With a wave of his hand, the grand master prepared to summon something into the battle arena. Then an arsenal of weapons appeared, and he told the candidates to choose whatever they wanted as a sword was thrown. With a quick and firm movement, the boy's hand gripped the hilt of one of the swords. Louis then took a second sword and showed that he was ready for the coming combat.
The other candidates could barely handle the weight of the weapons, and the director gave a final warning. He asked whether everyone was ready, and gave the signal for the start of the final exam.
With a smile on his face, the director ordered the bonded slimes to be released.
The candidates looked around, confused, because they could see nothing different in the arena. They wondered what bonded slimes were, but nobody there knew the right answer.
Louis noticed something and looked up with a very attentive gaze. Suddenly several blue spheres began to fall from the sky towards the candidates. One of the spheres hit the ground and transformed into a very strange blue creature. Then everyone realised that those creatures were the slimes the director had mentioned earlier.
The rules were explained. Blocking an attack was worth one point. Dodging was worth two, and defeating a monster was worth five. The director then advised that the ranking would be by points, and that only the top one hundred would pass to the next test. Louis reflected on the difficulty, since only a hundred people would be able to pass.
Suddenly a giant slime screamed and started launching several smaller copies of itself in all directions.
One of the candidates scoffed, saying that slimes were low-level monsters and that it would be easy to defeat them. With a confident smile, the boy advanced with his sword, ready to easily secure his five points. He ran at full speed towards one of the small creatures, yelling for it to receive his attack.
But the blue creature suddenly changed its expression and revealed a very intimidating aura of power. At this, the little monster fired a powerful energy beam at the candidate who had underestimated it. The noble's expression changed from confidence to pure panic upon seeing the small creature's power. With no time to react, the slime's attack hit the boy's face dead on, sending him flying.
The other candidates were shocked to see what had happened, and realised the real danger of that test. Several slime attacks began to fly across the arena, catching everyone else by surprise. The nobles were completely terrified by the unexpected power of those small blue creatures. One of the boys shouted for everyone to be careful, as more and more slimes continued to fall from the sky. With that, the arena became a true battlefield, with explosions and candidates flying everywhere.
Chaos took over the place, and many participants were quickly defeated by the slimes' attacks. From above, the examiners began to announce the scores of the candidates who managed to react to the attacks.
One of the examiners commented to the director that this year's exam had nobles from famous families. She believed that because of this a new record might be broken, as the battle continued in the arena. Another examiner commented that this year there were excellent commoners, and remembered the boy the director had helped. The director smiled and said that the boy was interesting, and might show something incredible.
But the other examiner was concerned about what he was seeing in the battle arena. He pointed out that the young man had not moved a single step since the beginning of the test.
A noble scoffed at Louis and said that the slimes were too fast for a commoner. He continued, saying that a commoner was always a commoner and would soon be defeated. With that, a large sphere of energy was fired in Louis's direction.
The attack approached quickly, but the boy remained still, showing no reaction. With a calm look, and with a minimal movement, he dodged the attack, leaving the other candidate shocked. The noble who had provoked him could not believe it, and wondered how he had managed to dodge.
But the attacks did not stop, and another sphere of energy flew across the battle arena. This sphere hit another participant head on, throwing him far away with the impact. Louis then got a serious look on his face and prepared for what was coming next.
Suddenly several slime attacks began to rain down on the boy. The noble who had provoked him smiled and said that there was no way he could dodge so many attacks.
Louis closed his eyes and concentrated, to feel the movement of the attacks. Then he began to remember one of his most rigorous training sessions from the past.
In his memory he was in a snowy field with his training partners. They were holding rocks and talking about how dangerous it would be if they were hit by them. But the young man told them not to worry, because he wanted to test something new. Then his friends shouted for him to be sure to dodge, and threw the rocks with force. With that, a shower of rocks flew at high speed towards him.
His eyes glowed with a blue energy and he focused completely on the attacks. In his past life, he had managed to formulate a new hypothesis. The boy had trained to transmit information quickly from the parietal lobe to the cerebellum. If he calculated the trajectories and reacted instantly, he could deal with any attack.
Back in that training field, the boy began to collect the data from all the rocks. With the data in mind, the next phase was to calculate the trajectory of each one. And the final phase was simply to dodge all the attacks with precise movements.
His friends were completely shocked by the incredible skill he had demonstrated. The boy wiped his sweat and thought to himself that his new power was incredible. His companions ran up to him and asked how he had done that, and said that it was really cool.