I open my eyes to find myself on a wide dirt path, with dense grass taller than I am on either side as far as I can see. The path is perfectly straight, and leads off into the horizon without interruption. A look down shows that I’m wearing the same armour as the last scenario, with the same pouches and all. A quick check reveals that whoever designed this intended a degree of continuity, as the spoils I took from the goblins are still there.

Just like before, a pane of light appears before.

Scenario Two.

Progress down the path, and survive.

“Well that’s ominous,” I say to myself. To make matters worse, there’s something already niggling at me about this scenario. Still, there’s no point in stalling. I preemptively summon my gauntlets, so I don’t have to worry about the lag from the mindscape, and begin to walk.

Not two minutes after I start walking, I hear a rustling in the grass to my right. I ready myself for the coming fight.

A moment later, whatever it is bursts out, and I roll to the side to avoid, enhancing myself in the same moment. It’s become largely second nature these past few weeks, which I’m quite grateful for.

I scan the monster as I get to my feet. It’s not one I recognise at all, which doesn’t mean much. Mom’s seen so many monsters that she’s bound to have forgotten a few. It looks like the unholy lovechild of a panther and a hedgehog. Thick, powerful muscles and feline grace combined with sharp quills and an inexplicable malice. It’s tail is thicker and much longer than a regular panther’s, and coated in longer spines than the rest of its body. It growls menacingly, and it whips its tail sharply, sending three spines flying my way.

I sidestep the first two with ease, but the flicking motion sent one of the spines wide, so I block that with my gauntlet. The force of the hit, even reduced by the Astral Steel of my gauntlet, almost sends me stumbling. The big spiky cat, seeing me off balance, snarls and leaps for my throat. I let the force roll me back and bring my legs up to kick it in the chest, forcing extra Stellar mana into the hit.

Its momentum carries it over me, but it lands on its side and rolls once, then gets back up. It seems dazed and winded, but otherwise not too bad off from the exchange.

I dash in, intent on finishing this quickly. The cat-hedgehog-thing lunges in to bite me, and I step to my right while smashing it with a right cross, then step back to let its bulk pass me by. I move back in and kick it in the rear left knee as hard as I can, and I hear the satisfying crack of bone breaking.

The cat yowls, and twists around. Before it can properly assess things, I punch it in the snout, then kick it in the throat. It lashes out with its claws on instinct, and I move back as quick as I can, but I’m not quite fast enough. The claws scratch into my armour deeply, though not quite enough to draw blood.

The gauntlets are taking too long, they’re a bad match for this fight, so I dismiss them and swap to the sword. Just after it flickers into my hand, the cat rushes in to finish me off. I swing my sword in a warding motion, not to attack, but to get it to hesitate. It’s broken rear leg causes it to stumble slightly, and I use that to set up a thrust into its eye. The momentum causes it to bowl into me, ripping the sword from my hands.

Moments later, I’m stuck under a rapidly dissolving corpse, the same pearly gray sludge the goblins turned into beginning to pour all over me before pooling together and evaporating. It is the most profoundly disgusting experience of my life, and despite it disappearing fairly quickly, I swear I can still feel it all over me even while I’m inspecting the loot.

A few scraps of fur that don’t want to separate for some reason, eight spines from what looks like its tail, a single canine, and two claws. A far sight more than what the goblins dropped individually, but not all monsters are created equal. Goblins on their own are fairly weak, but when they swarm they can still be a major threat. Most monsters are more solitary in nature, though I think there are still a fair number of those that swarm, or at least hunt in small packs.

Regardless, I pack the remnants into my pouches, end my enhancement to conserve mana, and start walking.

I finally realised what was bothering me about the description for this scenario.

It’s an endurance test.

I’ll just have to hope my mana control has grown enough to make do, and keep walking.

**********************

Ariel stepped into the control room for the entrance exam. It was a cramped stone room situated behind where the doors for the students to enter the tests were. The walls to either side held the complex array of glyphs, sigils, and carvings that channeled and focused the mana for the spacial pocket array the prospective students were currently in, as well as the temporal compression array for those entering through the Combat track, as it was decided they needed a longer section for the final scenario. Ariel was privy to that much only because she technically worked under Amadeus in the Combat track.

The far wall was a more arresting sight, however. It held the mindscape array that actually performed the testing for all the students, a masterpiece given it was supposed to affect hundreds of young minds in different ways for each. The array itself was not easily discerned, given it was covered up by a series of holographic screens displaying different students in their exams. As Ariel watched, a few of the screens froze, and a bright red ‘FAILED’ appeared over the screen before being replaced by a view of a different student.

“Damn blasted thing, what’s wrong with you now?” groaned a voice to Ariel’s left.

Glancing over, Ariel saw Davis Connell, Head of the Craftsman track, crouched down over a section of what Ariel believed was the temporal compression array, though she never would claim to be an expert on these things. He was a remarkably short and stocky man, with fiery red hair and a scraggly, unkempt beard. He looked perpetually sleep-deprived, but never seemed to be inconvenienced by it. From the short time Ariel had known him, she came to the conclusion that Davis ran almost exclusively on black coffee and raw, unfiltered, spite.

“Should you really be fiddling with an active array while children are under its effects?” Ariel asked.

Unfazed by her intrusion, Davis replied, “Relax, Ariel, there’s more failsafes built into this fucker than actual operational magic. I couldn’t fuck this up without bringing a sledgehammer into things.”

“Then what, exactly, has you so worked up?”

He gestured vaguely to the array as he stood up. “Somethings tripping half the fucking failsafes, is what, and I have no fucking clue what could be doing it. It isn’t even consistent either. They tripped twice in the same minute, then nothing for nearly fifteen, then they go on and off for five straight, and now I just know the second I fucking look away they’ll do it again.”

“Hmm. And you can’t see anything wrong with the array itself?” Ariel asked.

He gave her a look that bordered on condescension. “Of course there’s nothing wrong with my fucking array, who do you take me for? I ain’t some halfnutted enchanter with a loose carver and no pants on, now am I? No. I know what I’m fucking doing.”

Ariel restrained herself from asking what ‘halfnutted’ meant and said the obvious, “Then why are you focusing on the array if there’s nothing wrong with it?”

“What are you on about?”

“Well, if the array isn’t the problem, then it's something else, clearly. Maybe one of the students has an unusual Aspect, and it's stressing the array? They’re rare, but not unheard of.”

Davis looked at her like she was an idiot. Then seemed to think about it. “Fuck. Lost fucking gods, if one of those whiny little shits fuck up my work, I’m gonna tie them to a waste accumulator and drop them in the fucking siphon.”

He stalked over to the wall displaying the students progress, and held both hands out in front of him at waist height. A flick of both wrists caused a series of symbols to appear in the air in front of him, white and vibrant. He taps one, and all the screens merge into four larger ones, each displaying a different track.

“Alright you arrogant little fucks, which one of you’s fucking with my shit?” he growled.

Ariel sighed and walked up to him. “Whilst you’re scanning the feed, would you bring up Valerie’s for me? I did come here to see her progress, after all.”

Davis rolled his eyes and muttered under his breath, but he opened up the array’s search function anyway. Ariel held back a smirk looking at the holographic keyboard floating before him. It was remarkably similar to the plastic ones from Earth. She would never let her daughter know how long it took her to figure those things out.

“Let’s see, Valerie Endmarch. Here we are.”

The Combat track screen shifted to show a view of Valerie fighting a swarm of Titan Ants. She was doing well enough. Ariel may have yet to see her daughter fight outside of a sparring match, but she could still recognise the look of determined focus she carried, belying the undercurrent of thrill Ariel knew she felt.

Despite that, Ariel could tell Valerie had been fighting for a while. The armour she was wearing was scratched and torn in places, she wasn’t entirely steady on her feet, and she was subconsciously guarding her left shoulder, something Ariel noticed Valerie doing when she got too tired in a fight. There was a cut on her forehead, partially dried by now, that required Ariel to almost physically stop herself from pulling Valerie out of the mindscape. Her daughter wouldn’t forgive that, she knew. Not for some time, anyway.

Davis whistled. “She’s already at the ants. Most newbies would have lost their edge by this point, there’s only the Amphis after this.”

“‘Most’? Are they not meant to?” Ariel asked, brow raised. Whilst mindscape arrays weren’t a terribly recent development, Cardinal hadn’t been using them for their tests when she had started, so this was new to her.

“Not entirely. This one’s to see how well they deal with multiple fights back to back, with little rest. It’s possible to reach the end, sure. It’s not endless. But realistically, few ever do. I’ve seen a few manage it, and almost all ended up in the Advanced classes.”

Ariel nodded, and kept watching. As she did, Valerie switched weapons from her sword, to her gauntlets, and slammed into the Titan Ants with almost reckless abandon, though Ariel knew that was just how her fighting style worked. Rush in, keep them off balance, and exploit it. It was oddly perfect for her, given that was almost the complete opposite of how she handled social situations.

Out of the corner of Ariel’s eye, at the same moment Valerie switched weapons, Ariel saw a large portion of the temporal array light up, pulse for a moment, then die down.

Davis chuckled darkly. “Oh, it was you was it? Alright then, time to find out how you like-!”

He cut off the instant Ariel’s hand clamped down on his shoulder.

“I trust I shouldn’t have to say this, Davis,” she said, voice cold. “But I will anyway. Do not. Touch. My. Daughter.”

Davis nodded shallowly, but didn’t say anything.

She patted his shoulder. “Good. Well, I got what I came here for. I’ll let you get back to your work.”

Ariel turned around and walked out of the control room.

**********************

As my fist crashed into the head of the last ant, I let my enhancement fade once more, and stumble to the ground, panting. My right leg is throbbing with pain from when one of them got me deeper than I’d like.

I don’t exactly have much time to rest. I’ve learned over the last hour or so that if I linger in the same spot after killing a monster or group of monsters, then slightly stronger copies of those same monsters will show up about five minutes later.

I’m not built for this kind of thing. My training so far has focused on my skills rather than my physique, which I’m now seeing is something of a glaring oversight. Armsmaster said it’s because she wanted a bare minimum of skill out of me before worrying about that kind of thing, and Mom said physical training will be part of the Combat track, so there’s that to look forward to.

Speaking of Armsmaster, I’ve made a habit of describing the monsters I face in here to her so she can tell me about them while I take advantage of what rest I can get.

Giant ants, but look like they’re made of stone, and replace the mandibles with small swords and the legs with spears.

“Oof. Titan Ants. Nasty things. They’re like wolves, but in the body of an insect. You may have noticed already, but one will keep your attention focused on it as best it can so the others have a chance for a clean hit. Monsters like this are why I spent so long developing your battlefield awareness. If you lose track of even one of them, it could prove deadly. Just count yourself lucky you’re fighting them in an environment like this. The stonelike appearance makes them a right terror to fight in caves and on mountainsides, and they know how to use the camouflage well.”

By this point I’ve managed to bandage my leg as best as I can, and have started collecting the remnants. A hefty number of pieces of chitin, a couple of mandibles, and even a lone antennae, for some reason. Weird.

My pouches have become fairly full by this point, though weirdly they don’t seem all that heavy. Maybe it’s a design flaw, maybe not, but the contents don’t seem to weigh me down all that much.

After a few minutes to catch my breath and chew on some herbs I found that were labeled with ‘painkiller’, I stumble back to my feet wearily. My mana is almost fully depleted, I’m sore all over from various close scrapes, and I’m pretty sure I’m only conscious because of pure stubbornness at this point, but I can’t bring myself to give up. Not yet. I want to give this my all, even if a not inconsiderable part of me just wants to lay down and sleep forever.

I push one foot in front of the other, easily losing track of the time. As much as my body is worn down, my mind and ears are alert for the rustle of grass that signifies the next fight, but it doesn’t come.

Instead, the path opens up into a wide open space at the end of the path, circular in shape.

That’s not what stops me though.

No, that would be the giant snake with two heads and no tail.

Both heads stare at me openly, hungrily. Eagerly waiting for me to approach so it can have its next meal.

It's about half my height in thickness, and maybe fifteen, twenty metres in length? Rust brown scales coat the whole thing, lightening to a soft tan colour underneath. The eyes of both heads, from what I can see from here, are pitch black.

Big snake, two heads, no tail, I say to Armsmaster while staring at the snake, which has yet to move towards me. Maybe it won’t until I enter it’s ‘boss arena’? How polite of the giant me-eating monster.

“Shit. It’s an Amphisbaena. Okay, quick plan. Find the seam where the scales flip orientation, that’s where it’s vital org-”

Yeah, Imma be honest, I don’t think I have enough left in me for whatever you’re thinking, I interrupt Armsmaster. I know I probably shouldn’t, but this looks like my last fight for this scenario and I feel like doing something stupid.

“You cannot seriously be thinking what I think you’re thinking.”

I shrug, even though I know she can’t see it right now. We need to know what it does, and this is likely the best chance we’ll get for now.

She sighs. “Damnit. Fine. Fine. Go ahead. Just be careful, alright?”

Got it.

Now that I have permission for what is possibly my dumbest move yet, I dismiss my gauntlets, and tug on the faint thread of mana leading to my sword. I’ll have to time my mana use carefully, but I should have a chance, and if this works how I think it will, then I only need one or two hits.

I step forward carefully. The Amphisbaena begins to slide towards me once I step in the ring. I’m not sure how exactly, considering both heads are keeping equal pace with each other, but I’m tired enough to just shrug and says magic is probably involved.

Once the distance between us is halved, I enhance myself. Strength suffuses my limbs, energy buoys my step, but I keep my pace to a walk.

Once the distance is halved again, I run two threads of mana up my sword in opposite directions, focusing on the mana ripping into whatever it touches. I can barely hear the sound the sword makes over the thudding of my heart in my chest, but I see the pulsing lines of silver coat the edge.

The moment the snake monster is within striking distance, the head on my left lunges towards me. I step to the right and bring my sword down in an overhead slash. Just like last time, the sword screams as it tears right through like the Amphisbaena isn’t even there. The silver light clings to my target, rapidly eating away at it.

I would stand and watch, but the other head slips around and comes in to strike as well. I step to the other side and swing up, and my sword screams through again. The silver light clinging to both ends of the snake causes it to start flailing around wildly. I step back a few times and listen to the snake’s anguished shriek-hisses, and watch as the silver light rapidly gains speed with every inch it eats away.

Within seconds of my second strike, the Amphisbaena stops struggling, and dies. The remains turn into that gross pearlescent gray sludge, but the silver light continues to eat that too. Shortly after, it’s all gone.

The only remnant the sludge managed to coalesce into was a single large scale.

I dismiss my sword, and stumble and walk over to the scale. It's about the size of my palm, and the outer edge is lined with a jagged silver edge, like the light from my sword tried to eat at that too, but was a fraction of a second too slow.

I drop to my knees, and pick it up. There’s just barely enough room in my last pouch for it.

The moment I fumble it closed, the pane of light appears before me.

Congratulations. Scenario Two complete.

You will be given some time to sleep off from the Scenario, then you will begin the final Scenario.

I just barely manage to read the panel, before my mana runs out and everything goes black.