The group portion of the test proceeded smoothly. After the third wave, Max stayed on the wall with everybody else and didn't showboat anymore. During the second wave, when he actually saw his teammates' powers and abilities, he realized that his first action had probably been largely unnecessary.

  During the lull after the third wave, Max quietly asked Amun, "So what rank are you shooting for?" With a fixed three-minute break between waves, by Max's calculations, everybody still had a minute and a half left before the monsters even began coming.

  "What?"

  Max repeated, "When you get done with all this testing, what rank are you hoping to get? Like adventurer rank for your ID card? Challenger rank?"

  "Oh!" The Blue Wizardry Challenger thought about it for a couple of seconds before hesitantly saying, "I'm hoping for D-rank. One of my friends got D, but he's a little bit stronger than I am, so I'm not sure. I know for sure I won't get an F though.”

  Max almost asked if there was an E-rank, but quickly remembered himself. He had looked up the ranks the night before, so he was aware that on Earth there was actually an E-rank. He reminded him that F rank was the lowest of the low and meant that somebody was only a step or two away from being kicked out of participating in Challenger activities altogether. It could also be used as a disciplinary action. Getting kicked out of the system would be bad. For a Challenger not to be in the system anymore, even if they continued to hunt monsters, it would cost them a great deal of money, something Max was all too intimately aware of after his earlier trip to the pawn shop.

  Max nodded and said, "I think you'll get it."

  "Really? Thanks. Hey, what do you think you're going to get?"

  "Oh, I don't know," said Max. "I'd be happy with just an E."

  The man laughed. "To be honest, I was kind of just being polite. I think it's pretty obvious that you're going to get a C."

  Max made a noncommittal noise and then stared into the distance again. The other man joined him soon afterward, and only seconds later a noise sounded that signaled the start of the next wave. Max wasn't sure how many waves there were going to be, but now he definitely confirmed that it wasn't necessary for him to go all out, even without using any of his powers as a Blade Sorcerer.

  The next wave ended up being some sort of man-sized flying monster, something shaggy with big teeth and veiny wings. Making a show of throwing one of his explosive beads, Max intentionally missed the monster some distance away before hamming up being irritated and throwing another bead that solidly hit one. After that, he didn't throw any more and contented himself with watching over the other four Challengers as they used a myriad of abilities to bring down the flying monsters or kill them outright in the air.

  Max ended up killing one more monster that lost a wing and still mindlessly ran forward, even climbing their wall. A solid, straight-legged kick–heel first–to the thing's face, knocked it back over the wall, and when it hit the ground, it lay still.

  The blond woman healed a few wounds as did the black man, but they could hold their own with offensive abilities as well.

  As he stopped paying as much attention to what was going on around him, Max thought about the rankings on Earth. He'd assumed that a C would be pretty strong. After all, an A rank was only two ranks higher, and A rank challengers were known to be quite strong indeed. Each rank on earth was almost exponentially fewer than the rank lower by the power of three. But there hadn't been anything like a rank system in his Quartet, and he assumed that it had been the same in the other Quartets as well. That meant that the ranking system on earth was unique to earth. This also meant the power curve would be much lower than he’s assumed.

  With this thought in mind, after the new wave was over, he casually asked Amun, "Hey, you know you heard that I'm a Summoner. I know that Lance Fraser is a summoner too. He’s something else, huh?” In his mind, Lavinia snorted.

  Amun nodded seriously. “To be honest, I’d even wished that I was a Summoner after I got back to Earth. It's amazing watching any clips of him fighting. The way his spirits help him become such an overwhelming swordsman, it’s...inspirational. "

  Max made a face, trying not to laugh, but the man misunderstood.

  "Hey, it's okay, man, no need to be embarrassed. I know you're strong and all, and I know that you probably look up to Lance. I can't even imagine how powerful and popular he was in your Quartet! But don't compare yourself to him right away. There's still time to learn and grow, you know?" The man nodded slowly like he was taking his own words under consideration, and Max put his top teeth on his bottom lip, keeping his face otherwise blank. But in his head, both Saliron and Lavinia laughed. Even Slick sent a mental text message to Max, a simple "LMFAO."

  Max carefully nodded and said, "Yeah, I knew of him in the Quartet but I haven’t seen him in a while. It's been a while since I've read about Lance. I can't believe I forgot this, but could you tell me what rank he is right now?"

  This book is hosted on another platform. Read the official version and support the author's work.

  "You mean in the unofficial rankings, right? He's been S-ranked for a long time now. But I don't think he's in the unofficial rankings quite yet. In the unofficial ranks it's mostly Chinese, Japanese, and Russians right now. There are a few Americans and some others, but no Canadians like Lance yet. Everybody thinks he's probably going to break in this year, though. Then he’ll be the only ranked Canadian!"

  "Excellent," said Max, trying to keep his tone light. "It'll be nice to have more top-tier Challengers in North America."

  The man beamed until the sound for the next wave came. This wave’s monsters were a couple of dozen spiky rhinoceros-things that could spit fire. Most of them were dead before they even reached the wall, mostly courtesy of the red haired man with the longsword.

  Max had plenty of time to think. If Amun believed that Max was at at least a C level of power, that meant the Agency reps might think so too. Max didn't mind even being rated as an A-rank, but actually getting it on his card was impossible. And he needed not to garner too much attention too fast, at least not right now. He decided that every two or three waves, he would do something a little bit creative or powerful, but otherwise ride out this group portion of the test, just taking the opportunity to show good teamwork and protecting his comrades.

  Two waves later, he stopped keeping count of the waves and just followed his teammates for cues on how to act. He very carefully made himself look just a bit less tired than they were towards the end, but privately he was amazed that all of his fellow earthlings seemed so weak.

  ***

  The individual portion turned out to be just as straightforward as the group test. The Agency representative had not lied. What was strange, however, was the lack of transition again. One moment, Max was standing on the wall with four others, including the redhead guy who kept getting more and more aggressive and destructive. The next, he found himself standing by himself on a far narrower wall and valley. Other than the size, it looked identical to the group testing area. Max didn't need an explanation for what had happened, which was good because he didn't receive one.

  Soon enough, a single monster came running around the bend in the distance, moving fairly quickly. It was some sort of feline creature with thick armor on its elbows and back, almost like a tortoise shell.

  This one looks delicious, said Saliron in his head, for a non-humanoid, that is. And for an illusion. But like a daydream, an illusion of beautiful bones can still be pleasant. Max decided not to ignore Saliron’s prompting, and he hopped down to the ground again, just like he'd done for the first round of the group phase. Then he ran forward, directly at the monster.

  The truth was, he was physically capable of more than he'd shown. In order to tone it down now but still go some distance, he decided to showcase strength instead of speed. Upon closing with the monster, when it clawed at his face, he pummeled the top of its arm, making it narrowly miss the strike. And then, as the monster cat's fangs closed in, Max grabbed the scruff of its neck, or at least tried to. There were armor plates in the way. He improvised and got a good grip on one end of the armor plate before flinging the monster away. The creature probably weighed about three hundred pounds, but Max's toss sent it sailing at least ten feet.

  Then he jogged forward, and before the creature had completely reoriented after springing to its feet, he decked it in the face. The blow wasn't elegant and wasn't meant to be. He was trying to connect with more force than was necessary, and he also let Saliron run wild with the strike.

  The results were predictable. With a screech, the monster dropped but began clawing around in the air wildly, trying to get lucky and snag Max, even though it didn't have eyes or a face anymore. Max just walked around to the rear of the thing and punched it in the back, letting Saliron do what Saliron liked to do again. The monster's back snapped, and it stopped moving. It was already bleeding out of the face, so Max gave it one last kick, as much for showmanship as any sort of mercy, and then headed back to the wall.

  A light flashed over the landscape, signifying that the wave was done before he was back. Okay, good, it's dead, he thought to himself. Then he got back on top of the wall and readied himself for the next wave, which ended up being five smaller, insectoid monsters that had a gleam of venom on their claws.

  This time, Max dealt with them using only explosive beads. Since he had already used explosive beads, he wanted to only use them if possible. He was trying not to disclose the other weapons he could employ using Bead Sorcery. His poison gas beads, for instance, could be a real pain for someone who was not expecting them in the future, and Max didn’t know how secret these tests were. If at all.

  The third wave was a single monster, and it looked stronger than the first one. Instead of a feline, this one was ursine.

  Max got down to close with the enemy again, and Celerian's power made short work of its bones before Max crushed its skull with a powerful elbow strike. He returned to his wall, and when the next wave came, it was ten large rat creatures similar to the first wave of monsters he'd experienced with the group. This individual portion of the test seemed to follow a pattern: he was going to get increasingly stronger waves of a single monster followed by a group of monsters in alternating order, either until they killed him or the test was over.

  He’d seen the other four testees fight during his group test. Based on that, he decided that he'd aim to do about as well as he could imagine the red-haired man and Amun doing together if this were a duo event. That would be a good stopping point.

  It was several waves later when he felt like he'd reached that limit. During a group attack by large stony monsters, Max deliberately chose one of his weakest explosive beads to throw among them. Predictably, it had very little effect other than making them angry. Then Max jumped down and ran forward to fight them with his fists.

  The reality was that Saliron’s power would have made short work of these creatures, like it had all the others. But Max instructed the dark spirit not to join in, and instead, he began a losing battle. He hit the monsters hard enough to break some of the rock on their backs but started to acquire wounds in return as well. It was the first time during the entire trial that he'd taken any injuries. Max paced himself, allowing the monsters to inflict realistic wounds until he slowed down further, taking even larger wounds, and then eventually fell.

  It didn’t take long for the creatures to maul him to death as he stopped resisting.

  He saw a sudden flash.

  Just like moving from the group test to the individual test, there was no feeling of transition, and Max was instantly standing in his own body inside the magic circle again. He realized he had made a mistake when he looked around and noticed that he was the only testee left in the circles, and the others looked like they had been sitting down against the wall for some time.

  He stepped out of the circle. At the same time, several Agency employees rushed over to him. One of them, an overenthusiastic man Max hadn’t seen before, shook his hand and said, "A pleasure to watch your test, sir. Your name's Max, right? It was a pleasure to watch."

  From his new vantage point, Max could spot video screens in an alcove that he hadn't been able to see before. All of the screens were currently showing a paused third-person view of Max's body getting torn apart by the monsters. "Uh, thanks," said Max. "So what rank am I going to get?"

  Another Agency employee, a young woman, smiled brightly and said, "We've already sent the command to the printers for you to have a C-Rank ID to start with. Nobody even had to confer about it. I think we can pretty unanimously say you likely even deserve to be B-rank." She smiled again, and the other agency people looked just as happy.

  Based on Max's understanding of the Challenger ranks on Earth, it didn't make sense for the Agency employees to be making this big of a fuss for him being a potential B-rank unless he was missing something. If I were going to stay completely low profile, I think I messed up, he mentally sent to Lavinia.

  Her response was a drawl, Maybe. But how about getting some information before jumping to conclusions before you jump to even more conclusions. That was your original plan, after all.

  Point taken.