Chapter 362 Assessment Interval
After successfully escaping the maze, all candidates taking the White Card Exam were given a day to rest. This day served as a buffer for those still inside, a necessary preparation period for the exam halls and facilities, and a chance for the magical girls who had consumed too much magic power to recover.
Most candidates chose to use this day to catch up on the sleep they'd lost from running around in the maze all day the day before—after all, the first exam alone had already left them exhausted. However, not everyone was willing to rest peacefully. Considering there were still three exams to come, now was clearly not the time to slack off.
Candidates with similar ideas are seizing the time: some are practicing extra, some are reviewing, and some are making battle plans for the next test. Of course, some candidates are also having dinner together to celebrate.
——"Then let's toast to Xiao Jin for taking first place in this test."
Following Delphinium's toast, the Fangting City team members sitting around the table raised their glasses one after another. Under the bright yellow light, the glasses clinked together with a crisp sound.
"yeah!"
However, among them, Lin Xiaolu's cheers were the loudest. This abnormal situation made everyone else look a little surprised.
“…What’s wrong?”
The subtle expressions of her companions made Lin Xiaolu wonder if she had done something wrong, and she subconsciously retracted her hand. But after thinking it over carefully, she was sure she had done nothing wrong, and she straightened her back again: "Aren't we celebrating?"
The other three were speechless. They thought, "We thought you wouldn't accept this."
This suspicion is groundless.
Because right now, "Who is Xiaojin" has become a hot topic among this year's blank-card candidates. Some people will be curious and amazed at this first-place winner who suddenly appeared, and naturally some people will feel dissatisfied with it.
In other words, there are many people outside who are dissatisfied with Xia Liang.
Nearly ten hours had passed since the end of the test, and the vast majority of candidates had either already exited the maze or, realizing they were lost, had voluntarily withdrawn. With the exception of a few magical girls still trying to scrape together a few bonus points, every candidate already knew the results of the maze project and, inevitably, had noticed the codename "Xiao Jin."
Xia Liang's method of escaping the maze was clearly visible to everyone in the viewing platform, making it no secret at all. Naturally, this incident became a hot topic of discussion among the candidate community. Even many candidates who were supposedly still preparing for the exam, and hadn't yet begun the test, joined in the discussion. In a short while, the name "Xiao Jin" became widely known, and criticism of him became rampant.
"After all, you, Xia Liang, are my teammate. My teammate won first place, so what's wrong with me being happy for you?"
Perhaps she had gradually realized something, so Lin Xiaolu quickly turned the conversation to Xia Liang: "Although the way you got first place was a bit... well, weird? But isn't that also your ability?"
"Ha...thank you so much then."
Xia Liang accepted Lin Xiaolu's "praise" with a dry laugh, but within seconds, the smile on his face collapsed: "Alas, if I had known it would cause such a scene, I should have run a little slower."
"This is just a stage in the assessment process. There's no need to worry too much about what others think at the moment."
Delphinium didn't quite agree with her thinking, so she advised, "There are still three more tests to come. If you can still achieve excellent results, then others will naturally begin to recognize you and see the first test as a sign of your uniqueness. If your subsequent results are mediocre and your performance gradually becomes mediocre, then they will just make a few sarcastic remarks and no longer regard you as a rival."
"Ultimately, the main reason people criticize you right now is because they don't understand you yet. They don't know whether you're a true dark horse or just a lucky opportunist."
Delphinium shook the juice in her glass, then raised it up and gestured to Xia Liang, "But we, the teammates sitting here, all know your strength. We all believe that this first place is only the beginning of your fame among your fellow magical girls. All criticisms are only temporary and will disappear as others see your true strength. Therefore, this is something worth celebrating."
"Young Senior, when you say that, I feel so stressed that my stomach hurts..."
Xia Liang gripped the handle of the cup in his hand, looking quite restless. "My accounts on Xingge are almost bombarded with private messages. Besides some gossiping people, there are even people challenging me to a one-on-one duel in the second assessment... What should I do?"
"Of course we fight them all back!" Lin Xiaolu said with a smile.
"I'm so tired, right?" Xia Liang rolled his eyes.
The "one-on-one fight" she mentioned was not a private fight instigated by other candidates, but one of the processes of the second assessment.
Yes, when most of the candidates had escaped from the maze and the first test was about to end, the examiners from the Examination Institute announced the content of the second test on the viewing platform.
Unlike the first assessment, the Examination Institute did not conceal the main content of this project, but stated quite clearly: the evaluation criteria for this assessment is magic equipment.
This can also be said to be the practice of national assessments over the years.
The items of the practical assessment will change every year, and sometimes both the theme and the format are different from previous years, but the assessment of magic equipment is the only one that is carried out every year.
This is unavoidable. After all, a large part of a magical girl's abilities relies on her magic suit, and the power of the magic suit is the foundation of many of her combat methods. Therefore, the actual combat assessment of a magical girl is destined to be inseparable from the magic suit.
According to the statement of the Examination Institute, this year's magic costume assessment is divided into two parts.
The first part is for the examiners to test and score the magical girls' magic costume abilities. The examiners will test the candidates' development and mastery of their own magic costume abilities from multiple dimensions, and then give the candidates a preliminary rating.
The second part is to give candidates who are dissatisfied with their own ratings an opportunity to improve their ratings.
The specific manifestation of this opportunity is actually very simple: it's simple, if you think the examiners have made a mistake and your magic suit is more powerful than they said, then use actual combat to prove it.
Candidates can challenge those with a higher magic equipment rating than themselves. During the challenge, both parties can only use basic abilities and magic equipment abilities, and are prohibited from using spells, wonders, and even more means.
Based on the results of the battle, if a B-rated candidate challenges an A-rated candidate and wins, her magic suit rating will be raised from B to B+, while the A-rated candidate will drop to A-. After that, if the B+ challenged an A-rated candidate and won, the B+ rating would rise to A.
However, if the B-rated candidate loses to the A-rated candidate, half of the assessment points she would have received as a B-rated candidate will be divided among the other candidates. Once a candidate loses all her points, she will lose the right to continue to challenge for a higher position.
This is why some candidates challenged Xia Liang to a duel in advance. After all, in their view, Xia Liang relied on the special abilities of his magic suit to "steal" first place in the maze project, so his suit's rating was bound to be quite high. And the way they wanted to express their dissatisfaction and disapproval was naturally to challenge Xia Liang and lower his rating.
Admittedly, Xia Liang could have chosen not to accept the challenge, but with a little thought, he would realize that under such rules, a candidate who did not compete with others at all was destined not to get any particularly good ranking.
Even if a candidate could secure an A-rank right from the start, if they simply held onto that small score and fled, other A-rank candidates who accepted the challenge and earned the points would overtake them. Among the tens of thousands of candidates, there were probably only a few hundred who could secure an A-rank. Add to that the B-rank candidates who were truly skilled in combat and could climb to the A-rank… In the end, this fearful A-rank candidate would likely be ranked outside the top 100.
If a magical girl with little fame and no ambition could just get an A rating and rank in the 100th or 200th place, she would probably be satisfied. But for someone like Xia Liang, who was at the center of the storm, to take first place in the first test and then completely avoid the second one, I'm afraid it would really make people look down on her.
This is also the reason why Xia Liang only said that he would be "tired to death" when refuting Lin Xiaolu, but did not mention that he "could not win" at all.
Apparently, she also fought off a few challengers to prove herself.
(End of this chapter)
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