Chapter 345: Between Examinations

After successfully escaping the labyrinth, the candidates participating in this year's White Badge examination were all granted a day of rest. This day served three purposes: to give those candidates still lingering inside the labyrinth more buffer time; to serve as the necessary preparation period for the Examination Institute to set up the testing grounds and facilities; and to allow the magical girls who had expended too much magical power within the labyrinth to adjust their condition.

Most candidates chose to use this day to catch up on sleep, making up for the rest they had lost from running around the labyrinth the entire previous day—after all, just the first examination alone had left them utterly exhausted. But not everyone was willing to rest obediently; considering there were still three more examination items afterward, now was clearly not the time to let one's guard down.

Candidates with similar thoughts were all making the most of their time: some were doing extra practice, some were reviewing their performance, some were formulating battle plans for the next examination item. Of course, there were also candidates who were currently gathering for a celebratory meal.

—"Then, let us raise a toast to Senior Xiaojin's achievement of first place in this examination."

Following Senior Cuique's toast, the Fang Ting city team members seated around the table raised their glasses one after another. Under the bright yellow lamplight, the glasses clinked together with a crisp sound.

"Yay!"

However, among them, Lin Xiaolu's cheer was unexpectedly the loudest, and this unusual situation caused the others to inadvertently show somewhat surprised expressions.

"... What's up?"

Her companions' subtle expressions made Lin Xiaolu wonder if she had done something wrong, and she instinctively shrunk back a little. But after careful recollection, she was certain she hadn't done anything wrong, so she straightened her back again: "Aren't we celebrating?"

The other three were momentarily at a loss for words. They thought, we can't just come out and say "we thought you'd be unconvinced," can we?

This suspicion was not entirely without basis.

Because right now, "Who exactly is Senior Xiaojin" had already become a hot topic of discussion among this year's White Badge candidates. Some would feel curiosity and amazement at this first-place finisher who had suddenly appeared, and naturally there would also be those who felt unconvinced by it.

In other words, right now, outside, there are plenty of people who feel unconvinced by Xia Liang.

At this point, nearly ten hours had already passed since the examination ended. The vast majority of candidates had either already escaped the labyrinth, or had realized they were lost and voluntarily forfeited. It could be said that, apart from the very few magical girls still attempting to scavenge some reward points within the labyrinth, all candidates already knew the results of the labyrinth examination, and had inevitably noticed the codename "Senior Xiaojin."

And the way Xia Liang escaped the labyrinth was seen clearly by everyone in the observation stands, and couldn't be considered any kind of secret. Naturally, this matter also became a hot topic of discussion in the candidate community. Moreover, many Word Badge candidates who should have still been preparing for their examinations and hadn't yet started theirs also joined in this discussion. For a time, the name "Senior Xiaojin" became widely known, and all sorts of criticisms about her also rose to a great clamor.

"At least you, Xia Liang, are also my teammate. My teammate got first place—

?? What's wrong with me being happy for you?"

Probably because she gradually sensed something, Lin Xiaolu quickly redirected the conversation toward Xia Liang: "Although the method you used to get first place is a little... um, unorthodox? But isn't that still your ability?"

"Ha... then I really should thank you for that."

Xia Liang responded to Lin Xiaolu's "praise" with a dry laugh, but within a few seconds, the smile on her face collapsed: "Sigh, had I known it would attract this much attention, I should have run a little slower."

"This is only one stage of the examination; there's no need to pay too much attention to what others think at the moment."

Senior Cuique, however, didn't quite agree with this way of thinking, so she spoke up to advise: "There are still three more examinations after this. If you can still achieve excellent results, then others will naturally begin to gradually acknowledge you, and will come to view what happened in the first examination as a manifestation of how you're different from the rest. If your subsequent results are mediocre, and your performance gradually becomes ordinary, then they'll just say a few cutting remarks and won't consider you an opponent anymore."

"Ultimately, the main reason others are criticizing you now is that they don't know you yet—they don't know whether you're truly a dark horse, or just a lucky opportunist."

Senior Cuique swirled the juice in her glass, then lifted it slightly in Xia Liang's direction as a gesture: "But we, the teammates sitting here, all know your strength. We all believe that this first place is only the beginning of your rise to fame among this cohort of magical girls. All the criticism is only temporary, and will disappear as others come to see your true strength. That's exactly why this is something worth celebrating."

"Senior, when you put it that way, I feel even more pressure to the point of a stomach ache..."

Xia Liang pinched the stem of her glass, looking quite restless: "The big and small accounts I registered on Carrier Pigeon are almost being blown up by private messages. Apart from some idle gossip, there are even people challenging me to a duel in the second examination... what am I supposed to do?"

"Of course, beat them all back!" Lin Xiaolu said with a grin.

"You want to tire me to death, is that it?" Xia Liang rolled her eyes.

The "duels" she spoke of weren't actually private fights started by other candidates, but rather one of the procedures of the second examination.

Yes, when most candidates had already escaped the labyrinth and the first examination was about to end, the examiners of the Examination Institute announced the content of the second examination at the observation stands.

Unlike the first examination, the Examination Institute didn't conceal the main assessment content of this item, but rather stated quite clearly: the evaluation benchmark for this examination was magical equipment.

This could also be said to be the customary practice of the Kingdom's examinations over the years.

The items of the practical combat examination changed every year; sometimes neither the theme nor the format matched previous years. But the assessment of magical equipment was the one thing that appeared every single year.

This couldn't be helped, after all, a magical

girl's abilities could be said to rely on magical equipment for more than half of her strength, and the capabilities of magical equipment formed the foundation of many magical girls' combat methods. Therefore, the practical combat examination for magical girls was inevitably inseparable from magical equipment.

According to the Examination Institute's statement, this year's magical equipment assessment was divided into two parts.

The first part was for the examiners to test and score the magical girls' magical equipment capabilities. The examiners would test the candidates' development and mastery of their own magical equipment capabilities from multiple dimensions, and then give the candidates an initial rating.

The second part was to give those candidates who were dissatisfied with their own rating a chance to improve it.

The specific manifestation of this opportunity was actually very simple: nothing more than—if you think the examiners misjudged you, and your magical equipment is more powerful than they said, then let the actual combat speak for itself.

Candidates could challenge opponents whose magical equipment rating was one level higher than their own. During the challenge, both sides could only use basic abilities and magical equipment capabilities; the use of spell formulas, Mirage Realm, and further means was prohibited.

Based on the result of the battle, suppose a B-rated candidate challenged an A-rated candidate and won; then her magical equipment rating could be raised from B to B+, while that A-rated candidate would drop to A-. After that, if this B+ candidate then challenged an A-rated candidate and won, the B+ rating would rise to A.

However, if this B-rated candidate lost to the A-rated candidate, half of the examination points she would have earned as a B-rank would be transferred to her opponent. And when a candidate lost all her points, she would lose the right to continue challenging upward.

This was why some candidates had applied to duel Xia Liang in advance. After all, in their view, Xia Liang had only "stolen" first place in the labyrinth event by relying on the special abilities of her magical equipment, so her magical equipment rating was bound to be far from low. And the way they wanted to express their unconvinced feelings and non-acknowledgment was naturally to challenge Xia Liang and lower her rating.

Certainly, Xia Liang could refuse the challenge, but one only needed to think about it briefly to realize that under such rules, a candidate who completely avoided fighting with others was destined to be unable to achieve any particularly good ranking.

Even if a candidate could get an A rating right from the start, if she just clung to that score and fled from battle out of fear, then other A-rated candidates who accepted challenges and seized points would climb above her. And among the thousands of candidates, there would probably be over a hundred who could get an A rating. Add to that those B-rated candidates who were truly skilled at combat and could climb to A-rank... in the end, this battle-dodging A rating would probably only rank outside the top hundred.

If she were a magical girl with no reputation and no ambition, being able to cling to an A rating and muddle her way to a ranking of one or two hundred would probably indeed be satisfying. But Xia Liang, a figure right at the center of the storm, who had just taken first place in the first examination, would completely avoid

battle in the second examination—then she would truly be looked down upon.

This was also why, when Xia Liang rebutted Lin Xiaolu, she only said she would "tire herself to death," and completely didn't mention "not being able to win."

Clearly, she also had the thought of beating back a few challengers and proving herself.