The second test room had been designed to echo the floor it was on. The walls were formed from wooden roots and the entire area seemed to have been grown rather than built. It was beautiful, earthy, filled with green and browns, and most importantly completely unique. There was no natural light down in the roots of this building, but everywhere seemed to be lit by various glowing plants, giving the area a yellowish tint. At the entrance to the area was a black haired woman sitting on a chair formed from the roots in the surroundings. She was busy reading a book, but looked up when Laurence and Yun came through the doors. She paid little attention to the young boy and his dog, but just said “The test will begin in three days. Your room is further down the hall. If you would like anything then just write it down and put it into the message box in your room. We on the second floor testing room will do our best to give you what you require.” She paused to turn a page on the book she was reading, “Have a nice day.” With that she ignored the young boy, completely blocking him out until he left.

Once he walked away she looked up again and thought “A boy with a Tigerwolf cub. Has something happened to the Lupe clan?” Then returned to the book she was reading. To her it was more important than the nature of a child who would likely not be around for much longer.

Laurence found an empty room near to the entrance. This place was far busier than the first floor testing room, filled with the sounds of vibrant life, growth and movement. Yun found a soft mat of moss to curl up on and just said to Laurence “Hungry!” He was still a wolf of few words, but was incredibly intelligent and had an appetite to match the growing boy’s. Laurence smiled. Not a single day had been mundane with his canine friend by his side. It was incredible fun for him to be around the wolf, and their journey had sped by to get to the second floor testing room. He looked around his room, trying to work out what each thing did. There was a place to store clothes, which Laurence was still lacking, a couple of beds constructed of the roots and bedded with thick moss, and a large bookcase next to a thin box on top of a post. The box had the word ‘Request’ written on it, so Laurence assumed that this was the box the woman at the front entrance had meant when she had told him about the message box.

He grabbed a thin piece of paper and a charcoal stick and began writing on the paper. Please bring lots of food and a wooden box to room 2717. It is for a seven year old boy and a wolf cub. Then he put the paper in the box and waited. While waiting he finally pulled out the corpse of the Orik he fought in the forest. He noticed when fighting him that the creature’s hide was incredibly strong, as were its claws and its bone. The creature was prime material for making armour. So Laurence began stripping the flesh off the bone and sorted all the produce into various sections. In the end he had a pile of flesh that needed tanning, bone that needed to be tied to leather, muscles that could be stretched and used as string or twine, and organs that were mostly useless. There were two pieces of the internal organs that had use however. The mana reservoir in the Orik had formed, and the heart which Laurence remembered could be powdered into a medicinal reagent.

Once the creature had been fully dissected Laurence stored the usable materials in the slow down box, and began the tanning process for the hide. By the time he had prepared the hide for bathing the food had arrived. It was a massive plate of cooked meat, vegetables and fruit which the two devoured. Laurence was not one to waste any food, but Yun just ate the meat with incomparable speed. After they had the food Laurence began making the leather and thinking up how he wanted the clothing he would make to look.

Two days went by with great speed and by the third day Laurence had finished making himself some armour. His final costume was a rather imposing one, a thick green leather jerkin, bound in the centre with a series of bones that reinforced the body. Bones up either sleeve to act as a quick bracer and a hooded helm reinforced on the inside with the beast's skull. He also had new boots, made from the same leather. The special thing about the clothes apart from the materials was that Laurence had tried something new on them. He had bound the pieces with blood and marked them with the runes for ‘always fits’ and the caveat ‘only usable to binder’. This would allow them to grow with the young boy, who otherwise would have likely grown out of them within the year.

Laurence was rather proud of his new jerkin, especially as he had made a very small pocket dimension to keep the hood in when he was not using it. Long before he began making the clothing did he realise that if he had the hood out it could collect water, so he simply gave it the capability to appear when he went into battle. The jerkin and boots were both given self-restoration runes to restore themselves and keep them from breaking, but the were also given the rune for comfort which meant Laurence wouldn't even have to wear them in. The clothing was without a doubt the best possible armour the boy could make at that stage, and when he wore the good it gave the image of a boy demon with two little horns and an obscured face.

Yun was not particularly interested in the clothing Laurence wore, instead often requesting for the two of them to go hunting or to eat something. In the fourteen days that Laurence had known the wolf he had almost doubled in size, so his appetite had increased accordingly. Finally the day of the test rolled around and Laurence was prepared. The same young woman from the day they arrived knocked on their door and curtly told them to get a move on to the main arena for the test.

Once they arrived they were told to sit in pairs. "Ladies and gentlemen, birds beasts and lizards, My name is Rachael Briar and I am your Adjudicator for this floor. There is nothing to learn on this floor but there is still a test. This is a test of capability, intelligence, speed and might. Now, I asked you to sit in pairs for a reason. If you are in an agreed pair I will group you together in this two man test.” She looked round as various members of her audience scampered to pair up before the test started. “All done? Good. If you are alone still I will pair you up with someone at random. There are four thousand participants, so there are definitely enough people. The test itself will be a spin on a military training game called ‘capture the flag’. Each team starts with three flags, and they must have at least three flags at the end. Now we know this will cause some of you to act like a turtle and hide with your flags but there is an additional rule. You must have three different flags at the end of the match including your own.

“It is possible that all of you will pass, it is also possible for you all to fail. Generally speaking though, about half of you should pass the test. Now, there is only one other thing you should know, and that at the starting point for each pair there will be a pool that shows the location of all flags in the two kilometre area near you, and as you start around five hundred meters from any other person, you can see at least four other paid by looking at the pool. Now, unless anyone has any relevant questions we shall begin.”