Infinite Realm

"Prepare yourselves for the written test."

At an arena that was located behind the Blacksmith guild\'s administrative building, just beside the dormitory, the entire 300+ contestants as well as the massive crowd of spectators had gathered for the event. The Blacksmith guild had not expected such a large turn-up in regards to the spectating parties before so they had to change the venue to enable the tournament to proceed with ease.

Compared to the previous hall, the arena was very big and could comfortably house 3000 individuals. It was recently developed but didn\'t belong to the Blacksmith Guild. Rather, it was a joint project by the Blacksmith guild and the Scribe guild, which was just opposite the two, for the city. Due to the large number of attendees, the Blacksmith guild decided to relocate the venue for the tournament to the arena.

On the stage of the arena were the 300+ contestants all standing spaced out from each other. Similar to the square formation of a battalion, the participants of the tournament were each separated an arm\'s length away from each other to prevent communication. 

"You should all know that communication is heavily shunned and prohibited in this part of the tournament. And to make sure that that stays true, there are a few runes that would help us ensure it." Kolin said. 

Following that, green runes circled the feet of each contestant as a light green barrier arose and enclosed them within it. Every contestant was enclosed in their barrier, separated from the outside world as well each other. To the spectators, they could see the contestants in the green barrier, but as for the stars of the event, the contestants, they weren\'t able to see or hear anything from the outside, apart from Kolin\'s voice.

The arena, being a work of the Scribe guild, was decorated with assorted runes of varying functions. There were defensive runes as well as support type and miscellaneous runes. The green barrier was one such miscellaneous rune made for tournaments like this, that prevented communication, in mind. Apart from the officiating party\'s voice, anyone within the barrier would be unable to see or hear the voice of another, even if they were just one step away from each other.

"The questions would appear on the green barrier and you\'re required to answer them either by voice command or touch, depending on your liking."

"Remember, you have exactly one and a half hours to be done with the test which comprises of 120 questions. You don\'t need to complete all the questions, heck, it isn\'t even necessary for you to answer them." Kolin gave a strange smile.

"This isn\'t like some high school exam where your future or whatever depends on some bunch of scripts. There\'s no failure here and your performance depends on yourself. Only those interested in winning and those interested in proving themselves should bother about the test. As for the rest, you can just slack around till the timer is over, I don\'t care."

"This old man sure is grumpy." 

Some players began commenting on Kolin\'s behaviour. Some of them had already guessed him to be a grumpy old fellow due to the flourishing white beard on his chin, but some had initially thought different. However, after this speech of his, they had all managed to come to one very important decision, old man Kolin was probably single.

"The written test begins now!"

*Bang*

Following the explosive sound, a bunch of writings appeared on the individual barriers of each contestant. The format of the questions was the same as an objective test with a few subjective questions. All in all, the objectives numbered about 80 while the remaining 40 was split between subjectives and a special category known as sub-objectives[1].

\'Can\'t believe I would be writing exams in a VR game.\' Sato sighed as he roughly glanced at the questions in preparation to answer them.

Truthfully, the questions weren\'t that difficult. Though there were a few questions that were meant for practitioners and not apprentices, Sato didn\'t have an issue with them as most of the questions were stuff he had either read in the Caventry\'s library or had experienced while forging.

"Time\'s up."

The green barriers suddenly went blank as the questions disappeared from the sights of the participants.

1 hour and 30 minutes or rather, 90 minutes, sounded like a large amount of time but when one\'s focus and attention is on a particular activity, they wouldn\'t notice the time pass by. The same was so for the contestants as before they knew it, the written part of the tournament was over.

Unlike the others, Sato had completed the written part of the tournament before the rest. Very few were able to match up to his peed and all of them were NPCs. In other words, amongst the player participants, no one was able to come close to the speed at which Sato answered his questions. As for whether the answers were right or wrong, Sato would have to wait for the results, though he was extremely confident in himself.

The green barrier cleared as all the contestants were able to interact once more with the outside world.

*Phew*

The vice-guild leader Kolin tossed a square-shaped object into the air, which ended up hovering at a height of 50 metres. Following that, the object projected down a screen of light which was filled with the names of every contestant present per their tag number. By the right side of the names was a column showing their respective rankings, by the left side were two columns, with one showing the tag number of the contestant and another which was meant for displaying their scores.

After just 3 seconds of being active in the air, the column which was meant to contain the score of the participants began to be filled up as the names were reshuffled in order of the highest scores. This reshuffling went in for another 3 seconds till everything finally calmed down.

At the top of the list, the name which stood above all the others was just one line of a word and more of a nickname than a name. However, this line shocked every player and NPC present.

S/N  Name          Number  Score

1.      Cloudsmith      778        265