By now, the boy had climbed the steps, passing the woman just as she was coming down.
But the instant they crossed paths, the boy seemed to get accidentally bumped by the woman, who was half again his height. He lost his balance and tumbled off the steps onto the floor.
The woman froze, not expecting to knock someone flying. Seeing that it was a child, she hurriedly reached out. "Are you all right?"
"I'm fine."
The boy seemed rather shy. He murmured those words, then picked himself up and hurried onto the stage.
The woman frowned and instinctively reached into her pocket. Only after feeling the familiar outline of the coin did she breathe a sigh of relief and head down to wait in the contestants' rest area.
Meanwhile, the boy clearly had no intention of wasting time once he was onstage. He carelessly claimed to be level 2 with terrible stats, and simply showed an ordinary Magic Wand Relic to get the Relic presentation over with.
This presentation was undoubtedly slapdash. Never mind the two major guilds-even the representatives of the smaller factions thought little of stats with absolutely nothing outstanding about them. They all hesitated, with no intention of turning on their lights.
And that was precisely the boy's goal. Right now, all he wanted was to be eliminated quickly and leave.
To his surprise, however, the scene he had imagined, with every light staying off, never materialized. Instead, one light came on-and to many people's astonishment, it belonged to the Anomaly Investigation Bureau!
"Excellent! We think very highly of this young man's abilities!"
Zhang Yang had already stepped out from behind his table with a smile and walked straight toward the boy.
The boy immediately grew wary, but before he could act, Zhang Yang spoke quietly.