Kunsan Mountain range, the Wastelands:-

The soldiers had been informed about the exam late yesterday evening.

Some of them had freaked out about the late information but one glare from Harry had shut them up.

Harry had woken up early today at around 5 in the morning to leave for the location.

It was outside the country, so it would take about 8 hours to reach there by carriage.

Since he planned on running around and observing everyone, he didn’t want to waste energy trying to run to the location.

Still, Harry and the others decided to ride individual horses since they would get there in about 6 hours.

And by 11 AM, everyone was assembled in front of the Kunsan mountain range.

The examiners included Harry, Shin, Qing and George.

Harry planned on monitoring the largest number of examinees while George was supposed to monitor the smallest.

This had been decided based on the levels of strength.

Coming back to the venue, by the time Harry’s trio arrived, George was already standing in wait with the entire army standing in 50 groups behind him. (50 captains = 50 groups)

And seeing Harry get off his horse, George quickly said, “GENERAL GEORGE REPORTING FOR DUTY, SIR!!!”

“At ease, soldier.

Have there been any issues so far?”

“SIR, NO SIR!!”

“Good!

Now, men, are you ready for the examination?”, said Harry as he walked past George, towards the other soldiers standing behind him.

“SIR, YES SIR!!”

The reply came in a single loud voice.

“Does anyone have any questions before we begin?”

One person stepped forward.

“I want your name and rank before you say anything else.”

“FRANCIS FROM THE COMPANY UNDER CAPTAIN MARK, SIR!!

I HAVE NO RANKING AT THE MOMENT, SIR!!”, said the buff looking, blonde man.

“Okay, Francis, you may ask me your question.”

“THE ANNOUNCEMENT FROM YESTERDAY DIDN’T MENTION THE DETAILS OF THE EXAMINATION, SIR!!

IS IT REQUIRED FOR US TO KNOW THE DETAILS? SIR!!”, said Francis in the usual loud voice used by everyone else.

“Yes, you weren’t informed of the details.

But I’ll be telling them to you right now. No need to worry.

And, before I begin, please try not to scream so much.

This goes for everyone.

Don’t go streaming every single word so loudly every time you meet me.

Otherwise, your throat might get severe damage!”

“SIR, YES SIR!!”

Harry was met with a loud reply.

“All right.

Keeping this issue aside, let me quickly explain to you the details of today’s exam.

All of you will be divided into 50 teams under your captains and will have to survive in the forests of the Kunsan mountains for the next 2 hours.”, said Harry as he gestured for Shin and Qing to bring two boxes.

These were filled with strips of old bedsheets and curtains that had been left in 50 different dyes overnight.

“Apart from just plain old survival, you guys also need to wear these bands around any part of your body.

These will be used to colour-code each team.

Your real task is to collect as many bands from other teams while protecting your own bands.

These bands will serve as your ‘life’.

If someone takes them, you will be considered ‘dead’ and out of the match.

And once you are ‘dead’, you cannot make any sounds or movements.

You are also supposed to leave the area and report back here the moment your surroundings are clear.

Anyone who tries to interfere with the match after getting their band stolen or does not show up here will suffer immediate expulsion from the military.

Once you have taken a person’s band, you may also take any of the bands that they have on their person.

Even if you manage to steal back the band of someone else from your team, any ‘resurrections’ are not allowed.

Any such attempts will be severely punished.

The judging will be done by me, the Long siblings and General George.

We will not be interfering with your actions unless absolutely necessary and will only observe you from the shadows.

The number of bands that your team manages to collect by the end of the match will play a role in deciding your final scores.

The captain’s bands are worth double the regular points of regular bands.

You are only allowed hand-to-hand combat and anyone who attempts to give a major injury to their opponent will be expelled from the army!

Are the rules clear!?”

“SIR, YES SIR!!!”

“Good!

You are given five minutes to run in and set up your bases.

You will find poles with your band colours and territory markers at about 1 kilometre from each pole that marks the territory of your team.

You are to locate and set up your bases only in these regions.

Now, MOVE OUT!!”

And with that, the entire crowd rushed towards the forest.

Those poles and markers were something that Harry had put up last night.

He had gone out under the pretext of going to the washroom and used system points to teleport himself to the mountains.

And then he had proceeded to run at his usual high speeds to set the area for the exam the next day.

Coming back to the present, Harry and the others also decided to move.

George was supposed to monitor 2 teams, Qing was supposed to monitor 10 teams and Shin was supposed to monitor 20 teams.

The rest were to be done by Harry alone.

It seemed a bit excessive for people to manage so many people alone, but George was already used to managing almost the entire army by himself and the others had better skill than him.

Harry could also easily do it, but he planned on going a bit lazy and using the system’s camera features to get live footage of several groups at once.

They waited at the entrance of the forest for a few more minutes until the five-minute mark was hit.

Now was the time for test number one to start!

***

‘After spending all that time hunting in GDLF, this surprisingly feels like I’m back home!’

Harry thought to himself as he jumped from tree to tree like a ninja.

It had been about 10 minutes since he had entered the forest.

And in this time, he had found several of the teams.

Some had made great use of the surrounding terrain to hide their bases and set traps.

The orange team seemed to have dug a hole beneath the roots of a large tree and made a cave or something in the ground for themselves.

Harry had also spotted several net traps and covered holes made by the magenta team, while the violet team seemed to have hidden in holes in the ground to ambush others.

However not all the teams looked this well prepared.

Some had chosen to set up simple tents in the open, made of wood and leaves and the blue team didn’t seem to have set up anything.

Either they were extremely well prepared or just plain old dumb.

But this could only be found out once the attacks began.

The brown and the white teams were busy dealing with some of the wild monsters of the mountains.

‘A chameleon mountain lion?

Well, it’s your test. You guys deal with it yourselves.’

With this thought, Harry left them alone as they fought two Puma Chamaeleonidae.

He had to monitor 28 teams or about 2,800 people all on his own.

Not an easy task.

But Harry had a plan.

He would only monitor about 14 teams at best and have a live feed of the other 14 on the system screen.

This was one of the major reasons why Harry had given just 2 hours for the exam.

He had to buy 2 hours of live monitoring from the system and one hour cost about 500 points.

Harry felt that spending 1000 points on this stuff was more than enough. No need to empty his pockets on a simple exam.

All in all, he had spent about 3500 points on these guys.

2000 points on the trip to the mountain the previous night (return included), 1000 on surveillance of the 14 teams and 500 to inform him if someone got into real danger when he wasn’t looking.

Quite the expensive deal but Harry didn’t have much of a choice.

But now he could be sure of his soldiers’ safety.

Harry kept running around and looking at the soldiers, both the ones in front of him and the ones on the screen, as they started their operations.

Most groups had been divided into three parts, the scouting/reconnaissance unit, the attack/offence unit and the defence unit.

The reconnaissance unit was further divided into two groups, one that stayed at the base to look out for any approaching enemies and the other that went ahead to help the offence unit.

The defence unit walked or hid around the base and set traps to ambush anyone who decided to attack.

And the offence unit was the one that was supposed to go out and take down other teams.

Most of the groups seemed to be following everything that Harry had taught them so far.

As for the ones who didn’t, there was no way of telling if they would be able to survive or not.

But looking at their antics, Harry felt that their chances of survival were low.

Those groups were mainly made of the arrogant type characters who somehow managed to hold on to their overly inflated egos even after all the disciplinary training that Harry had put them through.

And the main reason they were together was that everyone else had kept pestering Harry with complaints about their behaviour until Harry finally separated them out into a new company of their own.

Not a great idea, but this at least ensured that all other soldiers were able to operate properly.

These few companies had become the ones who were constantly making trouble and getting punished.

That’s why Harry had included them under his watch for this exam.

These guys were the only ones who could actually create some trouble during the exam.

And sure enough, Harry spotted some doing exactly that.

Even though they were assigned to an area with minimal dangerous surroundings, they had managed to make several stone spears and spiked pitfalls that could severely injure others.

Completely against the rules, but these guys still did it for some stupid reason.

‘I guess some people are just born to be the “die you trash” young lord type of characters…’

Harry thought to himself as he moved towards those teams.

“Heeeyyyy, guys…

Whatcha doin’?”, said Harry in the cheesiest tone he could manage as he approached the nearest soldiers who were holding some spears. Something like what Isabella Garcia-Shapiro from Phineas and Ferb always says.

The soldiers who saw him coming were instantly drenched in sweat.

The Demon King had spotted them and now they were screwed.

The thing was that no team had been told who would be monitoring them.

And these guys, with their brains as big as a stegosaurus’s brain and egos as big as a stegosaurus’s body, thought that they wouldn’t be seen by anyone and would be able to pull off some of their plans.

‘Attack some people and disguise it as a monster attack or something.’, Harry thought to himself.

“You guys have one minute to break every single stone tip to bits and tell your teammates to do the same before I expel you from both this exam and the army.”, warned Harry in his usual way.

His “usual way” was to say things in a very sweet and gentle tone while stuffing just as much killing intent behind his words.

It always worked like a charm.

And even now, the soldiers instantly crushed the stone spearheads in their hands like they were sand before running off to tell their teammates to do the same.

Fear could make people do a lot of things.

And while these few guys ran to their other teammates, Harry himself went to town on the team.

He used his ninja skills to destroy any traps that were remaining as well as any weapons that people were still holding.

This had left the affected people to be very surprised and scared.

One moment they were holding a sharp spear and the next moment, even the handle had been blown to bits.

But there seemed to be no one around who could do such a thing.

Some of them even wet themselves thinking that it was some ghost or something.

But everyone quickly got back into shape when they heard that it was their king’s doing and that he had them under watch.

It was well known in the army that Harry could easily pull off such impossible-looking actions.

Harry could only laugh at their initial reactions and their speed of recovery once they heard his name.

But aside from these guys, others seemed to be doing pretty well.

Any monsters that attacked were dealt with quite swiftly.

And people had already begun to lose their bands.

But, thankfully, no one had been injured so far.

Everyone seemed to be following the rules and were only doing hand-to-hand combat with each other.

And the ones who ‘died’ were also behaving properly and leaving the scene the moment they got the chance.

Even as Harry watched, he could see some soldiers perfectly execute everything they learnt in their training.

Some of the teams even fell when they ended up getting attacked by more than one team.

It also looked like people were forming alliances with others as well.

‘Wow!

These guys are doing so much better than I had anticipated.

I guess that this was bound to happen after all that time they got for training.

But, as expected…’

As expected, no one was bothering to even look towards the direction that the “delinquent company” (as they were nicknamed by the entire army) had gone to.

The first thing that everyone had done was to work together to figure out where those guys had set up their base and decided to completely ignore that area.

“It’s their fault for not behaving properly.

I guess I won’t kick them out of the army or anything, but just make them the privates or something.

Being the lowest ranks of the military just might put some sense into them…”

So far, everything was going quite well.

But the exam had just begun and not even half an hour had passed.

There was still lots of time left before it got over.