"Give your best, brother! I will be rooting for you!" Ariana cried, her tiny hand clenched into a fist as she jumped into the air.
Alex nodded at his little sister's enthusiasm. She was clearly trying to motivate him, though she did not quite know what to say, and simply went with the flow.
He stood outside the academy walls with his family. They all seemed worried, but at least no one asked him why he had not come to the dining room the night before. Apparently, his father had also skipped dinner, leaving only his mother and sister at the table. With both father and son absent, his mother must have guessed that something had happened, so she did not go to his room to question him. From what he learned, his mother had even kept his little sister from coming into his room to invite him for dinner. He found this out from his sister, who, for reasons of her own, ended up sharing everything with him that morning while they drank tea together. His sister was likely trying to find the answer, but he did not reveal it to her at all. It was something that he would take to his death and not reveal it to her.
Today, there were not as many people as there had been on the first day. It seemed only a few people had been selected for the next round, and most had been dropped from the entrance exam.
"Son, do your best and don't worry about the result," Alex's mother said as she kissed his forehead. Alex felt embarrassed to be kissed on the forehead in public, especially with so many people watching them.
Alex turned to his father, who wore that passive, stern expression across his face. His father had returned to normal, though Alex suspected it was only a mirage. Still, he was grateful to see his father back on track; he had not liked that broken version of his father, not one bit. His father looked best when he was tough as stone and towering like a mountain.
His father patted his head. "Do your best. We are already very proud of you, no matter how you perform in today's test." His father's voice was so kind and comforting that Alex almost teared up, but he managed to control himself. He did not want to become a mess like he had been yesterday; he would hate to see himself like that again.
"Dear, it is getting late. We should not hold him back any longer," his mother added, noticing the atmosphere was turning in the wrong direction.
"Brother, Mother is right. You should hurry up. The others have already gone inside the academy," Ariana said. Small wrinkle lines formed on her little forehead as she gazed at the gate, clearly worried that he would miss the exam by being late.
"Of course, my little sister," Alex replied, pinching Ariana's chubby cheeks before running off toward the gate.
Alex could hear his little sister grumbling to their mother about him, and he could not help but laugh as he ran toward the gate.
Before long, he passed through the gate and saw the enormous crystalline white building standing before him, its dome vast and its spires reaching so high they seemed to pierce the sky.
Alex followed the others, guided by marks along the path. He found the way less crowded; almost half the examinees seemed to have been eliminated. He sighed at how cruelly the academy had dismissed so many. He was not sure exactly how many had been discarded, but the path was only half as crowded as before, so he guessed half must have been eliminated.
Soon, he entered the academy building and discovered that the structure had changed completely. The lower hallway, which had once stretched as far as his eyes could see, had been transformed into something like a courtyard, with a huge open, high-rise ring-like platform at the center. Open space surrounded it, enclosed by a square structure filled with hallways and classrooms.
All the examinees headed toward the center of the stadium, and Alex followed them to the edge of the high, raised platform. He wondered whether the test would be some sort of tournament, where the candidates would fight one another, and perhaps only the top hundred or something would be selected.
Alex waited there, and before long, the stadium's surroundings filled up. He looked up to see academy students watching from the upper floors, their bodies leaning on the railings as they talked among themselves. There were four floors above the ground, he counted. Only the first three floors had railings crowded with students; the fourth and uppermost floor seemed to be filled with teachers, all of them wearing tight suits.
Alex soon spotted Princess Eva gazing out from the first floor. She was looking at him, her face carefully hiding the worry she felt. Beside her stood the girl he had accidentally bumped into when he was running to his examination class during the written test. The girl's white eyes studied both him and the princess with curiosity. They wore white suits with orange lapels, and two stars hung from their shoulder boards. Now that he looked, the students on the other floors all wore white suits as well, but with different colored lapels and varying numbers of stars, depending on the floor.
Suddenly, he heard a shockwave in the sky. He looked up at the dome above, and as if out of thin air, a man appeared. This was no ordinary man—he was strikingly handsome, with long, flowing white hair and eyes so pale white and deep that it seemed something was hidden within their pupils. His pale face was set with a perfect jawline. The man looked to be in his thirties, or perhaps his late twenties.
Alex wondered how there could be such a beautiful man in the world. The man's eyes swept over the crowd, and Alex felt as though he was being thoroughly scanned. The man's gaze lingered on him a moment longer than on the others, his eyes darting so quickly around the room but pausing for just a second when they landed on Alex. It felt strange, and Alex could not tell if he was being paranoid or if something was truly happening. No one else seemed to notice, since nobody turned to look at him.
"The next and final exam will begin soon. It will determine whether you are worthy of the academy. Only two hundred students will be selected out of the two thousand examinees present today. The exam will last for five days in total. You will all be teleported to a different space, and those who last the longest and achieve the highest number of kills will be selected. You may kill each other freely; there are no restrictions whatsoever. However, beware—no one may use any artifacts or any weapons, also no potions from this world."
***
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