Chapter 268
At the same time.
“Puhah!”
Having just resurfaced from the ocean floor, Maelyn climbed onto the platform, panting.
The moment she came out, she filled the air magic circle with air and checked her Tongue Pad.
“Six now. I’m getting two each time I go down.”
The intense early phase of the exam, where it was a “limitless free-for-all”, had subsided, and now everyone was focused solely on collecting coins.
By now, there were probably some students who had already gathered all ten coins and moved out to the outer sea to start racking up points.
‘I’ve got to head out quickly before the outer sea monsters are all gone.’
Replenishing the air magic circle, Maelyn dove back into the sea.
Splash!
A school of colorful fish swam by. The sunlight glinted off their scales, scattering brilliant rays of light.
If this wasn’t an exam, she might have taken the time to enjoy such a view, but unfortunately, she had no such luxury.
Using the flippers developed by Dick, Maelyn descended rapidly underwater.
Although they said it was the ocean floor, luckily the depth wasn’t too bad, so she reached it quickly. The real problem was attacks from rival students or sea monsters.
‘No one around, right?’
Maelyn glanced around, checking her surroundings, and then swam forward slowly, meticulously scanning the seafloor.
Keyzen must have set up some enhancements, visibility wasn’t a problem even with the naked eye. Still, coins buried in the sand were insanely hard to find. She had cursed Keyzen more than a few times while digging through the sand.
“Ah.”
Maelyn stopped for a moment as she scanned the bottom. One patch of sand was intermittently shifting.
‘That’s a monster.’
She placed her right hand over the magic circle drawn on her thigh and transferred it into her hand as if drawing a pistol, activating it.
‘Ice Bolt!’
An ice shard shot from the magic circle, piercing straight into the center of the shifting sand.
Immediate response. A stingray-shaped monster burst from the sand, writhing in pain.
‘Nice.’
One of the symbols on her deployed magic circle vanished. Each one indicated remaining charges. Nine left.
‘Ice Bolt! Ice Bolt! Ice Bolt!’
With dull thud sounds, the monster was pierced by shards of ice and collapsed.
It took four shots to kill one monster, not the best efficiency, but there was no helping it underwater. Everyone was dealing with the same constraints.
Confirming the point increase on her Tongue Pad, Maelyn carefully searched the area around where the monster had been.
‘Knew it!’
She grinned with satisfaction. Right where the monster had been lying, a coin was buried.
She carefully picked it up and brought it to the bracelet-like Tongue Pad on her wrist. A tongue shot out from the device and slurped it up.
Storing coins in subspace was grounds for disqualification. They had to be stored in the Tongue Pad or kept on one’s person.
‘Got points from the monster too. Next!’
Maelyn was one of the faster students overall.
When the exam began and the students were blindly fighting one another, she’d stayed on the platform and conserved her energy.
Then, once the chaos subsided and the others were worn out, she dove in, swiftly alternating between platform and ocean floor to collect coins.
Thinking back to the scathing feedback from Jane on the last BMAT exam still made her cheeks burn.
Pace control. Controlling her pace was key. She’d never make that mistake again.
‘Found another!’
She spotted a coin entangled in seaweed like a grassy bush.
Maelyn quickly swam toward it, but there was a monster hiding there too. A mollusk-type creature suddenly sprang out and sprayed her with poisonous gas.
‘Ugh! Again?’
A grade-3 monster, Pulpa.
One of the most populous monsters in this sea, it emitted poison gas from something like an anus, paralyzing fish or people to devour them, a terrifying creature.
Even with poison sprayed directly on her face, Maelyn casually raised her right arm.
‘Ice Bolt!’
Thud!
The Pulpa took the ice bolt head-on and weakened. Maelyn swam up and plunged twin ice bolts into its torso with both hands.
Green blood splattered out as the monster collapsed. Reaching the ocean floor again, she let out a silent breath of relief.
‘Even after taking the poison, I’m totally fine. It’s all thanks to Professor Belya’s class, huh?’
She hadn’t understood the point of the “poison-eating” lessons at the time, but now not just Maelyn, but many students were seeing real results from it.
In fact, students who had taken Belya’s Toxicology class could endure Pulpa’s poison without issue, while students in other professors’ classes were struggling. Some even had to climb onto the platform to start making antidotes.
Maelyn now felt a bit guilty for having once resented Belya.
‘If I place in the rankings, I should at least stop by and thank her.’
Her search continued.
After a bit more time, she found another coin. That made nine.
Only one more, and she could head to the outer sea. But when she checked the air magic circle etched into her diving suit, it looked like she’d need to head back up soon.
‘Agh~ It’d be a waste to go up now. Isn’t there one more nearby?’
As she started scouring the floor in a final sprint—
Shaaaa.
The colorful school of fish suddenly darted past her. Maelyn turned around to see what was going on.
“!”
Behind the fleeing fish, a monster larger than a human emerged.
A Grade-4 threat level shark monster: Gamban. In its mouth, a student’s leg—likely from Keyzen—was twitching.
“……!”
Maelyn froze in shock. Then, as the Barrier Gauge ran out, the student’s body was teleported away from the shark’s mouth.
The monster, enraged that its prey had suddenly vanished, rolled its eyes and spotted Maelyn standing frozen and charged straight at her.
‘Kh!’
She immediately tried to swim away, but there was no way a human could outswim Gamban in the ocean.
‘I have to fight!’
Resolving herself, she checked her remaining Ice Bolt charges.
Just two left. Spinning around mid-swim, she aimed her right arm. Gamban was rushing at her, jaws wide open.
‘Ice Bolt!’
The two ice shards hit Gamban in the torso with thud thud sounds, but aside from a bit of blood, it only enraged the beast further.
‘Argh!’
Its sharp teeth clamped down on her right arm.
The Barrier Gauge dropped shockingly fast, turning from green to yellow.
‘I—I’m going to lose!’
She punched at Gamban’s face, but it didn’t budge.
Her barrier gauge, essentially her lifeline, had now dropped below half. She couldn’t afford to lose all her coins and points like this.
‘Someone… anyone!’
Swish!
Srrrk!
Just as she was cornered, a strange green whip descended from above, wrapping around Gamban’s body like a snake.
Startled, Maelyn looked up—and saw a female student casting black magic with both hands.
It was none other than—
‘Claudia!’
Entangled in the whip, Gamban thrashed in pain—likely poisoned—and its grip on Maelyn weakened.
Claudia gave her a subtle signal with her eyes.
‘I don’t really get what’s happening, but!’
Maelyn seized the moment.
Instead of pulling her arm free, she shoved it deeper into Gamban’s mouth and activated black magic.
<Freezing>
The inside of the monster began to freeze.
Creatures living in warm seas were especially sensitive to rapid temperature shifts.
‘And freezing from the inside is even worse!’
With the poison infection and the sudden internal temperature drop combined—
Eventually, Gamban’s strength gave out, and it collapsed.
‘Got it!’
At the same time, her Tongue Pad updated with points. 1,000 points were split between the two of them, 500 each.
Though they had successfully taken down Gamban, it wasn’t time to let their guard down yet.
Maelyn looked up and stared warily at Claudia.
‘What’s she planning? If she’s after my coins...’
But Claudia didn’t make any aggressive moves. On the contrary, she smiled faintly and pointed upward with her finger.
Gurgle!
She was out of air. With no other choice, Maelyn swam upward, and Claudia followed behind.
Soon after—
“Puhahhh!”
Bursting through the surface, Maelyn let out the breath she’d been holding. She had really almost died.
Beside her, Claudia also came up and gasped for air.
“......”
An awkward silence settled between the two girls.
Maelyn kept her mouth shut, awkwardly looking away and pretending to be uninterested, then finally opened her mouth.
“Hey, thanks for sav—”
“I’m sorry for before, Maelyn.”
Maelyn’s eyes widened at Claudia’s words.
“...Y-You know, that thing I said about your grades. I don’t know if you’ll accept it or not, but I’m sorry. I apologize.”
Claudia spoke with a strangely unburdened expression.
Maelyn realized her demeanor had changed from the recently touchy, overly sensitive version of Claudia.
Maelyn quietly smiled.
“Alright, alright! What’s with the cringey vibe? They say people die when they act out of character.”
“Ugh, can’t even apologize without catching flak!”
Claudia, blushing, shot back, then tilted her head back with a serious look.
“I’ve decided to stop the boycott.”
“After running around shouting about student rights and all that?”
“Ugh, whatever, I must’ve been out of my mind for a while. So embarrassing. Also...”
Claudia opened her palm. The poison whip magic circle she had just used flickered softly.
“I think I misunderstood Professor Belya.”
“Hm—”
As Maelyn raised an eyebrow and grinned, a male student was silently approaching from behind, preparing a curse.
Just as he was about to fire it—
Both girls turned around at the same time, as if they had been waiting for it, raising their right arms.
<Ice Bolt>
<Poison Whip>
Dark magic of poison and ice bombarded the male student, striking his barrier repeatedly.
In an instant, his barrier gauge hit zero, and he was teleported out without even managing to cast his curse.
“Serves you right.”
Maelyn laughed out loud.
Claudia joined in. Then, after moving her lips as if hesitating, she gathered her courage and made a suggestion.
“Maelyn, want to form an alliance for this exam only?”
After a short pause, Maelyn brushed her hair back and gave a small nod.
She had accepted the apology and they’d made up, there was no reason to say no.
The two of them clasped hands.
* * *
‘There! Over there!’
‘There’s another coin!’
Keyzen students in diving suits were scouring the ocean floor in a group. It was a team of three.
‘Finally, I can get my first coin...!’
Whoosh!
Suddenly, a rush of bubbles swept past them, and the coin on the seafloor vanished. The students’ eyes turned in that direction.
‘W-What the heck is that?’
‘Is he riding a skeleton? Underwater?’
While other students swam down one by one, diving and resurfacing repeatedly to search for coins, Simon was zipping across the sea at an insane speed, scooping up coins effortlessly.
‘Is he even taking the same test as us?’
‘That guy’s playing a completely different game.’
Simon briefly paused to search the seafloor, then picked up his tenth coin.
With this, he met the minimum requirement.
‘Deimos. Let’s head to the surface.’
Deimos tilted its head upward and rocketed toward the surface. The students kicking their way through the water watched with envy.
Shwaa!
They burst through the water in an instant. When Simon pointed to a nearby platform, Deimos promptly swam him over to it.
“Good boy.”
Once on the platform, Simon patted Deimos on the head. The skeleton rubbed its skull affectionately against Simon’s palm.
When Simon turned around, two male students were standing stiffly, clearly frozen in place. Simon smiled at them and asked,
“Are you planning to fight?”
The two looked between Deimos and Simon in panic, then quickly shook their heads and dove underwater as if fleeing.
“Huh? I wasn’t trying to chase them off. Now I feel kind of bad.”
While recharging his air magic circle, Simon sat down with a thud and checked his points.
1st – Elisa: 2,500 Points
(Coins: 10)
2nd – Aoun: 1,540 Points
(Coins: 0)
3rd – Hector: 1,100 Points
(Coins: 10)
4th – Shatel: 980 Points
(Coins: 10)
While he’d been relaxing, the point gap had grown significantly. They were all students who had moved to the outer sea.
The second-place student, Aoun, had likely given up on collecting coins and gone straight to the outer sea to rack up points.
[Keh keh keh! You sure about this? First place already has 2,500 points.]
‘It’s fine.’
Simon bent his fingers, calculating something, then said,
‘Ten minutes, and I’ll catch up.’
[What?]
Feer’s incredulous voice echoed in his mind.
[Keh keh keh! You lunatic. What crazy stunt are you planning now?]
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