Even though Jude passed the first test, there were still two more to go. He moved to the next part of the stage and proceeded to the next trial. The first was about defense, and this one was the exact opposite. In front of him stood a giant statue of a man about one and a half times the average size of a human. This was a defense shrine.

Anyone standing near a Defense Shrine would gain the protection of the shrine. In front of the shrine stood a small Clock-Work being that resembled something like a monkey. The monkey was heavily armored and was being additionally protected by the shrine.

Jude had seen others take this test but hadn’t listened close enough to figure out what was considered passing or failing. After all, this was the same clock-work monkey that everyone had tested against.

The nearby test official cleared up any questions that Jude had, “You are allowed to attack the clock-work for a total of 5 minutes. All types of damage can be applied and will be calculated to your total score. Do not worry about breaking the device; it is much sturdier than it looks. The only restriction is that you can’t use magic scrolls.”

The official didn’t feel like he needed to add the last line, but it was standard procedure, so he did it anyway. He had seen Jude’s masterful performance on defense and from the thousands of people he had tested today he had observed that those who excelled at defense were typically less capable of offense. The official figured that if Jude could make at least the lowest amount of damage to pass, then he would probably make it to the final competition.

The jeering contestants below had other ideas, even though they were wrong about Jude in the first round, they didn’t think that he would do well at this stage for the same reasons as the official. But Jude ignored those taunts as he tried to figure out how he wanted to attack the target.

If he used his sword, it would probably be passable, but it left Jude a little unsatisfied. Essentially it would mean that he would constantly be repeating the same and that just seemed boring. If he pulled out his staff, he could create a magic a lot more interesting, especially with 5 minutes to prepare.

would be pretty good in this situation, but the trail official had said no scrolls. He understood why there was this limitation, as weak offensive classes would be able to pass it if they all could use scrolls easily. But for someone like him, who created those scrolls, it was almost placing him at a disadvantage.

His thoughts went back to the new staff if only he could pull it out without everyone freaking out about it. If he could only cast an illusion on it. It was too bad Cairfray wasn’t here. Her new class would probably be able to make the illusion with no effort at all. Or could he do it?

If he pulled out the staff in such a way that his torso blocked the head, then maybe he could cast a water based illusion on the staff itself.

Jude began to mentally work out the code that would be involved in such a magical application. The main thing he would need to cover would be the five element representations that floated around the staff head. He continued thinking up the spell to use and came up with only one flaw. The illusion would blanket the staff head in mist. It would downplay how amazing the staff was, but would still show up as a legendary staff. Still, it was worth it.

“Ahem,” the official cleared his throat, “You have 2 minutes left.”

COSH! Jude nearly shouted a curse! He had wasted so much time thinking about unnecessary things that he hadn’t even realized that the time had already started.

“He was so good at defense that he couldn’t even think of a way to attack,” said one of the jeerers below.

“It’s just like I said, his muddle head was so thick that it’s good at defense, but he has no way to attack!” another said.

“There’s no way for him to catch up now, even if he’s proficient at , it is one of the weakest attack magic’s out there!”

Jude grit his teeth, now the jeers were getting to him. His sword appeared as if from thin air into his hands. He didn’t have time to do anything complicated; now he would have to go all out with just regular attacks.

“,” Jude commanded several times and shot the sparks up into the air. The monkey looked at him with very uncaring eyes; it didn’t think much of Jude’s spell at all.

“Look, now he’s so desperate that he’s casting some minor fire spell,” the jeerers continued to comment.

While everyone’s attention was focused on the flares that Jude sent above, he cast yet more magic under his breath. He used magic to disable the shrine, but to his surprise, the shrine was much stronger than he had expected. Before the landed, he cast as many spells as he could on the statue shrine in hopes that it would weaken the shielding effect on the monkey.

On the fourth cast of , he found that the third cast had already disabled the shield. He didn’t want to damage the Defense Shrine, so he redirected the spell to the nearest object, the clock-work monkey.

The Disruption Magic hit the monkey unprepared. At first, it thought nothing of this silly human that wasted so much time, but then it was hit by an invisible magic that wreaked havoc with its delicate internal mechanism that was normally protected by thick layers of armor.

Just as the monkey began to loose control the fell from above, landing on the monkey and bypassing the shrine’s shield everyone expected them to hit. As soon as they hit they burst into a torrent of flame.

“Cosh!” Jude swore under his breath. First, he had been lost in thought, and now in his rush, he overdid things.

Inside the flame, a loud explosion was heard and parts of the monkey flew everywhere. Jude knew that this was more due to his rather than the fire, but to everyone else’s perspective, it was because of the fire.

Now the jeerer’s were being jeered at, “How was that a minor fire spell?”

“If that’s a minor fire spell, I would like to see what you can do.”

“That spell must have been compressed. Only fools would see it as a minor spell.”

Jude barely heard any of this as he sheepishly looked over to the official, “Sorry, kind of I broke your clock-work golem.”

The official’s eye twitched, “Kind of? No matter, this is all covered by your entry fee.”

Jude sighed in relief. He didn’t have much money left after pay ten platinum.

While he hadn’t wanted to go as far as he did, he was pleased to find out that his went up by a rank. It was now at Rank V which unlocked a new disruption, .

Jude was quite pleased with this new skill. He knew a lot about Foundation magics, especially . But wasn’t the only magic that used Foundations. The most widely used form of Foundation magic was in . was the typical way to magically reinforce many areas and to create magical traps. Having a way to disrupt them would make his life much easier if he ever found himself needing to get past one.

Seeing how his life here in this world had progressed so far, he would probably need this skill sooner rather than later.

Jude then walked over to the last testing area for this gate. Several colored rings were floating through the air here. At a glance, you could tell that each color depicted a different degree of skill. Ranging from blue to red, Blue was the easiest as the didn’t move and were as large as a torso. From there they got harder and shifted towards the red spectrum. The more difficult ones became smaller, moved, or spun. The harder they got, the more they combined each of these aspects.

The official explained, “To pass this round you need a total of 200 points. There are five of each color: Blue rings are 10 points each, green rings are 20, yellow 30, orange 40 and red 50. You can use any spell and cast it as many times as you want, but after the first spell, you will be deducted 10 points for each one.

You already have enough points to pass this gate from the last two trials, but I encourage you to try your best. Those who have the highest scores at the end will receive great rewards! Plus, it will be easier to pass the upcoming gates.”

“How many points do I have now?” Jude asked points hadn’t been discussed before this.

“There is a total of 750 points per trial. You have 1500 right now, and you need 1200 to pass this gate.” The officer explained.

Assuming that each gate needed 1200 points to pass it, then the second gate would be at 2400. If Jude could get full marks on this one as well, he would be at 2250, nearly able to pass the next gate before taking any of its tests. He might as well go for it.

“Can I use any spell I want? Even ?” Jude asked.

The official replied, “I’m not sure how you would use to pass the trial, but as long as magic passes through a ring, it will light up.”

Others might not know the composition of Telekinesis, but Jude certainly did since he could see it. But he couldn’t have been the first one to think of this. Then it occurred to Jude that if someone else had used this, they probably used it in conjunction with another spell, using as a way to control it even more accurately.

was primarily a tentacle of mana. If he used it only, then it would get tangled up in the spinning rings. Once again, Jude wished he had his , out of all the magic he had used, they were the most accurate and nimble. But Jude wasn’t one for regrets; he had many skills that could fill in the gap.

If Jude took the route of controlling another spell with , then he would end up casting two spells. If he wanted to get full marks he had to do it in one spell. But would they be able to sense the casting of ? He looked around and quickly analyzed the runes and foundations of this test area and found that the probability was high that they would detect the second spell of .

If Jude had been paying more attention earlier to those on stage, he would have seen a few people do this and get caught for using multiple spells. Not that using multiple spells was against the rules, it just wouldn’t result in a final perfect score. So far no one had received a perfect score on any of the tests, except for Jude.

But then Jude had the thought, did have to be a single long rope like thing?

With a thought, Jude activated . A rope of invisible mana snaked out of Jude’s hand. Sure enough, the stage sensed a spell being activated and made a single chime sound. Jude moved his rope through the five blue rings with extreme ease. Next came the green rings which moved, each in a different direction. But it was still a simple task to navigate each and every one.

From the spectator’s perspective, it was one ring after another being lit up without a single notice of a spell. Those who were smarter realized that Jude was using , but they weren’t exactly sure how he was doing it. The way that they used was to latch onto an object and move that object with their mind. They had no clue how to use telekinesis beyond that. Only those who had successfully learned had a vague idea.

Jude passed the yellow rings next. They didn’t move but got much smaller. After that was the orange rings which did move and grew smaller still. Now the rings were the size of a fist. Still, these rings weren’t the problem. The real test was the red rings.

The red rings were all spinning. The first was larger than the orange rings, but it did spin the slowest out of all the red ones. The trouble with these spinning rings was that there was a possibility that even if you were on target that you would hit the side of the ring instead of going through it. But out of all the red rings, this one was the easiest. So it was the perfect time for Jude to test out something new.

The tip of his telekinetic rope bulged and ballooned out. Then with a popping like action, it burst off the telekinetic line. The accuracy was horrible, but the rope was close enough that it didn’t matter and Jude successfully lit up the first red ring.

The stage was still showing that Jude had used only one spell and now he had lit up all but four rings. The other contestants were quite surprised. Even those who had gotten this far before had used a minimum of two spells. But no one thought that he would get the rest with a single spell. It was just too hard. But if they could see what Jude could see, then they might not think that way.

The next ring was smaller than the last and spun faster, but it proved not to be a problem for Jude. Even though he missed a couple of times, each try was essentially still the same spell. The third red ring proved to be even harder as it added movement along with everything else. But Jude was able to get that one too.

“He has gotten all the way to three red rings on one spell!” someone said in an excited tone.

The attitude of the other contestants seemed to be changing toward Jude’s favor. The fourth ring was taking longer as the difficulty had gone up yet again, but he still heard a few of the other people talking.

“Perhaps one of us regular wizard will have a chance at winning this competition!”

“Yeah, those of the inner city don’t even have to take this test.”

“Inner city? Those at the core don’t have to take any tests at all.”

“Yeah, but they don’t get any rewards for taking the tests.”

“That’s not entirely accurate. I hear that they get full points as if they got perfect scores.”

“Why do they even need it? They already are getting the most benefits in the kingdom.”

The people were becoming distracting, so Jude blocked them out. Shortly after, his control with the got much better, and a ball of mana shot through the fourth ring. He then got a notification that he gained yet another telekinesis spell.

Telekinetic Bullet Rank I

A step beyond Telekinetic Push is Telekinetic Bullet. This spell can deliver an invisible shot of compressed mana with deadly accuracy and force.

Damage: 300%

Mana: High

Jude nearly laughed out loud. This magic was a little ridiculous. But honestly not much different than a normal bullet. Who can see a bullet that has been shot?

Jude focused on the last ring. This one was going to be incredibly hard. It spun ridiculously fast, move at random speeds and in random directions, and was not much bigger than a golf ball.

Jude was tempted to use , but that would cause another spell to register with the platform. But he noticed from the last shot with regular that it had become more accurate and easier to aim. It must be pulling from the bonuses that innately had. So Jude began shooting mana bullets, from his already active skill. Hitting the target was proving to be hard.

The crowd was growing more and more excited; Jude was becoming a sort of hero to the local wizards of Riwa. Even though they didn’t know who Jude was, they assumed by his clothes and looks that he was also a local of Riwa. Many of them were now pinning their own hopes and dreams onto Jude. He was someone they couldn’t imagine competing with, so subconsciously they decided to join in on his victory. They hoped that he would accomplish the impossible, to complete all the tests with full marks. After all, many of them would not even be able to pass this first test.

Even the official who was administering the test for Jude was biting down on his quill. The ink was dying his tongue black, and the feather of the quill was becoming quite ruffled.

And then the last ring light up! Everyone check the stage just to be sure that it all happened as they though. There it was, the stage showed that only one spell had been used and all the rings were lit up!

A cheer went up from the crowd. The official let out a shout of his own. The scribes down below who were checking in the people had stopped and been watching as well. They too wanted to see if Jude would accomplish the impossible. And for the one rare occurrence, no one complained that they weren’t being seen to.

The official finally regained his wits while the crowd was still cheering and making noise. He said, “Congratulations on passing the first gate with full points!”