The Adventurer's Examination

They had defined their roles beforehand and had planned how they would perform during the test, Evelyn and Jack cheating with a little magic if they saw that they could. They were aiming for a E rank as it would make them look like promising adventurers with a little fighting experience.

Finally reaching the top of the staircase, what awaited them was a long corridor with many chairs alongside the wall and doors on the other side. The troubling part was that all of them were empty and the only man in the place was seemingly their instructor. He was wearing a thick leather armor and had sword hanging on his side while he was lazily leaning on the wall.

When they walked toward him, his eyes lightened up and he hurriedly asked them :

"Are you a party of new adventurers taking the test ?"

"Hmm yes, we were sent here by Linda. I guess that you're the examiner ?" Laena said, acting like she was the leader of the party.

"Indeed, I'm Karl by the way. It's good to see that new adventurers still dare to show themselves now." He smiled, talking in a low and heavy voice. He seemed quite burly with more that 1.90 meters of muscles but didn't emit a threatening aura.

"What do you mean by "now"?" Jack asked, raising an eyebrow. He had already checked the strength of his interlocutor and the man in front of him was probably a retired adventurer as he seemed quite strong but didn't possess any kind of magic.

"You don't know ?" The examiner blurted out, surprised.

"Don't know what exactly ?" The immortal pressed, his patience running thin.

"Hmmm... I'm not sure I should tell you, I don't want to scare you..."

Sensing that her teacher was about to tear the man into different pieces with his hands, Laena cut the conversation and stated :

"We're not on our first ride you know, we have faced death many times. Now, will you tell us what kind of threat we will face later ?"

"Well said miss elf, you rise in my esteem. There are many reports of unknown monsters apparitions. Furthermore, one crazy guy came in a few days ago telling us that an army of undeads destroyed Grandia and was marching toward here. Of course nobody trusted him but the rumors still scared the newbies and they all left."

Evelyn then said with a small voice :

"We- we walked through Grandia... And the city is indeed destroyed. But about this undead army, the only thing we saw was a huuuuge pack of dead bodies on the road toward here. Maybe he misunderstood it ?"

The examiner's emotions appeared on his visage, showing a range of sadness, rage and surprise then joy.

"Is-is it true ?" He asked with a huge smile.

"Yes it is, you can ask all the other people who came through the southern gate. Some may have seen it too." Jack sighed, just wanting to get tested and go away.

Karl then excused himself, asking them to wait for a moment and rushed down the stairs to announce the news to his colleagues. A few minutes later he came back, opened a door and asked them to come inside with him.

"Excuse me for my... Lack of professionalism earlier. It is a really good news for all of us as we expected to be drafted by the military to defend the city with an emergency quest. To explain you how it would have worked, we are forced to comply and do whatever we can to help for the quest. If we don't we will be banished from the adventurer's guild and treated as traitors by the Kingdom. Those who survive gains a lot but they are a few since those damned soldiers treat us like meat shields. "

Taking a deep breath to calm himself, he then explained that he was going to test their fighting abilities one by one then all together. Evelyn went first, taking a wooden dagger on the weapon racks nearby and standing ready five meters from Karl. They were in a large room, nearly 100 square meters with a huge white rectangle on the ground. If you went out of it, the test ended. Same if your back touched the ground of if the examiner touched you with his weapon.

"3,2,1, start !" The former adventurer announced, rushing toward Evelyn and swinging his one handed sword toward her ribs with his right hand. She nimbly jumped back and threw her dagger, surprising Karl. He stopped it with his weapon's handle, forced to break his stance to avoid being hit.

'Taking advantage of an enemy's mistakes is the basic of any offensive magic.' She reminded herself of her teacher's courses and rushed toward the opportunity she created.

Using a sliver of wind magic to make herself sure to catch her dagger in the air, she grabbed it and lunged toward her opponent. He had been throw off guard but was still a former swordsman and knew how to react to such threat. Raising his arms to make his flaw bigger, he baited Evelyn and kicked her when she didn't expect it.

Since she was a child and quite frail she flew away, rolled on the ground and left the rectangle. Karl thought that he maybe went a little hard on her and hurt her but it seemed that she was fine since she got up and thanked him for the training. In fact, she had tried her best to create a small air cushion between his feet and her stomach to control the damages but failed quite badly.

Sitting on a chair nearby, she did her best to deal with the pain and looked at her teacher stepping in the ring. The examiner, wondering why such a well dressed man would come in as a martial artist voiced his concern :

"Are you sure that you will be able to move correctly with those clothes ?"

"You should worry about your safety first." Jack replied, his irises turning yellow.

Doing the same count as earlier, Karl was surprised as he lost the initiative to the man dressed in black in front of him. He didn't knew why but he felt that he would die if he dared to move his eyes from him, and he did well. Moving his left arm toward his chest, he blocked a punch while his blade was pushed away by his enemy's other hand.

Jack was doing his best to control his magically augmented strength and show a human performance and continued to punch his foe, mentally sighing.

'I could have killed him or blinded him in the first three seconds but I guess that such a performance would have been a bad idea. I guess I did well enough, time to spectate Laena.'

He then made a "dumb" mistake and his hand slipped from Karl's right wrist, freeing his blade. Jack kicked him, "trying" to make him fall but had hit the leg that supported the least body weight so his opponent didn't fall. Raising his arms to block the blade, he took the hit and walked out of the arena with a small smile.

Karl was surprised by the quality of these unknown recruits. They all managed to surprise him in a different way : the small girl was inventive and cunning while the man was ferocious and aggressive. Wondering what this elven swordswoman was going to show him, he smiled inwardly and looked at her testing all the different blades.

After a few seconds, she stepped in with a thin two handed long sword and respectfully said :

"I, Laena Brathadh, show my respect to my opponent. Please teach me during this training."

'Ah, she's a noble. Maybe that's why she has such surprising followers.'

"I will, don't worry. Take your stance !" He barked while holding his sword in front of him.

The elf simply held her weapon with two hands, the blade pointing toward the ground. Misunderstanding her stance as a form of disrespect, the examiner felt quite angry and rushed toward her. Trying to touch her with the tip of his sword he extended his arm and opened wide his eyes when he saw his foe's blade raising from the ground toward his right elbow.

At this rate, he would loose first in this contest of range. Jumping back to avoid her rising strike, he quickly held his sword in front of his heart as he had to block her thrust. Smiling, he immediately punched her weapon away with his left arm and touched her with his weapon. She then left the arena too, satisfied.

She knew that she would have killed him if it was a real fight as her sword was way lighter than this wood and lead one. Furthermore, her performance had been like they wanted it to be : Promising but still lacking.

Karl looked at the trio, smiling and said :

"I don't think that I will need to fight you three to see how you manage to cooperate. Your solo performances were already good enough for me to give you way more than a passing grade so I won't keep you locked in here any longer."

Writing on a paper for a few seconds, he paused then gave it to them and continued :

"Show this to Linda and she will start to create your adventurers ID. I hope to see you rising to impressive ranks guys but first you will have to start here." He explained while showing them a huge letter written on the sheet of paper. "Welcome in the guild, D class companions !"

'Well, it seems that we aced it a bit more than we thought. It's fine too, we will just be treated like geniuses and will have to tell that we already did this before.' Jack thought, revising his plans.

"Thank you, I hope that this guild will take care of us too." Was what he said though.

Smiling, their party went down and directly headed for Linda's counter. The girls seemed quite happy to have a high grade, even if they were a bit worried that it changed their situation. Seeing that Jack looked the same, they thought that it was fine and simply let him lead while being happy to get a D rank.

Their teacher looked at the woman behind the counter while handing her the document. She seemed truly surprised but happy to see that a new party of capable adventurers joined them. Her smile was quite charming as she was in her thirties. She seemed quite small too even is with her seat you couldn't guess her real size. The interesting thing about her was her cascading red hair which looked like fire with the sunlight shining on them.

She told them that their adventurer's ID would be done for tomorrow and advised them to go and rest. After all, they had passed the test and must have been tired after it. However, Jack asked if it was alright for them to take a quest right now. After all, the sun was still high in the sky and spending his day at the inn would just be boring.

Linda seemed quite surprised to see such a workaholic but stayed professional and told him that she would specially accept their quest if they brought the paper to her as they didn't have ID. Agreeing, they went to the D level panel and looked for interesting missions. The principle with ranks was that you could only take quests of the same or lower level as yours in order to avoid having newbies fighting with a dragon.

In the D class of quest Jack saw many collect of rare or hard to get plants but nothing really more interesting. There were also quests for bears exterminations and a tribe of goblins but it seemed boring. A ferocious smile rose on his face when he saw the other one : An orc tribe extermination.

Turning to look at Evelyn, he shown it to her and told her :

"Ready to avenge yourself ?"

She seemed quite terrified first, but her determination and rage soon surpassed the others emotions. She replied with a voice vibrating of anger :

"Of course teacher. I will show my village what I learned and avenge them."