Just then, Love came in and said "Congratulations to all regulars who have passed. I looked up and saw that there were 17 people here. Guess the hole in the wall really made it easy. Were they gonna continue with the normal tests or would there be an extra one?
"Please come with me for lunch. I have personally provided for the lunch. I hope you enjoy it as much as I will."
We followed him eagerly. All the stress of the past rounds caught up to me, and I couldn't wait to eat something, even if it was just cheap jjampong or ramen. When we got to the eating hall, I stopped dead.
Well, fuck. Guess that just showed how tired I was when I didn't pick up on the fact that the admin had prepared the dishes himself. Every table had huge platters of food. Unfortunately there was a cloud hot, eye-watering smoke.
The only thing there was spicy chicken.
Dammit! The hell was wrong with this test admin. I sat down with Cosmos and Nal-Kae who started digging in. Eyeing the chicken for some time, I scraped off as much of the sauce as I could and ate with watering eyes. I would never forget this humiliation of being forced to burn my insides. When I became a ranker I swore I would become stronger than Love and force as much fried chicken down his throat before he died.
Nal-Kae smiled at me, and asked "I guess you won't be wanting your chicken."
"How can you stand that?" I asked him in disbelief. "Do you like having your tongue burnt off?"
"Well, you've had your hair and face burnt off, you might as well finish the job" Nal-Kae laughed.
I threw a chicken at him and he swallowed it. Cheeky little bastard.
Cosmos laughed. "You seemed pretty harsh on that Yaan kid. There're plenty more idiots out there like him. Got any particular reason?"
I tensed, then just shrugged. "Nah. Stupidity just gets on my nerves. Can't stand kids."
Cosmos threw me a knowing glance, looked pointedly at Nal-Kae, then went back to eating.
Well, even if he did guess there was no way he'd know. Just so long he didn't bring it up I'd be fine.
Love came in and said "Greetings. I hope you enjoyed your lunch." Right, maybe we'd also enjoy getting our fingers burnt as well "and you will be pleased to note that the next test will be the last one today. Tomorrow there will be one more, after which the remaining regulars will pass to the next floor. When you want to, please go through this door where you may take the next test. Also note that there will be only one regular allowed for every 15 minutes. There will also be a limit of one regular in the testing ground at a time." With that, he walked away.
Did that mean we could just take the test whenever we wanted just so long it was today? What did that mean? Did we just go in? I wasn't the only one wondering about this. The regulars were all looking at each other. Everyone wanted someone else to go try it out. Go figure. The fishermen were all up for showing off in a fight where it suited 'em, but get them to do something they didn't know about and they got all scared and got someone else who had the balls they didn't to show them what to do.
Smirking, I got up and went inside.
Yeah. In retrospect that wasn't a good idea. I always did have a big mouth, also had a bigger ego. Going in first definitely wasn't a good idea, but I've always been easy to manipulate like that.
When I went in, I was in a corridor and there was another door in front of me. A mechanical voice told me to go into one of the three rooms in front of me. I stared down the corridor and saw that there were two other doors, one on each side of me, around 20 metres away. Damn rankers, wasteful as ever. They had all this room for extra tests but hung onto living space like a bulldog holds onto its meat. When I went in I saw a huge empty pit, with pipes leading into it. It looked like a square 20 metres across, but around 40 metres deep. That spicy chicken freak was on the other side.
"The task is simple." He said in that baby-voice of his "Using whatever means necessary, pop the ball at the bottom of the pit. Once you are done, you may go through the door where you will be directed to your room for the night. Good luck.
By now, I'd learnt better not to trust the admins in what they said. I knew there wasn't a time limit, they hadn't mentioned any, and admins could only hide rules, not lie. There had to be a glitch somewhere, but I couldn't see it. There didn't seem to be anything coming out of the pipes. I shrugged, and got onto my lighthouse. Shit happened no matter how well you prepared. Might as well just get it over with. When I got down there I slashed at the ball with my khukri and braced myself, but nothing happened except for the ball popping without any resistance. Frowning, I got back on my lighthouse and floated up, turning around slowly in case there was anything that came at me but nothing happened. Maybe the admins had known we'd realize how much fun screwing with us could be, and now they were just finding more ways to trick us. What the hell? Oh well. If it let me pass, then I wasn't gonna complain.