Approaching the supervisor with a cold look on her face, Leen stopped a few steps away as she stared at him. The man gave her a brief look before he said.
"Show us your tags." He said.
The girl nodded her head and then pulled a small pouch from her pocket. The pouch was almost as big as her hand and had some strange blue lines running across its leather surface. Opening it slowly, she tilted the pouch upside down.
Then...
*Click* *Click* *Click*
Slowly, tags started falling off, one by one. In a few seconds, the tags piled up in front of her as everyone watched in shock. With each passing second, they thought the tags would stop falling, but they never did.
'H-How many did she take...' Everyone thought at the same time.
But, the more fell, the more the people got shocked. At some point, the pile reached Leen's height and slowly crumbled to the side. Finally, the pouch was emptied.
"There are exactly 852 tags." She said coldly.
The entire room was submerged in silence after that. Nobody uttered a single word. The supervisors stared at the pile silently. The man and the woman were quite speechless while Winsdoor adjusted his glasses and said.
"It is indeed 852 tags. Good, you have passed. Proceed to the door behind me." He said in a mysterious tone.
The girl nodded her head, and then briefly looked over her shoulder. Her eyes wandered to Talon before she walked away.
The latter noticed that but didn't think much of it. 'She's probably thankful I helped her. Well, even if she wasn't, it was a lot of fun fighting that many people. Feels like home.' He thought to himself.
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With that, the process continued peacefully for a while. Talon was one of the few left at the end when his name was finally called.
'I didn't count how many tags I collected. I wonder if I got more than her.' He thought to himself as he stepped forward.
Stopping in front of the supervisors, he slowly moved his hand into his pocket. Then, slowly, he pulled a handful of tags out. Then, he slowly started pulling the tags one round at a time.
'Well, I don't have a pouch, so I can only pretend like I do or they would question how I had stored this many without that.'
Even though he knew it wouldn't be a huge problem if some people knew that he had a spatial storage space, he still tried not to be obvious about it. Whether they realize that or not was pretty irrelevant.
Surprisingly, the simple trick seemed to work as none of the supervisors seemed suspicious. Eventually, Talon pulled all the tags out, piling them up in front of him.
"Say whatever you want, I know what I'm doing. Besides, why would I flirt with her? I don't have time for that stuff."
"Oh, you always have time for it, what do you call our conversations then?" She winked.
"... Uh, friendly? No, that's not it." Thinking about it for a moment, Talon realized something. 'Wait, are we even considered friends at this point?'
So far, he had spent so much time with Acrypha, Talon had even forgotten what they were supposed to be. It was true that they were companions, but that didn't really explain what they were to each other.
'Well, we are certainly more than friends, and way more complicated than just companions... Uh, something in between?' Looking at Acrypha, and the way she smiled, he could only feel his cheeks grow a little red for some reason.
"Dammit! Don't confuse me like that now! It could be considered flirty, yes! I admit defeat!" He sighed.
"I thought so. So, you better make sure to keep it that way. Only I can do that. The rest can look for other people to do that with." She smiled proudly.
"Yes ma'am." The young man replied with a sarcastic tone.
At that moment, the three supervisors appeared down at the stage, catching everyone's attention.
"Ok, here we go." Talon adjusted his position and focused on them. He knew that it was time for the second test.
Winsdoor gave the entire stand a glance before he started. "First of all, congratulations to all of you for passing the first part of the tests. However, the next two parts are going to be way harder and way more dangerous, so brace yourself." He said.
The atmosphere grew even more solemn in the room at that moment. Everybody felt a little cold in their heart. The time for celebrations was over quickly, and the rough work was about to begin.
"Now, the second part of the test is a little more complicated so listen to me. The test will have you all work in groups. Precisely, group of 2 and higher. Naturally, the recommended number in each group of at least 4 or 6 optimally, but it's all your choice. As for the test itself, well, we shall call it 'Survival And Scavenging.'"
"Survival and Scavenging?" Talon muttered confusedly. 'Well, that doesn't sound good.'
"You all shall leave this city for two main goals. You have to first spend one week in the desert. Nobody is going to be there to help you, so make sure you bring everything you need to survive and come back. As for the second goal, you have to collect at least 10 monster cores, optimally it should be the Sand Eaters cores, but anything else would work too if you find it."
'Ten Sand Eater cores?...' Talon raised an eyebrow.
Not only was that number quite big, he didn't know how anyone could do that. He had fought them, and they were quite the tough foes. Looking around him, he noticed that everyone had varying degrees of the same reaction to that. Nobody seemed happy to hear that news as this test had suddenly turned quite deadly very quickly.
However, no one uttered a single complaint as they all came there aware of what they were about to face.
"Now, we shall start the selection process," Winsdoor said coldly, ignoring the terrified looks in the contestants' eyes.
A//N: Sorry for the one-week hiatus everyone. I had some stuff to do, and also started another book and had to write for it too. Hopefully, we are back with chapters now :) thanks for waiting.