him.

[Activating Appraisal Function]

[Appraisal Failed.]

Magnus freaked out, he realized that with the somewhat suspicious attitude he had, if he had pissed off the guy in front of him, he would be dead. The system said so itself, he had a 0% chance of winning.

His eyes shaking, Magnus was about to say something, before the Asian youth said once again,

"Oh? I didn't think you would have believed me. Hmm, perhaps you have your own methods of verifying that. Either way, the fact that you realize that should make this conversation a bit better. Don't worry though, I have no malicious intentions. What's your name, my friend?"

"...It's Magnus. Just Magnus."

"Oh, cool. My name's Baek Jin-Ho. Yeah, you might have a problem pronouncing that, just call me Jin."

"Alright, Jin. What's happening?"

Seeing that Magnus had regained his composure, Jin continued,

"Well, like I was saying. You're strong, Magnus, just like me. Not in your present state, of course, but you have the potential. I would be blind if I didn't see it, right now, you look just like what I used to look like. Hmm, you don't seem to understand, hold on, let me put it like this. People like you and me, we're rare, so rare in fact, that it'll be hard to find even 1 among a couple hundred Quadrillilion people.

'What's so special about us?' you may wonder? Well, to put it in the simplest way, we're selected by 『Destiny』."