Magic Trick

Mark opened his eyes in the infirmary of the academy. He woke up with no pain whatsoever.

'Where am I?' he thought. He looked around and realized where he was. He then tried to figure out why he was there.

It didn't take him long to remember being hit hard in the ribcage by Tina. "Ow!," he winced as he remembered what happened.

He felt the side of his chest and sighed in relief as he felt no pain at all. "Oh, thank god, I can still work," he said.

He quickly got out of the bed and walked out.

"Oh, you're leaving already?" the Doctor seemed coming back from somewhere.

"Ah, Doctor Greene. Thank you for healing me so fast," he said.

"It's alright. Go to the arena, you can still maybe catch the final fights," Doctor Greene said. Mark said his farewells and went back to the arena.

Tina seemed to be in the middle of a fight with a girl that was using bows and arrows but was making absolutely no hits.

Very soon, Tina easily incapacitated the girl and the match was over.

"Alright. Good job everybody. Don't worry about not doing well today. Against a hunter with over 20 levels, you were never going to do well in the first place. The entire reason for the test was to see how you would cope when fighting someone vastly stronger than you."

"Funnily enough, running away was a valid option too. However, I am happy to see that none of you chose to give up and kept on fighting. Thank you for that."

"Now the second test is over. The dungeon hunting test will take place the day after tomorrow at the F-Ranked Goblin Dungeon. Make sure to be there by 7 in the morning."

The examiner said up until that and dismissed the class.

Mark stood up and started walking towards the left door of the exam hall. "Mark Grier, please come down here," the examiner said.

"Hmm," he was surprised that the examiner called him. From what he recalled they should have had no interaction.

'I'm surprised he even knows my name,' he thought. He walked down the stairs and asked, "what is it, sir?"

The examiner said nothing and simply pointed him towards the corner. Tina was standing there, staring daggers at him.

Mark felt a little bit of anger rise inside of him when he saw her. 'What does she want?' he thought and walked up to her with a cold face.

In fact, he tried to make his face colder than hers even.

"I'm sorry about earlier," Tina said the moment he reached their stunning him. 'Oh, she was going to apologize?'

"Is that it? You nearly killed me back there," he said.

"I know, I'm sorry. I get angry too easily, and when you were besting me back there, I got angry. I didn't mean to hurt you on purpose. I was just blinded," Tina said. Her face was as stiff as ever, barely showing any sort of regret on her face even when saying sorry.

"Whatever, it's fine. If you don't have anything else to say, I'm leaving now," Mark said as he turned around.

"Wa-wait!," Tina said.

"What?" Mark asked as he turned around.

"Who taught you to fight like that? You definitely didn't get a normal training like everyone else," Tina asked.

"None of your business," Mark said and left the hall, leaving Tina behind alone. Tina was feeling the embers of anger burning in herself again. But this time, she held herself off and just turned around to walk away.

Mark got out of the academy and looked at the time. It was around 10 am. It hadn't been that long since he got here and he had already fainted.

"I should have a great score on the exam at least, right?" he thought.

He walked to the goblin dungeon in a few minutes and started working as a porter once again.

The day went by just like that and in the end, he managed to get around 90 units. Today wasn't very favorable for him.

He returned home at around 5 pm and dejectedly open the door to enter.

"Sister, I am home," he said. He waited for a few seconds but got no response.

"Sister?" he shouted. Then he saw signs of something torn up near the door. The stuff went towards the living room.

His eyes went wide. "Sister!!," he shouted. He immediately ran towards the living room to find his sister.

She wasn't there. The TV was open, but she wasn't there.

"Sister!!," he shouted more desperately and ran towards her room. He pushed the door open and entered.

There he found her, playing with a bunch of marbles on the floor. 'Are those… the goblin marbles?' he looked at them carefully.

"Sister, did that come in the mail?" he asked.

"Oh Mark, welcome back. When did you get in? Look. An uncle came by and gave me these to play with. All I had to do in return was write my name. That uncle is so stupid, giving things for free. Hehe," he said.

"Sigh, those are not things for playing, sister." Mark tried to take the marbles away from his sister.

"No. The uncle gave it to me. It's mine." She hurriedly pulled it away.

'Ughhh,' he could see trouble coming from afar.

"Umm… don't you want to watch TV? Your favorite cartoon is on right now. Besides, I can show you a magic trick," Mark said.

"Magic? What kind?" his sister asked suspiciously.

"Give me one of those marbles," he asked.

His sister was curious about the magic trick, so she curiously handed one of the hundreds of marbles to him.

He put the marble between his two hands and swiftly made two fists.

"Choose," he said.

"Umm…this one."

His sister chose the right hand. He turned it around to show there was no marble there.

"Huh? Was it on this one then?" she asked as she pointed on the left hand. Mark turned over his left hand as well.

There wasn't a marble there either.