The Beginning After The End (New Heights Book 2) (8 page)

“Pierce.”
 The examiner mutters softly.  The rock shards that redirected the
flames now shoot forward towards the flame tornado Lucas was inside of.
 The large shards of rock go through the fire tornado and dissipating it,
stopping just before they squish Lucas into fine paste.

The
blonde noble just falls to his knees in defeat, sweating from the exhaustion
from using so much mana.

The
rocks around Lucas crumble and fall as the examiner releases her spell.

“Your
control and creativity in the combinations of your spells are superb.  You
have a great future Mr. Wykes.  Your control over mana consumption needs a
bit more control but I look forward to see what you can become capable of.
 I think I can just barely pass you as a B class!”  She announces,
giving him a smile.

“WOAH!”
 “Another little monster!”  “Gah!  I want to just go home!”
 “What is with today’s crowd?”

I hear
some of the audience members that have already taken the exam murmur excitedly
amongst their peers.

 “It’s
only natural!”  Lucas gets up from the ground, dusting his robe while he
tries to keep a poker face but it’s pretty evident that he’s excited.

He
gets back to his seat before the examiner, who wasn’t even tired, switches
places with the Augmenter examiner.

The
scarred man gets up, stretching his body.  I see him high five the other
examiner and looks at his notes.

“Next
examinee, Note!  Please come down!”  He bellows.

Jasmine
puts a hand on my shoulder.  “Good luck.”

I nod
back and walk down, leaving Sylvie with Jasmine.

“It
seems you’re here to be tested under special conditions, seeing as there is no
information here written about you.  Okay!  Let’s see what you’re
made of.”  He gives me a curious stare, trying to look through my mask’s
eye slit to see who I was.

Just
as he’s about to unsheathe his sword, a voice interrupts him

“I’ll
be the one to test this particular examinee, George.”

Turning
my head, I see the thin, bespectacled man named Kaspian walk towards us from
the corridor I came in from.

“S-sir?
 You will be personally examining this participant?  I apologize if
this sounds presumptuous but is there really a need for an AA class to lower
himself
to test an examinee?

The
scarred examiner is visibly baffled by the fact that Kaspian will be the one to
test me.

An AA
class!  The difference in levels grows bigger as the ranks get higher.
 Being an AA class Adventurer signifies that you have the strength of ten
A
class Adventurers, and that’s just a rough estimate.

He
should be one of the pinnacles of strength amongst humans.  Even Gramps
would be considered only AA class after going into his second beast form.

“His
sponsor has deep ties with me so I feel obligated to test him personally.”
 He chuckles as his right hand reaches towards a thin rapier on his waist.

“Let
us begin.”

I unsheathe
the short sword and hold it in front of me with one hand.  The
various sounds around the coliseum are soon drowned out as I focus solely on
the opponent in front of me.

He’s making
figure eights with his rapier while his left hand is in his
pocket.  Yet, he has no openings.  He’s not even trying to
hide his killing intent while he’s smiling innocently at me.  My mind
flashes back to my old world’s dueling arena.  I didn’t think I’d
find someone like him so soon, someone capable of making me
excited.  This should be different from sparring with Gramps.

“Please
prepare yourself.  I wouldn’t want the person Miss Flamesworth is
sponsoring to lose too quickly.”

He blinks
and instantly closes the gap as his rapier cuts a few pieces of hair above my
left ear.

“Nice
dodge.”  He winks as he recoils his rapier, preparing for his next
move.

*Clang*

I block his
second thrust with the end of my handle, using the momentum to spin my body.

Kaspian
leans back, dodging my swing but a small cut appears across the tip of his
nose.

He looks
surprised for a bit but instantly regains focus.  Not giving him a
chance to fully recover, I follow up with a roundhouse kick to his leg.

*BOOM*

His sheath
stops the force of my reinforced kick.  In that split second, he was
able to use his other hand to reposition his sheath to block my attack.

The force of
my kick to his sheath creates a small dust cloud around us and he uses that
opportunity to gain distance.

“I must
apologize for underestimating you.  I shall be a bit more serious
now.”

His innocent
gaze gleams a bit with murderous intent as his rapier glows with a silvery hue.

He lunges at
the air in front of him and all of a sudden I’m hit in the arm with something
hard.

“You managed
to partly dodge that as well.  Seems like Miss Flamesworth has picked
up someone worthwhile.”

I look down
to see a gash in my left arm.

He was
aiming for my heart! I only managed to dodge on pure instinct.  He’s
releasing too much of his killing intent.  Is he doing it on purpose?

I curse at
my body.  Every time I fight, I still can’t help but feel restricted.

He lunges
his rapier two more times, but I know what’s coming.

*Fwoosh*  *Fwoosh*

He’s
creating spears of wind with his thrusts.  The difficulty in dodging
it comes from the spears being close to invisible.  I’ll have to rely
on sound and timing to dodge, but I have to decrease the distance between us
while doing so.

He had the
advantage of a longer reach and a much bigger mana supply than
me.  In this body, I’m not confident enough to even say that I have
the advantage in terms of technique.  My body just doesn’t listen to
me as well as I want it to.
  
The only advantage I could think of was my body being a lot tougher than
his thanks to assimilating with Sylvia’s Dragon Will.

I dodge one
spear of wind while the other one lightly grazes my right arm as I close the
distance between us.

It’s evident
that both of our sword techniques consist of speed and agility.

I embed my
shortsword in fire, releasing an arc of flames with my swing.

With a
simple swing of his rapier, a gust of wind blows the fire away, but that’s what
I wanted him to do.

Flicker
Step.

A technique
focusing fire affinity mana into the sole of your foot in rapid succession,
gaining instantaneous acceleration.

I arrive in
front of him while his rapier is still swung up next to his shoulder.

His brows
rise in surprise as I use my free hand to push his hand up so he can’t swing
down his rapier.

He will just
blow flames away so I coat my sword to an extremely high temperature.

Superheat.

“Vortex.”

Suddenly the
momentum from my flicker step is thrown off and a force pushes me into the
ground.

I jump back
to gain distance and see that there’s an intense swirl of airstream coming out
of him that’s strong enough to create cracks on the ground around him.

He widens
his stance, recoiling his rapier back with his left hand stretched out, resting
on the blade.

“Heaven’s
Rain”

His arm and
rapier turns into a faint blur as he produces a succession of countless
thrusts.

This was an
exam right?  Is he actually trying to kill me?

Fuck it.

“Thunderclap
Impulse.”

One of the
few techniques I managed to develop while training with Grandpa.  A technique
using lightning affinity mana to run currents of electricity throughout my
nerves, quickening my reflexes a couple times over.  If the average
human has a reaction time of around 0.3 seconds, there are trained fighters
that can get it down to 0.2 or even 0.15 seconds.

With
Thunderclap Impulse, I can quicken my reaction time to 0.05 for a short period
of time.

My pupils
contract and the hairs on my skin stand up on end due to the electricity.

I can hear
the spears of wind shooting towards me as I prepare to dodge them.

“Release!”

His skill
dissipates and my hair is just blown by a small draft.

Releasing my
skill as well, I look at him quizzically.  Before I had the chance to
ask him, Jasmine is already by my side, staring daggers at Kaspian with her two
blades in her hands.

“I may have
gotten a little carried away.”  He just shrugs nonchalantly.

“It seems
you wish to hide much of your ability.  I can only imply that you
wish to be placed at a lower rank.  Note.  B class.”

Before
walking off, he stops in front of the corridor.  “I assume you have
no problem with this?”  He turns his head a little to look at me.

I just nod
in agreement and he disappears from sight walking down the hall.

“That is the
last examination for today!  Please go to the front desk to receive
your Adventurer’s card.  Everyone is dismissed.”  The
Augmenter examiner shouts before he and the other examiner both rush after
Kaspian.

KASPIAN
BLADEHEART’S POV:

I arrive to
my desk and before I even have the chance to take a seat, the two Adventurers
in charge of today’s exams bombard me with questions simultaneously

“Sigh…
George, Emily, take a seat and don’t talk all at once.”  I sit down
and lean back.

“Sir!  What
was with today’s examinees?  Three B class Adventurers right off the
bat in a day?  This kind of situation is unheard of.  Not
to mention that two of them were kids!  Dark yellow at the age of
11... Has that ever occurred amongst humans?  ”  Emily nods
fervidly in agreement.

“Do you
remember what happened half a year ago here in Xyrus?”  I throw them
a question.

“Around 6
months ago was the first tournament that was held for all three races
right?”  Emily answers.

“Correct.  The
Adventurer guild workers will all know soon so there isn’t much of a point in
hiding this.  I was just notified of this a couple of weeks ago as
well.  The ban on elves and dwarves becoming Adventurers has been
lifted and today’s batch included some of the representative examinees.”

“S-sir, do
you mean to say that all three of them are either dwarves or elves then?”
George’s jaw is slack as he’s saying this.

I pull out a
small file of papers from my desk.

“Lucas Wykes
is a half elf that has been residing in the Kingdom of Sapin.  The
information on his birth is classified but if I had to guess, he was probably a
product of an elf slave.  The Wykes family has always had a bad
reputation for dabbling in nefarious ways to create better mages for their
house.  He’s an unusual case though, being able to be so adept in
flame affinity, despite his elf lineage. He awakened at the age of 8, which is
fast even amongst elf standards and was sent here for a sort of trial
run.  The Wykes no doubt expended a lot of money into buying beast
cores and other supplements to quicken his growth.”  I flip to the
next page.

“Elijah
Knight.  He’s quite the mystery.  According to the file,
his origin is unknown.  He was, however, raised amongst dwarves since
a young age.  He was sent as one of the first representatives from
the Kingdom of Darv to assimilate into the human kingdom.

“How come he
wasn’t tested Sir?  The clerk only told me to just put him into B
class.”  Emily leaned forward from her seat.

“Elijah
awakened a couple of months of ago, so he’s only now barely reached the Dark
Red stage.  As for why he was allowed to be a B class Adventurer
probably has to do with the person backing him up.  I don’t have any
say in his case so we can only let him be.  I’m curious as to what
his abilities are.”  I shake my head.

“As for that
masked Augmenter from today, to be honest, I have no idea who he
is.  He wasn’t recorded as one of the representatives on the
list.  I was simply curious as to what kind of person Miss Flameheart
would be willing to sponsor.

“Flameheart…as
in THAT Flameheart house right?  The famous house that is known for
birthing the strongest fire attribute mages?”

I put away
the file and look at them seriously, adjusting my glasses.  “I told
you all of this because you will find out soon anyway.  However, I
trust that you guys will refrain from telling others until the announcement is
made across the country.”

I dismiss
them as soon as I receive confirmation that they’ll comply.

I ponder
over today’s events.  That masked Augmenter.  His
techniques were not the standard skills that most fire attribute mages
use.  Even his style with the sword, it was something that made me
shiver.  But somehow, I get the feeling that he wasn’t at his optimal
state.  That somehow, he was being restrained.  I couldn’t
quite place my finger on it but his movements were awkward at times, as if he
wasn’t used to his own body.

I dismiss my
thoughts and start going over the pile of documents.

I can’t help
but grin to myself.  This continent is changing.  There
will be a lot interesting events happening from now on.

ARTHUR
LEYWIN’S POV:

The same
clerk that led us to the examination site hands me my bronze-colored
Adventurer’s card at the front desk.

From E class
to B class, the card is a copper color, where starting from A class, it’ll
change to silver, then gold for AA class, then white for S class.

“Do you have
a close relationship with Kaspian, Jasmine?”  I ask after putting
away my card, Sylvie asleep on my head.

“He’s an
acquaintance of my father.”  She says simply under a cold expression.

I don’t dig
for any further answers.  She obviously doesn’t have any sort of
positive feelings about all of this.

Changing the
subject, I ask Jasmine, “So what should we do next?”

She ponders
for a bit.  There were several options.  We could do
missions that were at or below our rank.  These missions included a
variety of tasks, from guarding, to acquiring specific items.  We
could also transport ourselves to the Beast Glades and explore while hunting
down mana beasts.

“Dungeon exploring.”   She answers, a soft smile on her
face.