34-33-32… 6.
Every single second was spent with one goal in mind:
Get points.
Kiera had progressed fantastically—starting later than most but climbing into the top six within a single day.
Now it was noon on the second day, marking the halfway point of the exam. Kiera was satisfied with her progress.
Elana: 10,670 pts.
Beasts stood no chance against her, especially those below the third stage.
Only 400 participants remained, so the rate of slaughter had slowed.
'Serpes' and 'Arconis' still reigned at the top with 14,890 pts and 15,230 pts respectively.
For two hours, Serpes had briefly taken first place—until the dwindling population made finding prey harder.
The inevitable happened: top contenders were forced to fight each other.
Kiera expanded her Shadow Sense as she walked toward a new region, having cleared this one of prey.
Suddenly, a massive shadow—larger than anything she'd ever felt—rushed toward her from behind.
Cold sweat broke down her back. This presence didn't just feel strong. It felt… evil.
Like whoever it belonged to knew they were being watched—
and knew exactly where she was.
Her swift sword was in hand in an instant as she turned to face the threat.
If she had to guess, it was either the fourth-stage beast, or…
"Him."
She barely had time to react before a massive, jet-black scythe crashed into her blade.
It was unnaturally heavy.
The ground cratered beneath their locked weapons, her arms trembling to keep from being crushed.
"Impressive," a man's voice said—without a hint of actual praise.
Kiera looked up, confirming her suspicion.
It was him - the man with the scythe. Now that she felt the crushing weight of his attack pressing down on her crossed blade, she could guess his name.
"Arconis..." she ground out between clenched teeth.
Still trapped beneath his overwhelming force, Kiera struck from her shadow. A glistening black tendril erupted from the ground behind him, its tip honed to razor sharpness. It punched clean through his back, bursting from his chest in a spray of crimson that painted the leaves behind him.
Too easy.
Yet Arconis didn't so much as grunt. The shadow blade remained lodged through his heart, blood dripping from its tip, but his grip on the scythe never faltered. The pressure against Kiera's sword didn't lessen.
"Nice try," he said, voice calm as a frozen lake. "But it'll take more than that to scratch me."
With a sickening crunch, the shadow tendril inside his chest shattered like glass, its dark magic dissipating into the air.
Kiera's breath came fast now. That strike should have been fatal — or at least triggered the exam's life system. Her eyes darted to his weapon: that massive, cruel-looking scythe with eerie red veins pulsing along the blade.
She began gathering her magic for a mental assault, trying to read his mind—
"Don't bother." Arconis leaned forward until his cold breath ghosted across her face.
"I'll tell you my secret. I am a healer."
His scythe suddenly glowed blood-red. It passed through her sword like a ghost through a wall.
The last thing Kiera saw was the ground spinning before darkness took her.
The exam's life system was a masterpiece of magical engineering — death with training wheels. When candidates lost their first life, their bodies dissolved into shimmering particles, funneled through the Academy's ancient rune networks.
Over the next two minutes, the system would stitch them back together — muscle fiber by fiber, heartbeat by heartbeat — before spitting them out somewhere safer.
The process wasn't perfect.
Consciousness detached from flesh during reconstruction, leaving candidates adrift in a void where time had no meaning. Many woke up screaming, nerves still firing with phantom pain from fatal wounds.
Some babbled about seeing the afterlife. The Academy called it "simulated death," but to those who experienced it, the terror felt real enough.
Kiera's reassembly came with the usual jolts — the sudden gasp of new lungs filling, the electric tingle of skin reforming. Then the world slammed back into focus as her boots hit dirt, kilometers away from where Arconis' scythe had taken her head.
She was alive.
Kiera's fingers twitched at her sides, phantom pain still echoing where the scythe had cleaved through her neck. The memory burned like poison in her veins.
A healer.
The words made no sense. Healers mended bones and purged fevers — they didn't shrug off fatal wounds like scratches. And that scythe... No ordinary weapon phased through steel like mist.
Her shadow tendrils coiled restlessly around her boots as she replayed the fight:
His Reaction — No flinch when impaled. No shock. Like he'd known her attack was coming.
The Shattering — Her tendril didn't just fail — it disintegrated inside him, as if his body rejected foreign magic.
The Kill — That unnatural glow before his blade passed through her sword. Not just healing. Corruption.
Kiera spat onto the dirt. Excuses wouldn't change the truth: she'd been outmatched.
"Weak," she muttered, crushing a pebble under her heel.
Not him. Her.
Her shadows had always been enough — against bandits, monsters, even Vael during sparring. But against a true monster? She'd been a child swinging a stick.
A snarl twisted her lips. She'd been reduced to a footnote.
But the exam wasn't over.
Luckily for her, she didn't lose her points after dying for the first time.
Meaning, she was still in the race.
Davy hadn't specified what the prerequisites for admission were.
Odds were, performance outweighed points.
So, Kiera guessed sixth place was enough to get admitted comfortably.
Which meant she'd get her rematch.
She would fight him to the death.
She would sacrifice her second and last life, just for the chance to test herself against him.
Arconis.