Natalie begins to explain everything she knows about the B-Class exams while continuing to pace around the mana-dense air in the room.

She explains that most years, there are 12 people accepted as applicants that pass the exams. It's very normal for the Apex region to take 4-6 of these slots, while the Veridian and Vice Region take the other 6 to 8 remaining.

All of these regions have submitted 12 applicants each, the maximum available.

None of the other regions hit the maximum that she knows of. The other 5 regions usually try to aim to squeeze in 1 or 2 passing slots with their most talented hunters every few years.

The Bedrock Region I came from only submitted 8, and that would have been 6 naturally if Ember and I didn't show up last minute.

For the exams themselves, there's always a very unique grading system used. Her best guess is that this year the wristbands will play a large role in grading applicants.

The first stage after today will be a written exam and will most likely be paired with general physical tests to see our natural intellect and combat ability.

Natalie recounts many of the training exercises she's been through over the last few months while living in the Apex region. Everything she's telling me seems like very basic procedure, making me realize again how overqualified Ember and I really are for this exam.

Still, I note down everything she says. Being over-prepared isn't a bad thing.

Finally, once she starts talking about the 3rd stage, this piques my interest. The white-haired healer describes a contraption that she's trained in similar to a device I've used back in Vice City. When I first visited the capital with a private guild from my hometown, there were special mana shielded rooms that provided high-grade gear to train with other hunters and not worry about being injured.

However, the descriptions that Natalie gives make the simulated rooms she used to train in sound like a step far above anything I've ever seen before.

She was able to fight simulated monsters of varying levels and in a small room it would feel like a vast dungeon all controlled by someone outside the room.

Once her explanation is finished, I notice the pale complexion in her skin return, sweat form on her face, and a wave of exhaustion wash over her eyes. She stumbles but catches herself on the edge of a sofa.

"Anyway, that's about everything I know... The sim stations usually hold about 4 people each, some of the big ones can do 6. So, that's something to keep in mind. Maybe you were looking out for other hunters while back in the game room. If not, we already have a room here, there's no rule that states you can't go back out and make connections. All you need is your activated wristband to move in and out of the rooms now."

I raise an eyebrow at her last remark, but see she's not in any shape for more questions.

I could give her a full regen potion right now, and she'd most likely be as good as new, but I'm still not too sure I can trust this woman as my ally. She is some random healer from the Apex region after all. I can't just assume that it's out of the realm of possibility this is all a part of the high-level Apex soldier's plan. She could just be a plant to hold us back even more.

Despite these thoughts, I reply in a friendly tone.

"Thanks, I think you've paid with more than enough information. I appreciate it."

She lets out a relieved smile and walks over to one of the master bedrooms, scanning her wristwatch on the door and walking inside. She speaks as the door closes.

"Thank you too, I wouldn't have had the resources to rest up for tomorrow without you."

It clicks closed and I turn to Ember immediately.

"I'm going back out there. If what she said about allies is true, I might as well make some other friends. It's not like we need to rest up like everyone else."

Ember shrugs.

"Suit yourself. I'm going to stay in here and keep an eye on her."

I leave the lounge and make my way through the marble hallways, scanning my wristband on every doorway—gold, silver, and bronze—until I make it back into the gaming room with a new outlook on the events taking place before my eyes.

I see every booth in the room as a personality test, and the eyes of all of the high B-Class proctors watching every applicant's move as a surveillance system that logs the data of everyone's trials.

I don't feel any recording crystals or advanced surveillance like there is in Valor City, but there are over two dozen level 700+ proctors in the room with their natural perception seeping through the room so not much can really be missed.

Even with all the eyes, I'm still determined to learn more about this event and make some connections while I have the free time to kill.

I wander around the room observing hunters win jackpots and outsmart proctors, while others lose limbs and even get poisoned and dragged away into unmarked rooms by waiters waiting nearby.

Many people from the same regions regroup after finding their way through the white plane outside, and on rare occasions some regions mingle.

To my surprise, the longer I wait, I actually see some hunters that were taken away get released from the private rooms the waiters brought them to.

Some look fully healed, while others still appear exhausted and injured.

My guess is private deals are being made, possibly at the cost of tokens, or maybe nothing at all. It's possibly all part of the exam, testing risk management but not actually killing prized, talented future B-class hunters over a simple mistake in a pre-exam trial.

The more hunters I see leave, the more I assume it's the latter, but I don't want to go into those unmarked private rooms myself to find out.

After a good amount of time wandering and observing, I decide to start playing a few more games I know I'll easily win without any real risk.

There's a drinking game where the applicant at a bar has to choose between extremely strong alcoholic beverages from platters of labeled intensity.

Of course, the higher the alcoholic potency, the less you have to drink to acquire a coin.

Many leave this bar staggering, but everyone that does has at least 1 black token in their hand when they do.

I take on the challenge and drink 9 of their strongest drinks in under a minute without batting an eye. By the time the liquid even makes it to my stomach it's already been completely neutralized like I'm drinking water.

I leave this booth with three black tokens and a baffled bartender.

There's one other food stand at the other end of the room that I haven't been to yet, and I decide I might as well stick to what I'm good at.

It's a similar game to the one I played when I first entered this room where one of the plates they offer has a high chance of some kind of toxin inside it.

There are a few applicants sleeping headfirst in their food sat at the table in front of a chef, so my best guess is it's some kind of sleeping drug.

I clear 3 of their hardest plates in just a few minutes, and feel the toxins in my body being dispersed in two of them.

I receive another 3 tokens for completing this challenge.

If there were more food or drink booths, I'd do them in a heartbeat. My body burns through this sustenance almost instantly, so I hardly feel like I've even eaten anything.

After my many long months of mana control and Qi training, I'm more used to consuming pure energy than food itself. While I need some vitamins, minerals, and water to survive; food itself has become less and less important to me. Today is one of the first meals I've eaten in weeks.

I let out a sigh while jingling the coins in my hand, looking through the crowds of people in search of a new game to successfully cheat or something interesting, but everything left feels like pure luck to me.

Playing these games isn't really worth trying.

I walk past the geode cracking game again, and see a random hunter open one of the stones to find bright red crystals inside.

Without warning, guards bring him away to a back room even though he looks healthy and fine. I'm happy I didn't test my luck on this one earlier. I still have no idea how it's played.If you spot this tale on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

Though, my eye does catch a familiar spear-wielding woman from the Talton region sat alone at an empty table holding two tokens in her hand, clearly deep in thought about something.

She's been in this room since before I even initially showed up.

Either her luck hasn't been good, or she's a very cautious player.

Her wristband isn't lit up, and she hasn't talked to anyone this whole time I've been wandering around, so I'm sure these two tokens are all she has at the moment and doesn't have a room.

While my identity as Jay wants to see the Talton region do well, and I'd help them if they asked; Ray Anderson from the Bedrock Region has nothing to do with them.

I'd offer her a place in my lounge, but that may come off as far too forward. She wouldn't make the connection that her doing better in these exams means that there will be more funding for her region and as a result of that; they could buy more goods from me.

So, instead, as I walk by I flip a single token in the air toward her.

"Hey catch, I had an extra."

I show 5 coins in my open hand as she catches the one I throw.

Her expression is a bit confused, but she looks me in the eyes and nods with a serious gaze.

"Thank you. This kindness won't go unnoticed."

I smile, and continue walking through the room.

She immediately gets up behind me and buys a basic room exit card at the nearest vendor with her tokens while I look for others that it would benefit to help out in the

long run.

I remember the two water-wielding guards from the Vice region that I saw when I first walked in here, but after another walk around the room I find that they too are gone.

They must have already saved up enough tokens and moved on.

The longer I wait around, the less impressive the crowd in this room becomes.

There's no one left that remotely compares to the strength and level of those two Apex Elites from before, and it makes me wonder if there are others of that strength level or even higher in the 25 applicants that made it into the suites and lounges before me.

While making my walk back to the back of the room to call it quits, I pass a card game table with chairs hooked up to higher-powered electric chairs.

I see a few players lose on my way over, and the mana-imbued charge that comes out of that chair has mana control nearing a level 850 monster.

Any normal hunter would be paralyzed and burned to a crisp by this attack.

Many are dragged away and given health potions on the spot to heal even before being taken to a back room.

If your hand goes over 21 or the dealer's hand is higher than the player's, the chair shocks whoever is on the seat. However, if the player has a higher number than the dealer, the player wins a token.

It seems like a very simple game, and the fact that I'm a lightning type adds to the believability that being shocked by this chair wouldn't hurt me.

I whisper under my breath as I see the exit sign close by, and sit between two level 531 and level 560 hunters in the seat that is still hot from the hunter who was shocked within an inch of his life.

"Alright, one more game, then I'm out."

I hear a very recognizable voice reply to my mumbles from across the tables.

"Yeah right, you should have said that an hour ago when you cleared out that roulette wheel."

The same man that was healed by Natalie for a token sits a few seats away at the card table nervously tapping his feet and holding two tokens in his hands.

I smirk and shove my hand in my pocket while doing a scan of his status to find he's level 602 and has an extreme wind summoning skill. His overall mana control isn't too bad. It's up to par for a level 600, he isn't falsely power-leveled.

I pull out a token and hold it up between us.

"You're from the Silca Region aren't you?"

He nods while the dealer behind the counter starts to shuffle up the deck to get ready for the next round of play.

The dirty blond-haired wind user replies to me in an annoyed tone.

"Yeah, and you're from the Bedrock, aren't you? What's that matter to you? We're both from weak regions so there's no point to rub it in that you already managed to get a room out of here."

He points to my wristband, and everyone else's attention at the table shifts to the bright [26] on my wrist.

I shrug, understanding that he's had a rough day, and not wanting to ruin the potential chance I have here for making a strong connection from another region.

So, I brush off his remarks and ignore everyone's stares, rolling the black token across the table and replying.

"How about you rest up for tomorrow. Us weaker regions have to stick together if we're going to put any number on the board right?"

He catches the coin with a surprised look on his face.

"R-Really?"

I reply while pulling out 4 more coins from my pocket and jingling them around before putting them away again.

"I've got plenty of them to throw away. Don't think too much of it. Just a friendly gesture from the Bedrock Region. The name's Ray by the way."

He pushes the coins forward at the dealer behind the counters and quickly yells out.

"One basic room, please, get me out of here!"

The dealer accepts his tokens and gives him a bronze card then the man turns back to me.

"I'm Dane- I- Thanks, man."

He wipes sweat from his forehead and runs toward the back of the room while everyone else at the table starts asking me for a spare token too.

I ignore all of them, as their mana control hardly even reaches Natalie's level, and their advanced grade elements won't make the cut if we have to do any team events later.

The dealer quickly shuts this down once he senses the disinterest I'm taking in the other offers and calls for those who are interested in playing to stay and those not to leave the table at once.

Two leave, and 4 people not including me stay at the table to play.

The first round of hands gets 2 people shocked very brutally. One is dragged away immediately, but the other somehow manages to stay upright, but it's clear he's badly injured from the charge. Only one person wins this round, he's the hunter to my right who hits exactly 21, while myself and the player a few seats to my left tie the dealer with a 19.

We don't get shocked, and don't get a token. However, it does count as an attempt at the table game so I only have two tries left.

The second round, the three of us remaining at the table all win when the dealer busts by making his hand go over 21, hitting 24 total and paying all of us out a full token.

After this win two players leave, and it's only me and one other sitting at the table once the dealer spreads out the final round.

I'm happy with a 20, and the hunter next to me is satisfied by his 19.

However when the dealer flips his card and draws another to hit, he reaches 21 and beats both of our hands.

The instant the card is placed down, electric mana imbued shock courses through both of our veins.

To me, it feels like a delicate static tickle, even without activating any defenses or special mana blocking skills, the shock of a non-double ranked up monster doesn't affect me at all.

The man next to me shows a whole different reaction as his hair stands straight up and he falls to the floor off his seat.

I accept my loss, as this was really just a game based on pure luck, and walk away from the table like nothing happened with the same number of tokens I had when I approached in the first place.

With 5 tokens in hand, I make my way back to the exit, but stop by the bar with the blue-haired bartender one last time to ask her one thing.

"Hey, your secret menu option, the second one. The part where it says any item I desire. Are there any limitations to this?"

She smiles and responds.

"Welcome back so soon. It looks like you have gotten quite busy today. You're one of the applicants I've had my eye on the most so far..."

She pauses and takes out the secret menu again for me to look at it and points down at the second option that reads: [2 Tokens] Choose a Magic Item you Desire.

"Hand me two tokens and ask for what you'd like. If it's not in stock, I can provide a refund immediately."

I nod, then push two tokens across the table and think carefully about what I'd like.

Once she accepts the black coins I speak.

"I want a teleport crystal that brings me back here, to the Apex Region."

Her eyes widen for a moment, then she looks up at the sky and waits again, like she's listening to someone speak, then finally looks back down at me and looks me in the eyes.

"Your request will be granted. Please wait a moment."

She places the black token beneath the table, and a few moments later one of the side room doors opens.

A low-level waiter in a tuxedo walks in with a black box and places it on the bar counter, then walks away quickly to leave us be.

The bartender opens up the box to show the glimmering transport crystal inside, then closes it and pushes it forward to me.

I grab the box and she speaks up.

"Is there anything else I can help you with before the exams begin?"

I think for a moment then respond while pushing another black coin forward.

"What will the contents of the exams be? I want an explanation of all of the stages."

She smiles and pushes the coin back toward me.

"Unfortunately, I am not permitted to answer questions of this nature."

I push the coin forward again.

"Will tokens be valuable later on in this exam?"

She smiles and accepts the token.

"No, tokens will only be used in this trial portion of the exam. Once the testing begins, they will be worthless."

I push the two tokens I have remaining forward and smile.

"Well, in that case, I want another transport crystal just like the one I bought that leads here to the Apex region."

She listens in and looks up at the ceiling again and shakes her head while pushing the coins back to me.

"I'm afraid we're currently out of the item you desire."

I think to myself for a few more seconds, then push the tokens forward.

"Well, then how about a lightning stone. The highest grade you have. High B grade, even A grade if you have it. Don't worry about me being able to handle it with my current mana control, I'm just thinking of this as a future investment. I might as well take advantage of this while I can."

She nods again and accepts the coins while listening to something in her inner ear again, then nods and responds.

"Very well, your request will be granted."

The same procedure takes place, and a waiter comes by with a clear containment case and a static-charged bright yellow lightning stone floating inside it.

I do a scan of the box and it feels like this really is a high B-Grade, borderline low A-Grade element stone.

If I had to guess, it was farmed from some monster in the 900-950 range.

There are no monsters that I know of like this in the Vice City labyrinth, so it gets me very curious about where it's come from.

I accept the item and turn away with the two boxes in my hands.

"Thanks again. Looks like this time I've really gotten everything I can out of this room."

The bartender watches me leave all the way to the exit door. I feel her curious eyes on my back until it shuts behind me.

After a series of clicks, and opening door locks, I finally make it back to the lounge to be greeted by Ember with his feet up lying back on the couch.

I throw both the items into my item storage through the fake item box on my waist, then lie on the couch next to Ember and tell him about the events that happened in the game room while I was away.

My eyes move to the clock above the door when I'm done, but I still see almost 12 hours left on the timer.

We both decide to lie back and relax until the time is up.

It's been a very busy month. Between training, fulfilling orders, and dealing with new businesses and citizens coming to the Crimson City back in Sector 2.

Just sitting back in this mana dense room with nothing on my mind but a single task ahead is pretty relaxing.

I let out a sigh and close my eyes.

"Alright. I'm fully prepared. B-Class exams bring it on."

—

We relax in the mana dense room as intended all throughout the night.

Ember and I discuss a few things about training and random crafting ideas through our telepathy link from time to time, but for the majority of it, we really do sit in silence and relax while absorbing some of the fresh mana in the air.

Once the timer on the door hits [00:00:00] a loud constant ringing sound vibrates throughout the room, and all of the master bedroom doors open wide automatically.

On the panel where the timer stops a new message [Stage 1: Now Begins!] flashes in bold white text.

Natalie comes walking out from where she was resting with a startled look on her face like she just woke up.

At the same time, there's a series of loud knocks at the lounge's front door that leads out into the hall.