While Acheron was dicing up his own foe, Draco, Itsuki and Ryuu were all working together to take out the lava zombies and ground badgers. Draco bludgeoned his targets down with a great battlehammer, leaving no room for his enemies to fight back. With every attack, blood splattered across his blunt weapon, the red residue that matched his irises staining his white hair. His weapon was imbued with the explosive power of his mana, using shockwaves to deal immense damage that would burst the lava zombies upon hit.

Itsuki stayed behind and sniped down the Mana Beasts that tried to ambush her friends from behind. Her bow did critical damage even from far away and with every shot, a gust of wind made her long brunette hair frolic behind her head. Her hazel eyes had light brown spikes at the edges of her irises that made it look as if she had a built-in scope within her eyes. Each arrow she shot encased the impact zone with ice, slowing the enemy and even freezing their heart if she could hit them in the right place. Although Itsuki’s Mana Surge was low, she still had her specialties.

Ryuu fought like a dragon, ruthless and powerful. Wielding the finest katana, the blade was bright with the yellow energy of his lightning mana and he acted swiftly without a second thought. His golden eyes never strayed from his target until it was dead and every time his eyes locked onto the next target, fear was shot into their veins. His glossy red hair flowed freely behind him with his sharp movements as he glided through his opponents like a wave of water and struck like a bolt of lightning.

“HAHAHAHA!” Draco laughed as he enthusiastically swung his hammer around without a care in the world. “I can do this all day!”

Just as he was about to get jumped by a stray zombie, it was shot in the back and dropped dead. “Not if you get caught with your back turned like that,” Itsuki scoffed from afar.

“Let’s just hurry up and pass this entrance exam,” Ryuu said indifferently as he swung his sword to his side and whipped the blood off of his blade.

Suddenly, a loud rumbling came from below Ryuu’s feet and another giant spider burst from the ground. Its screech blasted the eardrums of him and Draco, even reaching all the way to Itsuki. “A Flame-Dungeon Spider?!” Ryuu blurted out in shock.

“Another Dungeon Spider!” Theo exclaimed, quickly switching the camera angle to the three sorcerers without having to ask; everyone wanted to watch as well. “These three have a lot of synergy, participating in strike teams together without leaving a single person behind.”

Every sorcerer has their own personalized weakness. Whether that’d be close-ranged battles or aim-based duels, they all have at least one thing they’re bad at. However, all sorcerers also have one universal weakness, being thrown into the air.

Ryuu is a quick and agile swordsman but when left in the air, he is helpless until he is able to get a foothold on the ground. The spider raised one of its 10 sharp legs and stabbed Ryuu through the left kidney before tossing him into a small shop. When he hit the ground, the building demolished on top of him and buried him in dust and cement.

“Ryuu has taken critical damage!” Owen shouted, “requesting to deploy his barrier now!”

Ryuu’s small earpiece buffered with a static noise before Owen started to speak to him privately, “Ryuu, this is Owen speaking. As you know, you’ve been hurt badly. Your suit will heal it for the most part but the damage is still done. If you lose too much blood, you could die. Do you want me to cast your barrier? If we do, you will fail the exam.”

Ryuu was quick with his answer, “no,” he stated firmly and with all the confidence he could have. “I’m killing this spider and I’m getting into this damn school.” He grabbed the dropped katana next to him and stood back up, a waterfall of blood pouring from the hole on his side. He used his own mana to boost the suit’s regeneration and patched the hole with an artificial layer of flesh. “Itsuki, freeze the thing’s legs. Draco, knock it down.”

“Got it, boss,” Itsuki said, reeling back her arrow and firing it at the spider’s legs. She quickly fired a volley of arrows that all struck the spider’s legs and froze its feet into the ground. “It’s frozen. Your turn, Draco.”

“Who made you the boss?” Draco scoffed but obeyed without complaint. He jumped on a slanted piece of a wall and boosted himself forward to easily smash and break the legs of the spider, making it tumble to the ground. “All yours, Ryuu!” he shouted, leaping onto a wall and grabbing onto it.

Ryuu swung his sword to the side, slicing the air before glaring up at the spider with bloodlusted pupils. He vanished from his position and ran up the side of a skyscraper. As he ran, the spider shot giant cobwebs at Ryuu but he was way too fast to be caught and just narrowly dodged each web.

Finally, he stopped running and swiftly turned himself around to face the spider. “Sword of the Tempest Dragon,” he chanted, a fiery yellow aura surrounding his being as he charged forward, creating a small crater in the skyscraper’s wall from the explosion. “Scale Storm!” While in the air, the spider continued firing cobwebs but he sliced each one of them. When he reached the head of the spider, he stared at all 12 eyes before vanishing and reappearing around the beast, slicing and dicing the gigantic creature as it roared in pain.

As he was cutting, he was still in pain from the injury and bloody foam poured from his mouth. It was very clear to everyone he was going past his limits. In the end, he tripped over himself and tumbled to the ground. The beast was still alive and if it wasn’t taken out soon, it would just heal itself.

“Oh, what’s this?!” a female called out from above, “you guys were killing a Dungeon Spider without me? How rude!” The woman tipped over the edge of the building and came in skydiving onto the exposed back of the spider. Her divine battle axe was positioned behind her back, ready for a full-powered attack.

She put on an amused grin before she swung, making it blatantly obvious that she was enjoying her time with this kill. Finally, she swung her axe horizontally and cleanly cut off the spider’s head. The dark purple blood on the inside of the spider came gushing out and splattered all over the buildings.

“The poor thing was already helpless…” she murmured, “I’ll chalk that up to an assist. You three can have the kill.”

Everyone in the computer room was jaw dropped. They just watched three completely new students work together and take down a B+ rank Mana Beast with only a few hours of getting to know each other. To them, the future looked brighter than it could ever be for Auroria’s defense team and school.

Owen tapped into Ryuu’s earpiece again, “good job on killing the spider. I’ll cast your barrier and get someone to bring you in. Ryuu Tatsumi… You pass.”

GGGGRRRAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRRRRR!!!

A guttural roar came from the very center of the makeshift downtown city, catching everyone’s attention and causing distressed murmurs. “What was that?” they all asked themselves.

“The Geo Gate Boss has appeared in the center of town!” Naomi shouted.

“The Gate Boss?!” Narumi quickly took action and hopped from building to building toward the center of town. “If I take this out… Maybe he’ll finally acknowledge me!” 

“Not while I’m here!” Acheron suddenly shouted as he appeared on the building parallel to Narumi, “this kill is all mine!”

This guy is strange, Narumi thought, I thought I was beyond the class by having 71% but then he shows up out of nowhere and matches me?! NO WAY! How am I supposed to kill him if I can’t even outscale this guy?!

When they made it to the center of town, they were met with a giant badger that was even bigger than the spider. “Were Ground Badgers always this big?” Narumi wondered as she laid her eyes on the mystical yet terrifying beast.

In the computer room, Theo was questioning the same thing, “those badgers weren’t always that big, right?”

“No, they weren’t. Something’s wrong,” Naomi said, her eyes never leaving her computer screen as she read the Mana Levels of the beasts in the area. “I didn’t realize it before but these beasts are much stronger than usual. Both spiders that we saw were only supposed to have a Mana Level of 5 to 5.5. But they were at 7 flat.”

“What are the readings on this badger?”

“…It’s at 8.3?!” she exclaimed in shock. “Something is definitely wrong! Did we put the right Gates in place?!”

• • • • • •

Inside a small, cramped cave, three wanderers from the exam have stumbled upon the Gate under the cage. “You know,” one of the men started, “they say killing the Gate Boss destroys the Gate but wouldn’t trying to destroy the Gate directly be much faster?”

As they got closer, they noticed a slender figure crouched next to the giant mana rift. It was inhumanly slender; as if the person was extremely malnourished. They had gray skin with spots and scars that looked like the surface of the moon. Their head was bald and you could see the redness in their eyelids even though they had their back turned. Skinny fingers, long fingernails, boney structure and the same with their feet.

The man got closer to the thing, “I see you also found the entrance to this place?” he asked, but it sounded more like a lead up statement. However, no answer. “Well since we’re all here, why don’t we try taking down this Gate together?”

“Hey, bro, I think we should just leave,” one of the other guys said, “this guy seems dangerous.”

The first man turned around to face his friends and just waved his hand dismissively, “what’re you talking about? He’s probably intro…verted.” For the moment he was talking, he seemed perfectly fine—until he fell. He fell in opposite directions at the same time, like a peeled banana.

The two other guys stared in shock as they tried to process what just happened. “B-Bro…?” the second—now first—man murmured. Finally, he looked up at the strange gray thing and noticed how it changed. From skinny fingers to kitchen knife blades, the same color as his skin.

“You’re disturbing me,” the creature murmured with a foreign voice and unreadable tone. Although the cave provided a natural echo to all sounds, this thing had a robotic echo in its own voice and did not come from the cave. 

“W-What are y—?!” slice. The second man was killed.

“N-No!! Save—!!” slice. The third man was killed.

After the slaughter, the thing turned back to the gate. His kitchen knives turned back into fingers but the face of the fingers looked like suction cups. He touched the Gate with the tip of his fingers only and started to pour mana into the Gate.