“GRAWWR!”
A feral, wild growl sent shivers down the spines of all the students present. Their heads instinctively turned in my direction, and I only smiled back. A Cyclops, a monster that can kill up to ten fully trained soldiers with a swing of its mace.
Luckily for them, I had confiscated its weapon, making it a little less dangerous. Still, it would be a pretty good test for them.
“Professor, what kind of test is this?!” One of the students shouted. “Why is a Cyclops in front of us?”
Screams rang out all around me. Panic was taking over everyone present.
“We don’t even have our weapons!”
Oh. Didn’t know about that. Still, none of them noticed my ignorance.
“It doesn’t matter. You’re all gonna have to fight it. I won’t help you. You’re the Apex class; this much should be child’s play, right?”
All of them looked at one another, unsure of what to say. The Cyclops was getting closer to them with each second, saliva hanging from its mouth with each step it took. It was hungry and needed food. It had tried to escape at first, but it saw my face and turned around instantly, knowing that the students’ direction was the only way out of here.
“W-w-what should we do?” the student with purple hair muttered, her entire body shaking. “I-I didn’t study for this.”
I took a few notes of every student depending on the decision they took. Some of them were clearly used to letting others do everything as they hid in the back even though they weren’t mages. There were a few courageous ones, and most of them seemed to be commoners.
I wasn’t surprised. Commoners go through a lot more things than Nobles most of the time, so they have a lot more experience when it comes to fighting actual beasts.
With the group of commoners was only one other person, Darla. She seemed set on showing me what she had learned over the past week. At least, it seemed that way.
Suddenly, the Cyclops started running toward the students. However, it didn’t aim for those at the front; it aimed for those at the back, knowing they were the weakest ones. Not bad, you ugly one-eyed creature.
“All of you, move!”
Right as it was about to reach the group of scared students, a voice rang out. It was powerful and confident, pulling most of the students out of their reverie. I tried to look for the owner of that voice, and…found her.
She had long golden hair and pearly blue eyes. All the heads in the class turned in her direction, almost as if she had put them under a charm spell.
The Cyclops, having no weapon, reached them and started punching the ground where the students were standing. I made sure none of them could actually get hurt, analyzing the movements of the students under each strike of his. If anything bad were to happen, I could always save them.
The students started dispersing as fast as they could. It was all thanks to the golden-haired lady.
“We can’t run away from it!” she screamed as loudly as she could. “This is a test. The worst thing that can happen is for the teacher to help us!”
I sighed. That’s only if I want to… But well, I had to admit that she was the student who had impressed me the most out of everyone right now.
“Hm…should I look at her profile?”
I still had the folder with their information in my pouch, and I was honestly thinking about opening it to find out more about her. However, I shook my head; I would at least wait until the end of this fight.
“We have to fight it!” she said. “Mages go to the back, and the rest of you come with me!”
The students listened to her orders instinctively as they were suddenly getting more and more organized against the Cyclops. All of that because of one student. Impressive, I must say.
She pointed toward two burly students. “You two, can you buy us some time?”
They looked hesitant at first, but they finally nodded as they got even closer to the Cyclops, who kept attacking whatever student got in its way. One of them seemed to be a dwarf, and he still had heavy golden armor on his body. The other seemed to be a human, with only a shield. It seemed they hadn’t taken everything from the students, only the offensive weapons.
The dwarf’s body turned into literal rocks, one of their special skills called Hardened.
“Not bad. Definitely has potential as a tank.”
I looked at the other tank, and he seemed lost, just watching the dwarf with his eyes opened wide. The golden-haired girl seemed to have kept an eye on the dwarf as she noticed him starting to struggle.
“Quickly! We need to attack him with everything we’ve got! We won’t get another chance to attack him. Saintess, use your holy powers to weaken it. You, elven princess, don’t you have a bow hidden somewhere? We need to prove to the professor we’ve got what it takes!”
A blonde-haired girl nodded, and a glowing light appeared all around her body.
“My lord, please curse this evil being!”
A girl with long, pointy ears also pulled out a bow from a small pouch just like mine and drew her bow.
“Tell me when!”
I nodded a few times as I heard the identity of the people she shouted. A Saintess, an Elven Princess, a Vampire Princess—the director was right. This class definitely isn’t normal by any means.
They had pulled out weapons that they had kept hidden, not caring that I was watching them. It seemed the golden-haired girl had managed to convince them about actually being able to win against the Cyclops. It wasn’t a bad attempt, to be honest. Cute, really.
“ATTACK!” she screamed as everyone launched their strongest spell or attack at the Cyclops. A cloud of dust hid it for a short while, making everyone gasp. Unsure if they had done it. However, as the cloud of dust dissipated, the Cyclops was only bleeding from a small cut that it had received on its right arm.
Their attack had utterly failed.
It failed. But I couldn’t help but smile.
Those students really had potential.
