Qiu Meng nodded and ran toward the academy gates.
Outside the registration office, Sailafei was checking candidate numbers against a list. She saw Qiu Meng jogging over and verified the number on her badge.
207.
“You made it.”
Qiu Meng panted, hands on her knees.
“Huff… huff… made it.”
Sailafei stared at her for a moment, seemingly recognizing the little girl who had just arrived in the city yesterday.
She didn’t ask further, just stepped aside.
“Go on in.”
Before entering, Qiu Meng turned to see her mother waving at her.
“Xiao Meng, hurry in, or you’ll be late!”
“Mm!”
Qiu Meng ran into the registration office.
She had expected to see rubble, but instead, everything was surprisingly clean and tidy.
If not for the faint lingering smell of mana stone dust in the air, she would have thought last night’s street rumors were an exaggeration.
“Repaired so fast…”
She muttered.
Just then, a blue-haired girl carrying a registry book approached.
“Hello, what candidate number are you?”
“I…”
Before Qiu Meng could answer, Sailafei called from behind.
“She’s number 207.”
The blue-haired girl nodded and recorded it in the registry.
“Number 207, Qiu Meng. Entry confirmed.”
As the girl registered her, footsteps came from behind.
A red-haired girl walked in.
Qiu Meng blinked.
“She looks so familiar…”
She quickly remembered.
Liuna.
The noble lady she had met in the border town.
But why was she here taking the exam too?
Wasn’t she supposed to be staying in the border town?
‘No, this isn’t the time to think about that…’
‘Focus on the exam…’
Wei’erna walked over to Liuna, his voice softening.
“Miss Liuna, how’s your recovery?”
“Almost there. I can move freely now.”
Sailafei handed her a numbered sticky note.
“Number 208. Hurry up, you’ve got an exam to take.”
Liuna took the note.
“Got it.”
The blue-haired girl opened the registry.
“Please write down the department you wish to apply to.”
She pushed two forms in front of Qiu Meng and Liuna.
The options were: Physics, Magic, Tactics, Summoning, and Curses.
Qiu Meng looked at the words, her finger pausing slightly.
Physics.
She remembered her decision last night.
Remembered her father’s words, “Aren’t you afraid of getting beaten to a pulp?”
Remembered the crossbow her mother had given her.
Then, she slowly wrote down “Physics.”
Liuna, looking at the form, seemed a bit surprised.
“So there are different departments here too.”
She quickly picked up her pen.
“Then…”
Magic.
Two words fell onto the paper.
The blue-haired girl collected the forms and pointed toward the back of the hall.
“The first trial area is open. Please enter the portal.”
Not far away, a blue portal slowly unfolded. Mana ripples swayed like the surface of water. Nothing was visible beyond it, only the faint echo of wind and the clashing of metal.
Liuna was the first to walk toward the portal.
As she passed Qiu Meng, she paused.
“Well then, I’ll go in first. Good luck.”
Qiu Meng was taken aback for a moment, then nodded.
“You too.”
Liuna stepped into the portal, and the blue light swallowed her figure.
Qiu Meng stood before the portal, loosening her sleeve slightly to reveal the crossbow hidden beneath. Four mana stones glowed faintly in the shadows.
“I hope I can pass…”
She stepped into the portal.
The world turned blue in an instant.
The next second, she landed on a trial ground paved with white stone.
It looked like a small, isolated arena. There were no spectator seats, only high white walls and floating Observation Crystals in the air. The ground was etched with protection spell formulas, clearly there to prevent examiners from accidentally killing students.
Standing in the center of the area, a man was leaning on a greatsword.
He was tall and broad-shouldered, wearing the light armor of a Physics Department examiner. The greatsword looked even more intimidating than Qiu Meng’s entire body.
The man let out a whistle.
“Nice gear, little lady.”
Qiu Meng nodded stiffly.
“Uh… thanks?”
“But signing up for the Physics Department might be a tough break for you.”
The examiner grinned.
“This isn’t a place where you can just coast by on fancy magic tools.”
Qiu Meng raised her hand.
“So, has the exam started now?”
“Are you ready?”
The examiner pointed to a weapon rack nearby.
“You can pick a weapon.”
“Is it okay if I bring my own?”
“Sure. But at least grab a backup.”
Qiu Meng walked over to the weapon rack.
Shortsword, long axe, dagger, baton, staff, halberd…
She looked them over and, very pragmatically, chose the dagger.
Because she probably couldn’t lift anything else.
She gripped the dagger in her right hand, while using the fingertips of her left hand to adjust the gears inside the crossbow, switching the mana stones to Wind Element mode.
Click.
A very soft sound.
The examiner raised an eyebrow.
“Little lady, aren’t you going to enchant it?”
Qiu Meng tightened her grip on the dagger, not responding. Instead, she lowered her stance.
“I’m a special type, I guess.”
The examiner laughed and finally picked up his greatsword.
Magenta flames ignited along the blade’s edge, mixed with a kind of watery ripple. It wasn’t a simple fire enchantment, but a special form of mana created by mixing both fire and water attributes.
Qiu Meng’s pupils contracted.
‘Starting with a dual-attribute enchantment… This is a Physics Department examiner???’
‘Isn’t this a freshman test?’
Before she could continue complaining, the examiner was already in front of her.
The greatsword came down.
Boom!
Qiu Meng’s vision blurred as the blade’s wind pressure sent her flying.
She rolled across the ground, dizzy, but got up, pretending to casually raise her left hand.
Whoosh! Whoosh!
Two Wind Element bolts cut through the air.
The examiner clearly hadn’t expected her, with no obvious mana fluctuations, to fire such fast elemental bolts. The first bolt grazed his arm, leaving a shallow mark on his light armor. The second struck the sword dead-on, deflecting it half an inch.
Half an inch was enough.
Qiu Meng lunged forward and threw the dagger.
The examiner rolled to avoid it.
She took the opportunity to pull two bolts from her waist pouch, load, twist the dial, and switch.
Fire Element.
Click.
The examiner threw a punch.
Qiu Meng gritted her teeth and dodged. The punch whistled past her ear, making her scalp tingle. She retaliated with a Wind Element bolt, but the examiner simply caught it with his hand.
“A straight shot like this—”
He stopped mid-sentence, his figure vanishing.
No.
It was an afterimage.
The moment Qiu Meng realized she had been fooled, her collar was grabbed from behind.
Thud!
She was slammed hard onto the ground, and a searing pain shot through her left arm.
The feeling of a bone cracking.
It hurt.
A lot.
Her vision even went white for a second.
“Ngh…!”
The momentum sent her rolling across the ground, finally crashing into a wall… But she had no intention of giving up. The next second, her right hand grabbed her left arm tightly and forced the crossbow up.
But the examiner didn’t give her a break.
He traced a circle on the ground with his greatsword, and the sword marks ignited with flames. A fiery dragon emerged from the ground, charging at Qiu Meng with scorching wind.
Her bolts were swallowed by the fire instantly.
She rolled to the right.
The fire dragon slammed into the wall, the protection spell formula flaring to life. The ground was scorched red, even crystallizing into gem-like fragments.
Qiu Meng loaded, switched to Fire enchantment, and fired again.
But the bolt just hit the crystal, exploding into useless shards.
The next second, the crystal shattered under the sword’s edge.
The examiner was already in front of her.
The greatsword came down again.
Qiu Meng barely dodged, but he didn’t give her any room to create distance. The blade scraped along the ground, forcing her to keep rolling. She tried to reload, but his positioning locked her down, leaving no opening.
So Qiu Meng had to resort to more desperate loading methods. She bit the sleeve of her left hand, using her teeth to steady her trembling arm, and forced the bolt into the groove through the pain.
Water Element.
Whoosh!
The bolt was fired, but the examiner deflected it easily.
“Child’s play!”
The examiner landed, shifted his weight onto the sword, and spun with a wide, sweeping motion. The greatsword, wreathed in magenta flames, carved a deep gash across the ground.
Qiu Meng didn’t try to block it.
She knew she couldn’t.
She backed up, rolled, dodged, but her eyes were locked on the examiner’s feet, searching for an opening.
Finally, she understood what his next move would be.
The examiner lowered his sword and charged forward. The next strike would undoubtedly be an upward slash.
In that instant, Qiu Meng grabbed the dagger from the ground, leaped forward, and struck the side of the greatsword with the dagger.
Clang!
She was sent flying by the rebound.
An ordinary person being sent flying was just that.
But what Qiu Meng needed was exactly this height.
In midair, she released her bitten sleeve, stared down her opponent while quickly pulling out a bolt, loaded, and twisted the dial.
Wind Element.
Click.
She fired an accelerated bolt at the examiner.
He blocked it with his sword, forced back a meter by the momentum, his feet digging into the ground.
Qiu Meng didn’t stop.
Second shot.
Still Wind.
But this time, the target was to lock down his movement.
The examiner’s center of gravity was forced to pause.
After landing, Qiu Meng quickly twisted the dial to Fire Element, then bit her left sleeve again to prevent the recoil from tearing into her already injured arm.
Third shot.
Fire.
Boom!
The Fire Element bolt exploded in front of the examiner. The blast sent his greatsword flying.
As the smoke rose, Qiu Meng remembered the Ice Magister.
It wasn’t about power.
It was about angles.
It wasn’t about a head-on fight.
It was about making them think you were still fighting head-on.
She charged into the smoke, circled behind the examiner, and used her momentum to throw the dagger.
The examiner had just retrieved his greatsword and swung back, deflecting the dagger.
But that, too, was within her expectations.
The deflected dagger spun in the air.
Qiu Meng surged forward, caught it, and landed a clumsy, even awkward, upward slash on the underside of the greatsword.
Clang—!
This time, the examiner’s stance finally broke.
The greatsword flew from his hands and embedded itself in the ground at a distance.
Qiu Meng stood before him, panting as if she had just run an entire city.
Her left arm was numb with pain, almost senseless. Her right hand trembled.
But she still held the dagger, pointed at the examiner.
“Do you want to keep going… ha…”
The examiner sat on the ground, looking at her. Suddenly, he laughed.
“You pass.”
Qiu Meng blinked.
“Huh?”
“I surrender.”
He said it very bluntly.
Qiu Meng stood frozen for two seconds before slowly lowering the dagger.
“I… won…”
Her voice was barely a whisper.
“Huff… I didn’t let my parents down…”
Her hands were still shaking.
Her heart was pounding.
This was her first time defeating a strong opponent on her own.
Though she knew he hadn’t used his full strength. If this had been a real battlefield instead of a test, she would have been cut in half by that first swing. The fact that he could casually block two Wind Element bolts showed his stance was rock-solid. That final upward slash likely wouldn’t have worked if the examiner had been serious.
Not yet.
She thought from the bottom of her heart.
‘I… still need to keep working hard.’
The examiner sat on the ground and looked at her.
“Little lady, can you answer me one thing?”
“Huh?”
“Why did you come to this academy?”
He looked at the magic crossbow beneath her sleeve.
“From your fighting just now, it’s clear you don’t have a single bit of mana.”
Qiu Meng was silent for a moment.
“Why…”
She looked down at her hands.
They hurt, and they shook badly.
But besides that, there was a belief, something more important than this fear, that gave her the courage to keep going.
“I want to live a more exciting life, I guess.”
She looked up and said seriously.
“After all, it’s pretty hard for a desk clerk to travel the world.”
The examiner froze.
Then he burst out laughing.
“Travel the world, huh?”
“Yeah.”
“You’re quite an interesting little lady.”
He stood up and dusted himself off.
“Alright, you can go. You passed the entrance exam.”
Qiu Meng finally breathed a sigh of relief.
“Thank you.”
She turned to leave.
The examiner called out from behind.
“Our Physics Department isn’t like those Magic Department folks, running a bunch of random tests. There’ll be a written exam on basic theory later, probably a makeup test after school starts. Don’t forget to take it.”
Qiu Meng’s steps faltered.
‘Written exam…’
“…I understand.”
She walked out of the trial grounds with a heavy heart.
The moment she left, the communication ring on the examiner’s wrist lit up.
He raised his hand.
“It’s me.”
A low report came from the other end.
The examiner’s relaxed expression gradually faded.
“Yes, it’s her.”
“Shalin’s daughter.”
He paused, his brow furrowing.
“Yeah, I know. Those Ice Shadow people are still too reckless.”
“Don’t worry, we’ll handle it.”
The communication ended.
The examiner hoisted his greatsword onto his shoulder and looked in the direction Qiu Meng had gone. He clicked his tongue softly.
“A bunch of northern barbarians… ugh.”
“It’s a wonder they managed to join the Four Alliance Merchants’ Union.”
He turned and walked toward the exit.
“Whatever. Let’s go find the Vice President first and see what advice he has.”
The morning sunlight shone through the high windows outside the trial grounds.
The freshman exams had only just begun.
But the matter of the Four Alliance Merchants’ Union was far from over.