(A/N Big thanks to everyone for the Power stones and Golden tickets, they mean a lot. As usual, please don't hesitate to comment or drop a review. ENJOY)

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As Orion moved farther away from the trio, even while protocol guided him, his mind continued replaying scenario.

As exciting as the trial sounded, it was terribly inefficient, students that deserved to study in the academy or had the talented could be rooted out by the more talented and those with inferior talent would find ways to sneak in.

It was a brutal game of strength and chance, and unless you were overly talented or powerful up to a certain extent, there's always a degree of risk.

Then again, it could be what the academy wanted, maybe the whole point wasn't to pick the best 5000, maybe they didn't want all the students to be impressive, adding the mediocre creates a certain dynamic.

'That has to be it,' Orion thought.

Surely, he won't be the first to have thought of this. And if his conjencture was right, then this trial was a lesson in itself, a lesson learnt at the cost of others.

'Life certainly wasn't fair and they'd manage to capture that in a single trial' Orion thought.

Of course he'd recognized Irelle, her mana signature had stood out like a beacon drawing him.

He didn't have to memories the signatures of everyone of the 9923 students, and he certainly didn't have enough time or concentration to do that, but the 65 he'd counted for the whole Magnum 1, he'd put them directly in his head, his intelligence stat wasn't for show.

At first he'd thought of her as another brat to take points from but his fight with them and her attempt had made him reconsider, naïve probably but he had a feeling she would be a better help for him in the future despite her pride and his conscience also had a minor part to play in his decision.

He snapped out of his trance suddenly, the shift in the wind and the mana vibrations in the ground, was immediately picked up by his senses, protocol immediately absorbing the information and laying the pathway to his next actions.

He stopped immediately, changed directions and surged forward. While running, he could pick up the outline of a shrine not too far from his position but he simply ignored it.

He wasn't interested in shrines, sitting and waiting didn't suit him and he was solely focused on grinding protocol and what better way to do that than put some children in their place.

He jumped over a root and was about to land when protocol suddenly scrambled, his mind immediately went on guard and he Aether stepped away.

He landed on the thick branch of a tree, his senses alert but surprisingly, nothing happened, the clearing was as still as peaceful as could be.

This was the first time protocol had scrambled, meaning he had no experience what exactly went wrong but if he had to guess.

'An action more complicated than Low proficiency protocol can handle.' Orion thought.

Now that intrigued Orion, he was quite glad he'd chosen to experiment with protocol now.

His mind immediately tried to dissect the problem.

'If protocol activated here but got scrambled, then something complicated must have happened and considering its still low proficiency, I doubt it's that complicated. Still it scrambled, and so far nothing has happened. So its either the action was useless or –'

He coated his hands with mana and stabbed into the bark of the tree, piercing it and grabbing a chunk before aiming and throwing it with as much force as possible to the floor immediately after the root.

And sure enough, the ground depressed revealing the layer of sharp wooden spikes beneath.

"Haha" Orion chuckled, amused.

'Someone actually took the time prepare something like this.' Orion thought amazed.

Of course it didn't violate the non lethal rules, the soikes were only enough to give injury to the foot and render the person unable to move well.

Orion's eyes canned the terrain.

'And if that's the goal, they'd either need to have a means of finding out when the trap works or they'd have to be nearby and considering the simplicity of the trap, I'd vote the latter.' Orion thought, shrinking his senses to increase awareness of his surrounding.

Sure enough, he sensed someone in the trunk of a tree not far from the trap, probably confused by the sound and the absence of a shout or scream.

Orion Aether stepped to the front of the trunk and knocked.

"Hello, your trap didn't work. I was wondering what would be your next course of action." Orion said.

He sensed how the person tensed up before relunctantly revealing herself and stepping out of the trunk.

She had short brown hair in a bob cut, but what stood out was the ferocious expression on her face, her choice of dressing and the amount of muscle that was on the surprisingly not so young girl, plus her height.

Her clothing wasn't revealing in down below but up-ward, she wore a small tank top that exposed her muscular arms and abs, covering her already grown bust, and on her face was a pair of deep silver eyes and a ferocious expression.

Orion was dumbfounded, his eyebrows up like he'd just seen the most astonishing thing in this world.

'She definitely isn't 10, more like 15' Orion thought, astonished.

She was definitely taller than he was and he was quite tall.

"How did you dodge the trap," She asked, her voice coming out in a bitter growl.

Orion snapped out of his trance.

"I don't really think that matters. How old are you." Orion couldn't help but blurt out.

The girl immediately frowned, her body taking on an offensive posture.

'Ok that definitely pissed her off.' Orion thought,

He activated protocol, already closing his eyes, if she was 15 she'd definitely be formidable although that raised questions about her methods but he chose to ignore it for now.

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