"Stop touching my hair!" A voice could be heard somewhere in the forest of monsters.

It was loud and boisterous, belonging to a male.

"Why not? You clearly put so much effort into combing it. That's like begging me to mess it up!"

A second voice replied, coming from a girl. She had a teasing tone to her voice like she enjoyed poking fun at the boy.

The two voices belonged to the boy with a huge bag pack from earlier and the tall girl with red hair and orange eyes.

They had walked quite a distance from where they first met while having argument after argument.

The professors who were watching honestly thought they reminded them of an old couple.

The girl had taken out any monsters the duo had encountered so far. While the boy would scavenge the bodies for materials he could use.

"Hey," the girl asked, "that sack of yours... doesn’t it have a limit to how much it can carry."

The boy looked up at her and scoffed, "And why should I tell you."

The girl rolled her eyes, "We're supposed to be teammates. Teammates share everything with each other."

The boy scoffed "That's best friends, you mean. And I don't even know your name why would I tell you, my secrets."

The girl hummed tapping her chin, "You have a good point..."

The boy nodded, 'I have my secrets, you have yours. So, let's mind our business and—'

"My name is Anad, and you?" The girl put a hand on her chain mail covered chest and asked.

The boy was silent for a moment. Then he blinked.

'Huh, is this girl crazy?!' He screamed internally.

It may seem like an overreaction, but in this world, the wrong person knowing your name could get you killed.

"Why... why would..." The boy clearly didn't understand why the girl told him her name so easily.

She chuckled at the boy's stupid expression.

"Well... are you gonna tell me?" She asked with a smile on her face.

The boy stopped walking, prompting her to do the same.

"My... bag, it's enchanted with spatial magic." He admitted.

Anad was fairly surprised, only rich nobles or merchant family could afford spatial enchantments.

"Wow you must be loaded, aren't you?"

"And don't those normally go on rings. Creating a space bag that big kinda defeats the purpose..." She added gently.

The boy stared at her with no expression on his face. "I know that. I did it for another reason."

He resumed walking, "Which I don't feel like telling you now."

"C'mon don't be like that." The girl walked after him.

They kept going for a while before the boy said, "Did you notice something strange about the rules they gave us?"

Anad looked at him and asked, "Which one."

The boy laughed a bit, "There was no time limit."

"..." Anad didn't have anything to say about his observation.

"A test has a time limit. Or else everybody would be able to pass."

The boy wagged his finger in front of the girl, "That goes against what they said about only 300 of us passing."

Anad was curious, 'I didn't think about it that way.'

"Maybe it's the first 300 to get 500 points then." She proposed.

The boy nodded his head, "You make a good point, but if that was the case why not specify it?"

Anad was confused, "Maybe they want us to figure it out by ourselves."

The boy shrugged his shoulders, "Then why say we could go above the quota?"

Anad's eyes widened. The boy had a point.

If the exam was a race to see who could reach 500 points, then they wouldn't allow for the point limit to be passed.

The boy continued his explanation, "So we've established that the test won't end even if we get 500 points."

"I think there's another angle to this exam."

Anad remained silent, 'I suspected he was smart but... '

"What? Are you in awe of my wits?" The boy said smugly.

"Don't get ahead of yourself. Just keep explaining."

The boy pushed up his glasses, "Tsk, fine."

"So, if we have no reason to go sprinting around for points, then we shouldn't."

"Instead, we should save our strength. You never know what kind of monsters we'd meet."

'Whether human or beast.' He thought.

***

SPLAT!

A girl with white hair walked right into a puddle. Her black boots were stained by whatever was on the grass-filled floor.

She looked down at her favorite boots that were now ruined. The sisters had always said not to wear your best clothes when an important event was lurking ahead.

'Bad luck, they said.'

After seeing the boots, she concluded that whatever she had stepped in had just splashed on her laces.

Though 'seeing' wouldn't be the right term for it as she had a blindfold on.

She wasn't blind though. She was obligated to wear a blindfold by... some special circumstances.

'Hmm?' She had just noticed something.

'This is blood.'

She raised her head as if searching for the source of the blood she had just stepped in.

A frown contorted her face.

'How appalling. Did a monster do this?'

Though she couldn't use her eyes due to the blindfold, she could still use a convenient spell called [Mana Sense].

As everything in this world possessed mana, she could use this as a sort of second sight.

What she sensed was blood and organs spilled all over the area of the forest in front of her.

Intestines hanging out of bodies, tongues cut out and skewered on small sticks.

Some limbs were lying a few meters in front of her, their previous owners unidentifiable from the pile of corpses in front of her.

There were at least 20 candidates that fell victim to this tragedy. She wondered if they would be taken care of by the school.

The smell of blood hit her nose fast, her face wrinkling in discomfort.

She tried examining the bodies, maybe the beast that did this was one she knew of.

That was when she noticed it. Her pulse quickened and she rushed forward towards the nearest body.

'How could I have been so slow?!'

She quickly got down on her knees next to an unfortunate soul who had their stomach ripped open.

The person had also lost both their arms, and was currently bleeding out.

She put a hand to their neck and let out a gasp,

"He's alive!" She screamed. Never would she believe that she would find someone in such a state.

She quickly placed both her hands on the candidate's elbow and cast [Heal]!

The bleeding arm was closed into a stump. She repeated this for the second hand and then the stomach.

"You're in luck today." She said, cleaning up the blood around him with her sleeve, "I happen to know a few spells."

Her condition had left her oddly fascinated with magic. She was a fast learner and could be called quite decent in it.

She quickly looked at the others with her [Mana Sense] and gulped.

"They... they're all... they're all alive."

She could only imagine the kind of pain they had to endure before she arrived.

She quickly went to the next body, "I'm sorry, I don't have enough mana to heal all of you back to perfect health." She muttered an apology as she placed both hands on the chest of a girl.

She cast [Heal] again but only enough to make the wounds non-fatal.

'It's unnerving', She noted, 'Even with all the theatrics, no vital organs were damaged.'

She finished with the girl and moved to another body. This one was hanging upside down from a tree so she had to be extremely careful when moving it.

SQUISH!!

'EEEEEEEEPPP!' she screamed and jumped away, she just stepped on something squishy.

'Oh my gosh! Oh my gosh! Oh my gosh! Oh my gosh! Oh my gosh!' She jumped on one leg after the other, wiggling her hands like she had something disgusting on them.

She looked down and saw... a frog.

"Huh?" She quickly calmed down. Putting her hand on her chest to calm her rapidly beating heart.

She crouched down on the floor, "This isn't good for my health."