Doing his part to find the source of the Phantom Nest, Ken rushed towards the deck of the ship. On his way, he passed more barriers just like the one he and Tai spotted earlier. 

"It seems like someone is creating them and keeping them stable. I could only imagine how draining that would be." 

The situation continued to get worse by the second, but that didn't stop a lot of students from fighting back and trying to survive. Before Ken could reach the door leading to the deck, a group of phantoms blocked his path.

“Spectre Blades” 

Multiple purple mana blades appeared in front of Ken. Like bullets the blades rapidly fired towards the phantoms, each blade able to pierce the phantoms and burn them up into white flames, extinguishing them.

With his path cleared, he finally reached the deck of the ship. The fog was so thick that even he had a hard time seeing through it.

"Now for me to get rid of the fog. I should try to stand in the center of the deck, or at least as close as possible." 

"It's much quieter up here and for some reason, there are no phantoms,"

“Illuminate” 

With Ken’s incantation, a ball of bright light materialized in front of Ken, shining light in his immediate area.

“Even with this, I can only see about 4 meters away.” 

Ken continued walking straight ahead until he saw another ball of light in the near distance. “Hmmm… is that the caster?”  

“Who goes there?” a female voice called out. 

“Huh? I know that voice.” 

“Claire, is that you?” 

“....” 

“Of course, she would ignore me.”

Walking towards the light, it was revealed that Ken was right. Standing in front of him was none other than Claire Ullastrea Vaylinmoor. As usual, she was not pleased to see Ken. 

“I knew it. So what are you doing up here? Are you the one behind all of this chaos?” Ken asked. 

“Don’t be silly. If I was the culprit, you wouldn't have made it up here, your soul would have left your body long ago.” 

“Is that so? Then what are you doing up here?” 

"Probably the same reason you're here. Trying to get rid of the Phantom Nest."

"Seems like you've had no luck in doing so.”

“Obviously," Claire replied in a sarcastic tone. "I already got rid of the fog before, but it just keeps on reforming itself. The best I could do was get rid of all the phantoms up here."

"Then that means this fog won't go away until we find the person who cast the spell.” Ken sighed.

"Phantom Nest is an expert spell, meaning someone strong must be doing this. It can't be any of the students since this exam involves them." Claire said, trying to narrow down who the caster could be.

"It can't be the robots, cause none of them have any sign of mana in their body," Ken added. "Maybe, one of the teachers is hiding on board?"

"No, there is no teacher here, I already scanned the whole ship beforehand," Claire replied. "The only person I can think of is maybe the helmsman." 

"That's a good idea, let's go check."

Ken followed Clair down to the cockpit, but unfortunately, the ship was operated by a robot, just like everything else on this ship. 

"This isn't good. We need to think of something fast, the more souls that get devoured the stronger this spell becomes!" said Ken.

"Okay, let's stop and think.”

"For Phantom Nest to work best, its targets have to be put in a state of fear so the phantom's nightmarish shape-shifting abilities can have a better effect, allowing them to liberate souls," Ken explained. "Did anything seem strange or off before the Phantom Nest became active?" 

Thinking to herself, Claire replied, "All I heard was a scream, but before I could check it out, there were phantoms everywhere." 

"A scream… so did me and my friends. That scream was so loud it must have echoed throughout the entire ship…"

Before Claire could say anything, Ken's eyes lit up like a light bulb. "I think I just figured everything out!" he exclaimed.

"Huh? What? What is it?" she questioned.

"Follow me," Ken replied before running off.

With no other choice, Claire followed Ken back down to the first floor, where the first incident happened. While all the commotion was going on, Ken focused on looking for the first student who was found soulless on the ground.

"Found you!" Ken and Tai called out at the same time, as they bumped into each other.

“Huh? Tai, have you also figured it out?” 

Nodding his head, Tai replied, “I might have.” 

"So what did you figure out?" Claire asked. 

"Before Phantom Nest was active, this girl was on the ground soulless," Ken explained.

"Meaning she couldn't have had her soul snatched from her if the Phantom Nest was never active, and Phantoms only started appearing after she fell to the ground soulless" Tai continued Ken’s explanation.

"So she can lead us to the caster… or even better, she is the caster!" Claire said, putting the pieces together.

"Bingo!"

Squatting down to get closer to the girl, Ken flipped her onto her back. “As expected. It's faint, but there is mana coming from here.” 

"It's a doll?" Tai questioned as he crouched down to get a closer look. "I see, this all makes sense now. It was a basic illusion covered by an expert illusion… how clever,"  

"Yes, when this girl dropped to the ground she let out a scream to catch everyone off guard, which was what triggered the first illusion. A basic illusion that made everyone that looked at her think she was one of us, making us believe she was dead." Claire explained. 

"And as soon as people started to panic the second illusion was cast, Phantom Nest. Which made the situation worse and made everyone forget about the first illusion, turning their focus solely on how to deal with the Phantoms and keep themselves safe…” said Tai.

“We were all so focused on the expert spell that we didn't realize the basic illusion that started all this," Ken added.

"And looking at the magic circle on the doll's chest confirms that she is also the caster of Phantom Nest," Claire concluded.

“Then, destroying this doll should put an end to all of this. Placing his left hand onto the doll's chest, Tai’s anti-magic curse erased the magic circle on her chest, as well as draining what little magic it had. 

Once Tai removed his hand, a shock wave made of light spread throughout the entire ship and expanded into the thick fog. This caused all the phantoms to burn up and vanish, and with it the thick fog surrounding the ship slowly started to dissipate, revealing the blue ocean once more. 

All those that lost their souls, had it returned to them, but they stayed unconscious. The state of the once luxury ship looked like a cyclone had just passed through.

“An anti-magic hand? That's something you don't see every day… How impressive.” Claire praised. 

“A compliment from Miss. Vaylinmoor? I'm honored.” 

"Looks like you and I make a good team," Ken said, looking at Claire.

"Don't get full of yourself, I won't praise you," Claire replied in a smug tone.

"I'd be shocked if you did." Replied Ken.

From the speakers all around the ship, Jess declared this task to be complete. 

“Congratulations! This task has finally come to an end. For those who still have their soul intact, you have earned yourselves 20XP. For those who lost their soul but regained it before the task ended, you have earned 10XP. For those who lost their soul till the end of the task, you have earned 0XP, and for the three that ended the task, you have earned yourself 40XP. You can all now relax, until your next task.” 

After Jess’s announcement, a notification popped up on everyone's screen, showing the XP they had just gained. It took time for the realization that the task had ended, but once it sunk in, everyone was happy to let their guard down and relax, despite everything being a mess.

“40XP, that's a good start,” Tai said looking at his phone screen. 

“I wonder how many points Hanako gained?” 

Approaching the trio, Stark waved, “Hey, Ken, Tai!” 

“Good to see you awake buddy!” Tai called out. 

“Did you sleep well?” Ken chuckled. 

Nervously scratching the back of his head, Stark chuckled “Yeah, sorry I was a liability, but thank you for looking after me.” 

“No problems.”

“Yeah, don't sweat it.” 

Stark then turned his attention to Claire, “Miss. Vaylinmoor, I was told that you were responsible for creating the barriers. So I’d also like to thank you.” 

With a gentle smile, Claire replied, “Don’t mention it.”

"You're responsible for those magical barriers on the ship?"

Claire’s gentle smile faded, before she answered Ken’s question, “Why do you sound surprised?”

“There were more than 10 different barriers, and you don't seem the one bit worn out after maintaining them for so long” Ken chuckled. 

“I'm not surprised. Something like that is child's play for a person born Loved by Mana,” said Tai.

“Loved by Mana?” Stark questioned. 

“People Loved by Mana, are born with an immense amount of it. They can control their magic much easier and regenerate it quicker, amongst other quirks. To put it simply, those Loved by Mana are considered ‘Superior’ in the magic world.” Ken explained.

“Woah, that's awesome!” 

“Which leads me to think, you wouldn't happen to be the candidate for—” 

“–Don't ruin the fun.” With that, Claire left. 

Letting out a deep sigh, Stark continued to say, "I was not expecting such intensity"

"I don't think anyone was," Tai added

"We better keep our guard up for the next test,"