"GRAWWR!"
A feral, wild growl sent shivers down the spines of all the students present. Their heads instinctively turned in my direction, and I only smiled back. A Cyclops, a monster that can kill up to ten fully trained soldiers with a swing of its mace.
Luckily for them, I had confiscated its weapon, making it a little less dangerous. Still, it would be a pretty good test for them.
"Professor, what kind of test is this?!" One of the students shouted. "Why is a Cyclops in front of us?"
Screams rang out all around me. Panic was taking over everyone present.
"We don’t even have our weapons!"
Oh. Didn’t know about that. Still, none of them noticed my ignorance.
"It doesn’t matter. You’re all gonna have to fight it. I won’t help you. You’re the Apex class; this much should be child’s play, right?"
All of them looked at one another, unsure of what to say. The Cyclops was getting closer to them with each second, saliva hanging from its mouth with each step it took. It was hungry and needed food. It had tried to escape at first, but it saw my face and turned around instantly, knowing that the students’ direction was the only way out of here.
"W-w-what should we do?" the student with purple hair muttered, her entire body shaking. "I-I didn’t study for this."
I took a few notes of every student depending on the decision they took. Some of them were clearly used to letting others do everything as they hid in the back even though they weren’t mages. There were a few courageous ones, and most of them seemed to be commoners.
I wasn’t surprised. Commoners go through a lot more things than Nobles most of the time, so they have a lot more experience when it comes to fighting actual beasts.
With the group of commoners was only one other person, Darla. She seemed set on showing me what she had learned over the past week. At least, it seemed that way.
The dwarf’s body turned into literal rocks, one of their special skills called Hardened.
"Not bad. Definitely has potential as a tank."
I looked at the other tank, and he seemed lost, just watching the dwarf with his eyes opened wide. The golden-haired girl seemed to have kept an eye on the dwarf as she noticed him starting to struggle.
"Quickly! We need to attack him with everything we’ve got! We won’t get another chance to attack him. Saintess, use your holy powers to weaken it. You, elven princess, don’t you have a bow hidden somewhere? We need to prove to the professor we’ve got what it takes!"
A blonde-haired girl nodded, and a glowing light appeared all around her body.
"My lord, please curse this evil being!"
A girl with long, pointy ears also pulled out a bow from a small pouch just like mine and drew her bow.
"Tell me when!"
I nodded a few times as I heard the identity of the people she shouted. A Saintess, an Elven Princess, a Vampire Princess—the director was right. This class definitely isn’t normal by any means.
They had pulled out weapons that they had kept hidden, not caring that I was watching them. It seemed the golden-haired girl had managed to convince them about actually being able to win against the Cyclops. It wasn’t a bad attempt, to be honest. Cute, really.
"ATTACK!" she screamed as everyone launched their strongest spell or attack at the Cyclops. A cloud of dust hid it for a short while, making everyone gasp. Unsure if they had done it. However, as the cloud of dust dissipated, the Cyclops was only bleeding from a small cut that it had received on its right arm.
Their attack had utterly failed.
It failed. But I couldn’t help but smile.
Those students really had potential.