"A B- is actually an outstanding result for this assessment,"
The woman paused to look at Alex, and continued, "You're likely the highest scorer in this batch. Most students can only slightly increase the elemental energy in their surroundings, which is considered a good result."
Alex listened intently, taking what the woman said with deep interest.
"You've taken it a step further by manifesting your elemental control into the physical world with your fire, and the spatial disturbances."
Her words offered some consolation.
She added, "FYI, to achieve an S+ result, you'd need basic manipulation over your element, which essentially means your control needs to be good enough to use it in battle. This is also the main requirement for upgrading your soul core to C tier."
Alex nodded, absorbing the information.
Despite his initial disappointment, he realised that his result was actually very good.
***
Alex returned to his dorm, feeling a mixture of relief and exhaustion.
The elemental assessment had taken all of the energy and effort out of him for the day, and all he wanted to do now was rest.
Ring! Ring!
But before he could do that, his communicator started going off like crazy, and like a fairy, Mira's face appeared in front of him in holographic form.
"Hey! Alex, how did your elemental assessment go?" She greeted, excitedly smiling the whole time.
She couldn't wait to talk to him.
"I got a B-, how did yours go?" Alex replied, smiling back with his cheeks slightly flushed.
Only a day had passed since they had started their relationship officially, and it was still going to take Alex some getting used to — seeing Mira's face so up close and personal, even though it was a hologram, made his chest feel funny.
Mira's smile faltered slightly, "I got a C..."
It's not like there was a school someplace where he could learn all about the art of assassination... right?
"The assessment will take place in a Virtual Reality environment. After all, it's not like they'd get us to assassinate real people..." Alex joked.
"Each student will be loaded into a separate VR environment and stripped of all of their awakened abilities, left with only the body of a normal human being!" Mira spoke, reading from the information sheet.
The two of them continued reading through the details of the assessment released by the university, and couldn't help but feel uneasy about the upcoming assessment...
Their goal was to assassinate an F- rank awakened. Even though this didn't sound like much of a challenge, it would actually be their hardest test yet.
The difference between an F- rank and a normal human would be like pitting a kitten against a fully grown, battle hardened adult lion.
"We need to remember that we're not just trying to kill an awakened," Alex said. "We're doing it without any of our usual powers. We have to think like normal humans again."
This was where strategy came in.
Since they had no strength to rely on, they had to focus on using all of the other factors to their advantage.
Things like their intelligence, experience etc would be crucial.
And most importantly, environmental factors.
Unfortunately, the university hadn't released anything related to how exactly the assassination would be set up, so they could only speculate.
But that was why there was a 1 week time limit to this assessment, which would only be 1 day in reality thanks to the time dilation technology on the Virtual Reality pods.
They had a week to assess, analyse and examine everything they could use to their advantage in assassinating the F- rank.
"Man, this is going to be tough..." Alex spoke, unsure if he could even pull this task off.
"Yeahhh..." Mira agreed, also just as worried.
***
The next morning, Alex woke up feeling refreshed. But that was about the only good thing about his start to the day.
The strategy assessment would start in a few hours, and he hadn't come up with any ideas on how he'd even approach completing it yet.