Chapter 3835 (￣︶￣) One, two, three, four
Time passed quickly, and in the blink of an eye, night had fallen.
The Grob Basin wasn't far from the magical city of Oisast. It lay in a forest outside the lake where Oisast was located, and the Northern Branch of the Magic Association had turned it into one of the testing grounds for the First-Class Mage exam.
The night was as dark as ink. Here in the Grob Basin, apart from the small lake at the center, whose surface shimmered in the moonlight, a massive barrier had been erected like an enormous inverted bowl, enclosing the entire testing area along with the lake and completely cutting it off from outside interference.
And while it separated the inside from the outside, it also signaled that the competition within—the First-Class Mage exam—had quietly begun.
Since the number of applicants far exceeded expectations, the Magic Association had abandoned its usual approach and adopted a more ruthless team-based format for the first round. That was why the candidates were randomly assigned to teams of three.
The rules for the first round were simple and straightforward, just as the bespectacled examiner had quietly told Zanze at the venue: each three-person team would be treated as a unit. Before sunset the following day, they had to capture one special magical creature called a "Meteoric Iron Bird" and put it in a specially made magic cage. Every member of the team had to survive; no one could be lost.
If both of those conditions were met, all three members would pass the first round!
There were no other rules.
And a lack of rules often meant that the only rule was that there were no rules!
In other words, everyone—or rather, every team—could resort to absolutely anything.
During those