Three exam committee members stand near three baseball launcher machines. They aren’t ordinary machines that Dean might have seen before at the Braham University baseball club.Those machines almost look like a military weapon, with a 3 inch suction hose connected from the wall to each of them. They are computationally controlled and connected to the monitoring room, fully controlled by Lily Gardner, the exam supervisor.[Mr. Morton! If you feel ready to take the test, please step into the red circle in front of you.]That’s Lily's voice coming from the speakers. Dean follows her instructions and steps into a circle with a radius of 2 meters in front of him.[Now! There are three baseball launcher machines in front of you. There will be five stages of challenges here, but you only need to pass the first three stages.][But the first stage, we will only shoot you by using one in the middle. To pass this first stage, you are required to avoid every ball coming to you, and you are not al

She finds Dean looking clueless for a moment in that monitor, before Dean averts his attention directly to the camera.[But you said that I could use my weapon, didn’t you?]“Can’t you use your brain a little? If the participants break the machines, then there will be no test for them? You can’t just…”Gale Nicholson gently pats her right shoulder. “It’s okay! He has cleared the test, and we’ve seen his potential. Just tell your men to fix those hoses.” After that, he walks away, no longer having any interest to follow that test.Lily tells Dean to leave that gym coldly. She still seems so annoyed, but can’t deny that she is amazed by what she has witnessed.In fact, no one has ever managed to clear all the five stages of that test in the last 10 years. And Dean cleared them all in the most magnificent way.However, due to the damage he has done, Daniela gets more time to recuperate. Dean even denies Daniela’s help when she intends to treat his injury.“You should focus on your condit

The problem right now, there is no one in the monitor room. Lily Gardner, who is supposed to act as the exam supervisor, is not there at all. The two guys are actually B-rank professional guardians. And besides that, this third test does not require any control from the monitoring room at all. Therefore, Lily entrusted everything to these two committee members. But of course, no one expected that an incident like this would happen, where an examinee would openly threaten two members of the committee like that. “Are you being serious?” asks one of those B-rank professional guardians. “I dare you move an inch from your position,” Dean warns. The two girls who are in disguise look worried, with pale faces due to the pressure from the intimidation that Dean is releasing. Even though they might also be professionals, it seems like they are just low rank guardians. Meanwhile, the two guys on the back look so angry. They are so mad, but the specter has already fled through the vent. And

All those low rank guardians in that lobby are now speculating about their chances. There are still several slots available for more participants.“Five slots left. Should we participate too?”“You think we even have the chance?”“You don’t need to win it! As long as you are able to advance quite far in this tournament, some higher ups will reevaluate your rank. But it’s different if you are already a B-rank guardian.”For B-rank guardians, maybe they will not be immediately promoted to A-rank guardians through this tournament. But by showcasing their abilities, they could gain the trust of higher-ups in the Ministry of National Security to get more important missions.Just like the winner of the previous tournament, Robert Howard, a mage in Gale Nicholson’s team. He participated as a B-rank mage. However, after winning the tournament, he got several important missions, and then got promoted to A-rank guardian 4 months later.For lower rank guardians, either D-rank or as C-rank, they

The mysterious man leads Dean away from the urban area, to a quiet road on the edge of the hills. Then he climbs the uphill road, seemingly ignoring Dean who is following him from behind. Dean himself is a little doubtful whether the man really doesn’t realize that he is being followed, or whether he might have deliberately lured him into a quiet area like that. Until at some point, the man stops, and then turns back looking at Dean. “So, he knows I’ve been following him.” Oddly, that mysterious man smiles a little, and then walks away from the road approaching a concrete fence of a residence. He jumps, and lightly pulls himself up over the fence to get into that residence area. Of course, this piques Dean's curiosity, and he continues riding his motorbike until he arrives at the entrance gate of that residence. There he is surprised to find that the place is actually a villa that has been converted into a museum. Absolutely no fence at the entrance, and it’s totally open. There’s