End of the line

~Level 38 clear. Level 39, starting in 60 seconds~

~Level 39 clear. Level 40, starting in 60 seconds~

'Okay, that wasn't so bad.' Yasuo thought, not having felt his life was in danger even once when fighting the trolls.

The trolls were slow and Yasuo could easily dodge their attacks. The only problem was that the defence and regeneration of the trolls was so high that Yasuo had to use a minimum of two skills to defeat even one of them.

The best way Yasuo found to kill the trolls with his current abilities, was a [slash] attack followed up by a [stab], which would just be enough to defeat a troll. But with these two skills combined costing forty mana, and with the [mana steal] skill of his dagger not working in augmented reality, Yasuo had now almost completely run out of mana.

'This isn't good. I can only use one more skill at best and the next level will have a new monster in it. This might be the end…' Thought Yasuo. Not thinking pessimistically, but realistically.

'Well, it is just augmented reality, so let's just try our best until the end.'

With determination to fight until his last breath, the next level started.

The environment started changing to a forest once again, and a forest elf appeared holding a bow. Before Yasuo could fully grasp the situation, the forest elf had retreated into the forest, and Yasuo completely lost sight of it.

'Crap, where did it go.'

Quickly putting his guard up, Yasuo reluctantly activated a small mana barrier with the little bit of mana he had left.

With a forest being the natural environment of forest elves, Yasuo couldn't even detect it in the slightest.

A few minutes went by, and when Yasuo least expected it, he heard the whistle of an arrow coming from behind him, but it was too late to react and his barrier shattered.

Yasuo's heart began racing as he got the feeling that this was the strongest monster he had ever faced. With his mana barrier broken, Yasuo quickly tried putting it up again, but a familiar message popped up:

~Insufficient mana~

With no mana barrier protecting him and not knowing the forest elf's location, Yasuo became worried, thinking that this might be the end.

But he calmed down as he remembered that he was still in the augmented reality, meaning that his real life wasn't in danger.

Knowing that it was augmented reality and that he wouldn't die, Yasuo tried to make the most out of the situation and learn as much as he could.

With laser focus Yasuo was looking around, anticipating the next attack of the forest elf. And there it was again, the whistling of an arrow behind him. This time Yasuo heard it sooner and unlike last time, he could turn around fast enough and saw the arrow coming at him, but unfortunately that wasn't enough.

As the arrow was so fast, Yasuo couldn't dodge it and the arrow struck deep into his thigh.

"Aaaahhhhgg."

Yasuo screamed out in pain and feel to his knees from the first time he had ever been injured like that. Even though it was augmented reality, and Yasuo knew this, the pain still felt 100% real, almost unbearably so.

As the pain didn't seemed to fade, Yasuo quickly pulled out the arrow as a reflex, creating an even bigger wound. Blood came flowing out and the pain wasn't subsiding even the slightest bit. Biting through the pain, Yasuo tried to focus again as he knew a hurt prey would be the most vulnerable to another attack.

Fighting a mental battle to get up, Yasuo managed to get to his feet again. With the adrenaline finally kicking in, the pain seemed to lessen which cleared Yasuo's mind a bit.

As Yasuo had no way to know where the forest elf was, he made a reckless plan knowing that he was in augmented reality.

Taking a deep breath in, Yasuo closed his eyes. Clearly hearing his heart beating as he tried to heighten his sense of hearing to determine the location of the forest elf.

But Yasuo was unsuccessful as he once again heard the much dreaded whistle of an arrow behind him. With zero hesitation, Yasuo turned around as quick as he could and started running towards the direction of the whistling arrow.

As Yasuo was running towards the arrow, he clearly saw it and tried to weave to the side, but he couldn't fully dodge it and the arrow grazed his arm. "Agh"

Clenching his teeth Yasuo bared the pain and continued his stride towards the direction of the arrow, and there he spots it, the forest elf.

For the first time since staring the level Yasuo saw the forest elf again. As he looked the elf in the eyes, it stared to draw its bow again.

Without any regard for his life he kept running towards it, as fast as he could. Even though he was out of mana, hurt and out of breath, Yasuo ran faster than he ever had, reaching the forest elf before it could fully draw its bow. And with a single attack, Yasuo took it down.

~Level 40 clear. Level 41, starting in 60 seconds~

"Aaaaahhh" Yasuo screamed out. Not from the pain, but because he felt like he had stepped over a big hurdle.

'That felt good.' Yasuo thought, even though he was in pain. '…but I will probably die in the next round…'

Seeing two more forest elves spawn in front of him, Yasuo knew that it would be impossible to defeat them, being hurt and out of mana.

This time a forest elf with a dagger and a forest elf with a bow appeared. The elf with the bow quickly hid in the forest as the dagger wielding elf took a defensive stance.

'I should probably analyse their movements and gain as much information from them as possible.' Yasuo thought rationally.

But Yasuo chose to not put in anymore effort and just sat down and withdrew his dagger, accepting his defeat.

Looking at the dagger wielding elf, Yasuo was confused as to why it wasn't moving. With Yasuo having sat down he thought that it would immediately attack him, but he soon found out the reason as he heard a whistling sound coming from behind him, hitting his chest and piercing his lung.

"Ugh" Yasuo grunted, trying to stay calm, not showing his pain.

At this point the dagger wielding elf had started running towards Yasuo with the intent to attack.

Seeing this, Yasuo just tilted his head back, creating a clean canvas for the elf.

'I'm hoping it won't hurt that much like this…' Yasuo thought optimistically, but he was completely wrong. As the elf's dagger struck his neck, it didn't decapitate him and just cut his artery before the elf jumped back, distancing himself from Yasuo.

'You son of a…'

It hurt a lot more than Yasuo had expected, but the blood filling his mouth didn't help much to express this. And as a cherry on top, another arrow hit him thorough his stomach. Weirdly, Yasuo didn't seem to feel this, but everything suddenly went dark.

'Is this what it feels like to die?' Yasuo thought, before his sight came back to him, finding himself back in the training room with a hologram in front of him.

~ Level 41 fail~

"Thanks for reminding me hologram." Yasuo said sarcastically.

As the hologram gave him instructions to take off his suit and sign the result of the evaluation, Yasuo left the training room.

To his surprise the hall had become almost completely empty, with only a handful of students left in front of the first few rooms.

"Student number 1000, please leave using the elevator." Said the instructor indifferently as he did to all the other students.

Walking to the elevator door, Yasuo looked back one more time. As he looked back, he locked eyes with someone. A girl who had hair as red as fire, reminding him of the guild master of the Vulcan guild, Hana Lee.

They seemed to hold eye contact for a few seconds, both looking indifferently till the instructor spoke to Yasuo again reminding him to leave. With the instructor having called him by his number, 1000, the girl's expression seemed to change, but Yasuo couldn't pinpoint what kind of expression it was and also didn't have time to look at her again, as the instructor was now kindly escorting him out.

As Yasuo walked back to the auditorium like the instructor said, he felt happy. Having seen that not many people were left in the hall, Yasuo became confident in his evaluation results and had hope of reaching the top fifty students, which Yasuo speculated could possibly allow access to the training rooms with augmented reality.

Having reached the auditorium, where the students could be heard discussing their results and trying to gauge their ranking, Yasuo entered. As Yasuo walked to his seat in the back corner, the auditorium became even noisier.

Having seen that Yasuo came back so late, they began speculating why. As Yasuo concentrated to hear what they were saying about him, he only heard negative things form people, like: "He must have stayed in the training room after having failed the first round.", not one person was even humouring the chance that he was so late because he cleared a lot of rounds.

Not caring about the students badmouthing him and gossiping about him, knowing the truth, Yasuo decided to put his hoodie up and tried to take a nap, resting as much as possible, waiting for the last few students to return.