Chapter 184 - The Academies’ Trial

Cecil was fascinated while looking at the wooden sword. Unlike the Corruption, the World Tree's First Thorn, the wood on the Third Thorn was a red color. It still had the same golden runes engraved in it, but the grooves on the blade were a little different.

The size shape and engravings were the same, the only difference were the grooves and color of the blade.

Cecil walked up to the pedestal and had a funny thought.

"The sword in the stone...haha~" Cecil smirked thinking about the legendary sword. "One day, I'll go gather the best ores and materials out there, then I'll ask Radon to craft me another sword and I'll name it Excalibur...huhuhu~"

Cecil snickered at the thought, "Then I'll make a sword skill exclusively for the blade and name it Excalibur as well!"

With that passing thought, Cecil clenched both his hands over the hilt of the wooden blade and pulled.

To his surprise, it didn't take him much strength to pull out the sword. Just as he was able to pull out the entirety of the sword out, Cecil felt something rush into his body through his hands.

"Wah?!"

Red colored mana began flowing from the pedestal into the sword and into Cecil's body. It was very painful, but even when he tried to loosen his hands around the sword's hilt he couldn't.

"GAAAAAAAHHHHHHHH!!!"

As the red colored mana entered his body, he felt it eating away at his own mana. His mana was present all around his body, permeating every single cell of his being. The pain of having all of that mana being devoured was unprecedented to Cecil.

He felt like his body was slowly being grinded down into meat paste, but he could nothing to stop it. Cecil tried to endure the pain, but it was too maddening for him. It was the first time he was subjected to something like this and he was panicking.

Unknown to him, the exact same thing happened when he had gotten ahold of Corruption. Black colored mana had flowed into him, but he couldn't see this due to the dark environment and he didn't feel this excruciating pain because Cecil's mana was very low at the time.

Now that his mana had been fully recovered and he had so much of it, the pain of the devouring was more prominent to him.

Cecil couldn't handle the pain and dropped to his knees. The weakness began to spread all throughout his body and he fainted soon enough. Even while unconscious, he was still groaning and intermittently spasm in pain.

While still holding onto the sword, he fainted leaning over the pedestal. The red mana flared up and continued to flow into his body uninhibited.

*****

Down at the 2nd plaza where the 3rd trial was being conducted, it was unknown how many days had passed, but the students had finally reached the 50th and last wave of monsters.

On the pedestal there was a record of the time, monster kills, and the person with the most kills during the wave engraved on it.

The person with the most kills during the wave would be given a random reward at the end of the wave.

What was common in all of these records were that the name of the person with the most kills was always the same.

Lucia had monopolized all of the most kills and their rewards. She didn't want to do this, but during the 5th and 6th waves, some students of the other academies wanted to cause trouble for the Arks Academy since they had begun to monopolize the kill rewards.

Lucia had only taken the kill rewards during the 1st wave. The next couple of waves she let her friends from Little Kings take the most kills while she went around and helped all her fellow students if they were placed in danger.

Because of this, they earned the ire of the other Academies. The Beastmen were the first to try something during the 5th wave. They sent some of their students to try and kill steal their monsters.

Of course they said it was in the name of cooperation since the Ark's Academy had the least amount of students remaining. They had only 40 students left while all the other academies had 50-55 of theirs left.

Zephyr let it pass since Ainz was still able to take the most kills during the wave. The next wave was Fina's turn and this time the Gigantes had come to play, along with the Beastmen. Fina only barely got the most kills during this wave and this was only because she decided to give them some payback.

Fina conjured multiple familiars and mana armaments. Then she sent them over to the Beastmen and Gigantes' lanes and stole their kills. They complained of course, but it was a good thing that the Neftersea Academy stepped in.

Obviously because they were picking on their very own Princess, of course they had to come and defend her!

But, the continued interference lasted until the 10th wave and this caused Lucia to explode in fury. The 7th and 8th waves were given to the Neftersea Academy. Then during the 8th wave, the Neftersea Academy and Arks Academy let the Elves take over their lanes. The elves were at the most disadvantageous position since they were required to support everyone, so the two academies let them have a chance.

Because of this, the Gigantes and Beastmen Academies became more brazen and directly tried to put their hands on the two academies' gates. Lucia could no longer hold back and decided to just simply end the wave in her lane with an Ascending Blade.

Since she single handedly took down an entire lane's wave, she of course got the most kills once again. Lucia continued to do this for another 5 waves and it finally caused the two academies to band together and started to berate the Arks Academy and show open hostility to them.

Since they couldn't use any violence against each other when inside the plaza, a furious Lucia shut them up by sending two Ascending Blades directly into their lanes, literally taking away all hopes of them getting any sort of reward.

The reward system of the 3rd trial didn't only reward the person with the most kills, but everyone with any amount of monster kills would get a reward even if it was just one monster. Though, the reward was not as great as the person with the most kills.

Because of Lucia's open threat, the two academies immediately backed down. They still tried to send some men to interfere with the Arks Academy, but Lucia put a stop to all that by cleanly wiping the monster waves with every single skill and spell in her arsenal.

If one Ascending Blade didn't wipe the monsters then she would send two. If that wasn't enough, she would continue sending more and more down the lane in a fury.

The multiple sword energy beams that decimated the lanes of monsters destroyed the plants and terrain in the Arks Academy's lane. Her name Apocalyptic Queen wasn't just for show. When she was angry enough, she could cause a mini-apocalypse to happen.

The best thing about Ascending Blade was that it used up very little mana. Elemental Burst's aura was used to power the skill so although there was a sizable amount of aura used, it wasn't all that much compared to Lucia's abundant reserves of mana.

That's why Lucia was able to spam the skill without worry about depleting her mana. Even if she somehow did use up her mana inside her mana point, then she could just release one of her tails' cores and use that mana instead.

This incredulous and mind-boggling scene finally put a stop to the two academies' scheming and they finally knew about another thing, there wasn't only one monster present in Arks Academy. Although everyone from the other academies thought that the other monster had perished, there was still another that took his place.

Lucia had furiously taken the most kills starting from the 11th monster wave. She gave no quarter to anyone around her. She was too furious to even share the rewards with her friends.

Her only thoughts were to quickly end the trial and meet back up with Cecil or try and find him since he was still somewhere in the trial grounds.

The intervals between waves increased 30 minutes after every wave and for the 50th wave the rest period was over a day long, 25 hours to be exact. During the previous wave, the academy students had to face against multiple colossus titans of different elements.

Earth Titans, Magma Titans, Artic Titans, Storm Titans, Dusk Titans, and Dawn Titans, they were a tricky bunch of monsters that complemented each other when they worked together.

Many students began to die or directly failed during this monster wave. The students began to falter starting from the 40th wave. The previous waves were child's play compared to the 40th wave.

From then on, the casualties and failures only continued to rise. This time the monsters had even been able to breach into the plaza and all the academies had to band together to take down every single monster.

It was tough even for the Little Kings, but they still managed to kill off every monster in their lanes. They had even requested for Zephyr to leave the lane up to them and go help out the other academies if they required it.

Of course, the Gigantes and Beastmen didn't want it, so they helped out the Neftersea Academy students. But as the waves continued, the two academies began to pile up even more casualties than the Neftersea, Elven, and Arks Academies put together.

They had no choice but to request for help. The only lane that was still going strong was the northern lane where the Little Kings had decided to take control of.

The party was used to dealing with these kinds of high ranked monsters. From the 40th wave, S ranked monsters began to pour in and finally on the 49th wave when they faced against the individually ranked S titans, the threat that they were exposed to rival SS ranked monsters because the Titans were in a pack and they were coordinating very well with each other.

It took them over a day of constant rotations between members to clear the 49th wave and they were given 25 hours of rest time to prepare for the last 50th wave.

The casualties and failures were so high for every academy that the total amount of students left was barely a little over 100.

Arks Academy still had 26 students left, their numbers being slashed almost by half. The remaining students were all the faction leaders, the Arks Academy Kings and some very strong or lucky students left behind.

The other academies didn't fare any better, having only 20 to 40 students left. Arks Academy was no longer the one with the least amount of students, but the Gigantes instead.

This was mostly due to the fact that the Titans were magic based monsters. For the Physically strong Gigantes, their strength meant little to the Titans and many of the close combatants were immediately put down by the monsters.

The third trial was already so hard. None of the remaining students had any hopes of clearing the last monster wave. They were all prepared to wipe during the last wave.

[Time left until final wave: 2 hours 12 minutes

Please make the appropriate preparations. Monster wave incoming: Corrupted Dark Wood Elves]