Chapter 537

We all walk forward into the jungle environment through the silver door.

Once it clicks behind us, the exit disappears, and it feels like we're inside a normal dungeon.

However, there are a few major differences.

Floating high in the sky is a visible timer now counting down from 55 minutes.

Below it is a large blue holographic text prompt.

[A Party of B-Class hunters failed to subjugate a dungeon break. They've been separated into multiple areas after splitting up to defeat this dungeon. Save the 3 remaining survivors and clear the break!]

Four massive holograms pop up in the distance. Three of them are yellow exclamation points, scattered far out into the jungle, pinpointing where each of the hunters are, and the 4th is a red arrow with [Boss Room] hovering above it.

When I scan the dungeon using enemy detection, I do sense enemies in here, but they feel much different than normal monsters. There's enough mana inside them to trigger my perception, but there's a visible holographic [Lv. 668] hovering above the head of the closest one I find in my mind's eye.

That's not from my inspect skill; it's visible to anyone that looks at it.

When I try to fully appraise the creature, nothing shows up; it just feels like a huge energy blob of pure mana being manifested into the form of a monster.

Everyone in the squad takes in the view and reads the message in the sky.

Before we can even devise a plan, the monster closest to us starts to make itself known. I yell out to make sure everyone's prepared.

"Incoming! Lizard monster, twelve o'clock! We take this out together then come up with a plan!"

Immediately, everyone gets into position.

Marcie begins to glow with mana and runs up ahead of us, activating her armor set and imbuing large amounts of energy into her spear while scanning the jungle ahead.

Dane jumps into the air and takes out two thin curved swords imbued with wind stones and hovers in the air while Natalie runs back to stand beneath him and stay alert.

Ember and I stay put, right behind Marcie, and wait for the monster to show itself from beneath the thick trees.

I pull out my daggers and let the lightning magic crackle on them, and Ember ignites his fists with a low sizzle of flames.

We all move forward slowly as the cracking of sticks and presence of a strong aura grow closer.

A 6-meter-long green-skinned lizard with massive beady eyes and a long red tongue comes flying out from the trees.

The moment Marcie jumps up to make the first contact with it, a layer of dense stone is summoned all over its body.

Her spear tip hits its underbelly, and a layer of pink mana shielding forms around her in a semi-circle to block the shattering stone as she pierces through to land a hit.

Wind blades come curving in from behind as Dane lets out an attack at the now-exposed monster's underbelly too, while Marcie steps back and pulls out her spear.

I curve to her right while Ember curves around her left.

The wind blades create a wide-open X-shaped gash, far deeper than the spear wielder's hit because the monster's outer shielding has already been shattered.

I aim for its neck with my blades while Ember lets fire erupt from his fists to attack right where the weak spot Dane and Marcie already created is.

The creature's body explodes in a ball of fire, and its head rolls to the artificial dungeon floor as its long red tongue crackles with static electricity, still reacting to the clean slice I followed through with to its neck.

In a matter of milliseconds, our opponent that out-leveled every one of us dissolves into thin air and its holographic tag disappears into the air.

The flesh I cut through felt real, but the lack of any system notifications after the kill convinces me this is truly not a legitimate monster. It is somehow a lifelike manifestation of what a monster would feel like.

The Apex Region has their hands on tech that can replicate the mana shielding and skills of monsters for training scenarios like this.

We all float to the ground, then put our weapons to our sides, and Natalie speaks up.

"That was... very impressive. Just know, moving forward, even though this is a simulation, the monsters might as well be real. You can get seriously injured just the same as any real monster attack in a legitimate dungeon. I'm not sure what parameters they're set to; sometimes they're programmed to stop the simulation once the hunter inside looks like they're in critical condition. However, I wouldn't be surprised if they took this safety feature off for the exams."

I can see she's a bit wide-eyed and frazzled by the display we just put on, so I just nod and reply.

"Thanks for the heads up. I've never been in one of these before... so I'll just assume everything is real."

Similar remarks come from Dane and Marcie, as they've never tried tech like this either and just assumed it was real too.

We all discuss the mission at hand, and come up with scenarios of how to fulfill it efficiently.

Dane and Natalie both agree that the safest way for this mission to be completed is to go to each hunter checkpoint that needs to be saved one by one as a full team.

In the prompt itself, it said that these hunters split up and couldn't handle the dungeons.

Ember and Marcie have different opinions about it; they believe that we're all stronger than whatever hunters came here before us in this scenario. If we want to have any chance of winning the fastest pace prize, we need to split up and rescue them in three groups.

I consider both options but speak up with my own idea in mind.

"What if we just go straight for the boss room?"

There are a few confused looks at me, but then they consider what I've said in more depth.

I grin, turning to Natalie.

"I don't know how these simulation rooms work, but if this were a real break, the smartest thing to do would be to focus on taking out the boss monster. The whole dungeon would collapse and all excess dungeon mass would be automatically teleported to safety."

I shrug.

"We wouldn't have to prioritize one hunter over another to save first, and we wouldn't have to risk splitting up into groups to save time and sacrifice our own safety."

Marcie chimes in.

"I like that idea better. Even if it's not what the test wants us to do, it's what the right thing to do in the actual scenario would be."

Nat thinks hard but can't come to a conclusion, whispering to herself.

"I don't know... I don't know if the sim room is programmed to work like that..."

Before anyone talks us out of it, I jump in the air, stepping on small yellow platforms of lightning magic and point toward the red arrow at the back.

"Come on, I'm the reason we're all on a team together, at least humor me. I want to see what happens! Let's fly there; it'll save us even more time."

Ember fire-steps up to follow, while Marcie uses pink platforms of mana to follow, and Dane floats up with wind.

Natalie lets out a sigh, manifesting mana beneath her feet and following upward.

"Fine, but we're going to use my safer strategies in the next tests if this backfires."

We soar over the trees, and occasionally large green lizards jump up into the air toward us, but we fly way too high for any of them to actually hit us with attacks or engage in battle.

Less than 3 minutes later, we pass right by one of the yellow exclamation points less than 500 meters away to our right.

The next one passes less than a kilometer away on our left. Then the last is far out about 2 kilometers in the opposite direction of the boss room.

We hover down to the simulated dark grey portal and jump through; they all follow my lead.

An enormous tree with leaves that stretch over 5 meters long is all there is in the boss room, and a huge camouflaged lizard over twice the size of the first one we fought is what we're meant to fight.

It has a body hardening perk to it as well, and its tongue sharpens to punch holes through whatever it makes contact with.

There's a large blue [Lv. 690] over its head as we fight.

While either Ember or myself could easily end this battle in a single strike, we let our teammates shine and leave any special moves for emergencies.

It really only adds an extra minute or so onto the battle.

Dane has extremely proficient accuracy from long range, and works well with Marcie as she is able to shatter its armor for brief moments of time whenever she attacks.

Using these distractions, Ember and I chip away at its vitals.

Natalie waits and stays out of attack range, feeling a bit out of place until the battle is over.

The massive lizard falls from its tree and disappears before hitting the ground.

Soon after, the boss room disappears around us too, and a loud ringing sound fills the room as our surroundings turn white, then a silver door opens in front of us with blue text hovering over it.

[Congratulations! [00:25:56] Remaining! Trial 1 Complete! 1 Point awarded to all applicants! 1 MVP point awarded to Ray Anderson! You've come in 3rd place, better luck next time! Please rest until your next trial begins.]

We walk through the silver door and find ourselves back in the resting room we came from.

The leaderboard comes into my vision as the door behind me closes and I see that the team of Apex Members 1-6 came in first, finishing the trial 10 minutes faster than us. Another team finished about 4 minutes after them.

Marcie and Dane celebrate, then go off to drink mana potions and water from the stash supplied.

Natalie looks a little confused and somewhat upset at the situation while she looks up at the leaderboard to see her region mates must have used a similar strategy. I speak out loud what she's thinking.

"They either thought the same thing as me and were just much faster to jump right to it, or they're just that much better than us."

I think about how fast and strong Trax and Callum are, and try to picture it in my head. If they really stepped on it, I'd believe either scenario was possible.

However, my best bet is they went straight for the boss room too. That's what any competent hunter of their caliber would do. I wouldn't be surprised if they had separate simulation training for the Elites of their class, that may be why Natalie thinks this way by default.

She replies.

"Sorry I doubted you. Maybe taking the creative approach is necessary if a weaker team like us is going to score any points."

I shrug.

"Who says we're weak? Third place isn't really that bad for round 1. We still have 23 trials to go; there's room for improvement. I just need to get a better feel for how these simulations work."

Over the next 30 minutes, more and more teams complete the trial and get their points on the board.

Once the timer rings, only 11 out of 13 teams have completed the challenge. Many hunters have 1 point, all the MVPs from each team have 2, and the Apex team, team 1, all have 2 points other than Trax who has 3.

Once the timer hits 0, it resets to 5 minutes just like it did when Rodrigo was speaking, and once it hits 1 minute, the door opens again.

I see a desert landscape before me at dusk, and we all walk through to begin the next challenge.

[Clear the Two Dungeon Breaks and protect the village by helping them fix their Automated Defense System.] Shines bright in the sky and I see two bright red dungeon breaks on either side of a valley.

Dozens of monsters are pouring out from the breaks, charging toward the village down below.

There are almost a hundred simulated people in the village, and none of them are even close to strong enough to face the level 400-550 monsters charging toward them.

I stare forward for a moment, letting out a pulse of mana to observe what's going on in far more depth, then think of a way to solve this as fast as possible while the time ticks down above us in the sky.

"Emrie, you take out that break. Go straight for the boss room, I'll handle the monsters that squeeze out."

I turn to the other red dungeon portal..

"Marcie, Dane, you two on that one. Do the same, head straight for the boss room, clear it as fast as you can without looking back or stopping for pointless fights."

The three of them head off to my left and right, not hesitating at all.

"Nat, you come with me, we're going to see what's going on in this village."

We fly forward and are already making progress before the timer in the sky even ticks down a full minute.

We soar past the charging monsters below and get to the town before they do to meet with scared townspeople at the flimsy wooden front gate.

There are maybe 30 houses in this whole village max, and two enormous humanoid robots out front that appear to be powered down.

A middle-aged townswoman calls out to us for help.

"Adventurers! You've come to save us! Our mechanic has fallen ill and we need someone to find the activation crystals for our defense system before it's too late!"

We come to a halt and float down to the ground in front of them, and I take in the situation, then reply.

"Okay, how can we find the crystals...?"

She lets out a sigh and covers her face with her hands.

"If I knew, the machines would be up and running as we speak! We need you to fend off the monsters and help us search the town. I heard some adventurers have a 6th sense for this kind of thing."

She looks up at me with her eyes wide, and I do a full scan of the town but find nothing out of the ordinary like she's describing.

If it were this easy, anyone with half-developed mana senses could figure out this quest in an instant. There must be other clues.

A boy in overalls peeks his head through the crowd beneath the woman's arm.

"Old man Robert works in the red house on the south edge of town... or no... was it the yellow one?"

He scratches his head, and I let out a sigh.

An old woman tells her story of where the man works sometimes too, then another kid chimes in and says somewhere else.

I turn to Natalie and roll my eyes.

"We may just have to start looking around the old-fashioned way on this one..."

Then I hear a teenage boy speak from deep in the crowd.

"If he'd just wake up for a minute or two, maybe he'd tell us where those crystals were... He's the only one that knows where the crystals are."

At the same time, a wave of monsters from the dungeons up on either side of this valley comes charging toward us about 500 meters away.

The townspeople begin to panic and scream, but I immediately turn to the boy and speak to him while grabbing his collar.

"You said the old man was asleep, he's sick right...? Where is he?"

His eyes are wide, watching the approaching wave of monsters from a distance, but he stutters out a reply.

"He's uh- He's at the town doctor- But there's nothing they can do, he won't wake up-"

I turn to Natalie as she's also staring at the stampede coming our way with miniature beads of sweat rolling down her forehead.

"You want to win a round, Nat? Go follow this kid to the doctor's and heal that mechanic. If he wakes up, he'll be able to fix those robots himself."

Nat's eyes lighten up as she realizes my plan.

I pull out my daggers, then turn toward the monsters coming our way.

"In the meantime, I'll handle these. Trust me!"

I run forward, and the white-haired healer follows the boy back into the town full of panicking villagers.

As the timer in the sky ticks down, arcs of lightning fill the valley, and I decapitate all of the ranked-up beasts that get in my path.

I push my suppressed mana control to its limit, and even move slightly faster than I did during the agility trials during the physical exam to make sure no monsters get by. This is definitely a 2 or 3 hunter job, but I'm the only one left capable of doing it, so pushing my perceived limits is what has to be done.

About 7 full minutes pass before the monsters from one dungeon completely disappear while I'm fighting them.

Then, No more than 4 minutes later, two enormous metal robots join me in the fight to protect the town using mana-powered lasers to mow down the ranked-up monsters with deadly precision.

I look behind me to see Natalie waving with one hand while using the other, glowing bright white on the back of an old man carrying a set of tools and all kinds of colorful gems. Even from here, they don't give off any mana aura at all; they're just for show.

However, my idea of healing the only man that could fix these things worked. I delegated all of the tasks and we wasted no time at all for this trial.

Another 3 and a half minutes pass, then the next dungeon break is cleared, and the monsters coming out dissipate into the air.

[Congratulations! [00:36:17] Remaining! Trial 2 Complete! 1 Point awarded to all applicants! 1 MVP point awarded to Natalie Sterling. You've come in 1st place, 1 additional point awarded to all applicants! Please rest until your next Trial begins.]

The whole desert scene fades away, and we're left in a white room again with an open silver door leading back to the resting area.

Marcie and Dane are both sweating hard and out of breath, while Natalie looks somewhat pale from healing the mechanic.

However, the room fills with excitement once we look at the leaderboard on the ceiling and everyone realizes we just won a round.

Despite not being the strongest, smartest, or from the Regions that have hidden information about these exams and guided toward victory, there's still a chance for us to rack up some serious points during this event if we play our cards right.

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Author's Note:

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