I don’t know why I expected the next area to be underground. It was labeled as a field. So when I found myself stepping out of a building and nearly blinded by the sun, I was a bit surprised. There wasn’t even a dome overhead. The field was truly outside.

  Actually, the more I thought about it, the more it made sense. If we were going to have classes on survival, we needed to have someplace where the elements would be free to do their worst.

  Where the sun would bake down on us on hot days. Where the dirt that had been turned to mud by the rain would drag at us. Things that would happen out in the world beyond the walls. And I already hated it.

  Give me a workshop and a project and I won’t care about how dirty or hard the work is. But put me outside and ask me to run and I would turn around and run back to the workshop. Unfortunately for me, that wasn’t an option.

  Like the arena, the field in front of me was covered in sheets of white and gray. Unlike the arena, the machines projecting them were clearly visible. At opposite corners sat two massive units. And by massive, I mean twice as tall as me and a quarter as wide. Cables the size of my forearm snaked from both and into a nearby hole. They practically vibrated in my senses with the amount of mana that rushed through them.

  I wanted to go over to one of the machines. To see how they had managed to give projections a physical aspect, but I didn’t have time. Though maybe during lunch I could take the time to tear one of them apart. Surely no one would mind. So long as I put it all back the way I had found it. Right?

  With an effort of will, I forced my eyes off the nearest machine and to the sky over the field. The same sentence as the one in the arena hovered there.

  Find the nearest open section, enter, and follow the instructions provided.

  Eyes glancing around me, I realized I was the only one not moving toward a section. So, with a hop, I got moving. As soon as I saw an open section, I raced for it and found myself in a small space that almost matched the arena.

  At my entrance, the man in the corner looked up from his pad. “An object will appear in the center of this space. Name it, list any potential uses, where it might be found, and anything special you notice.”

  He didn’t give me a moment to ask a question. With a tap on his pad, something appeared in the center of the space. The odd plant took me a moment to identify. Mostly because I had never seen one in person.

  “Lilly of the Valley.” Wait, did he want the common name or the one that it was actually called? Might as well play it safe. “Otherwise known as Lycan Wart.” I know, such an odd name. But that is what someone named it. Hence why everyone knew it as Lilly of the Valley.

  “It is used in many basic healing ointments. Areas with stagnant water tend to have patches here and there.” Of course, those same places had swarms of bugs. I shivered at the idea of even going near such a place.

  When I didn’t say anything more, he tapped his pad. The plant vanished to be replaced with a rock. Not knowing what I was looking at, I shook my head. The monster that replaced it was one I did know.

  “Kinetic Boars.” Also known as cannon balls, mostly thanks to their tendency of not being able to stop once they got going. “Their meat is good, if a bit lean. Their bones also make great reagents in various physical compounds.” Who wouldn’t want a bomb that had a bigger explosive radius? Not for in the city, obviously. But for traps and swarm thinning. “Found on various plains.”

  With a tap, we moved onto the next item. This continued for what felt like forever. Long enough that I needed a drink. Not that I thought I would be allowed to go get one. The items ranged from various plants, monsters, and a few minerals to machines and their components. To say that I had a much easier time expounding on about all the odd things I noticed about each machine and part would be an understatement.

  But eventually we moved on. “As with the previous test, an item or items will appear. You will demonstrate how to use it.” With a tap of his finger, a pair of small metal rods, a coil of rope, and a piece of fabric appeared.

  It was an odd assortment of items, and each had a multitude of uses. Combined, though, there was only one option I could think of. The tent, while not pretty, went together quite well.

  Unfortunately for me, the moment it finished, it vanished. Scattered in its place were an assortment of metal pieces and a mana pack. The mana pack was the thing that gave the item away. With deft hands, I reassembled the small pistol. All the while making sure that my finger stayed off the trigger and that the barrel always pointed toward the ground.

  When the mana pack slid into the handle, a small target appeared on one of the walls. I knew I had to shoot it, but I also worried that the gun would work. Sure, it was a holographic item, but the hologram had mass. It felt solid. Real. What if the projectiles that came out of the end were just as physical?

  Before I could make a decision, the gun and the target vanished. A small circuit board and a probe appeared next to me. My hands went to work checking over the circuit even as my mind fought with itself over the whole gun issue.

  Before I knew it, the next items appeared. Thin and made of some tough and magically enhanced metal, the carving knife fit snuggly into the palm of my hand. Still, knowing how to hold a tool didn’t mean one knew how to use it because I had no clue how to butcher the small monster in front of me.

  As the test continued, I was presented with tougher and odder combinations. I had few issues with anything related to machines and repair. Everything else? It was a crap shoot.

  To this day, nothing about alchemy made sense to me, and it showed. Then there was the skills and items for hunting outside the city. Material treatment, harvesting, and even using a compass. I failed at each.

  With each failure, I grew annoyed. At this place for these tests, at the tests themselves, and most especially at myself. These were things I didn’t need to know but should have learned anyway, as it might make some goods and materials cheaper to buy wholesale and harvest them myself.

  Then the test was done. “I will present you with a scenario, then a selection of items will appear. Tell me what you would use and how.” He waited a second before giving me the first scenario. “A small apartment building that was scheduled for demolition has just collapsed in front of you. Just before it did, you saw three people working in the lobby.”

  They had to start off dark, didn’t they? Still, let us see what they gave me to work with. The inch-wide and five-foot-long rod of metal could be useful if I got it positioned just right. Though I maybe I wouldn’t need it if I could somehow bypass the laser cutter’s limit of an inch of thickness.

  The rest was an assortment of wires and what looked like spent mana cells. None of the pieces would be useful in removing a building. Not on their own. I had ideas, but each required something I was missing. It didn’t help that I knew that, somewhere, a stopwatch was running.

  Finally, I gave up. There was no way to move forward without some risk. So there was no real choice but to go with the hail marry that kicked around in the back of my mind. Sure, the laser wouldn’t work after today, and the cells might explode, but fuck it.

  Just as my hands reached for the laser, his words came back to me. ‘Tell me what you would use and how.’ He didn’t say show him. He said tell him. God. I wanted to strangle the person who made these fucking rules.

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  “I would take the laser welder and cut the two tips off and use something like the wires to strap them to either end of the rod. Then, I would strip each mana cell for its cathode and line them along the rod.” His eyebrows lifted at that. “With a pulse of mana through them and into the metal, they will fuse to it. I just have to make sure the cells stay intact, as the power stored in them can be used in conjunction with the laser to produce plasma. While I would lose control of the laser's intensity thanks to the mana cell parts, the non would allow me to control the distance the new plasma saw will cut.”

  My proctor didn’t say anything as he tapped at the terminal a few times. All of the items vanished as he spoke. “You are in an outpost that is about to be overrun by monsters. Your team is outside, preparing the final vehicle to make a getaway. Unfortunatly they will not be able to finish getting the last of the battery cells loaded.”

  A new assortment of junk appeared. From monster hides to a few raw mana stones. My eyes locked onto the stones as they would solve the issue if I didn’t mind blowing up the motor and destroying every circuit in the vehicle. A sure way to kill everyone. In fact, it would almost be easier to just blow everything up.

  That thought caused me to freeze. Why not just blow everything up? It wasn’t like the place would be standing for much longer. Plus, it would give the monsters something to eat and fight over while we made our getaway.

  “I would use a hammer to break the various raw mana stones into multiple pieces of relatively equal size. Then, using the various pieces of chitan, I would bundle three from different stones so that their mana is close enough to resonate but not close enough to touch. All while making sure there is nothing between them but air. Depending on how many pieces I have, I would make as many as I could until I only had one piece from each stone. Those stones would go into that basket.”

  I pointed to the largest basket. “With small, thin slices of monster hide between them. Then, I would place the basket on something in the center of the room. A table or chair. Near enough to the edge that a good shake would cause it to fall to the ground. As I raced to join my team, I would toss the various stones toward the monsters. A few seconds after I toss them, they will go off.”

  They were makeshift grenades, and boy, were they unstable. But, unstable or not, they would do the job. The kicker of using mana stones in this way was that the explosive yield was not linear; it was exponential. The more new mana stones you added, the more conflicting frequencies. Honestly, that basket of stones might even be a bit too strong.

  To my surprise, that was the last of the scenario tests. “You will be given an item and two of the walls will fall. Your goal is to use your item and theirs to make something to dig a one foot by one foot by one foot hole.” As always, I had no time to ask anything as a mana battery the size of my pinky appeared in front of me.

  Within a moment of me grabbing it, the wall in front of me and to their left vanished. The man in the middle didn’t bother with pleasantries. He just stalked toward me with a hand out. “Give it to me.”

  It might have been the test or how he spoke, but I took a step back. “No.” My voice wasn’t hard, but it also wasn’t all that yielding as I gave the two of them a quick once-over. One was frail and a bit sickly, while the other looked like he needed to stop with the enhancers. “Of the three of us, I am probably the best at making something to dig a…”

  “Even an idiot can make a bomb to kill a monster.” He didn’t let me finish as he once again reached for my clenched fist.

  With a jerk, I moved out of his reach as I demanded an answer. “What do you mean a bomb? We need to make something to make a hole.”

  “No.” While my words had him freezing for a fraction of a moment, he took a step toward me. “I was told to make a bomb, and I am not going to fail this test.” With those words, he suddenly leapt at me. My body barely twisted out of the way in time.

  While I heard him smack into the wall, I ignored it as I focused on the third person. “What were you tasked to make?”

  “Something that I could fit into a pocket.” He held up a bar as long as my hand. There was no way it would fit into a pocket in its current shape. Though, judging by the fact that the bar was made up of multiple metals held together by glue or something, it wouldn’t be all that hard to break it into smaller pieces.

  “So we have three different tasks.” I took a second to glance back at the idiot as he started to get to his feet. “We have to make something that fits into a pocket. Something that makes a hole. And a bomb that can kill a monster.”

  While each task sounded hard, they weren’t impossible given the right materials. It wouldn’t even be hard to make something that did everything given materials and time. The challenge here was the fact that we didn’t have time and we only had the materials provided.

  “What did they give you?” I asked the hancer, but then held up a hand to forestall any arguments he might have. “The sooner I know what I have to work with, the sooner we can figure out how to build something that does all three tasks at the same time.”

  That seemed to shut him up as his mouth audibly clicked and he lifted something in my direction. To a normal person, it would look like a sliver of stone, albeit one that glowed purple if held up to the light. The instant I saw it, I backed away.

  My movement caught his attention. “Um…” I stammered as I tried to figure out what to say that wouldn’t cause him to do something that would kill all of us.

  “Please tell me you know what this stupid rock is.” His hands jerked up and down as he kept pointing the rock toward me, even as I moved to get out of its path of travel if he lost his grip on it.

  “Stop.” I wanted to shout. Hell, I wanted to scream at him. But that would only cause him to drop the fucking thing. Thankfully, he listened.

  “Is that what I think it is?” The third guy asked. With a glance and a nod in affirmation toward him, I saw his face turn ashen. “Dear god. Please tell me you have a plan.”

  The only thing I could do was give him a shrug as I held a hand out. “Let me see your bar of metal slices.” He didn’t take a step toward me. He simply tossed it in my direction and slowly slid backward until his back hit the wall.

  I ignored him as I focused on his object. While I couldn’t be one hundred percent certain about what each metal was based on color and feel alone, I didn’t have any other choice. We had what looked like copper and gold. There was also the rainbow color of titanium and the telltale shimmer of one of the odder magic metals.

  The metal was odd because it was practically useless for anything other than storing wild mana while preventing any other mana from passing through. In fact, it was good for little more than gathering ambient mana for some remote outpost or machine. If not for the fact that it was placed next to titanium, it would probably have a decent charge.

  Actually, now that I had everything in front of me, I could see that there might be a way to do what was asked. But first, I needed to get the hancer’s help as I wasn’t strong enough for this part.

  “Slowly,” I emphasized the word. “Place that stone on the dirt patch over there.” I gestured at the patch in the corner. There was little to no chance that any of us would step on it that way.

  He did what I said without hesitation. His footsteps were quick as he moved away. I didn’t let him get far as I held the bar up to him. “See if you can break these bars without separating them. If possible, try to get them to be about an inch long.”

  No one spoke as he took the bar and gave it a good once over. I felt it when his mana flared. It caught my attention as it didn’t work in the way I expected it. Instead of helping boost some part of him, it acted like water as it flowed between his pointer and thumb.

  With skills borne from what had to be years of practice, the stream thinned as the speed and pressure increased. Slowly, the bar traveled between the two. A piece of it fell the moment the last bit was past the stream.

  This process was repeated a few more times as he sliced the rest into the size I needed. All the while, I collected them and got to work. A smack against a rock here, or a press against it there, and I had various configurations of the metal.

  The mana cell in my pocket found its way into the odd mishmesh of metal. A finger slid across a small piece of protruding metal. As a result, mana traced through the housing, twisting and turning until finally jumping between the pair of prongs on top. The mechanism was ready for the last step.

  Eyes closed, I took a deep breath to try to center myself. To prepare myself for what came next. With no choice but to continue, I made my way to where the stone had been left. It slid into its new housing without resistance.

  I was tempted to try the mechanism, but that wasn’t in the instructions. Instead, I handed it to the nearest proctor. “This item fulfills all the requirements.” She took it, gave it a once-over, before turning toward a wall and pressing the protruding piece.

  Like before, a spark of mana jumped between the prongs, but unlike the last time, the spark hit the rock, slicing off a tiny portion in such a way that it was thrown into the wall with enough force to cause the material to react.

  I had expected the explosion to be louder, but maybe it was dulled by the various pieces of equipment for our safety. What with us being in a small space and all. Still, the explosion managed to carve a small divot into the wall. One that lasted all of a second before suddenly vanishing.

  The proctor pocketed the item as she spoke. “This test is over.” With that, the walls around us vanished, and the three of them walked toward one of the side buildings.

  “So,” the hancer clapped his hands. “Anyone up for lunch?” His words caused my stomach to declare what it wanted, and something told me that it wouldn’t take no for an answer. Still, I wasn’t going to eat with the two of them. After all, I needed to find Bert and see how he was doing.

  With a shake of my head, I answered him. “I have to find my friend first.” Maybe another time. Neither of them seemed to care as I took off for the elevator. All the while, I pulled up his contact and sent him a ping. Surprisingly, the ping failed to go through.

  The system was probably too overloaded. Maybe I would just make my way over to the section of the academy that he was scheduled to be in and eat there. On the plus side, even if I didn’t find him, I would be that much closer to my next test.