The freezing northern gale howled through the narrow mountain passes of the western perimeter, the sub-zero air biting hard against my exposed skin as I climbed deeper into the jagged black crags. The white granite spires of the Capital Sector were completely cut off from view now, buried behind the high basalt ridges of the Ashen Crucible. The terrain here was unforgiving—a vertical jungle of razor-sharp stone outcrops, dead, skeletal pine branches, and deep fissures choked with ancient, unmelting blue ice.
Unlike the central ravine where the loud, frantic screams of the main candidate mob were already echoing in the distance, the western high ground was dead silent. The only sound was the faint, rhythmic crunch of my own leather boots splitting the white rim-frost coating the stone.
I maintained a steady, unyielding pace, my posture locked in a state of fluid kinetic economy. The light iron shortsword in my right hand felt light, almost weightless across my palm.
My flat twenty-five attributes had completely rewritten my physical baseline. With every stride, my expanded mana pathways flushed clean, stabilizing energy through my quadriceps and calves, effortlessly neutralizing the natural incline of the mountain paths. My centre of gravity tracked perfectly along the centre of the rocky ledge, my abdominal wall locked flat to shield my lumbar spine from the jarring impact of the uneven bedrock. To any military scout observing from the high battlements, my movements carried zero civilian hesitation; I was moving with the precise target-tracking efficiency of a seasoned frontline captain.
Deep within my torso, the internal furnace of the five-day forge maintained its heavy, crushing torque. The unranked cosmic force of my hidden EX-Rank core was actively vibrating through my skeletal structure, drawing steadily from my mana reservoir to fuel the critical transformation phase. My newly bleached white hair whipped across my face in the wind, the silver-tinged locks framing a pair of deep, swirling violet irises that remained fixed on the dark ridge ahead.
I stopped abruptly behind the thick trunk of a dead pine, my body melting seamlessly into the dark shadows of the basalt wall.
Three hundred meters ahead, tucked inside a natural hollow where two rock faces converged, a small tribal scouting party was huddled over the remains of a slaughtered crag-beast. They were small, low-slung humanoids with corded green muscles, long, pointed ears, and sharp, needle-like yellow teeth that glistened against the dark frost. They wore crude pieces of dried leather armour stolen from past border sentries, their movements jerky and unpredictable as they tore at the raw meat with their long fingernails.
Goblin Scout
Level 4
HP: 280 / 280
Goblin Hunter
Level 5
HP: 340 / 340
Goblin Hunter
Level 5
HP: 340 / 340
The simple, unblocked lines of raw data stacked cleanly across my retinas, the numbers dissolving back into the grey mist rolling through the hollow.
In my past life, a Level 1 candidate stepping into a nest of Level 4 and Level 5 tribal monsters with an unpolished iron blade would have meant immediate core destruction. Goblins were not stupid; they were pack hunters that utilized low-angle tactical tracking, poisonous bone-tipped daggers, and sudden, frantic numbers to overwhelm an unconditioned triallist's defences. The noble heirs of House Aethelgard intentionally steered commoner squads into these exact mountain hollows every year, watching from the safety of the surveillance mirrors as the provincial youths were broken and forced to trigger their emergency rescue tokens, automatically dropping them into the lower vanguard grunt camps.
But to my perfect combat memory, their defensive geometry was completely full of holes.
The two hunters on the right were over-extended, their weight leaning heavily on their leading ankles as they tore at the carcass, leaving their rear flanks entirely exposed to a high-velocity lateral strike. The lone scout on the left was the only immediate threat, its long ears twitching continuously as its small, yellow eyes scanned the edge of the brush.
I tightened my fingers around the leather-bound hilt of my shortsword, my unsealed mana pathways flaring with an instant, cold current as I calibrated the micro-angles of my approach. I didn't use a flashy elemental skill or execute a loud battle cry that would alert the pack. I simply shifted my centre of gravity forward, my boots driving into the frosted earth with absolute, silent leverage.
The Goblin scout's ears snapped upward, its head twisting toward my position a fraction of a second too late.
Before the creature could even lift the crude bone horn hanging from its leather belt, I cleared the distance of the brush in a single, explosive burst of velocity. My light shortsword cleared the sheath in a fluid, diagonal arc. The tip of my iron blade didn't hack blindly at its tough, green skull; it slid with surgical orthopaedic precision right beneath the creature's lower jawbone, severing the deep lingual artery and piercing straight through the base of the brain stem.
The scout's yellow eyes rolled back instantly, its vocal cords severing before a single warning screech could escape its throat.
[+50 XP]
The single-line notification flashed briefly across my retinas as I violently wrenched the steel back out of the collapsing skull. The creature's body was still falling toward the black gravel when I pivoted on my left heel, my torso twisting with flawless martial leverage to redirect my kinetic momentum toward the remaining two hunters.
The sudden scent of black blood in the air triggered their primitive survival reflexes. The two Goblin hunters snapped their heads around, their throats letting out a pair of high-pitched, guttural snarls as they scrambled backward to reach for their rusted iron daggers.
The hunter on the left was faster, its low stature allowing it to launch its body forward in a frantic, low-angle disarming lunge aimed straight at my right knee.
A standard candidate would have stepped back to defend their base, but I moved forward instead, driving my left boot directly into the centre of the creature's exposed collarbone at the exact moment its weight shifted. The heavy, bone-crushing impact cracked the thin clavicle bone instantly, the sheer mechanical leverage throwing the monster's entire centre of gravity off balance and slamming its torso flat against the jagged stone. Before it could recover its breath, the tip of my shortsword came down in a single, crisp vertical thrust, piercing the thin skin between its cervical vertebrae to sever the spinal column.
[+150 XP]
The second notification rolled across my retinas, the stacked numbers fuelling the cold furnace behind my ribs as the ambient temperature inside the mountain pass dropped by another noticeable margin. Thin webbings of pristine white frost began to crawl out from my boots, the independent feral presence of my companion entity pulsing with a low, sub-vocal hum of raw satisfaction as it tasted the essence of the slaughter.
The final Goblin hunter was already in full retreat, its primitive mind completely shattered by the instant, silent execution of its pack. It scrambled up the vertical face of the basalt ridge, its long claws tearing at the loose moss as it tried to reach the high pass to alert the main tribal cohort.
I didn't chase it up the stone. Moving with fluid efficiency, I let my right arm relax, my shoulder blade locking into a stable throwing axis as my unsealed pathways channelled a sudden pulse of cosmic mana down into my forearm.
The light iron shortsword left my hand with an explosive, whistling spin, the balanced blade cutting cleanly through the freezing wind to strike the fleeing monster directly between its shoulder blades. The heavy iron point pierced straight through the thin leather armour and out through the centre of its sternum, the kinetic force pinning the creature's dead weight flat against the basalt wall like a broken insect.
[+150 XP]
The final notification dissolved into the grey mist as the hollow fell back into a heavy, dead silence. I stepped across the blood-spattered gravel, my hands empty once more as I reached up to wrench my blade free from the stone. The first hunting grounds had been cleared, my flat twenty-five attributes had handled the friction of the trial without a single drop of sweat, and the recruiters on the high observation decks were about to see their rigged simulation completely dismantled.