"The rules are simple. A shot on target would gain ten points for your team, and if I hit a team member, that team member is as good as eliminated from the test.
"That's all. Now let's begin." The professor took a fighting stance.
The top students made signals between themselves before spreading around the professor; each of them looked tense, but that only increased the rage within them.
"Go!!" Troy prompted, and they all started closing off on the professor. Tension thickened in the air, and every student watched in dread and anticipation, but the professor was calm, as if they weren't worth the match.
"Do it!" Troy commanded and they all launched into the air, locking down on the professor.
Mid-air, they vanished, leaving for one second two pentagonal cores, side by side, one carried the human life existence and the other, the beast life existence, and above both cores an elemental core.
For Troy, it was an Earth core, and the same for Rowen, while Benjamin, with his octopus beast, had a water core.
It was just like that of Jayden, but Jayden was a dragon tamer, which made his life existence cores hexagonal and, more importantly, he had four elemental cores.
Team one's A-rank potential beast animated, but unlike Jayden, where Draco had the control when he took the lead, here the human body only took the beast form, giving the tamer full control over all activities.
Now replacing Troy, Rowen and Benjamin. Where their beast forms—leopard, gorilla and octopus, respectively, each landing with a destructive strike.
'Fools, you're supposed to wait for him to attack, then counter, ' Jayden thought. He could see how wrong this was playing out even before the fight started, making his body ache to want to speak up, but he managed to contain himself.
The professor's mana spiked to the left, hinting at the direction in which he was sidestepping, but team one was blinded by rage.
They all slammed the ground where the professor was but not before the professor sent the gorilla flying with a kick from its side.
Troy and Benjamin mounted a stance, growling more bitterly at the sight of their companion who had been eliminated from the test.
They rushed at the professor at their own will, without being able to share strategies with each other since they now spoke different languages according to their beast
The professor kept on backstepping with every strike from the leopard and attempted to whip from the octopus, but not before telling off his direction with mana spikes.
Each second it became more annoying both for Jayden and the professor.
That was it. The professor had decided he had given them more than enough chances to make amends.
In the blink of an eye, both Troy and Benjamin were growling on the ground until their beasts became unstable and they transformed back into their human forms.
"How pathetic." The professor spat. "This is a test, not a section for beast advertisements."
He was furious at the poor performance of the top potential students.
"That's a minus 10 points from each of your test scores. Next!"
The hall went stone chill with only the sound of occasional, painfully growling from the defeated students, and as more teams came, their fate wasn't any better even when the professor limited him self to using just one hand and one foot.
Some even surrendered before the test started.
So far, only team three had made the best progress but without a strike on target. They attacked in a 'V' shaped formation, striking from three angles and leaving the professor, who had pitted the group of girls, to just using a hand and standing on one foot, to now being pushed backwards by them.
"Enough", the professor shouted, then stamped a foot to the ground.
'Shit. Earth element' Jayden bared his teeth. He could see the grey burst of mana from beneath the girls, which was meant to be a signal, but they weren't capable of seeing mana.
The ground beneath them jutted up, throwing the girls into the air.
Like girls would naturally do, they were screaming with their high-pitched voices, but one of them, Zoe, was flying directly at Jayden.
'No. No. No!" Jayden could only take a step backwards, for some reason his body didn't allow him to move from that spot
Then BOOM.
The soft, pleasant kinda BOOM for Jayden.
She bumped into him, her chest against his face, but the impact sent them skidding across the floor with Jayden beneath.
"G-Get off me!" Jayden screamed beneath her warm weight, his face was probably crimson by now.
Zoe stood up and turned away, acting a bit angered in an attempt to hide her uncontrollable blushing while cleaning off imaginary dust from her body, when Jayden was the one who really swept the floor.
"I was expecting a 'thank you' at least" Jayden purred as he stood up. But Zoe, hummed, folded her arms, closed her eyes and looked away.
She felt shy seeing the way Tyler and Ryan were softly laughing, also feeling disgraced by the way the top students looked at her with disdain.
Unbelievably, in this case, Jayden wasn't thinking of the extra mile. Blushing in the face of something like that was natural for even a saint.
He simply went back to stand amongst his teammates, but that was when they started poisoning his mind.
"I know those soft things had put you on cloud nine" Tyler teased, bumping his shoulder into him while laughing.
"He must have travelled through the galaxies in just those few seconds" Ryan muffled.
As an innocent boy, Jayden just nodded and said, "You guys should just shut up".
The test continued with one failure after the other until the very last team was called.
"Team 24"
Jayden immediately picked up his egg and attempted to step forward. It was the time he had been waiting for, but now he saw the reluctant faces of his teammates, who also wanted to give up, like some other teams did.
He didn't need to speak a word to them, he knew just how to push their buttons.
He walked himself to the front of the professor, holding his egg like a badge.
Both the professor and students were shocked at his confidence, some had even started mummuring how his egg might have given him false hope again, like before.
Tyler and Ryan were both shaking. But if Jayden, the beastless student, could fearlessly walk into the battle, why not them?
They took the challenge and stepped up behind Jayden. Tyler and his Dodder vine plant and Ryan and his glass frog beast.
"If we're gonna get beaten, let's do it together" Tyler whispered.
"No one is getting beaten, just follow my lead" Jayden winked at them both.
The professor shrugged.
"Mr Logan. Isn't that thing going to be a hindrance?"
Jayden immediately knew he was referring to his egg.
"Not at all, sir," Jayden replied. He could already see the faces of some other students, especially Troy's group, grinning, waiting for the moment he embarrassed himself, but Jayden wasn't gonna give him that satisfaction.
The professor placed one hand behind his back, raised a foot, closed his eyes, physically limiting himself or maybe even trying to mock the lowest team.
"Ohh, what a pity," Draco slyly said.
Jayden smiled.
"Begin!" The professor prompted.