The Exam

When sunlight bathed the entire city, the entrance gates for the assessment at Guild headquarters opened.

The hunters filed in in an orderly manner.

Inside the examination hall, two rows of long, narrow tables stood neatly arranged. Tall bookshelves covered all four walls wherever there were no windows.

Ahtal-Ka looked up at the four towering square pillars in the hall, slowing the movement of her legs.

"You really shouldn't stare at those."

Li Le reached out and gently pressed down on the golden crown atop her head.

Helpless, Ahtal-Ka could only lower her head and look straight ahead.

At the far end of the hall, beneath a stained-glass window with vivid colors and peculiar patterns.

A middle-aged man in instructor armor waited with his arms crossed.

"Candidates, I am the chief examiner for this hunter admission assessment. My name is Kedon. Please form up!"

At Kedon's powerful voice, the candidates lined up.

Ahtal-Ka noticed that she alone stuck out beside the formation and obligingly moved to the back, forming a row of her own.

"Today's examination has three parts. First, hunter knowledge. Second, comprehensive field skills. Third, hunter physical fitness and hunting weapon proficiency. The third part carries the most weight. I hope you all perform your best!"

"Yes!"

Everyone answered together, full of confidence.

"Good. Next, find the seat corresponding to the number on your assessment notice and sit down. The hunter knowledge examination will begin shortly."

With that, Kedon went with the other two instructors to fetch the knowledge examination papers.

Li Le found his seat, took out his quill and ink, and set them on the table.

Tap, tap...

Ahtal-Ka stepped her two forelegs over the bench, lowered her body, and "sat" beside him.

Human and insect turned their heads in unison and looked at each other.

"It feels so strange having someone sitting right up against me during an exam..."

Before long, the sealed scroll examination papers had all been handed out.

"The hunter admission knowledge examination begins now!"

At Instructor Kedon's command, everyone removed the sealing tape and unrolled their scrolls horizontally across their desks.

Li Le rubbed his hands together, lowered his head, and began answering.

1. Before setting out on a hunt, the correct preparation procedure is ().

α. Treat everyone to a meal and bid a final farewell to friends and family.

β. Confess to your beloved and have it out with your enemies.

γ. Accept a suitable contract from the Guild, obtain the latest map, learn about the monster, purchase supplies, inspect equipment and items, gather your party, and depart.

Ω. Lie down at home to conserve energy.

Three short answers and one long one-pick the longest. Free points.

By any reasonable standard, it should be γ.

2. While out hunting, an effective way to ensure you return alive is ().

α. I'm hard to kill. I won't die easily.

β. Hire a Felyne rescue team in the hunting area and sign an emergency evacuation contract costing one-third of the total reward per rescue.

γ. Pray devoutly for protection.

Ω. When recruiting a hunting party, only choose braver, stronger hunters as teammates, and retreat first upon sensing danger to reduce your own risk of injury or death.

Option Ω is so selfish.

So the correct answer should be β.

3. During combat, your hunting party notices a large monster other than the target approaching. The correct response is ().

α. Here's your chance to show your skills. Make sure to hunt both monsters.

β. Facing two large monsters at once greatly increases the risk of casualties. Keep track of your teammates' movements and be ready to cover a retreat at any moment.

γ. This is too terrifying. Flee back to camp immediately and prepare to return to the village.

Ω. Play dead on the spot while the monster's attention is elsewhere.

This one's easy too. Judging by the reactions, only β sounds like a normal person...

Wait. Since these options exist, could someone really have done something similarly ridiculous before?

And that was why they were included in the examination questions as warnings?

Li Le answered twenty questions in a row.

He found that although most concerned hunting and combat.

Their focus was not combat application, but how to avoid casualties among oneself and one's party as much as possible.

Clearly, the Guild's greatest hope for novice hunters was not that they would possess exceptional talent and hunt powerful monsters in the future.

It was that they would first keep themselves alive while hunting in the wild. Only then could other possibilities be discussed.

21. Are you willing to give your life to protect your companions, preserve ecological stability, and ensure humanity's survival?

The final question had no options, only a large blank space.

"I don't know."

Muttering this, Li Le wrote down his honest thoughts.

Before long, Li Le and Ahtal-Ka left the examination hall with the group that had handed in their papers early.

To better prepare for the next examination, they had little time to rest and immediately headed to the second examination site ahead of schedule.

The Dondorma arena training grounds.

The heavy steel gate rose open, and the smell of monster dung, so familiar in the wild, hit them head-on.

Clang, clang! Bang!

The sounds of blows against metal bars and collisions with stone walls echoed around them.

"Looks like they keep quite a few captured monsters here."

Li Le remarked as they walked through the long, tubular passage.

"Come to think of it, my family brought me to watch arena tournaments when I was little, but I stopped wanting to come once I grew up..."

Holo recalled.

"Was it because you started researching insects?"

Li Le guessed.

"Yes. If everyone understood enough about ecology, perhaps they wouldn't enjoy watching arena tournaments anymore... Anyway, how prepared are you for the comprehensive field assessment?"

Holo asked with concern.

"Scent tracking, identifying plants, things like that-I've spent a lot of time out in the wild, so those shouldn't be much trouble. Combining and roasting meat are a little difficult, though."

"You've trained seriously. Have confidence. Besides, they don't count for much of the overall score, so there's no need to worry too much."

Holo's reassurance proved quite effective.

Li Le immediately felt less worried.

The circular, open-air training grounds were covered with a thick layer of yellow sand.

Since the hunter assessment required sufficient space, only the instructors preparing for it were currently busy on the grounds.

Finding a corner, Li Le arranged sticks of firewood in a circle, placed the small cooking pot Kaluo had carried on top, and lit the fire.

Once the water boiled, Li Le consulted his beginner's combination book and dropped in a handful of green herbs.

The greatest benefit of handing in his paper early became apparent now.

He could try out the examination tasks at the actual site ahead of time.

"Once the boiling water turns emerald green, add the crushed blue mushrooms and stir vigorously clockwise with a stirring rod. Once it turns dark green, stop heating immediately..."

"Long time no see, Li Le."

Li Le turned and saw Lan Rui resting his hands on the perimeter railing, greeting him.

"We came to cheer you on, meow!"

Sanye stood on the railing and called out with chest puffed up.

"Thanks."

"It's time!"

Lan Rui pointed at the cooking pot to remind him.

Li Le looked down, tossed in the crushed blue mushrooms, then bent over and began stirring.

A small whirlpool formed in the pot, and soon a jade-like, dark green sheen appeared.

"Hah!"

He lifted the pot onto the sand, and Kaluo ran over with a potion bottle and funnel.

Once the potion bottle was full, Kaluo raised it in one paw to inspect it.

"Does it look like a Potion?"

"There's a bit too much sediment, but it should meet the requirements, meow. Passing this part shouldn't be much trouble."

Hearing Kaluo say that, Li Le sighed in relief.

"Hm? Where did Sisi go?"

"Sisi's over by the mechanical wyvern, watching very closely, meow."

Kaluo extended a paw toward a wooden mechanical wyvern modeled after a Rathalos in the training grounds.

Ahtal-Ka stood quietly in front of the mechanical wyvern's head, gazing up at it.

"Let Sisi look. Bring me the sap plants and paintberries. I'll practice making paintballs."

"Uh... all right, meow."

Kaluo answered with a troubled expression.

The reason was that Li Le did reasonably well combining everything else.

Paintballs alone were practically a black hole for materials.

The paintballs he rolled were either gigantic or super-gigantic, each more ridiculous than the last.

Time slipped by little by little during his final practice.

More candidates arrived at the training grounds, and the comprehensive field assessment soon began.

Identifying spoiled meat, identifying plant species, deboning and carving loin meat, distinguishing paintball scents...

One wilderness survival test after another proceeded in an orderly fashion.

As Li Le diligently completed them, he also paid attention to some of the other candidates.

He could tell that, apart from a few particularly absurd cases, most had prepared extremely thoroughly for this examination.

Aiden truly had not been boasting either. He excelled in every test, making him the most well-rounded candidate.

Calling Aiden a genius was hardly wrong. After all, by the time the Fifth Fleet departed, he had already earned a place among its recommended members.

But if Aiden was the benchmark, just what kind of genius would that Sapphire Star be? It was impossible to imagine...

Li Le marveled sincerely to himself.

Once they reached the meat-roasting and combining tasks, the previously swift pace of the examination slowed.

Standing before the campfire and turning the handle of the BBQ spit, Li Le listened to the rhythm played by the Felyne drum band, his eyes fixed on the sizzling, dripping meat.

"Hah!"

Beneath the sunlight, a golden piece of bone-in roasted meat was held high.

"Haha, I did it!"

Filled with an immense sense of achievement, Li Le finally understood why everyone liked striking exaggerated poses.

"Time's up! All candidates, stop!"

Instructor Kedon approached and tasted this batch of candidates' roasted meat one by one.

"Instructor Kedon..."

A young man spoke apologetically, lacking the courage to even offer his charcoal-black roast.

Kedon's expression remained unchanged as he reached out and picked up the charred meat himself.

Crunch, crunch.

A series of crisp sounds rang out, as though he were chewing coal cinders.

Soon, the charred meat had been eaten, leaving only a straight bone.

"The first rule for hunters in the wild: don't waste food."

"Understood, Instructor Kedon!"

The young man raised his head as he spoke, seemingly having learned something.

"Good."

With that, Kedon marked a cross against the young man's meat-roasting task.

He had barely taken two steps when a piece of half-raw meat was offered to him.

Kedon's eyelid twitched.

"Sorry, Instructor Kedon. I'm still not very familiar with using the BBQ spit, so I wasted a lot of time..."

The young man lowered his head in apology.

"All right..."

Kedon pursed his lips and managed to eat another piece.

"Instructor Kedon, here's mine!"

Li Le happily offered his roast.

At the sight of the golden meat, Kedon's gaze changed.

"The heat was still a little too high, but this is already quite good."

After finishing it, Kedon gave Li Le nine points.

For the combining portion.

Li Le passed the Potion, pitfall trap mechanism, and other tasks.

Only his finished paintball was deemed unfit for being too large, resulting in an outright failure.

At midday, after eating, most of the candidates arrived at the training grounds early to make their final preparations for the physical fitness and hunting weapon proficiency tests.

Several teams of instructors also gathered to observe and assess the candidates.

Aiden, who used several different hunting weapons, drew the most attention.

Everyone predicted that his passing the assessment was practically a foregone conclusion.

Just then, a flash of gold streaked past, and a dazzling halo began moving around the training grounds.

It soon caught the examiners' attention.

"Sisi! Extract!"

A clump of insect silk shot toward the balloon Kaluo had tossed into the air, striking it precisely and sticking to it.

"Inject!"

Li Le raised his arm, and the balloon swinging toward him collided with the Kinsect perch strap, bursting on impact.

After watching for a moment, Kedon asked in surprise, "So that wasn't a rare pet insect, but a Kinsect?"

"That's right. Li Le is the only Insect Glaive hunter registered for this assessment."

A female instructor checked the roster before answering.

"What kind of joke is this? That's clearly a ground-crawling insect that can't fly. How is it supposed to hunt alongside a hunter? And with a body that large, it has no way of dodging large monsters in time."

Kedon immediately voiced his dissatisfaction.

"Earlier on, it would indeed have been against the rules, but Sara, the director of the Kinsect Research Institute, has already registered this Kinsect called Ahtal-Ka with the Guild and received approval, so there's no issue."

The female instructor sounded helpless as well.

"Sara... that's the veteran hunter bent on promoting the Insect Glaive, isn't it? What a headache. And why would the Guild approve an application like that? They should at least have certified it first!"

"Uh... the Kinsect Research Institute itself is the foremost authority on Kinsect certification."

The female instructor quietly reminded him.

"This is absurd... No. Even if Sara wants to take a shortcut and have Li Le risk his life on an experiment, as instructors, we absolutely cannot allow it. Let me think... Since he's so determined to make this ground-crawling insect a Kinsect, he must have tampered with its specially tailored assessment tasks."

Kedon soon spotted the loophole.

Making Ahtal-Ka a Kinsect offered no assurances whatsoever to an Insect Glaive user.

With its abilities, passing a proper assessment was simply impossible.

The only place to manipulate things, then, was naturally the specific assessment criteria supplied by the Kinsect Research Institute.

"That makes sense. Since Sara registered the Kinsect, he must have been responsible for setting its assessment criteria too."

Realization dawning on her, the female instructor immediately fetched the criteria document and examined it carefully.

She wanted to use it to put an end to Li Le's absurd assessment.

But after barely reading any of it, she suddenly froze.

"The criteria Sara set are far too easy, aren't they? That senior really..."

Kedon felt this was inevitable.

Its inability to fly and its excessive size alone were enough to rule out any possibility of Ahtal-Ka becoming a Kinsect.

"It's not a question of whether they're easy. You'd better look for yourself."

With that, the female instructor handed over the scroll containing Ahtal-Ka's assessment criteria.

Kedon's eyes swept over it, and his gaze abruptly changed.

"Are these really the qualifying standards for a Kinsect... What exactly is Sara trying to do? Does he not want Ahtal-Ka to become a Kinsect either?"()