"The heavens may tolerate your existence, but my blade will not," Alec said, his eyes gleaming with pride and belittlement. His left hand rested behind him while his right displayed a hand seal. Ten handleless blades, created by The Author's Pen and controlled by gravity proxies spun like a maelstrom. Each turn they made decapitated countless enemies, causing them to dissipate into a smoke.

Alec's words didn't mean anything. He had just wanted to try saying something a sword immortal would say. Nor did the hand seal he made mean something, he was just showing off, to no one in particular. Hell, he had both written and read about it countless times. It must have some kind of effect, right? Well, it did. It was strangely fun, and he relished it. It didn't lose him anything, so why not?

The first few waves of the monster phase were easy to overcome. The main issue was the downtime between the waves. For that, he had to immediately annihilate any monster that appeared before they could leave the walls to maximize his time. Only that way, would he have the necessary time to fight against the next waves. Such was maximizing. He wondered if other students calculated these things too, or if they were more focused on the killing monsters part. After all, this kind of maximization was more of a modern-earth, MMORPG concept.

The way he fought didn't make any sense for a fight outside of the training cave. In real life, monsters wouldn't be coming out of the walls in a circular pattern. Not all of the enemies would be close-range fighters. And Alec wouldn't be in pristine condition whenever he fought. Well, at least he assumed it to be so. He really hadn't had a proper fight since the current iteration of his memories started.

Whatever it was, he had no intention of surrendering his chance to get the first place. He didn't feel good about what had happened the previous day, and he wanted to drown his sorrows in money. A lot of it.

As the first few waves passed, he was left face to face with hundreds of monsters, once again. It was time for the second part of his strategy. He took out The Author's Pen and wrote on air confidently. Suddenly, a pulse of gravity spread in every direction, in the shape of a dome. It pushed whatever it was met with and slammed them against the walls.

Whoever saw this would call it scummy. Alec wasn't dirtying his hand in any way or form. In fact, he hadn't lost any health points in his training runs so far, which made the whole mechanic kind of meaningless. 'It probably won't be the same in the final exam.'

As another wave of monsters appeared, Alec slammed them against the wall too. This time, however, not all of them died. The monsters in the back would act as cushions for the ones at the front, necessitating Alec to cast several times. So he did. As waves kept coming and monsters left the walls, he cast. The Author's Pen was very effective when it came to casting and allowed him to do so without wasting mana.

Still, at one point, it was meaningless to continue. He had to be careful about the mana he spent on this level to avoid getting too low of a score on the second part of the training.

"5460..." Alec read the number on his vision. This was the precise number he had found to be the best point to stop casting. "I have ten seconds left. Let's do this."

Taking a deep breath, Alec braced his fists and launched forward. Each time his fist stretched out, he would amplify and spread the impact into a wide area using gravity magic, which would immediately evaporate a handful of monsters.

This wasn't as fast as the first method, but it still increased his score. It was cheap, effective, and relatively low-risk because of his stats and the range.

With another push utilizing the rest of his time, Alec managed to get his score up to 5600. This was good. In fact, it was the highest he had gotten so far. Well, not by much. The runner-up was 5598, which would have been a disappointingly random number. 5600 on the other hand? Smooth.

As the remaining monsters disappeared, Alec gathered himself. He had a bit of mana and quite a lot of stamina remaining.

A portion of the jagged cave walls disappeared, revealing a similarly-sized room. In the middle of that room was a dummy. It was pretty much indestructible, and Alec wasn't some exception to that rule. He had tried giving it the strongest attack he could before, and the thing hadn't even budged.

He made sure to gather his breath in the given time, which was a 30-second downtime. If he were to start attacking the dummy before the downtime ended, it would end immediately. 'No wasted time here.'

Reaching out his hand and writing with The Author's Pen, Alec took his hidden iron quarterstaff. His stats hadn't improved much lately, as he had to spend most of his mana on other things, than producing stat upgrade potions.

[Name: Alec Greenwood

Strength: 32

Agility 31

Health: 32

Mind: 28

Mana: 34]

Against his expectations, Alec still occasionally gained natural stat-ups on certain occasions. Although the improvement had indeed slowed down to a crawl, it wasn't as impossible as he had calculated it to be. His mind stat had jumped from 27 to 28 without a potion for example.

He had also learned a new, important bit of information. Apparently, every 50 points on a stat would create a synergistic effect and cause the person to make a qualitative breakthrough. For some reason, the curriculum or the books in the library hadn't contained this information before. Maybe the academy wanted to keep the students from dumping their entire free points on a stat prematurely.

'This might be the answer to my agility and air friction question,' he thought as he lowered his body and held the quarterstaff perpendicular to the ground.

Again, throughout his attempts, he had shifted the quarterstaff to be the most weight-efficient. If he went past a certain weight, it would become too unhandy to use. However, if he made it too light, he would be losing precious momentum.

Once the countdown ended, he swung the quarterstaff, putting both his weight and the quarterstaff's weight into it. The quarterstaff slammed against the dummy with a pang and bounced off. Controlling the rebound was an important aspect of this phase. Alec had experienced it, breaking his hand the first time he tried hitting the dummy full-force.

Alec didn't hold himself back and utilized the Adrenal Boost. His body started pumping out a concoction of hormones that pushed him beyond his limits into his veins. It took immediate effect. He started smoking from his head. While another spell he cast started pulling in the water vapor into his body to replenish lost moisture, he kept hitting the dummy.

This was more effective. Unfortunately, none of his spells were that potent in dealing single-target damage. Buffing his already strong body to deal physical damage was more effective.

As his relentless assault continued on the unresponsive dummy, Alec started feeling dizzy. He did his best to regulate his breathing. The academy lacked martial manuals or anything of that sort. So he didn't actually know what he was doing. Slamming the rod again and again on the dummy was a simple process, but he could have probably made it much more effective if he knew how to regulate his breathing or utilize his muscles better.

'If I can leave this academy one day, I will go and meet people of other classes. I could probably learn a shit ton from them,' he thought.

Seeing that time was ticking down, and he didn't have much time left, Alec recast The Adrenal Boost that was slowly losing its effectiveness, infused his strikes with gravity magic, and started going all out. He had to spend everything he had before the time ran out.

The swooshing noises his quarterstaff made as he swung it crackled through the air. Every time he hit the dummy's armor, an explosion-like sound would resonate in the cave, assaulting his ears. Fortunately, he didn't have to endure it for long, as his time ran out a short while later.

'5600 kill score and 7121 damage score. Multiplied by 4... Holy shit. That makes 16 million!' Alec calculated. He felt that he had overdone it a bit for the moment, but decided that it was okay.

Retracing his steps and jumping up, he left the illusory training cave. By the time he went back outside, people were dumbfoundedly staring at the damage charts. The amount of damage dealt by Alec not only placed him in first place among the second-year students, but he even topped the other two charts.

"What the fuck..." Evan muttered, his mouth slightly agape. Alec shrugged his shoulders and walked to their side. Lea was even more nervous now. She held onto Evan's arm and became smaller.

"It is what it is," Alec jolted awake the close combat mage from his daze.

"You think anyone can cross that?" Evan asked. "The second years probably can't. I'm asking about the third years."

Alec thought for a moment. Maybe Edward would? But still, they would see a couple of hours later.

"Let's not focus on that. We have to get ready for the final exam..."