The practical part of the exam was meant to test their strength, agility, and ability to think their way out of the most unpredictable situations. At least, that was how it was presented.

  In reality, Guild practicals weren’t exactly known for their creativity. Most of the time, the testing grounds simulated something familiar – a cursed village, an abandoned mine. Just like this one.

  After clearing five or six trials, a candidate would reach the center of the arena. There, they’d complete a final objective – retrieve an artifact, for example – and walk out with their head held high.

  So what exactly were they expected to do?

  The adventurer’s badge at Kel’s chest gave a faint tremor. He and the man beside him activated theirs almost at the same time. A translucent projection of one of the examiners materialized before them.

  He didn’t waste time on pleasantries. He went straight to the point.

  “The assignment for your group is as follows. This mine was used to extract lumicite crystals. Unfortunately, a collapse occurred. The surviving miners claim that one of their colleagues was left trapped behind the rubble. He may be injured.

  Your task is to reach the cave-in, locate the missing miner, and escort him safely to the exit.

  You may use any Guild-approved tools or materials available to you.”

  With that, the examiner vanished.

  “Try not to get in my way,” the man said flatly. “We’ll deal with everything else after the trial.”

  Yeah. As if Kel was going to take him at his word.

  Just in case, he refreshed every defensive spell he had layered on himself. Poison wouldn’t touch him now. Neither would steel, curses, or stray spells. Maintaining the stack was mildly exhausting, but he wasn’t about to make the same mistake twice.

  The mine was dark and damp. Kel brushed his fingertips along the wall and felt the moisture clinging to the stone.

  A flawless simulation.

  He’d bet anything that even wounds sustained in this space would feel real.

  His partner activated several of his artifacts. For a split second, a crimson flare lit up the tunnel. To the naked eye, nothing seemed different, but through mage-sight Kel could see the faint shimmer of a barrier settling over the man’s body.

  Nothing impressive.

  It’ll stop falling debris. A sword strike, too. Probably monsters up to level fifty, Kel assessed calmly. Not that they’d throw anything stronger than that into an exam.

  A small amber sphere hovered over the man’s shoulder, casting a steady, bright glow through the tunnel.

  “Use it while I’m feeling generous,” the man said, stepping ahead.

  “Whatever would I do without you, my benefactor,” Kel replied dryly.

  He kept his mage-sight active. It showed far more than the sphere’s light ever could. Besides, when it came to scanning unknown territory, Kel preferred using every tool available to him.

  They moved forward carefully.

  Before long, the tunnel split into three passages.

  Faint traces of residual magic told Kel the right path was – well, the right one. But don’t interfere meant don’t interfere. Leaning against a fallen support beam, he watched as his partner fiddled with a magical compass.

  Considering the entire testing ground was held together by layered spellwork, the device was doing more harm than good. Its needles spun wildly, utterly useless.

  After a while, Kel grew tired of listening to the man curse under his breath. He’d rather not spend the entire day wandering in circles.

  Pushing off the beam, he stepped forward.

  “Let’s go right.”

  “And why would that be?” The man shook the compass a few more times, as if that might magically fix it.

  “Look.” Kel pointed toward the passage on the right. “According to the story, the miners fled in a panic, trying to save their lives. Seems like one of them dropped his pickaxe.”

  The trial was designed for all adventurers – even those who couldn’t afford artifacts. Even those without the faintest spark of magic. It was meant to give everyone a fair shot.

  Of course, to notice a pickaxe half-buried in the mud, you’d have to actually examine each passage carefully.

  “I don’t see anything,” the man said. The amber sphere floated higher, nearly brushing the ceiling.

  Kel wasn’t surprised. Without mage-sight, the tool was almost impossible to spot.

  He stepped into the right tunnel, walked up to the pickaxe, and nudged it with the toe of his boot.

  “Suit yourself. I’m going this way.”

  A few seconds of silence passed.

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  Then he heard hurried footsteps behind him.

  At the next fork, the clue came in the form of a bloodied handprint smeared across the wall.

  So far, the trial felt like a guided tour for children. Had the Guild seriously not bothered to release a single golem in here?

  Kel kept an eye on his partner, but the man didn’t do anything reckless. It was as if the morning’s confrontation had never happened. Maybe Kel really was being paranoid. Maybe ending up in the same party had been pure coincidence.

  Then the ground beneath their feet began to tremble. The walls shuddered, dust raining down from above.

  Another collapse?

  Kel jumped back instinctively. Not that falling stone would kill him – he wasn’t worried about that.

  What did concern him was the surge of magic twisting through the air. He could feel the currents spiraling around them, thick and violent. The mana density spiked so sharply it became hard to breathe.

  The ambient magical pressure was overwhelming.

  “What’s wrong? Scared of a little shaking?” the man laughed when he saw how pale Kel had gone. “Pathetic.”

  Kel said nothing, jaw clenched tight. Sometimes a high magic capacity – and the sensitivity that came with it – was more curse than blessing. The man’s mana reserves were so shallow he’d noticed nothing beyond the tremors.

  Kel, on the other hand, felt like he’d been thrown onto an anvil and struck again and again with a hammer.

  But where were these fluctuations coming from?

  To affect a mage of his level, the source would have to be monumental. Unbidden, a memory surfaced – the recent Omen.

  “You planning to stand there all day? I’m not babysitting you.” The man reached out as if to grab Kel by the shoulder, then froze when their eyes met.

  Ignoring him, Kel formed a sigil in the air.

  Then another.

  And another.

  Before, he’d been able to sense the entire testing ground with ease – its dimensions, its boundaries. Even a shallow scan revealed everything.

  Now he couldn’t feel the edges at all.

  His spells echoed off walls and through tunnels, racing farther and farther outward until their traces dissolved into nothingness. It was as if the arena had expanded to span hundreds of miles. He couldn’t find the beginning. He couldn’t find the end.

  And the Adventurers’ Guild had absolutely nothing to do with this.

  “You think your little tricks are supposed to impress me?” The man’s tone was rough, but there was unease beneath it.

  “Quiet. Follow me. Fast and silent. No unnecessary questions.”

  Kel hadn’t found an exit. That would require more time – and a far more complex ritual. Time they didn’t have.

  They were no longer alone.

  The arena had twisted into a true labyrinth, and monsters were pouring into it. Some of them were already close. Too close.

  To his credit, the man didn’t argue.

  They reached the end of the tunnel and turned into the next just as something dropped from the ceiling. The creature never made it to them. Mid-leap, it split into several pieces and hit the ground with a wet, nauseating splatter.

  Severing spells were simple. Efficient.

  But Kel would have to switch tactics.

  He watched as the thing’s blood – or whatever passed for it – sizzled across scattered wood and metal debris, eating into the surfaces. Good thing none of the droplets had touched them.

  Kel scanned the surrounding space again. It felt like trying to listen to music with cotton stuffed in his ears – muted, distorted, wrong.

  He snapped his fingers.

  The tunnel behind them collapsed in a thunderous roar. It would slow the monsters down. Buy them a few minutes.

  “How did you do that?” the man demanded.

  Kel didn’t bother asking whether he meant the creature or the cave-in.

  “I said no unnecessary questions. First, we get out. Don’t interfere.”

  He shoved aside every other concern – including how he would later explain his magic. He could feel the creatures multiplying, their presences flickering through the warped mana field.

  How long could they keep running?

  How much could this body endure?

  They needed a stable pocket of space – somewhere quiet enough to perform a ritual instead of wandering the tunnels aimlessly.

  From then on, Kel didn’t bother with precision.

  Any monster that crossed their path, he reduced to ash.

  It took slightly more effort – but it was far safer.

  It felt like they’d been pushing through the labyrinth for hours.

  In reality, no more than twenty minutes had passed since the tremors.

  His partner’s magical armor was gone. One swipe from a clawed limb had shattered it outright. The artifact had done its job, at least – instead of being split to the spine, the man had only been hurled into the wall hard enough to rattle his teeth.

  It was a sobering lesson.

  After that, he stopped demanding explanations.

  Kel hesitated for half a second – then cast a proper shield over him.

  Aigon would never have left a companion unprotected. He wouldn’t have even considered it. He would put up his own shield first, rather than relying on the artifacts.

  Unfortunately, in real life, Kel made a rather poor hero. Too many inconvenient thoughts.

  It was strange that the System remained silent. Did it not consider their current situation dangerous? Kel was starting to lose any sense of its logic.

  The next monster erupted from the ground in front of them.

  Incineration didn’t work.

  Neither did severing spells.

  Both slid harmlessly off its thick, crimson hide.

  We’ve dealt with this before, Kel thought, narrowing his focus to a single, precise point.

  “ Disintegration.”

  The creature’s head burst apart.

  Now that the man was protected by his shield, Kel could cast freely. Unlike artifact defenses, he trusted his own magic completely.

  The man let out a quiet, strangled sound when a chunk of the monster hit the barrier inches from his face and slowly slid down, leaving a dark smear before dissolving.

  Still, he threw his dagger.

  It was useless against high-tier monsters – but Kel appreciated the attempt.

  Finally, a brief pause arrived. Kel was about to scan the space again when he heard faint voices. People.

  He immediately slowed his steps. In the depths of a side tunnel, he made out flickers of light, pulsing brighter and dimmer.

  Kel extinguished the floating sphere that had been hovering next to the man.

  “They said only the owner could control them,” the man whispered in irritation.

  “Quiet,” Kel replied. Amusingly, after everything they’d seen so far, it was this tiny detail that seemed to bother the man the most.

  First, they had to figure out who was approaching: friend or foe. Judging by the voices, there were about three of them. As they neared the tunnel’s exit, Kel put out their sphere as well.

  “Damn it!” a male voice cursed. “Is it completely broken? Worthless junk.”

  “If you hadn’t stepped on it, it would’ve been fine,” a female voice snapped this time.

  “Maybe we should try making a torch?” suggested a third voice. “We were taught that back at Tin Rank.”

  Allies, Kel realized, and without waiting for the strangers to fully emerge from the tunnel, he ignited the man’s floating sphere.

  “Hey, we’re not alone here! Wait, don’t leave!” another voice shouted.

  Apparently, these candidates didn’t share Kel’s paranoia.

  Soon, three of them stepped into view. A girl, around twenty, held a dormant sphere in her hands. Kel sensed only the faintest traces of mana from her.

  A tall, broad-shouldered man stood beside her, sword bare in hand. Both his clothes and the girl’s were streaked with blue slime – proof that their teams had encountered different monsters along the way.

  The third man pressed a bandaged arm against his chest.

  “I know you,” the girl said, glancing between Kel and his partner. “You’re the ones who started the fight in the Guild courtyard this morning. But how did you end up in our trial? What’s even going on?”

  Kel had a few guesses, but instead of answering, he simply shrugged, silently saying he didn’t know anything.

  Any theory he might voice would sound completely insane. Now a different question gnawed at him: how many candidate teams had been sent into this labyrinth?

  Could it be… all of them?