Chapter 73: Halved

The Examinees bid their goodbyes to their friends, if they had any. Lots of sympathy and pity going around. Lots of assurances that next year would be their year.

Those who failed walked shamefully into the staircase, shoulders shivering as they tried to stop themselves from crying.

"You too," Kaiser said, pointing at someone in the crowd. The man hid behind a wooden log in the hopes of being forgotten. "You failed to break a Concrete Block."

"It’s not fair!" the young man shouted. Eren recognized him to be one of the examinees who went into the License Exam with confidence.

One of the few who blasted through the practice Concrete Walls with style.

"It’s just a matter of luck!" he continued. "I wandered through the tunnels for hours on end, and I couldn’t find a single Concrete Block! Meanwhile, some people here who can’t even use their Reinforcement correctly stumbled upon an easy Burrow and passed the test!"

Kaiser remained cool as the disgruntled examinee spewed spittle at him.

Then suddenly, the examinee found himself forcibly floating up into the air.

Something constricted his body. His arms were pinned at his sides, shoulders becoming narrower.

Kaiser flicked his hand and the examinee crashed head-first in front of his feet.

"ARGGH!" the examinee groaned in pain. Then, he looked up at Kaiser, spat at his feet, and charged at him with a Reinforced fist.

His strike bounced off. Kaiser had defended with his own Reinforcement. Much faster, more efficient than anyone in this room. Eren wondered if his Primary Meridians were opened naturally.

With another swipe of Kaiser’s hand, the examinee hurtled up the stairs, tumbling uncontrollably as he did so.

"I don’t need to remind you," Kaiser said to no one in particular. "Psions are fickle. Luck is a necessary part of Awakening if you want to control your Psions better."

In short, it was the disgruntled examinee’s fault that he wasn’t lucky enough to stumble upon a Concrete Block in the hours he’d been here in the Subterranean Burrows.

And Eren agreed. Only an overconfident idiot would rely on pure talent to achieve victory.

Ormann may have failed, but he at least did everything he could to succeed. Even if it meant sacrificing others to achieve it. And in that regard, Eren commended him greatly.

No other interruptions occurred after that. Kaiser’s powerful Psionic ability silenced all dissent.

And soon, five hundred men and women were gone from the Subterranean Burrows. And a handful more would forever be entombed in the darkness, accompanied by nothing but broken dreams and shattered hopes.

Even the warmth of the cindering campfire couldn’t combat the cold breeze running through the tunnels.

Once that was over, the bisected walls closed back up, enveloping the entire Main Camp into darkness once again.

Kaiser stared at the remaining examinees. Being stared at by his cloudy left eye felt like their bodies were enveloped with pins and needles.

"Congratulations, those of you who have advanced to the next stage of the License Exam. You get to experience even more hell."

He pointed beyond the campfire, towards the tiered cliff faces containing the hundreds of Burrows they’d spent hours traversing for the Concrete Blocks.

The ground underneath the entrances emerged, completely blocking the tunnels beyond it. They were replaced by doors made out of steel. And pinned under its pinhole were the nameplates of the examinees who’d succeeded in the First Test.

"This will be your dorm for the Second Test. Make yourselves comfortable," Kaiser announced.

The murmurs and chatters grew louder as examinees realized what was happening.

"Wait, we’re not going to leave the Subterranean Burrows?"

"I thought that we’d get to go out!"

"Don’t tell me... we’ll be stuck here for the remainder of the License Exam?!

Kaiser heard all of their complaints and shook his head. "If you want to go out, go right ahead. I’ll open the staircase for you anytime you want.

For now, take a rest in your dorms and await my instructions for the next phase of your exam."

The cloud of anxiety once again emerged amongst the examinees. Many counted on the fact that they’d leave the Subterranean Burrows after this First Test.

They only had to endure for an entire day, they convinced themselves. The truth disheartened them.

"At least they gave us dorms to sleep in," Abe laughed wryly.

"But that also means we’re going to be here for days...," Celeste replied. "How many sunspores do we still have? We have to make a tally.

"I only have 40 more," answered Abe.

"Mine is 36."

"25"

Their answers ranged from 20 to 50. Overall, the group had more or less 300 minutes of light to use. Good enough to be used for a single day. But not enough for more.

Harvesting more sunspores became the number one concern for most examinees. But with the Burrows gone and replaced by the dorms, no one knew where they could source their sunspores from.

So for the time being, they had to be conservative with their use of light.

And because of that, those who had the foresight to hoard sunspores sat at a very comfortable position.

A certain ’pudgy’ individual cackled with wholehearted joy. "GUHAHAHAHA! Sunspore here, get your sunspores here!"

Pang Cai’s raucous hawking attracted attention everywhere in the Subterranean Burrows. His business of sunspores had finally paid its dividends.

Even the ’richest’ examinees when it came to sunspores only had a hundred or so in their inventory. Pang Cai had thousands.

He could probably supply the rest of the people here for a few days.

A few examinees quickly approached the scion of the Cai family and asked him how they could purchase a few bundles of his sunspore.

"I take payment in a couple of ways," Pang Cai announced. "If you have a resource you want to sell, I can take those off your hands. If you have a skill that is useful, I can hire you for your services. If you have none of those... Well, I can give a loan. But beware, I will take interest."