Chapter 270: End of Exam
{Jin’s POV}
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My head felt like it had been split open with a rusted battleaxe.
I groaned, pushing myself up off the damp moss and violently clutching the sides of my head. The world was spinning in sickening, overlapping circles. I forced my eyes open, blinking rapidly to clear the blurred edges of my vision.
Through the thick, iron-wood trees, I could see the sun of the Obsidian Woods dipping low on the horizon, painting the sky in deep, bruised purples and bloody reds. I had been out for hours.
Where am I? I thought, my mind sluggish and completely disoriented.
Then, the memories hit me. The massive Earth-Rending Ursa. The black lightning. Carving out the core. And then... the sudden, crushing weight of absolute mana depletion and Emma...?
I sharply inhaled, my head snapping up. I was sitting exactly where I had fallen. A massive, perfect dome of golden light surrounded the clearing, completely cutting off the ambient noise of the dark forest.
Panic flared in my chest. I immediately looked down at my left hand.
The silver spatial ring was sitting perfectly on my ring finger.
I stared at it, my brow furrowing in deep confusion. But... I remember her taking it off—
"Ah, you are awake, Jin."
I flinched slightly, snapping my head around.
Emma was walking toward me from the edge of the barrier. Her Academy uniform was perfectly clean, completely unbothered by the brutal wilderness. In her arms, she was casually carrying a bundle of dry branches, a handful of wild, purple fruits, and a couple of freshly killed, low-tier horned rabbits.
I narrowed my eyes, my muscles tensing out of pure instinct. Before I could even formulate a question with my spinning head, she spoke.
"You fought really hard and just passed out," Emma said smoothly, dropping the branches into a neat pile for a fire.
She dusted off her hands and looked down at me, offering a bright, completely flawless smile.
"I’ve been watching over you for the last few hours. I thought you might be starving when you finally woke up, so I created a barrier to keep us safe and went to gather some food."
I raised an eyebrow, staring at her sweet, cheerful face.
Jagged fragments of memory were violently surfacing in my throbbing brain. I remembered my legs giving out. I remembered falling backward. I vividly remembered looking up at her from her lap, paralyzed, as she deliberately pulled the ring off my finger to trap me there.
And I remembered the kiss.
"Did I really just pass out?" I asked slowly, my voice raspy and entirely unconvinced.
Kept my eyes locked onto hers.
"And you just... kept a watch on me?"
Emma blinked. Her big blue eyes widened in a portrait of absolute, unadulterated innocence.
"Of course," she said softly.
Then, her expression shifted.
She narrowed her eyes at me, puffing her cheeks out into a dramatically offended pout. Crossed her arms over her chest, the very picture of a slighted, underappreciated teammate.
"What?" Emma huffed indignantly. "You’re doubting me? After I kept you completely safe from all the monsters all afternoon while you were sleeping? Hmph!"
She turned her back to me with an exaggerated swish of her hair and marched away, kneeling down by the pile of wood to start organizing the branches for a fire, completely ignoring me.
I just sat there in the dirt, entirely speechless.
I looked at my hand again. The ring was right there. There were no lingering error messages. I blinked, slowly rubbing the throbbing temples of my head.
The severe neurological shock of completely emptying a mana core was known to cause intense, highly realistic delirium in mages.
Was that... I swallowed, looking at the cheerfully humming girl currently building a campfire. Was that just a mana-depletion hallucination?
I let out a long, heavy exhale, shaking my head to clear the lingering, chaotic fog from my brain.
Severe mana shock. It had to be. It was the only logical explanation.
Pushing myself to my feet. I walked over to where Emma was kneeling in the dirt, stubbornly ignoring me. I crouched down beside the pile of wood, picked up the thicker branches, and silently began snapping them over my knee to feed the small, crackling fire she had started.
The moment I began helping, her exaggerated, offended pout completely vanished.
She let out a soft, highly pleased hum, her bright, cheerful demeanor instantly returning as if someone had just flipped a switch. She pulled a small hunting knife from her pouch and began expertly dressing the horned rabbits, humming a light, bouncy tune under her breath.
We sat by the fire within the quiet, glowing safety of the golden dome. The roasted meat, seasoned with a few wild herbs she had found, was great.
As we finished eating, Emma wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. Her bright blue eyes sparkled with renewed, infectious energy in the firelight.
"Well!" Emma chirped, dusting off her pristine uniform as she stood up. "Now that you’re all rested up, let’s hurry up and finish this exam!"
I stood up, rolling my shoulders to test my mobility. The heavy stiffness was completely gone.
"Let’s go," I agreed.
Emma clapped her hands together, immediately dropping the golden dome. The oppressive, heavy atmosphere of the Obsidian Woods rushed back in, the smell of damp moss and wild mana instantly replacing the sterile warmth of her magic.
The next twenty-four hours were a systematic, ruthless sweep.
With Kyle gone, our strategy fundamentally changed. We didn’t need loud, chaotic vanguard charges anymore. We operated with absolute precision. I utilized my Debugger class to continuously map the topographical layout, pinpointing the patrol routes of high-tier beasts and tracking the heavy mana signatures of the surviving squads.
I acted as the silent executioner, moving through the thick canopy and dropping into enemy blind spots to swiftly disarm them. The second an opponent tried to cast a retaliatory spell, Emma was already there, instantly locking them down in impenetrable cages of hard light or blinding them with high-density flares.
By the time the sun sank for the second time, turning the forest a dark, shadowy blue, the massive, glowing runic extraction array finally materialized in the center of the woods.
I stepped out of the heavy brush, my boots clicking against the stone platform of the array.
As the forty-eight-hour timer finally hit zero, the array flashed with a blinding, bright light, pulling us out of the woods and officially ending the mid-term examinations.