After a very close competition, the royal team was able to qualify for the second round. Even with the bad cooperation between the team members, the royal team had a lot of people and most of them were quite powerful too. Not only that but the other teams competing with them were also badly hurt by the demon attacks while going up the mountain.
Those were the reasons why they were not able to defeat the royal team.
But this outcome did not make the prince to be happy. He was not an arrogant person but he still needed to maintain the prestige of the royal family. Barely qualifying for the second stage of the trial was not a good look for the absolute top of this world. So finally the prince started to get serious and tried to manage his group for the first time.
...
What the royal family was going in the second round was not something Rein was worried about. They were taking on the challenges of the third stage and it was quite a hard challenge. After observing the obstacles so far, it was clear that this trail ground wanted the challengers to have good team work and relationship. So Rein's excellence alone was not what this realm was looking for.
So the third round also had challenges that needed good teamwork to solve. But this time the disciples needed to share some of their important truths with other disciples to easily clear this stage. There was a way how the disciples would be able to clear this round without divulging their secrets but that process was very long and time consuming.
After discussing about this matter for some time, the disciples decided to use the first method. They did not need to tell their secrets to everyone and to just three other people. They all would be partners and those people would also tell their secrets. So after thinking about it, all the students judged that it would not be a big deal if they chose their partners properly.
Ten team of three people were made and they went to take on clear the stage while Rein and Colinde were going to take the harder and more time consuming method. They needed to enter a battlefield and had to kill one thousand demons to advance to the next round. They needed three people to participate in the first method but Rein and Colinde were left with no partners.
But they were rewarded for that as only their whole team was able to advance to the next stage. As for the other powerful people who had managed to reach the finish line before that team, they needed to wait for all their group members to come here and only after that would they be able to advance to the next stage.
...
The fourth round was quite tough and the disciples here needed to depend on one another to go through a very difficult maze. After reaching the fourth stage, some of the random disciples were given the ability to observe the maze from a higher point but in exchange, they became unable to move. As for the people who did not get this special ability, their physical strength saw a great increase.
So in this round, 16 teams of two people were made with each team having a person who was capable of seeing the maze from an upper view. In Rein's team Rein got the ability to see the maze so Colinde needed to carry him. He was capable of breaking the restriction of not being able to move but seeing how excited Colinde was about carrying him, Rein decided not to do that.
As for Lu Shi and Lan, Lan got the extra power and Lu Shi got the special ability. So in this case Lan needed to carry Lu Shi and that made Lu Shi to be very comfortable. Lu Shi had been seeing Lan as her little sister so it was quite embarrassing for her to be getting carried by someone younger than her.
This round was supposed to be easy and most of the students were able to clear it without any problems. But at the same time, in this round Rein's team had their first elimination. Probably after seeing how easy this round was, two of the disciples from Divine Scale Pavillion had become very lax so the person in charge of observing did not notice a trap and the person carrying fell for it easily.
This way both of them were disqualified from this trial.
It was quite disheartening to see their friends getting disqualified especially after making such a stupid mistake. But these people could not blame anyone but themselves for making this kind of mistake.
The disqualified disciples were sent to the outside world through their tokens. As for the others, they continued toward the fifth stages with a group of 30 people.