[The examination will be conducted in a simple manner. You will all be sent into the 'Great Kuzel Forest'. There, you are to hunt monsters and extract their cores. The number of cores you have correspond to your grade in the exam. That will be all, also if in a fight with a 'beast' your life is severely in danger, instructors from the academy will step in and help you out of the exam but that will end your opportunity to earn more grades, and a penalty will also be executed on you.]
As the information was revealed, Raizel took notice of a lot of tense faces around him. Whispers pierced the silence as the tension in the air thickened. Most people were scared, even if they were strong, fighting beasts was no easy task.
Strangely Raizel felt calm, too calm in fact.
He placed his hand on his chest and felt his heart beating as if everything was normal, not a hint of excitement or fear oozing from him. 'I guess with me, my heart has also become that of a monster.'
This realization gave him relief. The greatest gift of humans was their humanity—their emotions. Now he felt robbed of this gift, but he felt nothing. Because along with being the greatest gift, it was also the greatest curse of humans. In a world as dangerous as this, empathy was a weakness and a quality enjoyed by the weak.
These were Raizel's thoughts, unbeknownst to him, he was slowly changing. Not just his body, his temperament, thoughts and even emotions slowly morphed, each day, each moment, drifting him away from who he was.
After a brief pause, the mechanical voice once again chipped in.
[Good luck.]
As these words echoed through the large field, suddenly a light flash engulfed the entire area and in the blink of an eye every student disappeared.
.
Raizel opened his eyes and found himself in completely different surroundings.
Around him were pine trees, their lush green spiny leaves calmly resting. The sun in the air was close to disappearing. The ground was muddy and covered with pinecones and fallen brown spiny leaves.
The air felt cold, and the terrain looked uneven. Raizel was sure he was on a mountain range.
'So, this is where the exam is taking place. Hmm, this place sure looks nice at least.'
Raizel stretched out his body and headed in a random direction, he was going to start hunting. He couldn't fall behind to other students.
'But to think there is someone capable of teleporting so many students, the Union must have a ton of firepower, and they are ruthless too.' Raizel thought, during the exam announcements, he had taken note of one thing and maybe the others had as well. The vice principal mentioned there will be help if a student is in danger fighting a beast but mentioned nothing about if one is under attack by another student.
'Maybe they want students to kill each other. What a bunch of assholes, but oh well, if someone tries to kill me, I will just repay the favor.'
Raizel cautiously traversed the mountain range. The terrain here was especially dangerous; he saw sharp slopes leading down thousands of feet. If he fell down one, he wasn't sure he would live.
As he was moving forward, he suddenly felt something move from the corner of his eye.
Without even thinking, he moved out of the way on pure instinct.
*BOOM*
The place where he was moments ago was now a puddle of green acid, the corrosive power was so strong, the grass, fallen pine leaves all turned to gas in an instant.
Raizel smiled dryly looking at the scene then turned his attention to the attacker.
It was a mushroom. Almost 8 feet in height, a brown mushroom swayed on the ground. It had a grotesque pore on its head through which it had shot out acid recently.
Raizel did not think much, pitch black tendrils shaped like sharp spears shot out from his shadow. In a blinding speed, they all pierced into the brown mushroom monster, puncturing massive holes on its body.
The mushroom didn't even have a chance to retaliate. The attack damaged its body too much as it fell to the ground with a thud.
"Huff" Raizel breathed in a sigh of relief; this was his first combat ever and thankfully it had gone smoothly. Although the monster was weak, it had managed to sneak up on him.
'It can camouflage, what a strange sight.' Raizel noticed that the color of the mushroom monster's body was the same as the ground and it had used it to its advantage.
'Also, my perception is just 14 according to the system. That may be another reason why it managed to hide from me.'
'Anyways, it is time to get the monster core.'
Raizel wanted to send out the tendrils to do the work, but they consumed too much Force. Thus, he went ahead and did it himself.
He could see the monster core through one of the punctured holes on the monster body. Reaching out, he smoothly got hands on the core.
It was blue in color and gleamed slightly with an ethereal glow.
With the core in hand, Raizel turned his head to the sky and noticed the sun had set.
'I need to find a storage space artefact. I can't carry many cores with me without one.' He thought feeling the weight of the monster core in his hand.