"Well, I will leave you with Liliane and Joshua's very capable hands," the receptionist said with a smile and, without skipping a beat, turned and walked off the training ground.

"Now about the assessment" I turned to face the mage.

"The assessment consists of a little hunting expedition."

"Hunting, that's all?"

"There is more to it than that. This exam exists to grade your skill level. Your aim is to go into a special part of the forest reserved for the guild and hunt."

"Sounds easy enough."

"There is more to it than that. The more valuable the animal or monster you hunt, the higher we grade you; however, keep in mind the more valuable the kill, the more difficult it will be to deal with. Let's say you kill a goblin and bring it back to us; we would give you the lowest grade we can, which is F; however, if you were to kill, let's say, Ogre, we would give you a C. you can also kill enemies in large quantities for example if you couldn't find an ogre you could give us something that is equivalent to that for example 10 wolves."

"How do you expect me to carry 10 wolves."

"that's for you to figure out this test also serves as an exercise of what to expect out there on the field; you need to be creative; you won't always have the tools you need all the time."

We kept on walking until we reached a set of benches on the other side of the training ground.

"Right, ill leave you here. It would be best to use the time to think of a strategy for the examination; everyone else should be arriving in 30 minutes or so."

And without a further word, she left.

'I still don't like her.'

'I know you don't, but for now, we have no reason to fight her, and she doesn't have a reason to fight us; besides, we have more important things to think about.'

'I guess so. Do you have a plan on how we are gonna win this

'Hmmm, according to the mage, we have lots of ways of winning this. I want to get at least a D or maybe a C.'

'C? why so low?'

'I don't want to draw too much attention at the moment, not until I have some serious strength to back it up.'

'makes sense and speaking of strength. We have to address yours.'

'address? What do we have to address?'

'it's inconsistency. Your strength is all over the place. As of right now, you should have the combined strength of more than 100 people, yet you struggled to fight that wolf. I've been wanting to address this for a while, but I wanted us to get settled in. look, this requires a more practical demonstration, so we will wait until the exam starts. Once we are alone, I can walk you through it.'

I adjusted the chair to get more comfortable and spent the next half hour talking about strategy with Alexis, but we couldn't land on something we both liked, so we decided we would see what happens and adapt from there. As we were doing this, more and more people started trickling into the training grounds. I got up from my chair to go mix with the others. There were all sorts of people ranging from short rogue-ish types to large and heavily armoured brutes. All in all, there were 30 people here in total.

"Alright, you miserable lot, pay attention!"

We all turned to the voice. It was Joshua who stood on some sort of stage.

"good. Now that I have all of your attention. You are all here to be assessed on whether you are good enough to join our guild and whether you have the skills to be an adventurer. You understand"

There were some groans of acknowledgement that came from the crowd.

"Good. I'll leave things to my partner."

Joshua walked off the stage as Liliane walked up.

"Thank you. Now that my colleague has gotten all your attention, let me explain the rules of what's going to happen."

She then spent the next 10 minutes or so explaining the rules to everyone.

"Any questions?"

"yeah," a  voice chirped from the back.

We all turned to where the voice came from it came from a short skinny man who looked like he really didn't belong here.

"Errr…. C-Can we…. ya know"

"come on, spit it out. We don't have all day!"

"Yes! Are we allowed to harm other participants"

"Good question. Harming other participants is allowed; however, outright killing others is prohibited. If you do well, let's say the consequences will be high."

Her eyes flashed purple, and an oppressive aura washed over the crowd.

"good. Now that all that is out of the way, we can begin the assignment."

She walked off the stage and into an empty space on the training ground. Lilliane then started collecting some purple energy in her right hand and started drawing runes in the air. The purple energy from her hand left purple traces where she drew the symbols. The runes began simple but got more complex as she drew them. It didn't help that she was drawing these at incredible speed, and in a few minutes, hundreds of runes were flying around her. She took a step back, and she mumbled some words. The runes suddenly smashed together and formed a small purple whirling mass.

"Whew. That's very tiring. Now I'm sure most of you know what this is. But for those who don't, it's a portal you step through it, and you end up somewhere else. Understand. Good. Now line up in a single file line."

We all got in a line and started walking through the portal. I was 10^th or so. So It didn't take long for it to be my turn. I arrived at the portal, and I turned to look at Lilliane. She gave me a thumbs up. I took a deep breath and walked through. My eyes were suddenly assaulted with a wash of purple and blue as I felt my body get stretched and turned upside down, and as soon as it started, it stopped, and I found myself in an empty clearing in the woods. I dropped to my knees and through up. It was a dark red colour with chunks of pink in it. I hope nobody examines this too closely. I looked up and saw several people in the same situation as me. It's nice to know I'm not the only one suffering.  

"First time"

I looked up towards where the voice was coming from. It was a man who had messy brown hair and a what looked like a sword on their back, and I nodded my head. "Yeah *urk*."

"Yeah, I can tell the first time is always the worst trust me, it never gets better; I find taking deep breaths helps reduce the sickness feeling. Here."

He passed me a large brown gourd.

I shook my head. "No, ill be fine," I said as I stood. It's not that I wasn't thirsty, but I'm not going to take some drink from a stranger.

"well. Your loss" as he took off the cap and drank from it.

"Where's my manners. The name’s Adrian," he said as he stuck out his hand.

I got up and steadied myself a bit before taking his hand and shaking it. "Adson."

"Adson, nice name."

"Thanks."

"so, where you from, Adson? Judging from your appearance, your not from around these parts."

"is it that obvious? I'm, Just a traveller."

"A traveller where have yo…."

"Alright, you lot! Get your crap together with the test. Start in 2 minutes!" Lilliane yelled.

Adrian looked at me. "I guess we can continue this conversation later, maybe over a drink. If you want to, of course."

"we will see how I feel after the test."

"Sure. No problem," he said with a smile as he turned and walked away.

'looks like someone has a thing for you.'

'Shut up, Alexis'

'Imagine it. the two of you together in a small house somewhere with two ki OUCH."

I sent a mental flick toward Alexis

'Your no fun', she pouted

I ignored her and went to meet up with the rest.

"The test is starting as soon as I can say you can go. You will have two hours, you understand?"

"YES!" we all said as one

"Good. THE TEST STARTS NOW!"