Episode-830
Chapter : 1659
He didn't look like a warlord. He didn't look like a savior. He looked like a man who had a very long to-do list and very little patience for incompetence. He wore a simple, tailored black suit that cost more than the collective net worth of everyone in the room. In one hand, he held a clipboard. In the other, a mug of steaming coffee that smelled like heaven to the hungry recruits.
Behind him glided Spirit Jasmin. She was a striking contrast to the grim surroundings—a being of living diamond and light, her expression perfectly neutral, her eyes scanning the room with the cold precision of a turret. Her presence dropped the temperature in the room by five degrees.
Lloyd walked to the front of the room, took a sip of his coffee, and sighed. He looked at the forty-five faces staring back at him. He didn't look impressed.
"Good morning, refuse of society," Lloyd said. His voice wasn't loud, but it carried to the back of the room with crystal clarity. "I trust the concrete floor was comfortable enough for your standards. If not, feel free to complain to the complaint department. Oh wait, we don't have one."
He tapped the clipboard.
"You are all wondering why you are here. You are wondering why the heir of House Ferrum has collected a group of people who, let's be honest, are not exactly the pride of the kingdom. Some of you are thinking I need muscle. Some of you think I need cannon fodder."
Lloyd walked over to a large blackboard mounted on the wall. He picked up a piece of chalk and drew a large 'X' over a drawing of a sword.
"Let me be clear," Lloyd said, turning back to them. "I do not need muscle. If I wanted muscle, I would hire an ogre. Ogres work for raw meat and don't ask stupid questions. I do not need swordsmen. If I wanted swordsmen, I would go to the Academy and pick up a dozen nobles who have been training since they were in diapers. You are here because you are weak."
A ripple of anger went through the room. Bruno the dockworker clenched his fists. Being called weak was the one thing he couldn't stand.
"You are weak," Lloyd repeated, smiling a sharp, sarcastic smile. "You have no magic. Your Spirit Cores are pathetic dust motes. In a fair fight, any knight in this kingdom could cut you down without breaking a sweat. And that is exactly why you are valuable."
He gestured to the rows of wooden desks that filled the center of the room. On each desk sat a black, rectangular slab of stone with a smooth, glass-like surface. Next to each slab was a silver stylus.
"Sit," Lloyd commanded.
The recruits hesitated. They looked at the desks. They looked at Lloyd. Then, slowly, they shuffled forward. The chairs scraped against the floor. Bruno squeezed himself into a chair that was clearly too small for him, looking ridiculous. Kaito sat down nervously, placing his cards on the corner of the desk. Vala, the failed squire, sat with perfect posture, though her hands were trembling. Ren, the clockmaker, rolled his wheelchair up to a desk, his eyes inspecting the black slab with intense curiosity.
"These," Lloyd said, pointing to the slabs, "are Logic Slates. They are a little invention of mine. They run on low-grade Lilith Stones. They are not weapons. They are tests."
"Tests?" Bruno blurted out. "Like... school?"
"Yes, Bruno. Like school," Lloyd said dryly. "But with higher stakes. In school, if you fail, you get a bad grade. Here, if you fail, you go back to the gutter."
Lloyd tapped a rune on his own master slate. Instantly, the forty-five slabs in the room flickered to life. A soft blue light emanated from the screens, illuminating the confused faces of the recruits.
On the screen, a grid appeared. In the center of the grid was a glowing blue dot.
"The test is simple," Lloyd explained, walking between the rows of desks like a shark patrolling a reef. "Pick up the stylus. When the test begins, the grid will turn into a maze. The maze will shift and change every ten seconds. Your job is to use the stylus to guide the blue dot through the maze without touching the walls. If you touch a wall, the dot explodes. If you get trapped when the maze shifts, the dot explodes."
"That's it?" a mercenary in the back scoffed. "A child's game? I thought we were training for war."
Chapter : 1660
"I wasn't finished," Lloyd said, his voice dropping an octave. "While you are guiding the dot with your dominant hand, arithmetic problems will appear on the left side of the screen. Simple math. Addition. Subtraction. Division. You must solve these problems by tapping the correct answer from a multiple-choice list with your other hand."
The room went silent.
"You must do both at the same time," Lloyd said. "If you stop moving the dot to do the math, the maze speeds up and crushes you. If you get a math problem wrong, the maze walls become invisible for three seconds. If you focus too much on the math and hit a wall... well, you fail."
Lloyd returned to the front of the room.
"This is not a test of strength. It is a test of processing power. In a battle, you don't have the luxury of doing one thing at a time. You have to move, aim, check your fuel, watch your radar, and listen to your commander screaming in your ear, all while someone is trying to turn you into ash. I need brains that can split. I need minds that can handle chaos."
He looked at his watch.
"You have one hour. If your score drops below fifty percent, the slate turns red. If the slate turns red, you stand up, you walk out that door, and you never come back. Begin."
The chaos began instantly.
Bruno grabbed the stylus like it was a dagger. He stared at the blue dot with intense, sweaty concentration. The maze appeared. He moved the dot. It was easy. He grinned.
Then, a math problem popped up. 15 + 7 = ?
"Twenty-two!" Bruno shouted.
"Don't say it, tap it!" Lloyd yelled from the front, sipping his coffee.
Bruno looked at the numbers on the side. He took his eyes off the maze to find the number 22. In that split second, the maze shifted. A wall slammed into his blue dot.
BUZZ. A loud, angry noise erupted from his slate. A red light flashed.
"Dammit!" Bruno roared, slamming his fist on the desk. "This thing is rigged! It moves too fast!"
"It moves at the speed of a slow goblin," Lloyd retorted. "You are just slower. Reset and try again."
All around the room, the sounds of frustration grew. The "warriors"—the men and women who had relied on their physical prowess their entire lives—were crumbling. Their brains were wired for singular focus. They could swing a sword with perfect form, but ask them to swing a sword while calculating a tip at a restaurant, and they fell apart.
One mercenary was sweating so hard he couldn't grip the stylus. Another was trying to do the math on his fingers, abandoning the dot entirely.
"I can't look at two things at once!" a failed knight yelled, throwing his stylus across the room. "It's impossible! Humans aren't built for this!"
"Then evolve," Lloyd said coldly. "Or leave."
Lloyd watched the master slate on the wall. It displayed the status of every candidate. Within five minutes, ten slates had turned permanently red. The system had locked them out.
"You ten," Lloyd said, pointing without looking. "Out. Collect your ten gold coins at the gate. Don't let the door hit you."
The failed candidates stood up, faces burning with shame and anger. They marched out, grumbling about "stupid magic tricks" and "waste of time."
Lloyd didn't care. He was weeding the garden. He needed to get rid of the rocks to find the soil.
He walked through the rows, observing the survivors. He stopped next to a young woman who was biting her lip so hard blood was trickling down her chin. She was staring at the dot with such intensity her eyes were watering. She ignored the math completely.
BUZZ.
"You're tunneling," Lloyd said softly. "You're focusing so hard on survival you're forgetting to solve the problem. In a war, that means you dodge the arrow but step on the mine. Fail."
He moved on.
The room was thinning out. The loud ones were gone. The angry ones were gone. What remained were the quiet ones. The desperate ones.
Lloyd stopped at the back of the room. He looked down at the desk of the gambler, Kaito.
Kaito was in a trance.
To anyone else, the test was a nightmare of multitasking. To Kaito, it was just a Tuesday night at the card table.
His world had narrowed down to the glowing screen. He didn't see a maze and math problems. He saw odds and variables.