Chapter 21: Ancient Capital

Cao Guang cooperated with Feng Zhuolong for more experiments until it was time for him to reach Ancient capital.

Ancient Capital was imperious as ever. The city itself was a giant ancient fortress surrounded with walls and sentry towers against their eternal enemies.

The city was divided into two layers an Inner layer that was a represented by a Clock Tower. The magic association of Ancient capital even drew it's name from the tower. The association was helmed by a younger version of Han Ji. 

Near the Clock Tower was also the Bell Tower Hunter Union. The military also had a base there. The inner wall was as old the city and was built by the Qin Emperor. The Outer city was about five times bigger than the Inner City and it's walls were only in the preliminary stages of being built. The wall was constantly manned in the evening.

Cao Guang met up with his friends in Ancient capital a day before their Sergeants exam. The reason they could take the exam this early was because of the fact that they took the elite path when they joined the army.

Although this was as far as the elite path took them in the army any further progress would depend on themselves. 

Cao Guang had always wanted to command his own troops and fight a war. But he couldn't even if he wanted to the focus of military here was to avoid wars as much as possible. It seemed counter intuitive to him at first before he remembered the true state of humanity.

Right now the focus was on building more cities and expanding their reach and thereby claiming more resources. The military wasn't overly focused on creating Forbidden Mages. The ratio of Earth Pistil allocation was focused towards creating cities.

Their Sergeants exam had two parts a written test and a combat one as well. The written test needed them to express their theoretical knowledge about magedom from poisonous plants and their antidotes to some commanding choices. In fact only Sergeants even had an exam as more often than not it would be Sergeants who would led a small troops around the demon territories.

As for larger troops led by Generals or Corporals they had a more convenient choice of having a more well rounded squads.

The written test weren't all that difficult for anyone. The combat test came next, contestants would fight against the judges in an elimination style competition.

The combat test were divided into three categories, offensive, defensive and scouts, with each Sergeant examinee able to choose their role. But in the lower levels their elements pretty much decided it for them.

They would all be fighting the judges regardless of their choice, but the judges would mark them for different categories. As for healers their test were completely different. More often than not they weren't sent out on missions either. The use of equipment were banned as well, contrary to any other professions. 

Their performance would determine what rank of Sergeant they would receive. There were three ranks from lowest to highest they were Sergeant, Senior Sergeants and Master Sergeants. 

This was because military would supply some equipment after this test after evaluating their prowess and at the same time they would retrieve the equipment that were underlevel for those who passed. But most of the equipment were usually standardized. This policy only applied for military issued equipment.

There were a 100 participants in this exam. They were on average Intermediate mages with a second primary element. First the judges would eliminate the examinees that were not yet ready for the Sergeant ranks. The second round would be for the rank of a Senior Sergeant and the last round to obtain the rank of a Master Sergeant. 

Becoming a Sergeant also did not mean one would be leading a squad outside the safe zones in immediately in Ancient capital. They would have bring their secondary element to the intermediate level as well before they could lead squads outside. But this was only in the wartime.

In a City like Bo, Intermediate mages could lead squads outside the safe zones, but in Xi'an the situation was more complicated.

Commander level undead wasn't all that rare, so Sergeants would only leading squads in war time. The only problem with that equation was that Ancient capital went to war every night.

The war with the undead was constant and even the economy of the city was based around the war and loot. The citizens of Ancient capital were well adjusted to this life style. It functioned like any other city, only the military was not able to keep the fight away from the sight of the citizens.

Even Master Sergeants were only allowed to lead a squad of ten people. However even the Lieutenant class would be able to lead from 12 to 50 people. This allowed for Lieutenants to have a lower threshold for theoretical knowledge as they would a more complete squads or a competent Sergeant.

A/n : All maximum troop sizes are war time numbers. The ranks of the army and their sizes are a mix of real world ranks and numbers adjusted to reflect the mage world. The time of the combat test is Late September as previously mentioned.

Cao Guang and others checked the roster and reported to the stages. The competition was organised and judged by the Imperial Mages of Ancient capital. Even their leader Liu Han who was known to be the strongest mage in Ancient capital would be present for the final.

The fights would also be back to back. With the help of Healing and Blessing mages, they would recover fast from all minor injuries and fatigue while judges tried to keep the injuries to a minimum.