Taking a seat in the large comfy chair, Gindur arched his back, a large cracking noise rumbled across the balcony. Avana poked at him, giving him a wide-eyed grin.

“Only one this year?”

“That’s all I need,” Gindur responded.

“I thought you would be grabbing them by the armful because of what happened last year.”

“Don’t talk about last year,” Gindur snorted.

“Hihihihihi,” a small pitch laughed chimed from across the row of chairs. “Didn't you blow up all of the participants before the exam even began?”

Gindur face grew a heated red as he gazed over at Zevne. “I was still testing the puzzle box.”

‘If it’s any consolation, the participants thought it was some elaborate exam that was meant to see how durable they were. If anything, they thought it was one of the most genius exams, catching them out of nowhere like that,” Avana said.

“Can an ore in it, you guys are just jealous I hit the motherload this year.”

“I hate to admit this but I am. It’s been a while since any of us has gotten a star pupil, maybe I'll get lucky this year as well.”

“Umm, if you don’t mind, can I got next?”

“No,” Avana and Kes’ven said in unison. “Remember eight years ago when we let you go first. Eighty percent of the participant quit and only ten percent of them were even participating in your exam.”

“Please?” she said in a high whiney voice. “It’s been three years since I even had someone pass.”

“Why don’t you lower your standards?” Avana said.

“Lower my standard?” she shouted. “Gindur, in your last mission, who was the one that got your team out alive from the Delver’s Mine?”

“Your student.”

“That’s right. Kes’ven who made it possible for your team to infiltrate Black Breach?” Kes’ven moved forwards not making eye contact with any of the other masters.

“Yeah, that's right. Avana who made it possible for your team to...”

“Okay, okay, I get your point. I'll let you go before me, but you have to make it a bit harder for the other contestants to see what’s happening. Kes’ven what about you?” The man, still looking forwards, gave a flick of his wrist.

“Thank you guys,” Zevne said giving Avana a hug and then dashing over to Kes’ven. Jumping up towards his chair, she attempted to give him a hug but failed as he appeared next to his chair.

“I don’t know why you keep insisting on hugging him, you be better off hugging water.”

With a shrug, she dashed off towards the back of the balcony.

“Zevne” Avana shouted.

“Yeah,” Zevne answered turning around.

“Keep it under two.”

With a nod, she tip-tapped down the winding stairs leading to the Arena floor. Skipping towards the middle, she held out one hand letting the proctors know her exam was next.

“So you have to tell me more about this Grail kid,” Serena said taking syncing steps with Trent as he made his way towards Break and Emmy.

“I don’t know what I'm supposed to tell you. He was just a kid we were looking after for a friend.”

“C’mon, there has to be more than that, my news channel is going to eat this up, and I need to beat that snarky ass Bilson in views.”

“This is Break, and that’s Emmy,” Trent said taking a seat.

“Nice to meet you,” Serena said holding out her hands.

“Likewise,” Break said.

Placing a hand over Emmy's silky black hair, “Wow your character model is so cute, how did you get this hairstyle?”

“Was a gift,” Emmy said with a faint shrug.

“Was it a boyfriend? He must have dropped a literal ton of credits on this.”

“What?” Break said in confusion.

“Don’t you guys know? This hairstyle was limited to a particular event about twelve years back.

The event consisted of a thirty-six man raid consisting of eight world boss, three divine boss, and a randomly generated god at the end. If I recall correctly the raid was only completed about thirty thousand times globally. Along with some unique legendaries, the raid also dropped a series of style shards called The Maiden. The rate in which the style card dropped were predicted to be the same as the legendaries from that raid.RIght now, an unused style card for this set sales for about three million.”

“Credits?” Break huffed. “That's three times more than the cost of our beta key.”

“Supply and demand,” Serena said. “It was estimated that only two hundred of each card was dropped for the six card set.”

“I get the supply and demand, but it's just a style shard. Are there not hundreds of other styles that look identical to that?”

“Yes.”

“Okay then, why does it cost three million?”

“Because it’s the only style set that gives stats.”

“What?” Trent and Break said unison.

“Each part of the set grants the user a small plus one to all stats, and if you're lucky enough to get a whole set, you get plus ten to all stat as well as a divine aura the grants your character plus two to any healing magic.”

“The hell,” Break said giving Emmy a hard glare. “Now I’m interested, how did you come to get that hairstyle?”

“Really?” Emmy snide, pulling her hair back.

“Um, I’m a bit curious myself,” Trent shrugged.

“My dad,” Emmy said with a disappointed sigh.

“Is your dad the head of a prestigious guild?”

“None of your business,” Emmy griped.

“The next exam will be for Guild Chrome,” a proctor said stepping up towards the theater floor. “You have thirty minutes to prepare, then an additional ten minutes to enter the arena.”

“Any of you guys competing?”

“Just Emmy,” Trent said. “What about you?”

“Nope, no healing magic. What type of healer are you?”

“She has...” Trent began to say.

Waving his hand towards Trent to cut his chatter, Break made a loud cough, “That’s on a need to know basis.”

Lifting one eyebrow, Serene hunched over towards Emmy. “Did you guys find a new class? No, really, did you?.” In stone silence, the three stared at each other. “Guys, fill me in, I need to know, this could really help my career.” Leaning her body over to Trent, she pushed up onto him. “You were about to say something?”

“Umm, nothing,” he said hesitantly.

“What if I make it worth your while,” she said almost falling over on his lap.

“Let’s go,” Emmy said grabbing Trent by the back of his leather tunic. “We need to go plan for the next exam.”

“Wait,” Serena shouted, holding out one hand. “T4 key.”

Break halted, turning back towards Serena, “Limit?”

“Unlimited.”

During the first year of Arium, many players would flock to dungeons to farm rare armor, weapons, and crafting material. After the establishment of large company guilds, many of the dungeon entrances, located in PVP zones, started to be camped. Corporations would set up large numbers of high-level players outside the dungeon entrance to kill anyone attempting to get close. They would then have shifts of worker farm the dungeons twenty-four seven for item sets and crafting materials and resell them to players for an absorbently marked up price.

During the first huge update for Airium, developers added a new type of limited dungeon that would periodically pop up in a random location. These dungeons lasted between an hour to a whole day depending on the location and the difficulty of the dungeon. Along with being in a random location, another thing the developers added to stop the mass funneling of corporate guild groups to a dungeon’s location was the use of dungeon keys. Key are categorized by their tiers ranging from tier one to tier ten. Keys can drop from just about any monster including world bosses, but included a set of rules set by developers to stop large corporations from hoarding them. These limitations state that keys may not be stored in banks or vaults and that a player may not carry more that one at a time. Keys are not limited to their respected dungeon tiers but may be used on lower tier dungeon. While these new changes help many low tier players, higher level tiers dungeon are still hunted and farmed by large corporations for their tremendous rarity. To combat endgame limited dungeon farm, the developers then added an additional rule to keys. Keys now had a limiter that only allowed them to work within the zone they were originally dropped from. This helped greatly curved the amount of keys corporation could horde as well as enabling groups to farm endgame dungeons.

“What do you mean unlimited?” Break asked.

“It’s part of the new update, all keys under tier six are now unlimited,” Serna answered. “See how easily I shared that information, I would only be fair if you could do the same.”

“What do you think Emmy?” Break said.

“It’s only a tier four,” Emmy said.

“Yeah, but the dungeons are fresh, we could find a bunch of new stuff,” Break replied.

“He does have a point,” Trent added.

Crossing her arms, Emmy gave a placated look over at the two and gave a dismissive sigh. “Fine, it’s not like I’m going to be a well-kept secret anyways since I’m sure I'm going to be using it during the exams.”

“Looks like we have come to an agreeable arrangement,” Break said.

“I have one stipulation, I get a screenshot of your character page.”

“What, Why?” Emmy said.

“Proof, if I'm going to proclaim something, I'm going to need proof. You can’t just expect me to just randomly tell people there is a new class or race without proof do you? What better proof than with a screenshot. Screenshots are all saved on the game server, and are all documented and searchable with their own ID code.”

“Fine,” Emmy said.

“Well, spill it, was I right? Is it a new class?”

Waving her hand, Emmy produced a ball of green glowing water. “No, I think it’s a new subclass for spells.”

“What?”

“Let me explain,” Break said. “So before the update, only the healer class was able to use magic, but after Emmy used an Arcana Orb, she was granted tier one water magic which included a healing spell,” Break said, pointing towards the green glowing blob of water.

“Wait, so what your telling me is that every class is able to learn healing magic?”

“Technically, yes.”

“Whoa,” Serena gasped, falling back onto the theater chair. “This could be the biggest thing to hit the new since the paladin integration.”

“The what?” Break asked.

“The paladin integration. Have you not notice the large numbers of paladins currently being played?”

“Now that you say it, I have noticed.”

“That Russian team during the last exam were all paladins,” Trent added.

“Yeah, why is that?”

“It’s because paladins are the only class other than healers that can heal. And since they are not as squishy and are able to do damage, stacking paladins have been the meta for endgame dungeons for the last few months.”

“How have I not known this?” Break huffed.

“Well to even be a paladins you have to have a list of prerequisite subclasses as well as completed a long and time-consuming story quest. As you know, the only people that have the resources to do this type of things are the corporate guilds or pro teams.”

“We're going on a tangent though, I want to see if Emmy can really heal.” Taking a small dagger from her pouch, she made a small cut on her arm. “Can you heal this?”

Emmy placed the watery orb over the wounds. The water seeped into the wound and stitch the cut area. Gazing over at her health bar, Serena gave a huge nod. “This is amazing, I can’t wait to tell everyone in the newsroom.”

“Key,” Emmy said, holding out her palm.

“Wait, not until I get that screenshot.”

Shaking her head, Emmy open info screen and gave Serena access to her character panel. With a few clicks, Serena handed over the key and made her way towards the exit portal.

“Where are you going?” Trent asked.

“Logging out, I need to get ready for tonight’s news, I can’t very well let anyone else beat me to this.”

“But don’t you want to finish the exams?”

“There are thousands of other news outlets here, they're all going to be running the same thing tonight so I'm going to miss nothing.”

“Five minutes,” a blaring voice blasted from the amphitheater stage.

“That was quick,” Trent said, waving goodbye to Serena.

“Oh fuck, I forgot to ask the NPCs any question about this exam,” Break shouted, placing both hands over his head. “You're going to have to go in blind for this one.”

“It’s fine, it’s not like it can do any better than the last exam, right?”

“Right,” Break said, with an awkward chuckle.

“Good luck Emmy,” Trent said.

Emmy stepped through the portal making her way back onto the fully repaired arena. Taking a rough count, she estimated that there were only about two hundred people participating in this exam compared to the thousands from the last one. What made it stand out, even more, was the ratio of players, sixty percent, to NPCs.

“Hello everyone,” a small gnomish person said, pattering her way across the cement floor. “My name is Zevne, nice to meet all of you. Before I explain what the exam is, can I get everyone to come just a bit closer together.”

The group walked towards one edge of the arena where Zevne stood in wait. Placing her hands in her robe, she pulled out a small spherical orb the size of a billiard ball.

So this exam is quite easy, all you need to do is be the first one to grab this orb. Any questions?

“That’s it?” a player by the name of Pendalin said in a confused tone.

“That’s it,” Zeven replied, a wide smile across her face. “If that’s all the question, let's get this exam started.”

With a puff of pink smoke, Zevne poofed to the other side of the arena. Placing the sphere on the floor, she held one hand out towards the sky and made a clenching motion. Like a crashing wave, and thick fog slammed down into the arena, filling it like a small fish bowl. The sound of the crowd muffled as glowing lights rain across the field some the size of grapes, other the size of ships. A large orbital blue glowing eye drifted towards the southern part of the arena, a shadow could be seen behind cascading the field like an eclipse.

“What is that?” Trent asked gazing into the floating screen.

“Bad news,” Break replied.

The orb faded into view as it loomed closer and closer to the edge of the wall. With a whaling shriek, a row of teeth emerged each one the size of tanker ships.

“What that fuck,” Trent said, jumping out of his chair. That thing must be the same size, no larger than the arena itself.

With a full thrust, the large monstrous beast charges forward into the arena wall. A large portion of the crowd panicked, some even started to cast portal spells. With a faded whisp, the monster fazed through the crowd like an ethereal ghost.

“The hell was that?” Trent said, grasping onto the hilt of his sword.

“Don’t worry,” one of the participants sitting two rows back said. “The arena is in a different plane of existence, so anything created within the arena is unable to harm the audience.”

With a placid huff, Trent took a slow sit back into the chair. “How do you think Emmy is fairing?”

“You worried?” Break said, with a smirk.

“I am,” Trent nodded.

“I mean out of the three of us, she is the smartest and the most mentally durable. I think she is going to be fine. I mean how hard can this exam even be? Noone as even been eliminated yet.”

“How do you know that?”

“If they were eliminated the arena would have spat them out here in the middle of the amphitheater.”

“Uh…, yeah I guess your right.”

Like watching paint dry, the two glared at an almost white screen for a good two hours until a large gong could be heard from across the arena.

“Wha… what was that?” Trent said half slumped in his chair.

The fog slowly dissipated leaving a scene of dismay and horror. “Wow, a tie,” Zevne said, approaching the orb which was grasped by two individual players. Surrounding them were the remains of the other participants, many of them huddle in the fetal position. Like a bag of popcorn, each player was sent flying out of the arena into the amphitheater.

A cacophony of whales could be heard as many of participants ran from each other like a scattering of mice. “Emmy, Emmy over here,” Trent said, running towards her.

Emmy's eyes were a pale white as Trent grabbed onto her arms. With a savage scream, she clawed at his face leaving a large gash. “Break I need some help,” Trent shouted having trouble keeping Emmy steady.

System: Force logout

Looking over at his party UI Trent notice that Emmy profile icon has gone gray indicating that she has just been ejected from the game. Dragging her limp body to one of the chairs, Trent saw the horrifying scene as many of the participants began to go into a rage. “What the hell is going on?”

System: Hotfix incoming, all player currently in the beta will be forced to log out in

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1

Opening his capsule door Trent rushed over to Emmy’s capsule. A muffled scream could be heard as he unlatched the door. Falling to the floor, Emmy's eye began to dart about the room.

“Hey, hey, it’s me, Trent, are you ok?”

Flailing her arms, Emmy grabbed onto her purse that was latched onto the side of the pod. “Get away,” she screamed, wildly swinging the bag around like a flail.

“It’s alright,” Trent said, taking small steps towards Emmy who was backing up towards the side wall. Getting right up to Emmy, Trent places a hand around her, embracing her in a hug. With a dull pain, Emmy pulled her arms back from him. A dark red gooey liquid flowed across her arms and onto the cold marble floor.

With a clink, a knife fell from Emmy's hands as she grabbed the back of Trent's head. “No, this can't be real.”