My Roleplay System-Chapter 224: End Of The First Year Exam

Kate’s slash tore through the fog, a crescent wave of pure starlight screaming forward.

Bradford, locked in his high-speed duel with the goatman, saw it coming in his periphery. In a burst of lightning, he disengaged, leaping clear just as the brilliant arc slammed directly into the creature’s chest.

"ROARRR!"

The goatman roared in surprise and pain, staggering sideways under the force of the impact. It was an opening Bradford did not let slip.

Swoosh!

He was a blur of motion. His sword cut a clean, vertical arc through the air.

Splurt!

The tip of his blade bit deep, carving a massive, sizzling gash across the goatman’s torso.

Despite the grievous injury, the creature seemed unnervingly unperturbed. It immediately retaliated, its claw swinging down in a vengeful, earth-shattering blow.

BOOM!

The ground where Bradford had been standing erupted into a cloud of dust and debris. He had dodged by a hair’s breadth, the wind from the strike whipping past his face. Seizing the moment, he swung his blade again, leaving a deep, clean slash along its left forearm.

"RORAR!"

The goatman’s fury reached a fever pitch. Its eyes burned with pure malice as it launched itself forward from a squatted position, a battering ram of muscle and shadow.

This time, Bradford didn’t have the space to dodge. He braced himself to tank the hit—when he suddenly felt an invisible force yank him sharply to the side. The goatman’s massive form barreled through the space he’d just occupied.

Glancing behind him, he saw Bramble hovering gracefully, one hand outstretched, having pulled him aside in the nick of time.

"Thanks," Bradford said, his voice a brief, focused grunt as his eyes never left his enemy. A soft chuckle emerged from Bramble’s lips.

"You need not fret. Fight without restraint. I shall support you from the skies." With that, Bramble ascended higher, becoming the party’s eyes in the sky.

A slight, acknowledging smile touched Bradford’s lips as he refocused on the goatman, which had already scrambled back to its feet. 𝚏𝐫𝚎𝗲𝕨𝐞𝐛𝕟𝚘𝐯𝚎𝗹.𝕔𝐨𝗺

"ROARAR!"

It unleashed a deafening roar toward the heavens, and its rage became a physical storm. It began smashing its fists into the ground in a furious, uncontrolled rampage, creating massive craters and sending tremors through the earth. The very ground crumbled beneath its wrath.

It was too dangerous to approach. Bradford was forced to fall back, watching warily as the beast dug its claws into the earth and pried up a massive chunk of stone and soil.

"Not good!" he hissed, instantly understanding its intention.

The goatman primed the makeshift boulder, muscles coiling to launch the projectile directly at him. Bradford tensed, ready to throw himself aside—but then he saw it. A small, familiar flash of starlight emerging from behind the goatman’s towering silhouette.

Immediately, his eyes flashed with recognition and a new plan formed. Instead of dodging, he charged forward, directly toward the beast.

The goatman saw this act of defiance and was further enraged. With a guttural cry, it hurled the massive stone.

However, before the boulder could leave its grasp, it suddenly convulsed. A searing, brilliant pain erupted across its back—Kate’s blade had found its mark, sneaking up from the shadows. The throw went wildly off-course, the stone spinning harmlessly into the trees.

The creature barely had time to turn its head and notice Kate behind it before its world turned to white agony.

Lightning crashed down from above, a concentrated bolt of divine wrath that struck it directly between the shoulders.

"AHHHHH!"

It screamed—a horrifying, distorted sound that mimicked the cry of a man in utter torment—as raw electricity coursed through its body, seizing its muscles and burning from the inside out.

The high current flowing through its body would have been enough to kill any normal animal, yet the goatman displayed a terrifying, unnatural vitality.

When Bradford saw it even attempt to move despite the lightning coursing through it, he gritted his teeth and poured even more mana into the attack, pushing his output to its absolute limit!

"RARGH!"

The goatman spasmed violently, a shudder wracking its massive frame, but unbelievably, it remained standing. Its fur had been completely seared away, revealing raw, reddish skin that rapidly blackened and charred under the electrical onslaught.

Its convulsions eventually slowed just enough for it to make another attempt, one elongated, twitching claw stretching toward Bradford.

Seeing the claws mere inches from him, Bradford had no choice but to cut the flow of electricity and throw himself backward.

Thud!

The goatman collapsed to one knee, its body still jerking irregularly as it fought to stabilize itself. Dark, abyssal shadows began to weep once more from its form, and its glowing red eyes swirled madly in their burnt, wide sockets.

"Quick! Kill it before it recovers!" Bradford shouted, but Kate was already a step ahead, having closed the distance with her sword raised high for a decisive strike.

Swoosh!

Her blade came crashing down, aiming to sever its head in one clean cut. But at the last possible second, the goatman shifted its body with a final burst of defiance, causing the blade to slice through one of its horns instead.

Kate adjusted almost instantly, already swinging her sword back up for another strike, but it was already too late.

POOF!

A thick, suffocating black fog exploded from the goatman’s body with concussive force, slamming into Kate and throwing her backward. The creature’s figure vanished completely within the expanding murk.

Bramble swooped down from above, snatching her out of the air just before the fog could envelop her.

"Shit! What’s going on now?!" Kate cursed, furious that she’d lost the perfect opportunity to finish the beast.

Bradford had already dashed several meters away, observing the disturbing phenomenon with a deep frown, a bad premonition coiling in his gut. The fog continued to swirl violently but didn’t expand outward, instead coalescing into a dense, churning sphere where the goatman had fallen.

Suddenly, eerie purple flames ignited from the edges of the fog, transforming the dark cloud into a swirling tornado of violet fire.

As the flames grew more intense, a devastating roar tore through the air, echoing for dozens of kilometers and shaking the very ground.

Bramble, floating in the sky, suddenly felt a heavy, immense pressure bore down on him, forcing him into a rapid, uncontrolled descent. Kate and Bradford weren’t immune either; they felt their entire bodies lock up as if placed under a powerful, invisible restraint.

Almost the moment they felt this, Kate went pale as the terrifying realization dawned on her.

"R-Rank Three..." she breathed, her voice barely a whisper.

As the two of them crashed to the ground, Kate could feel the pressure of a newly forming mana field crushing down on them, stifling the very air.

Struggling to raise her head, she stared into the eye of the storm, barely making out the monstrous figure within. The skin on its head had been completely burned away, leaving behind a clean, white skull; the horn she had broken off was still missing. In the sockets where its eyes used to be, twin purple flames now burned, growing brighter with each passing second. Its body slowly rose, and jagged bone spikes erupted from its back like a macabre crown.

Neither Kate nor Bradford could move under the growing, oppressive force. Soon the goatman would complete its advancement, and when it did, all they could do would be to pray for a painless elimination.

"...What were those bastard instructors thinking," Kate ground out, her voice strained against the pressure, "putting a creature capable of this in an exam for first years?"

She watched in grim resignation as the goatman stood to its full, terrifying height, its transformation nearly complete. Just then, she heard a soft beep from her wristwatch.

"Did someone get eliminated again?" she sighed internally.

But the voice message that played completely betrayed her expectations.

[Ding! The first-year exam has been successfully completed. Beginning transfer out of the exam field.]

"Huh?"

Before Kate had time to process what was happening, the world suddenly shifted around her. In the next instant, she was kneeling on the hard floor of the open stadium, surrounded by the other students who had been extracted earlier.

She was still disoriented from the sudden transition but managed to quickly recover and push herself to her feet. A sigh of relief escaped her lips—she had somehow survived the exam. But when she looked at the faces of the remaining students, their expressions weren’t the grateful, ecstatic ones she would have expected.

Surely they should be overjoyed, right? They must have been the ones to complete the objective.

However, no matter where she looked, she couldn’t find a single person smiling. Instead, all she saw were complicated expressions filled with confusion and unease.

’What happened?’

As she was wondering, the announcer’s voice suddenly boomed throughout the stadium, crackling with dramatic energy.

"Boy, did I not expect that plot twist at the end!"

"Just when the advance unit were about to reach their goal—bam!—they encountered a final, fierce group of monsters! But they pushed through, heroes to the last, and finally made it to the outskirts of the castle!"

"Unfortunately, what awaited them was not the monster army they were expecting. Instead, what greeted them... was the captured figure of one of their own allies!"

Suddenly, the central hologram shifted, displaying the last scene recorded during the exam.

It showed the group of students marching wearily forward, reaching the barren outskirts of the castle. But what they saw up on the wall, tied to a post and displayed like a trophy, was the unconscious figure of one of their allies.

Kate stared in shock as she recognized the distinctive blue hair and pair of wings on the person’s back.

"...Iris?" She whispered, her blood running cold.