The Battle Arts Academy's assessment was divided into two parts.
The first part involved fighting alchemical puppets made by the Alchemy Academy to determine the initial rankings.
The second part allowed students ranked within twenty places of one another to issue free challenges. If a challenge failed, they would automatically lose eligibility for all subsequent challenges. The purpose of this stage was to adjust the rankings, giving students whose scores were close to the admission cutoff a chance to advance, while also giving those dissatisfied with their rankings room to improve them.
When sunlight pierced the pale gray clouds and streamed down in beams upon the earth, the first part of the examination finally began after more than an hour of waiting.
After entering the examination venue, Lucia was quickly assigned to a room. Its four walls were covered in defensive magic arrays, and an invigilator was already waiting inside.
"My name is Conrad Dean. Hello, Sterling," Conrad said with a smile to Lucia.
As the head of the Magic Swordsman Department, he held an esteemed position in the Battle Arts Academy. There was only one reason he had deigned to personally invigilate for a new student: he was deeply curious about the genius girl Lucia. Before the ranking challenges of the second part, he wanted to observe her first and see whether she was qualified to become the personal disciple of the academy head, Ignatius, the "Flame Demon's Hand."
Lucia greeted him politely and picked up a standard iron sword from the practice room.
On the other side of the room stood a human-height alchemical puppet shaped like a wooden dummy. Its face was plain, bearing only shallow outlines of facial features that made it look somewhat unsettling. It held the same standard longsword and remained completely still.
Clearly,