Chapter 41: Oh, the Lifesaver

Chapter 41: Chapter 41: Oh, the Lifesaver

Zane’s notched iron broadsword slipped straight out of his numb fingers, burying itself tip-first into the damp mud.

?Beside him, Clara’s eyes widened to the size of saucers, her mouth falling completely agape as she stared at the three-digit number hovering in golden runes above Aegon’s chest.

She blinked once, then twice, rubbing her eyes with the back of her soot-stained sleeve to make sure the mana exhaustion wasn’t making her hallucinate an extra zero.

?"Two... 240 points?! How is that even possible?! The exam has barely been going on for an hour! Even if you killed a puppet every three minutes without stopping to breathe, you wouldn’t have two hundred and forty points!"

?"Wait, a score that high is very difficult... Don’t tell me you went into the inner zone and hunted Giant Puppets by yourself?!"

?"Yes,Two of them," Aegon replied casually, "And ten ordinary ones along the way. The outer ring was too crowded, so going after the big ones saved time."

?Two Giant Puppets.

?Zane and Clara exchanged a stunned, speechless look. Before entering the forest, Chief Proctor Ronin had made it clear that a single Giant Puppet possessed the combat peak strength of a Circle 1 Sorcerer (=Beginner Spellcaster) and required an entire squad of elite applicants to bring down.

Yet Aegon spoke of slaughtering two of them the same way a hunter might talk about picking mushrooms by the roadside.

?Any lingering trace of superior bloodline pride they had held onto before entering the capital dissolved completely.

Aegon continued,

?"Right now, you should stay focus. Because 30 points won’t not be enough to guarantee your safety. Once the supply of ordinary puppets in the outer ring dries up during the final two hours, desperate examinees will start forming hunting packs to steal points from weaker applicants. And both of you need at least 80 points to stay comfortably above the cutoff."

?Zane swallowed hard, retrieving his notched sword from the mud.

"You’re right. Ronin said stealing points is allowed as long as nobody is killed. If we run into a team from one of the capital’s noble houses in our current state, we won’t be able to defend our badges."

Aegon nodded and lead the way.

?"Follow me while we search for Marcus. Whenever we encounter a squad of puppets, I will sever their joint conduits to immobilize them. The two of you will shatter their cores to claim the points."

?"You’re going to feed us the kills? Wouldn’t that slow down your own ranking for first place?" Clara asked, her cheeks flushing slightly with embarrassment.

?"240 points is already more than enough for today. I also know being first on every single board only paints a bigger target on my back. But I am prepared for that. Come on, let’s move before the western sector gets any noisier."

?Seeing that Aegon had already started walking, Clara and Zane hurriedly swallowed a pair of basic stamina pills and jogged after him, keeping close to his back as if walking behind an invincible shield.

?Over the next 20 minutes, Clara and Zane witnessed firsthand just how terrifying their youngest cousin truly was.

?They did not even need to scout ahead. As they moved along the western hill, four ordinary combat puppets suddenly lunged out from beneath a camouflaged pit of dead leaves.

?Before Zane could even raise his iron broadsword or Clara could chant the first syllable of a frost spell, Aegon blurred forward like a phantom.

?Shing! Shing! Shing! Shing!

?Four crimson flashes of heat lit up the dim forest floor in the span of a single breath.

?Aegon’s blade sliced cleanly through the monster-tendon tendons behind their knees and the unarmored mana conduits beneath their left shoulders.

?Thud! Thud! Thud! Thud!

?All four deadly automatons crashed face-first into the dirt at Clara and Zane’s boots, their arms and legs completely paralyzed while their crimson cores continued to hum helplessly inside their intact chests.

?"Go finish them now," Aegon said without looking back, already scanning the trees ahead.

?Staring down at the four immobilized killing machines that would have taken them half an hour of desperate fighting to defeat, Zane let out a dry, astonished laugh before driving his broadsword down into two of the cores, while Clara shattered the other two with concentrated spikes of ice.

?Ding!

?[ Zane Noiré: 40 Points ]

?[ Clara Noiré: 50 Points ]

?By the time they crossed the second ravine ten minutes later, Aegon had crippled six more puppets along the path, effortlessly pushing Zane to 80 Points and Clara to 90 Points, placing both of them securely within the upper ranks of the leaderboard.

?Just as they reached the edge of a rocky creek bed bordered by thick briar bushes, a frantic, high-pitched crashing sound suddenly erupted from the dense bushes two hundred meters ahead.

?Snap! Crash!

?"Help! Somebody get these fucking wooden monsters away from me!"

?Zane’s head snapped up instantly. "That voice... It’s Marcus!"

?Bursting out from the wall of thorny bushes down by the creek came Marcus.

?He looked nothing like the haughty, loud-mouthed noble youth who had marched onto the cliff an hour ago.

His earthen-brown tunic was torn in three places, his helmet was long gone, and his face was as pale as grave-ash, slick with tears and cold sweat.

Ever since witnessing the boy in the blue cloak get his throat impaled ten paces in front of him, Marcus’s nerve had completely destroyed.

?Right on his heels, two Seventh-Generation Combat Puppets bounded across the wet stones of the creek with cold precision, their iron halberds raised to cleave Marcus down from behind as his boot caught on a slippery root and sent him sprawling face-first onto the gravel.

?"No, no, stay back!"

Marcus scrambled backward on his elbows, raising a trembling, paper-thin shield of rock that cracked the instant the first puppet’s shadow fell over him.

Then, closing his eyes tightly, he screamed at the top of his lungs, "Aegon! Save me!"

?SWOOSH!

?At that instant, a streak of blazing crimson fire split the air above the creek bed.

?CLANG—BOOM!

? When Marcus cracked one terrified eye open, the two iron halberds that had been inches from his skull were gone, turning into mechanical wreckage.

?

Standing calmly on the flat boulder right in front of him, with his red scarf fluttering lightly in the warm breeze and a smoking crimson longsword resting at his side, was Aegon.

He flashed a smile.

?"You have a habit of tripping over roots, Marcus. Now get up. If you stay on the ground any longer, other teams will think you’re free points and come to chop you up."

?Staring up at Aegon’s small back, Marcus froze for two seconds before scrambling to his knees and practically lunging forward to grab the hem of Aegon’s cloak like a drowning man clutching a piece of driftwood.

?"Aegon! You’re really here! You know those puppets... they actually kill people! A guy right next to me got his throat cut open in one strike! I thought I was dead for sure!"