A moment later, Meltlake was standing again, and she pointed at me.
All I saw was a single line of light appear from the tip of her finger, aimed right at the center of my chest.
Then there was a flash of pain and my vision went white.
When I reappeared in the waiting room, Sera was the only one in there.
No second-year student to watch over us, and more importantly, no Marissa.
I briefly considered just running back into the testing room, but it was pretty clear that I’d be breaking the rules that way. And not in a fun, “Corin always breaks the rules as much as he can while getting away with it” sort of way.
I turned to Sera instead. “You okay?”
She nodded. “Tired.” She coughed, clutched her throat for a second, wincing. “Can’t talk much. Fill me in?”
By the time I’d let her know what I missed, Patrick had appeared.
“Aww.” He folded his arms. “Almost thought we had her for a minute.”
I shrugged. “Jin still might.”
Jin appeared a moment later.
“Or not.”
“She stopped holding back quite as much once we hurt her,” Patrick explained. “The attacks she was using at first were just basic stuff, like Quartz and Citrine level. I think we made her mad.”
“Good. That indicates a degree of success,” Jin replied.
“I agree.” I looked around. “Anyone seen Mara?”
It was five full minutes before a battered Marissa appeared in the room, smoke still rising off her torn and burned clothing.
She had some sort of weird, unfamiliar crystal in her right hand.
“Man,” she mumbled, “That dragon was tough.”
There was an awkward pause.
Patrick visibly stared at the gem, then Marissa, then back to the gem.
After a couple minutes of explanation, we found that Marissa had rested for a bit, then run back into the test room once Sera had come out — much like what I’d done in the first exam.
Sera had directed her to the room with Meltlake, but unfortunately, there was a dragon in the way.
Marissa had then solved the dragon problem.
Unfortunately, that had left her too weak to do much of anything else, and Professor Meltlake had come up behind her and finished the job.
The professor showed up in our chamber a minute or so after that.
She was clearly uninjured, so it was probably the real version this time.
“Congratulations. You have successfully passed your final exam for Magic Theory class.”
We let out a holler of victory. Even Jin looked pleased.
Sera broke into coughing again afterward, and I gave her a look of concern.
Professor Meltlake kept talking, though. “You’re one of few teams to reach the floor guardian room at all this year, and one of fewer to actually harm my simulacrum.”
“How close did we get to beating her?” Patrick asked.
Meltlake laughed. “Don’t think a busted lip is going to get you anywhere close to taking me down, Patrick. My simulacrum still had about ninety percent of her mana, and about eighty percent of her barrier left. That is not an insult to your performance by any stretch, however. As first-year students, you were not expected to be able to hurt her at all.”
I nodded at that. The simulacrum was probably at least a Citrine-level monster, and aside from Jin, none of us were anywhere close to that.
It definitely reinforced the knowledge that Derek had been seriously holding back when he’d fought us in the spire. That simulacrum alone was more than enough to beat all of us — and the real Meltlake was probably considerably stronger. A glance showed her aura as Citrine, but I suspected she was hiding an Emerald aura, just like Derek had.
“Given the difficulty of reaching the end of the dungeon, as well as your performance in the fight, I am pleased to give you all a rank of ‘A’ for your final exam. Congratulations.”
We let out another cheer, except for Sera, who wisely kept her enthusiasm subdued.
“Now that we’ve completed the test, can we ask you some questions about it?” I asked.
“Of course. But keep in mind that you still may not speak to any other teams about the test. Some people haven’t finished it yet.”
“Great. Now, let’s start with the dark room…”
We spent the next hour grilling her with questions about how certain puzzles were meant to be solved. I was surprised to find that everyone seemed just as interested in knowing the other solutions as I was. Even Jin had a question or two.
After that hour, Professor Meltlake smiled and waved. “I’m going to have to go — I have another test to run. If you have any further questions, you can ask me at my office at a later time.”
I nodded. “Just one last one. Did anyone do better than we did?”
“Not many,” she admitted. “But one first-year team actually managed to beat my simulacrum.”
I blinked at that. “How?”
“That’s confidential for now, I’m afraid. But I can tell you after the end of the year, if you’re interested.”
“Very interested.” I wanted to learn every trick I could for future tests and trips to the spire.
I wasn’t surprised that someone had managed to outperform us a little — there were hundreds of teams, after all.
But beating the simulacrum?
I had to know who could fight like that.
I’d definitely look forward to finding out.
“Hold on, everyone.” Sera stopped us outside the building, as we were about to split up. “Even you, Jin.” Sera’s voice was scratchier than usual, almost as bad as it had been right after her first surgery.
Jin was already ahead of us, but he still turned around and returned to the group. He shoved his hands in his pockets, giving Sera a look of mild irritation.
The rest of us just turned toward Sera, since we were already walking together. Sera was still having trouble talking, but at least she wasn’t coughing.
“I wanted to say that everyone did a great job in there, and we couldn’t have succeeded without everyone’s cooperation.”
We gave her a series of nods.
“Wish they would have let me use this. We might have done even better.” Patrick patted the sword that he’d fastened back on his hip. They’d forced us to hand over his Dawnbringer replica before we’d even entered the exam.
It was a little irritating, but given what had happened with Selys-Lyann, I didn’t blame them for being cautious with our magical weapons. I was lucky they’d even let me bring in the transference sword.
“You still did just fine without it.” Sera gave him a friendly nudge. “Anyway, I had a couple more things to say. First, I would like to ask you all to consider being on my team again next year, provided we all graduate — which I’m sure we will — and that we have similar tests next year.”
“I’m in,” Marissa replied at once. “Couldn’t hope for a better team.”
Patrick gave a cheer. “Yeah! We’ll do even better next time.”
I smiled. “I’ll be here, obviously.”
Jin winced as all eyes turned to him. “I’ll think on it.”
Sera’s eyes narrowed. “Good. I would like to include you, Jin. But there is one more thing.”
Jin tilted his head downward. “Say it.”
She nodded. “You clearly already know where this is going, but I’ll say it regardless. If you ever hurt one of my friends again, I will personally feed you to Seiryu.”
He gave her one of his signature half-nods. “Understood. If that’s all…?”
Sera’s jaw tightened just a hint. “That will be all.”