Chapter 22: Mercenary Test (Part 2)
After a minute or so, Sol and his entire team were on the other side of the underground chamber.
They faced the dummies in front of them, readying to use the Ether Spells at their disposal.
Oddly enough, the man next to Sol was one that he seemed to recognize.
The man was ugly, so Sol instantly recognized who he was. "How the hell did you get here?" Sol said with a slight chuckle.
The ugly man didn't say anything, simply staring at Sol with furrowed brows.
'I guess he's getting serious to prove me wrong. Good for him.' Sol mused as another voice to his left--opposite where the ugly guy was standing--spoke out to him.
"We dragged him here. He didn't want to miss this test for anything, so after some arguing, we decided to bring him with us even though you knocked him unconscious."
A guy standing beside Sol said with a demotivated look on his face.
"Oi..." The ugly guy man to speak out of nowhere. Sol turned again to face him, only to realize that the man was facing forward this time.
"Understand this..." The ugly man spoke in a very deep and low tone, serious and unfaltering. His eyes were determined, and his expression was confident while remaining calm.
A few of his friends even looked over at him with surprised expressions. They had never seen this side of him before.
"Did this kid unlock a new power within him!?" One blurted out, slightly shocked.
The ugly man continued, "What matters is not how one gets up after a fall, but how he falls." He said with a stone-cold expression.
"W-what?" Sol exclaimed in confusion.
"I-I mean!" The ugly man quickly gathered himself, "What matters is not how one falls, but how he gets back up."
He turned to face Sol, "And I swear, I will get back up by obliterating you through each part of this test, even if I have to swear my life on it."
He sounded as if he was the main character or something. Quite frankly, even Sol was impressed with the conviction.
"Oh~~"
"Wow~~"
The ugly man's friends exclaimed as the first test began.
Sol was the first to use his spell. He raised his hand toward the dummy 30 feet in front of him.
The ugly man beside him shot him a side-eye, 'Casting his spell already? What spell is he going to say?'
Sol thought to himself the name of his spell, 'Wind Blade,' and conjured it in front of him in mere seconds.
Light gusts of air began to swirl around each other, eventually contorting into a fine blade of wind.
The ugly man's eyes widened in shock and his face glimmered slightly with astonishment.
'A... a non-verbal conjurer!?' He screamed within his own mind, shocked.
'Argh! Whatever! That isn't enough to defeat me!'
At that moment, Sol unleashed his Wind Blade toward the dummy. It shot forward and sliced through the dummy almost instantly.
The top half of the dummy thudded on the ground a few feet away as Sol lowered his hand.
The other testees looked at him with awe and conjured their very own spells.
Several different shots began to whiz past, sounding different each time from all directions.
Amid this chaos, the ugly guy finally raised a wand in his hand with a stoic expression.
His friends had already shot their spells and were waiting for confirmation to know if they had passed.
They all stared at him, along with Sol who was also quite interested in the ugly guy at this point.
The main characters were intriguing for a reason. Although, Sol had never seen such an ugly MC before...
"Grandiose Hydra!" The man shouted as droplets of water began to form and combine together in front of his wand.
"Revive and strike down my enemies, oh divine beast!" He exclaimed, as a few others also peeked in his direction on hearing such a grand spell cast.
At that moment, a sphere of water no larger than a cue ball manifested itself in front of the ugly man's wand.
Sol looked at the man's face, 'Is this it?' He mused. The man's face was still serious, so clearly, he hadn't done anything wrong. This was still all going according to plan.
Then, the water ball shot forward, and many looked on with anticipation.
After reaching halfway to the dummy, it suddenly lost all strength to fly and dropped onto the floor like a small splash of piss.
A hush fell over the entire crowd as the ugly man's hand dropped to his side as if it was limp.
His eyebrows curled inward and a giant frown appeared on his depressed face.
Then, in the midst of it all, Sol suddenly began to laugh his ass off. "Ahahaha! I actually thought you were going to do something great! How pathetic!" He patted his stomach several times.
The ugly man's posture drooped forward as others around him also began to laugh. Hell, even the knight in white armor couldn't help but chuckle.
This was the worst day of the man's life. Out of nowhere, he began to cry.
"Damn it! I'll get you all back for this one day! And especially you, you fucker!" He yelled as tears trickled down his red face before storming out of the chamber.
Sol soon stopped laughing, 'Well... at least the guy was entertaining.' He mused before moving on to the next tests.
He had already made a slight impression on everyone with that display, but even more so when he passed the physical punching box test fairly easily.
The scores weren't displayed as random numbers but were pre-graded on a scale from F- to A+.
F- would mean failing as badly as possible, and A+ would mean passing as greatly as possible.
Sol was the first to get an A. He didn't get an A+, but that was a given, as he had only cultivated for one day his entire life.
After this, he was able to easily dodge every single arrow that came toward him in the dodge test.
This was not just a test of speed, but one that also valued how much one knew about body movement and how to control one's weight to avoid attacks.
Sol had practiced this for hundreds of years, so it wasn't at all a challenge.
In the end, with 26 people left over, Sol arrived at the final testing area with his team.
Most were panting, exhausted, and battered from the previous tests.
The knight shouted at that moment, "The final test will now begin! Everyone, jump on the vat of poison placed in front of you!"
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