Pursuing The Summit - Chapter 9 Shea

Before anyone could take the test, they had to show that they had achieved one star mastery in at least one profession. Shea handed over her clay card, which had one star on it, her name below it and the date and place she acquired it from. Then she was handed a booklet and a multiple choice answer sheet.

There were four sections on the test: history, geography, math and reading. The history portion tested three main time periods: the migration of humans into the continent three hundred years ago and the forty year war that ensued, the creation of Allyn County and the creation of the elemental cities.

Geography tested the major geographical features and national borders throughout the continent, from the Great Forest to the east of the continent, the mainland (of humans) on the western half of the continent, the elemental cities at the outskirts of the mainland, the frontier states between the elemental cities and the Great Forest, and the Great Desert at the northern part of the continent.

Furthermore, the political situation within the elemental cities and the frontier states were an important part of this section, since while the twenty eight elemental cities were in a loose alliance, not all of them liked each other. To the south of Allyn County, the theocracy of the Teresa, the main god of light, a position rivaling even that of Imaru, was on poor terms with Allyn County, for religious reasons. To the west, the Lacan family ruled the Lacan County, a dictatorship reliant heavily on mining minerals and the county with the worst economic, political and social disparity within the elemental counties.

The math section tested basic trigonometry, calculus and algebra. The reading section tested both comprehension in general and of religious texts.

Shea was poor at both history and geography, for she never felt that she would ever leave Allyn County, for she wanted to be a water priestess, just like her mother. However, she excelled at the history of Allyn County, math and reading. Rather than spending much time on geography, Shea simply filled out what she could then skipped what she didn’t know. She didn’t need to get a high grade on this exam to graduate. All she needed was an eighty percent, assuming she did poorly on the cultivation exam, which was not possible, since she already reached the third realm, and the average was merely reaching the middle layers of the second realm.

Two hours later, Shea turned in her exam and started the cultivation exam in the next room, which was an empty square room with each side being five yards. She faced a different examiner this time. A man who looked to be in his younger twenties. He had blue hair and blue pupils, so he had pure water qi.

“Shea Allyn, right?” The man scratched his head. “Since you are going to be a priest, the test will not have a fighting portion. Instead, it will be a game called ‘Pong’. The objective of the game is to prevent the ball from hitting your side and, at the same time, hit your opponent’s side. The catch here, however, the ceiling and walls are also potential targets and the balls used have their own irregularity.

“Each ball has a certain amount of qi within them, which determines how long they last. You can reduce and increase the amount of qi within a ball. If a ball expires in mid air, without hitting any of the six walls, then nothing happens. Although the game would start with a single ball, a number of balls from one to five, will appear every thirty seconds or when the current set of balls disappear.

“Each round will last five minutes, with a five minute break in between. There will be five rounds. You don’t necessarily have to win, but, if you do, the grade of you score is likely to increase. My cultivation realm during this test will be the ninth layer of the first realm. Good luck.”

Once the man sat down, array lines within the room appeared, decorating the walls of the room with white flowers on each wall. A single black line split the enter room in half between Shea and the examiner, including the walls and ceiling.

Just as Shea was wondering when the ball would appear, a blue ball, the size of her fist, appeared at the center of the court. Before she could react, the examiner’s qi smashed the ball towards her side of the ceiling. This time, Shea was prepared. She summoned a thin strip of qi blocking stretching from her left hand to the ceiling. Once the ball hit her qi, she trapped it with her own qi while extending her qi to cover all the walls on her side of the field before imbuing the ball with qi and launching qi faster towards the examiner’s ceiling area. The ball hardly crossed the black line before the ball was smashed once more with a smaller orb of qi and repelled onto her field. Once more, she caught the orb, which had shrunk a bit after being repelled and imbued it with more qi. This time, she also formed an outer layer of her own qi, that would not affect the ball itself, and launched it.

The orb of qi smashing into the ball crumbled only the outer layer of qi, allowing the ball within to fall to the ground. But the examiner was not done, this time, creating one strip of qi of his own that redirected the ball to her side. When Shea created a new strip of qi to catch the ball, the examiner simply broke her strip. Shocked, Shea let the ball fall onto her back up strand of qi that she set up at the beginning, but that too was broke through, at least partially and where it was relevant, allowing the ball to slip through the cracks. The moment the ball hit the ground, it shattered into light.

Without waiting for her to react, five new blue balls, flying in five different directions, two to her side, three to his. Shea could only grit her teeth as she repaired her back up strip of qi with her left hand. With her right index finger, a small amount of concentrated qi flew out to one of the balls. Without waiting for it to hit, Shea launched another bit of qi at the other ball, but both of them missed. The first ball moved too quickly and lodged itself within her strip of qi while the other crawled upwards, seemingly to defy physics. Soon, it too lodged herself within her strip of qi and, while they were in different parts of the strip, their existence alone seemed to strain the strip of qi, especially since there were now two different areas. Just as she was figuring out to deal with it, the other three balls that flew into the examiner’s area, all smashed into one area of her strip, shattering the entire strip of qi and all five balls hit her walls and disappeared.

Three balls appeared immediately, this time all falling onto her side. Not wanting them to hit her walls, she launched a large amount of qi at the balls, shattering them in their place. For a few seconds, nothing happened, before four balls appeared in the area, once again falling onto her side. She launched a large amount of qi once more to destroy all the balls and she gained another few seconds of peace. This time, she used the time to catch her breath.

Two balls fell onto her side once more and she shattered them again. Then she created a new strip of qi, this time in the same of a cone over the examiner, severing all his connection with his qi outside of the cone. Once the three balls fell towards her side, she created a hand of qi and slapped all of them away from her. The examiner could only shatter her cone of qi and had no time left to deal with the balls flying in random directions, allowing all three to fall onto his walls.

Grinning, Shea found her strategy to win. This time, when four balls fell evenly on each side, she shattered them all with her qi then created another cone around the examiner. The examiner was ready this time and shattered them just as fast, but another cone would pop up in its place. When the next set of balls appeared, Shea broke them once more. This time she created multiple layers of cones with higher qi densities around the examiner. Meanwhile, whenever she got the chance, she would launch the balls towards to examiner’s side, to score some points. If she couldn’t manage it, she would simply shatter the balls.

As such, the game became a game of endurance and the five minutes slowly passed. Although Shea used up much more qi than the examiner, the examiner was restricted to the peak of the first realm, while she had the qi reservoirs a new third realm cultivator. Although she exhausted a quarter of her total qi reservoir, the examiner had exhausted a third of his and sweat had began to drip down his face. Six balls fell onto her side, but twelve fell on his side.

When the array stopped, the examiner was frowning. “You know, the point of this game is to test your ability to read qi within the balls and its change when another person reacts to it, right? Simply trapping me with a larger amount of qi defeats the purpose of this exam.”

Shea shook her head. “The point of this game is simply to hit your opponent’s side with the balls. I don’t necessarily have to make this game where we hit it back and forth, my qi targets areas rather than moving about and reflecting the balls. The room seems too small for that, given the speed of the balls. Plus, I have much more qi than you. If you stick with the rules, you can last at most two more rounds, while I can last three. I will claim at least two of the next four rounds, so it’s my victory.”

“I won’t be so sure about that.” The examiner said, frowning. “Anyone can have a lot of qi, but true skill is rare.”

“Well, I’m still eleven.” Shea said, smiling. “Considering I’m around three and a half years younger than the graduating average, I would say having enough qi to simply exhaust you is enough skill in its own right.”

They both stopped talking until the second round, where Shea destroyed the examiner, who spent the entire time catching his breath and replenishing his own qi. Shea spent the minimal amount of qi to win the first few rounds and didn’t have to do anything after that, since all the balls automatically fell onto the examiner’s side.

“Gave up already? That’s two rounds for me then. You have to win the rest, in order to beat me now.” Shea said, smiling.

“Be prepared to taste defeat this next round.” The examiner said.

The moment the five balls appeared, a cube formed around Shea. Unlike her cones, these cubes had what seemed to be immature rune engraved onto them, so she required much more time to break through the cube. Five balls landed on her walls before she could do anything about them.

Before she was surrounded by another set of cubes, she revolved her water elemental qi in a vortex around her, destroying the next four orbs. While maintaining a vortex around her with her left hand, since keeping it revolving was much easier than revolving it in the first place, she used her right hand to use more of her qi to create a cone around the examiner. Since she was only using one hand, the cones were created slowly, with nearly a second gap between each one, more than enough time for the examiner to destroy it. However, the examiner could not do anything about the balls nor trap her within a cube during that time, so she stopped the vortex and began her attack again. Four balls landed on his side before he could do anything.

When the next ball appeared, the examiner destroyed the cone while looking carefully at the ball, allowing it to hit his walls when he could have at least pushed it back. When the next set of three balls appeared, his water elemental qi erupted from his body and shattered the cones and the balls as well as disrupting Shea’s chain of qi to reach his side. The tempest of qi on his side only subsided a moment before the balls would appear. In its stead, a box of qi, with the side facing Shea open, floated around where the balls would appear. The balls bounced a few times within the box before they fell just out of range of her vortex.

Shea frowned, removing her vortex as she waved her right hand towards the ball. A hand of qi, replicating parts of her hands and forearm, swallowed the balls and charged towards the ground. Much like the first round, the third round became a game of endurance, but the examiner exhausted all of his qi during this round but still lost. In the end, fourteen balls fell onto Shea’s side but sixteen balls fell onto the examiner’s side.

“I win.” Shea said, smiling. “Thanks for the exam.”

“You may have passed, but I don’t approve of your methods.” The examiner said.

“Well, we are just going to have to disagree, I guess?” Shea said.

Shea followed the examiner to the front test, so he could report her grade. They returned to the room where she took the exam. On each desk were four piles of exams and the original examiner at the front of the room, behind a desk with a binder.

“How did she do?” the proctor asked.

“She won in three rounds.” The examiner.

“That means she got a 100 on the exam. Alright you may go. Shea stay for a moment.” The man said, looking at the binder. “You got a 80 on history, 60 on geography, and 90 on math and reading. Your combined score is 180, so you can graduate. Congratulations.”

“I did it.” Shea screamed, before covering her mouth.

“Yes, you did. Don’t forget to tell your family members,” the proctor said.

“I will.” Shea said, running out to meet Rachel. She did not get very far before tripping however.

“You passed?” Rachel asked, lifting Shea up.

“Yep. A combined score of 180.” Shea said, holding two fingers up in a victory sign. “Is mother coming to my graduation?”

Rachel shook her head. “She can’t make it. Something popped up at the shrine and she was needed there.”

“Oh.” Shea said, her happiness rapidly deflating. “I’ll just get the certificate early then. There’s no point in sitting through the entire thing.”