[Welcome to Magus Games! You will be now sent to a virtual arena, the pain will be real, death, however, won't.]

[Body and personal items have been scanned. All items above tier 3 are prohibited]

[You are part of Team 99]

[Your point : 0]

[Team point : 0]

[Objective - Defend the Orb at the Bridge]

[The Magus Games will start in 5 minutes]

Emery and the rest of the acolytes filed toward a portal. After they had entered it, Emery and his friends appeared inside a small square room. Their surroundings groaned, as the floor they were standing on shook, they felt themselves being lifted up. Then the ceiling hissed open; when the ground stopped moving, they looked around to see what their battlefield would be.

They found themselves standing on a large stone bridge that stretched up to an endless nothingness on both ends. They then saw a large shining bluish orb floating not far from them. Moving to the edge of the bridge, which seemed to be around 8-meters wide, all they could see was pitch black darkness. However, a distance from them, there were other bridges with people standing on, as well as the same orb. Those were most likely the other acolytes from other teams.

Once Emery and his friends had somewhat familiarized themselves with the area, they moved toward the bluish orb. Julian was already there and seemed to be pondering on something. With his arms crossed, he muttered, "Virtual Arena? What does it mean?"

"I think it means our real body is not actually here," said Klea calmly, receiving a confused gaze from Julian. Shaking her head, she continued, "What's important is that we won't die because of this game. But remember, the pain will be still very much real." Turning her head towards the other boys, particularly the bull-headed boy Thrax, she added, "So don't go around and start doing reckless things."

As if her words fell on deaf ears, Thrax grinned and summoned his brand new tier three spear and tier two shield. The spear had a bronze body as well as a vanguard, however, since they were on a different world, they just had the color bronze. Its full length was taller than Thrax and when he stomped the ground with its end, small pieces of rock shaked, indicating how heavy it was.

Nevertheless, Thrax swung it around effortlessly, as if it had the weight of a feather, hyping himself up. As for the shield, it too was bronze colored. It covered almost half of his body and its base appeared to be very crude and rough. Still, like his bronze spear, one shouldn't underestimate it by looking at its appearance.

"We won't die?" said Thrax with a scorn. "I had expected something more from the academy… How can a safe battle be compared or even become a real challenge?"

"Aren't you too confident, barbarian?! Let's see if you can back up your words later," sneered Julian when he heard Thrax's somewhat provocative words. Julian then proceeded to take out a short sword and shield from his storage ring, both of them gleaming a crystalline silver.

Shaking his head as he watched those two quarrel, Emery turned his attention back at the end of the bridge. When they only had one minute left, Emery noticed a light peeking through. Squinting his eyes, he finally saw that there was a huge 5-meter-tall stone black gate that was slowly opening its doors.

Seeing the stone doors were opening, Emery gestured to his teammates and pointed his finger at the doors, prompting the others to also notice what was happening, "So, I guess we are going to fight whatever comes out from that stone door." Turning around, he continued, "Any idea, guys?"

Holding his chin and thinking for a while, Julian then said, 'We don't know yet what will be our enemy and also the bridge is quite wide… I guess we should just create a line formation, where the four of us will stand at the front while Klea will be at the back protecting the orb. What do you guys think?"

Chumo, who was always silent, made a hand signal and took out a bow from his storage and then put it on his back. He then silently walked over to Klea's side. Julian, who saw that, nodded and said, "Alright then, you will be at the back with Klea, Chumo. In fact, I feel much better knowing that both of you will be the one protecting the orb."

Julian then turned toward Emery and said, "What do you think, Emery? We all will have a wider area to defend. Can you do it?"

Emery nodded with a smile and took out his recently acquired equipment. The black sword received gazes of interest from his friends. He had been itching to try out his new sword skills ever since he learned them and now, the time had finally come. Staring at Thrax, Julian asked with a reluctant face, "Okay. Anything you want to add?"

"Nah. Just make sure you can keep up with me, roman," said Thrax. He then shouted in excitement, "Bring it on! Ahoooo! Ahooo!"

Right after the shout ended, Emery saw little dark dots appear from the light peeking out of the stone gate. Thudding of footsteps resounded until they could vaguely see several figures running towards them. The virtual arena didn't have a light source, but every one of them could clearly see the nearing green skinned creatures, about half the size of a human, heading towards their direction. These creatures had bulging maddened eyes, little to no clothes and sharp elongated ears and noses. Each one of them was holding a different type of weapon, ranging from swords, sabers, knives, bows, clubs and so on. An information appeared in their mind as they looked at these creatures.

[Level One - Goblins]

[Battle power : 15]

[These are the lowest failed creations of the elves, but their sheer number, combined with their madness when attacking, made so these creatures should not be underestimated]

Dozens of these creatures were flowing out from the stone gate and began to run at them while screaming in shrieking noises. Klea, who was currently at the back, couldn't help herself but shout, when she saw those creatures approaching them, "Aiii! I'm sure those are the ugliest creatures I've ever seen." She then took out a staff with a purplish crystal on top of it, which shortly exuded a purplish bright light as she chanted a spell.

[Wind Sphere]

When the spell chant finished, a rotating ball of wind streamed rapidly on top of her staff and shot toward the group of goblins. The ball of wind crashed into the middle of the rushing goblins, throwing a dozen of them out of the bridge into the pitch black darkness on the edges of the bridge. If these creatures were normal living beings, they would have probably been struck with fear. However, they didn't seem to be affected in the least, as they continued to run with even greater madness in their eyes towards the group of humans. The spell attack was followed by a black arrow that could be seen travelling through the air and hitting one of the shouting goblins at the front, effectively killing it.

Headshot!

The black arrow was released by Chumo using his tier three unique bow, Black Longbow. The arrow seemed to be made from spirit energy as it immediately disintegrated after piercing through the goblin's head. Chumo then just constantly aimed his bow, continuing to release spirit arrows over and over, killing the goblins one by one, which also disappeared after a few seconds.

With the battle power stats that were shown, the group could tell that these creatures named goblin were nothing to worry about. This matter was also proved and supported by the fact of how easy those creatures were destroyed by Klea's spells and Chumo's arrows. They had, after all, fought with hundreds of level 3 beasts called Skyglazers, whose battle power was twice of these level 1 creatures.

These ugly creatures were still a good distance away when Emery stopped Klea, who was about to release another spell at the horde of goblins. Klea returned a puzzled gaze at him, however, Emery calmly said, "It's very likely this stage will be a long prolonged battle. It's better if we save and conserve our spirit energy as best as we can."

Klea and Chumo seemed to have understood his intent as they nodded and lowered their weapons after hearing Emery's reasoning. Emery smiled and was about to continue talking when suddenly Julian shouted and grabbed his arm.

"Come, Emery. The goblins are coming and we need you at the front to hold the line."

Smiling helplessly, Emery immediately turned around and walked with Julian but before he did that, Emery said something to Klea and Chumo while smiling faintly.

"Just watch."