Potential Threat
(Third Person Pov)
Heroes Nurturing High School.
Every year there are lakhs of students applying for the academy but only around 2000 students manage to enter the academy, in the hero course and in total the number of students who enter the academy every year is around 3500-4000.
To enter the hero course, one had to pass both theoretical and practical examinations.
The theoretical exam contained subjects related to Methods in Dungeology, Introduction to the Mana/Aura Theory, History, Specietomy, Constitutional Law, Logic and Reasoning, and a few more, each subject containing a vast amount of topics.
The theoretical exam had finished an hour prior and now the students were preparing for their practical exam.
The practical exam, unlike the theoretical exam which ends in 3 hours, lasts for several days and is divided in different stages.
Each year, there's some change in the practical exam and its rules.
For this year, the academy had decided to divide students into groups of 10,000 students and then further break those 10,000 students into teams, each consisting of five students.
"I don't know if it's the right time or not but I will go ahead. My name's Fren! It's nice to meet you all! Let's ace this exaam!!" Fren shouted with a cheery smile as he ran carrying a sword on his waist.
"How are we going to ace this exam when we are running away just after encountering our first monster!! Juliet, here!" The girl retorted, her tone irritated as she maneuvered the trees and kept running forward, she had various types of shuriken and throwing knives attached to her thigh holster.
This year's practical exam, stage 1 was simple, it will be held for 3 days.
Each group would be sent to a field, they could be anything depending on the group, a beach, a dungeon replica, a desert, or an island. These fields are filled with artificial monsters created by none other than Dwarves.
Each team in the group has just one objective and that is to survive for 3 days and collect a total score of 500 points.
Currently, this team who now had been thrown on a deserted island had encountered their first monster ...who happened to be stronger than them and so they were all running.
"You bastards, just buy me 10 seconds and I will burn him to a crisp! Can't you all do just that!" Another girl shouted, carrying a staff in her hand which suggested she was a mage.
"We can't buy you 10 seconds without getting wiped out first! That's why we are running! And are you really a mage!? How are you ahead of me... Whatever's your name! Mine's Ron" A boy shouted, he was wearing gauntlets and questioned the girl.
Mages usually fall behind when it comes to stamina and strength that's why Ron found it baffling to be the one who was behind everyone.
"My name's Himitsu! I just decreased the air resistance towards me and a little bit of friction from my feet to increase my speed, dumbass. But where is our fifth teammate!?"
"Damn it! I am jealous!"
"I haven't sensed his presence for a while now, all I hear is that monster running towards us! Maybe he already got eliminated... or maybe he went a separate way! That bastard!" Juliet shouted from above the trees.
On getting eliminated, the student will be teleported outside of the field and will be disqualified.
Even if the rest of the team manages to survive 3 days and collect 500 points, it wouldn't matter for the person already eliminated.
The way to be eliminated was simple, once the health bar in the bracelet fell below 5%, the person would be eliminated and even the artificial monster would stop attacking the person any further.
These artificial monsters were no different than robots equipped with AI, the only difference was these monsters had flesh and skin similar to that of a real monster, in other words, they were like clones.
Or if the student broke their bracelet.
Anyway, this team didn't seem to be in a good situation, losing their member so early is quite a huge loss to them.
"I think we should split up here to confuse the monster and then meet up again in an hour, if we survive that is!" Fren proposed ducking from the attack that came his way.
Meeting with one's teammate wouldn't be a problem. The bracelet came with a map function installed in it, the map itself was simply a rough structure of the whole island that kept on adding itself with details of the places they had been to or passed by but that wasn't their concern but what mattered was that it showed one's own teammate's coordinates in real-time. It also, allowed them to mark a location and let other teammates see the mark which could work as an indicator of where they should meet.
Finding Fren's proposal reasonable, the others nodded.
"No matter who it decides to chase, let's not have any hard feelings for each other! Alright, everyone!" Fren said with a smile.
"You and your fucking smile, I bet that monster is also irritated by you. It will be sure to chase you" Himitsu scoffed not liking the cheery nature of Fren.
Their situation wasn't good and their teammate was being so cheery for no reason, it irritated Himitsu.
"Alright then, let's split!"
And with that, everyone started running in different directions.
The monster halted in his tracks looking at them for a second and then started chasing once again.
"Fuck my luck!!!!!"
Himitsu shouted as she ran for her dear life.
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To collect the points one has to kill the monsters and then take the monster cores that they will drop and put these cores into their bracelet which also had a dimensional storage function inside of it.
The AI equipped with the bracelet will then evaluate the monster core and assign it a value. That value is what are called points and that is how students are supposed to collect them.
The team collectively needs to obtain 500 points and in case their teammate is eliminated while their teammate is disqualified and fails the exam, his points would still be valid and transfer to the team itself.
"So, a slime only gives about 0.5 points? That's stingy, then again, it makes sense since artificial monsters are weaker than the actual ones that are found in the dungeon. But that's not the problem ..." Ron's voice trailed off as he thought about their situation.
A slime which was the safest bet to fight against gives around 0.5 points.
To collect a total of 500 points they would need to hunt 1000 slimes.
And that's precisely where the problem stemmed from.
The island had a total of 10,000 students and a total of 2,000 teams all fighting to collect these points.
Ron had seen several types of monsters but they all varied in strength, and everyone was avoiding strong monsters which made weak monsters prey to be hunted by everyone.
But they weren't unlimited.
In other words, they had to act fast if they wanted to secure the points.
But his team had already wasted a lot of time in the initial phase and as the time goes on, it will become even harder for them to hunt the monsters.
"Well, it seems we will have to hunt stronger monsters. High risk high reward!" Fren said with his signature smile.
Himitsu simply rolled over her eyes while being sprawled on the ground while Juliet was sitting on the tree keeping an eye on their surroundings while listening to the conversation.
The team members met each other once again as they had planned, and had hunted some slimes on their way to the designated location.
They now had a collective of 3 points.
"What is that fucker doing over there of all places?" Himitsu questioned as she looked at the small screen of her bracelet.
It indicated four dots sitting nearby and one dot that was completely on the other side of the map, far away from them.
It was their teammate who seemed to be still alive and kicking.
"Can't we message him or call him?" Ron asked as he scrunched his face trying to navigate with his bracelet.
"If it was possible I wouldn't have asked dumbfuck" Himitsu sighed.
"Now now, let's look on the bright side, since he is exploring the island, our map details are getting filled in automatically, isn't that great?" Fren chimed in.
If the teammate wished to, he could share the details of the map that he had discovered with his teammates, and since their map was increasing and had become more detailed, it meant that their fifth teammate was helping them in his own way.
Himitsu shut her mouth and furrowed her eyebrows at those words.
"With its help, we can plan our fights with the monsters. We can still recover from the time we have lost if we plan things out properly. How about we attack this monster cave? I think, our fifth teammate has done a good job" Juliet said as she pointed at the monster cave that was filled with homo-goblins which showed on their map.
"Hmm? They aren't far away from here and it seems doable too." Fren said as he zoomed in on the map and thought about the surrounding terrain of the cave.
The cave was below the cliff, and nearby it was a flowing river.
"We can turn that cave into our rest spot too! Let's conquer it! They are just goblins" Ron felt eager to go as excitement coursed through him.
"A horde of hemoglobin, not just goblins. Put a break. That excitement is exactly what kills many adventurers. Seriously, are you sure you are going to pass the theoretical exam? What's the point of this all if you already failed in that exam anyway?" Himitsu taunted him.
"I will pass! Alright! I am clear with the theoretical exam! I am just excited about it!" Ron retorted and Himitsu simply scoffed.
"Well, it seems like we all agree to this then?" Fren asked and others nodded.
And with that, they set out to kill the monsters.
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Fren, Ron, and Himitsu, all three who had crab-walked their way through, now remained squatted down, as they observed the cave from behind the bushes.
Two hemoglobins with massive wooden clubs in their hands were stationed outside of the cave.
They all waited and patiently watched, when one of the hemoglobin looked to the other side and at that exact moment the other hemoglobin had his throat sliced and without wasting another second, Juliet attacked the other one, killing him without making any sounds.
"That was smooth... kinda scary if you ask me" Ron let out a nervous chuckle as he said those words.
"Well, it's my turn now," Himitsu said as she started casting a spell.
A blob of fire formed at the front of her staff's marble as she chanted her spell and then released the fire straight inside the cave.
A few seconds later a huge sound came out of the cave.
Boom!
"Your chanting speed is incredible," Fren said, impressed.
Chanting the spell took time and during that time the caster usually can't do anything making them vulnerable.
Mages who could chant as fast as Himitsu at her age are rare and honestly are considered to be geniuses.
Of course, in this world, people exist who wouldn't even need to chant and those people are thought of as straight-up monsters.
Himitsu puffed out her chest feeling proud.
Soon after, a few hemoglobins came out of the cave with clubs and another wooden weapon in their hands as they started to look around.
Juliet with her skill invisible activated started killing them off one after another.
The monsters without even being able to see the attacks in confusion could only shriek and in a minute or so, all of them were dead.
And then Juliet fell back.
"My skills are on cooldown now, switch with me"
Fren and Ron nodded and took the left and the right side of the entrance and Himitsu once again fired off inside the cave, this time with an even stronger spell.
They kept continuing like this until they cleared the cave completely and then went to hunt more monsters around in the area until the night finally arrived when they returned to the cave and called the day.
They had managed to gather a collective of 120 points.
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"Ack, I can't believe I have to eat this" Ron complained as he saw the boiled slime in his pot.
It was a purple-colored, sticky slime.
"You do realize you are the one who lost our rations, right?" Himitsu said with a huff, grumpy about their situation.
One of the objectives for students in the exam is to procure food for themselves, through the monsters or the plants that grew on the island.
As such, their team had been collecting all the food but that was not all stolen by another monster because Ron was negligent.
...With no other choice, they hunted whatever they could find and now they had to eat boiled purple colored sticky slime.
While it was not dangerous to eat, it definitely didn't smell good.
Not even Fren tried to defend Ron.
He just simply ate it with a smile.
And after they were done eating, they all retired for the night.
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Boom!
Crackle!
"AGHHH!!"
Shrieks, screams, and shouts resounded throughout the island.
Waking everyone who had gone to sleep.
Their team was no different.
"What's going on...?" Ron asked a bit afraid with all the shouts that he heard, completely awake.
Juliet and Fren were both in their battle attire, with weapons in their hands.
"Let's go and check out"
"Who cares, we can just learn about what happened when we go out tomorrow morning. Let's go to sleep" Himitsu liked her sleep, quite a lot.
"I am afraid to say this but we can't. Sorry, but please wake up" Fren said, his voice concerned.
Ron dumped cold water on Himitsu to wake her up.
"What the fuck did you just do bastard!"
Himitsu shouted, chanting a heat and warming spell upon herself as she looked at Ron with scorn in her eyes.
"Can't you hear it?" Ron said and then before Himitsu could say anything it hit her.
The screams and shrieks are loud enough to send chills up one's spine.
But that wasn't what caught her attention.
"This smell... it's burning?" She muttered.
And Fren looked at her, urging her to get up, without wasting any more time she got up from her spot and so they all ventured outside the cave to look what was happening.
What they saw was a simple yet horrific view.
The island was burning.
The entirety of the island was burning.
The monsters were rampaging, running all around.
All the monsters were moving probably trying to run away from the fire.
But the island had a barrier that stopped anything from going outside of it, so they were stuck inside.
.
.
.
"Hey, guys, why is it that our points are increasing" Juliet asked looking at her bracelet.
And the next instant, a huge flying monster hit the cliff, breaking a huge chunk of rock that fell right on Juliet.
Crushing her beneath it.
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"You can't let the health bar fall below 5% but it also means, it's somehow keeping our health in check by being in contact with us which implies that I can't take the bracelet off ...or at least that's what it tries to imply"
"I can't let the bracelet be broken"
"It doesn't matter how many points your team had collected if you are eliminated, it's game over and all your hard-earned points will be given to your teammates, how cruel"
"To collect the points, you have to collect monster cores which will then be evaluated by the AI our bracelet is equipped with"
"There are monsters with varied strengths, from G-ranked to A+ ranked and one even S- ranked"
"We have to get our own necessities, like food on this deserted island. The only things we are allowed to take with us are a few potions and our weapons."
"...And that's about it when it comes to this practical exam. Did I miss something?"
The boy said as he slowly stood up cocking his head to the side.
It was the third day of the exam and he had survived, he had also reached the exact mark of 500 points that were needed.
And so, that meant he had passed the exam.
"...Is this what you came up with to win?" A hoarse voice reached the boy's ears, the boy turned around to see a man with lime-colored eyes looking at him with a troubled expression. The man was none other than the headmaster of the academy, Regis Randolph.
The boy looked around, at the now charred forest and the corpses of monsters that lay all around him.
Without paying it any mind he walked towards him as he stepped on the corpses and once he came close enough to Regis he stopped, and the boy began to speak.
"Rules are rules. I played by the rules. That is all. Oh, btw, keep my name hidden or maybe my score is related to the theoretical exam. I don't care which way you choose to do it. I don't like unnecessary attention, you see. Think of this favor towards me as the reward for my performance. Thank you."
The boy said with a smile on his face as he started to walk away.
Regis Randolph stood still as he burned the boy's image in his mind, his black-colored hair that seemed to be reminiscent of night, his dark black-colored eyes that seemed to resemble an abyss, and that wrapped, repulsive smile on his face.
And once the boy had left, Regis spoke.
"Put Noah at the top of the list of Potential Threat"
That day, from around hundreds of groups, there was one group from which only a single student had passed the practical exam, stage-1