NOVPUB[Translator - Ramen]
[Proofreader - Artethrax]
Chapter 266
10 minutes before the exam started.
Splash. Splash.
Simon was waiting on top of a floating platform in the ocean.
The platforms were made of some kind of slime byproduct. They were flat and floated well on the water, and each held 20-30 students. The students themselves were all equipped with protective vests over their Kizen-provided wetsuits, as well as the tongue pads on their arms.
Looking around, Simon could see tons of these floating platforms filling the ocean.
Seeing that, it was clear that all 847 first-year students were taking the test at once.
"Simoooon! I'm over here!"
Shouted Rick, waving his arms from a platform some distance away. Simon smiled and waved back.
'Alright, let's focus.'
Simon checked the tongue pad on his wrist.
'It's a different design from the one we wore for the Island Survival assessment.' 𝙣𝙤𝙫𝙥𝙪𝙗.𝒄𝙤𝙢
Like before, the tongue pad remotely calculates points acquired from monster hunting and sends the data to HQ to be tallied. However, this tongue pad also showed the current points and overall rankings. Simon checked out the other different features too before the match started.
Perhaps everyone was nervous. They were all silently warming up or taking deep breaths to calm their minds.
[Kuhehe! Are you nervous, boy?]
At the sound of Pier's voice, Simon smiled and shook his head.
'I'm fine. It's not the time to be nervous yet, after all.'
Whirrrr!
Just then, a magic circle unfolded in the sky, and a loud voice boomed out from it.
[Thank you for your patience! We will now begin the third 'Broad Dark Magic Aptitude Test'.]
[The countdown will now begin!]
[10.]
[9.]
…
The students began to energetically count along.
[6.]
[5.]
It was the same for the spectators from Roke Island watching through a screen.
Everyone, regardless of status or nationality, was chanting the numbers.
[2.]
[1.]
[Begin!]
Tooooooooooooooooooooot!
Accompanied with the sound of boat horns blaring across the ocean, the students jumped into the water in unison as if on cue.
Splash, splash, splash, splash!
Watching hundreds of students jump into the sea and crash through the water was quite the spectacular sight.
"Mwahaha! I'm going in first!"
To everyone's surprise, it was Rick who first took the lead. As he enchanted his flippers and fed jet-black into an engine he had built into them, the viscous jet-black burned like rocket fuel and boosted him deeper down.
"All the coins are min— Huh?"
Yank!
Rick, who was on the lead, suddenly was forced to stop. When he turned around, he saw a male student with a strange fishing rod grinning toward him.
Before he knew it, a hook had gotten into Rick's flippers.
"Where do you think you're going?"
He yanked on the rod, and Rick was pulled in at a tremendous speed.
"Whoooooaaaaa! What are you doing?! Do you know me??"
"I don't! I'm just not letting whoever is in first get too big a lead!"
As the male student pulled up with his rod, Rick was thrown from first place to last as he flew to the water's surface.
The man holding the fishing rod made a satisfied smile.
Thud! Pshk!
"Urk!"
Suddenly, a jet-black arrow flew into his back and tore into his barrier, damaging it immensely.
"Who was that?!!"
He turned around to see a group of students all preparing to cast spells at him.
"You little…!"
"You gotta watch your back, y'know?"
The sea quickly turned to chaos.
The number of coins at the bottom of the sea was limited. Initially, there were only 1,000 coins scattered about.
Considering that each person needed to collect 10 of them to pass the test and move on to the next stage, only a maximum of 100 people could take the lead quickly.
Naturally, the competition became extremely fierce.
Of course, Kizen announced that they would add more coins to the bottom of the ocean as time went by, but the students were even more fired up to compete for the top ranks.
"Stop that bastard!"
"He's getting ahead!"
"We can't fight amongst ourselves! Get the ones going deeper!"
Everything was a tangled mess. Torpedoes, curses, and all kinds of other dark spells flew in all directions.
And Simon, who was mentioned by Jane as one of the students to keep an eye on…
"…"
He was just sitting down on his floating platform, blankly watching the situation below as it played out.
Explosions rippled the surface of the water, and muffled screams of pain and desperation quickly followed. The space below him was pure chaos.
'I don't have to jump in right away. If I take the lead, I'll need to constantly remain focused, and I won't have the stamina.'
In fact, not just Simon but most of the top students were still standing on the platforms, simply observing. They weren't wasting their energy and waited for the other students to tire themselves out.
Simon also decided to wait patiently while charging his breathing magic circle.
[But the test is only 4 hours long. Aren't you being a little too relaxed, Boy?]
Said Pier.
[I suggest that we change the order then.]
'The order?'
[That's right! We'll head to the open sea, hunt monsters to rack up points, and then come back when the battle for the coins has calmed down a little!]
'Oh, that's a good idea.'
Actually, a few students went straight to the open sea to avoid the fierce coin competition.
The place where Simon was, with the coins at the bottom, was shallower water that only went at most 20 meters deep. But once you get to open sea, the water gets much deeper, and monsters appear with much higher frequency.
So the idea was to hunt the monsters for points, then return to gather some coins with about an hour to spare. After all, everyone else would have gotten their coins already and gone to the open sea by then.
Well of course, hunting down the other students in the open sea and retrieving coins there would work, too. That's what most of the students who went to the open sea right away were planning.
'But I'm going to wait a little longer.'
Simon had a secret weapon, the deimos.
However, after training with it a few times in between, he realized that the skeleton didn't have great fuel efficiency. It could only perform actively for about two hours.
So Simon was going to get his coins when he was ready and not resurface until the test was over.
'I planned things out thoroughly as soon as I heard the rules. I'm going to make sure it works this time!'
His face was completely calm, but his soul burned with fighting spirit.
There was no point if he didn't get 1st.
* * *
Reaper Scans
Translator - Ramen
Proofreader - Artethrax
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* * *
"This third BDMAT is unlike any other! Who could have foreseen this?!"
Enthusiastically shouted the MC.
"It's now over half an hour into the match! But only two students have collected more than 8 coins! The competition is too fierce!"
The students were too conscious of the other competitors instead of the coins.
Some would stay on the water's surface, fighting back other students who had to come up to breath. Others went after the big collectors, trying to steal as many coins as they could. And of course, some were focussed purely on grabbing as many coins on the bottom as they could find.
"Ahh! This is taking an unexpected turn! According to the test rules, you'll be eliminated—in other words, expelled—no matter how high your score is! Vice-Pre— I mean, Professor! Won't this result in a massive number of expulsions?"
Jane, who was in the seat next to him with her chin resting on her hands, looked at the MC with brutally cold eyes. The MC gulped out of guilt.
"The students aren't dumb, Conrad."
"Yup! Yup! Of course! You trust your students, after all, Professor! And so do I! Ahh?! As I speak!"
The screen changed.
It showed a boy diving underwater with a refreshing level of skill and composure.
The boy—his white hair and white swim cap beautifully contrasting his dark brown skin—flicked his wrists and ankles, simultaneously creating six magic circles. The water around each magic circle grew colder.
Fwish! Pshk! Pshk!
Within mere moments, he activated all six spells and launched what looked like snow at the nearest competitors.
All of the projectiles landed, flying too fast for the surprised students to dodge. As the 'snow' struck them, it dragged them down and refused to let go. It didn't even melt underwater!
Meanwhile, the boy who cast the spells found two coins at the bottom of the ocean.
"Ohh! That's the student Professor Jane was talking about! Special Admission No.8 Laheim, the Lord of Snowfield Castle! He's already collected 10 coins, taking the only lead!"
The crowd cheered loudly, finally seeing the test progress.
The MC turned to Jane with a satisfied smile.
"Professor, what kind of dark magic is that student using?!"
Laheim drew a magic circle on the sole of his feet. He was traveling at super speed like a fish, puffing out smoke like he shot the projectile a while ago.
"It is 'Gold Snow', a unique dark spell by the Snowfield Castle family. It looks like normal snow, but it has no melting point, and once the target is buried in the snow, it multiplies itself and becomes extremely heavy."
The students who were hit by the Laheim's snow bombs were struggling against the weight and began sinking to the bottom of the sea.
Their fate was to either send out an SOS signal with their tongue pads and be counted as out or be teleported out by Kizen anyway when their breathing spells ended and they ran out of air.
"That is simply the ultimate dark spell underwater! But Laheim doesn't seem to be going to the outer sea despite being done collecting coins. From how he keeps on wandering around the inner sea, maybe he is looking for someone? Ah, as I speak, students who have collected 10 coins have begun to appear one after another!"
Starting with Laheim, the big names finally stepped into the game.
Elissa, the S.A.7, had built some sort of 'submarine', outdoing the Phantom Ships. She was targeted by countless attacks, and yet reached the bottom of the ocean and swept up swaths of coins.
S.A.10 Malcolm used his doppelganger to quickly retrieve coins from the bottom of the ocean while keeping himself out of harm's way.
Camibarez placed herself inside a large drop of blood, reached the bottom of the ocean, and rolled around in a ball to pick up her own coins.
For Serene, all she did was sit still on the floating platform at the starting point, and students started bringing her coins on their own.
"Suddenly, the battle has gone from a stalemate to a fierce race! Many of the students who had been floating on the surface are going down, too!"
"They were waiting for more coins to appear."
Explained Jane.
"As time goes by, the coins at the bottom increases. We have just added 1,000 coins, which means it's now more beneficial to collect them than to keep others from getting them."
"I see!"
The crowd seemed to be only getting more excited as there became more interesting students to watch.
Just then, an assistant teacher walked up and handed a piece of paper to the MC and Jane.
"Ahh, the new statistics have just been released! It shows that the Combat Dark Magic the and Poisonous Alchemy aspirants are now at an advantage! And it says that the Summoning aspirants are overwhelmingly at a disadvantage! I hope all of them will hang in there! Now, speaking of which, let's take a look at Special Admission No.1, Simon Polentia! Many call him the hope of summoning!"
Bzzt!
The main screen shifted, showing Simon still waiting at the start line.
* * *
Simon was still waiting.
It couldn't be helped considering that he planned to accumulate points in the last two hours, but he was feeling his body itch.
'Should I try to pass by and gather points without overdoing it?'
As he pondered this, there was suddenly a commotion next to him.
He turned his head.
"!"
Simon hastily jumped back.
Through the barely translucent slime, Simon could see powdery snow explode beneath him as projectiles flew in and hit the floating platform.
'This ability… Don't tell me!'
Creeeeaaaak!
In an instant, the floating platform flipped over as the weight grew where the snow explosion was.
Other students on the same platform as Simon screamed and fell into the sea.
Simon immediately brought jet-black into his feet and jumped to the top of the platform.
"I finally found you!"
Drenched in water, the white-haired boy who pulled himself up onto a nearby platform laughed as he took his swimming cap off.
"I challenge you to a duel for Meilyn right now!"
