Austin was kind of disappointed from his first battle in the tournament.
He didn't think he would be able to win so easily. Yes, he was trapped in the water prison there for a few minutes, but still if taken out that skill, the girl was quite weak in other aspects.
'She was at least ranked B…then does that mean she was a fake ranker, or maybe someone favored her during the assessment.' The chance is the bare minimum. Then does that mean the assessment doesn't actually evaluate someone's true rank?
'If I remember right, then they give training dummies to the test-taker…' Other than the evolution of one's shard, what works for evaluation is how many training dummies they can defeat within a limited time.
Based on what Austin saw, Lucy was at least at the second evolution stage, since she was able to chant magic fluently. Then that means, she got the evaluation mainly because of her Shard.