The second wave beast numbered 10 as declared earlier. The students took a defensive position to face the Red-Tailed Hawk. The hawks were yet to attack though. They were measuring their targets from treetops in the forest.

Suddenly there was a hoarse, screaming kee-eeeee-arr. The Red-Tailed Hawk had marked their prey and was announcing their sovereignty. Most of the students were below EQ15 marginally and thus they were almost on equal footing with the hawk on strength. However, that assumption might change considering the speed of the hawks.

Some of the students had started to panic already.

The leaves moved and within a fraction of a second, a hawk aimed its talon towards Ton. He quickly reacted and threw a punch with his gauntlets. The hawk dodged swiftly and flew away. They had judged the strength of their prey. It was time for all of them to make a move. It was a generic pattern that followed every student in the Solo Raid Battle.

The hawks started to attack Ton from every direction. He would wave his fists at them but they would dodge again and again. After some time passed Ton finally memorized their trajectory. He bumped his gauntlets and gave an awry smile. The next time a hawk attacked, it faced the full blow of ATK 170. All the other hawks met the same fate one by one. Ton was the fastest to complete the second wave. But he had taken some damage this time. The hawks had clawed him a number of times resulting in bringing his HP down to 1600.

Kaisha, on the other hand, had trouble against the hawks with her whip. She was not able to match their speed. But when a blow landed, it also meant a stun effect of 3 seconds. It was enough time for her to finish the job. She was next to Ton in finishing the second wave though there was a significant time gap. After the second wave, her HP was down to 1550.

Melv was quite effectively defending against the attack of the hawks with his heavy and durable shield. However, he was not able to attack back. This time he cannot push them off a cliff, so he started to rack his brain to find any suitable tactics. He looked over his shoulder and saw that the sun was at his back at the cliff-side. He smirked and rushed towards the forest with his shield. He stopped at the boundary of the forest and turned around. He bumped his shield into the ground towards the sun and covered himself against the hawk attack.

The hawks now have to leave their treetops and circle around to attack Melv from the cliff-side of the map. But this is what he exactly wanted. The light rays fell on Melv’s shield and it became a reflective shield. This had somewhat dull the senses of the hawks. Their main weapon, the vision, had become blurry because of the reflection. Some fell into the cliff, others were flying low, easy enough for Melv to smash them with his shield.

It was a crude tactic but enough to win over the second wave. Melv had a remaining of 1050 HP. No damage taken.

Noah was still fighting though. This was a match between 2 swift opponents. Both were avoiding each other via their agility. Noah figured he would not be able to land a blow with his dagger using a forward grip technique. He recalled some of the teachings he received from Kane.

Noah did not have enough strength to wield a bigger weapon like a sword or katana. Seeing this, Kane had taught him a few dagger or knife techniques that may come handy in situations.

Noah changed his technique to Reverse Knife Grip Technique Edge Out. The blade of a single-edged knife or dagger is orientated away from the body in the reverse grip, which sets the blade facing downward in the locked fist position. The main advantage of this technique is that the blade and cutting edge may be raked over the target in a slashing motion when the fist swings like a cross punch.

Holding the dagger downwards, Noah approached an attacking hawk head-on. Reaching the calculated distance he swung his fist. Till this point, the dagger was not visible to the hawk. Noah tilted his wrist to expose the edge of the dagger towards the hawk. There was a small light reflection on its surface and the hawk was blinded for a moment, enough for Noah to swing his fist in a cross punch, slashing the hawk at the edge of the blade. Noah then slowly and swiftly took down the rest of the hawks in a similar manner. Finally, the second wave was over for Noah, minimal damage taken and HP resulted in 750.

The reflection idea was imparted to Melv by Noah, among all other ideas. Both of them kind of used similar tactics to get past the second wave.

All students had passed this wave somehow, but most of them had a dwindling HP. They took heavy damage in the second wave even using their abilities and would not last long in the next one. The Examiners checked on the students’ health. The doctors and nurses were monitoring them round the clock and assured the Professors of their wellbeing so far.

The examiners took their seats and gazed at the jumbotron screen. The third wave beast had spawned and it was the Razor-fanged Warthog, another evolved beast. Though it is a level 3 beast, its fangs are sharp enough to pierce through even a titanium wall. It is equivalent to a human of EQ 20 and was about to give a hard time to the students.

The warthog didn’t waste a single moment as it charged towards the students. Some students were scared enough to instantly logout in fear. Some had a little HP left and were knocked out by the warthogs. They were logged out forcefully. The remaining were fighting with all they had.

Ton banged his gauntlets at the sight of the charging warthog. He landed a hit but was pushed back by the warthog. “Tch...this one will be tough. It seems no other way..”

He thought of reserving his ability till the last 2 stages but nevertheless, he will have to use it now. He quickly tapped into the brute strength of a chimpanzee and gave a loud roar. A warthog came charging at him as the others were circling him. Ton held the fangs of the warthog with his gauntlet and stopped its movement. The warthog was trying to push Ton back, but this time the opposite was happening. Ton pushed back the beast to a certain length and then picked it up in the air using his brute strength. He threw it down the cliff. One down and 4 to go.

The other warthogs snorted at the sight. It was clearly evident that they were angry. They charged at him from all sides. Ton stopped two of them coming from the front, but another one had already hit him from the sides. Seeing the fourth one rushing at him, he pushed back the other two and turned towards the one rushing. He leapt in the air and smashed both his hands on the head of the warthog. A shock wave emitted from the move. Ton called it ShockWave Smash. He had learned it recently.

The evolved Razor-fanged Warthog had a thick skull. It was a defensive aspect that has evolved. But the smash was too powerful and it cracked open the skull of the warthog. The remaining beasts moved back. Warthog was the most intelligent and lethal among its species. It would not recklessly attack Ton anymore. But Ton was also losing patience as they were stalling time. He rushed at one himself using his second ability, agility and caught it with a powerful punch in the abdomen. It was enough to be a killer blow.

The other two attacked him at the same time. He could hold one but the other would graze away and take some of his HP with a fang attack. He decided to fall back to the edge of the cliff. This way the only direction left for them to attack is the front. He conserved his power for one last hit to finish the job. As the 2 beasts approached him, Ton stood his ground and stopped them with each hand. He used his strength to dominate the beasts using a single hand for each beast. The beasts felt as if they were stuck under a huge boulder. Ton gave a loud roar and applied more pressure to totally squeeze them to death. Third wave successfully completed for Ton. It was a strength test for him. But his HP was hit hard, it came down to 1250.

Kaisha, on the other hand, started using her ability right from the beginning. She gauged the difficulty of this wave instantly. 5 warthogs would be tough for her to handle. Tapping into her ability of the Pink Charm Mountain Laurel, she created a boundary around her using the poison pollens. The beasts won’t be able to approach her carelessly. The next thing she did was to lace her whip with the same poison.

She swung her whip at one of the warthogs and landed a hit. The warthog fell down slowly and the poison started to eat up its HP until it was no more. The other beasts immediately felt the danger of the poison and started avoiding her whips. Kaisha felt that now the other beasts would only circle around and not get anywhere near the poison area. This way it would eat up all the time left in the exam. But she had no hope of continuing to the next round. She clearly knew her limits. If she could take down one or two more, it would be enough to rank second or third, she thought. So she stalled for time. 1050 HP regenerated by 1% every 5 seconds.

On another screen, Melv was getting pushed back by the charging warthogs. Taking some critical damage his HP was at 650. Also, he was unable to land any significant damage. Melv was already using his Dung Beetle ability to increase his strength. The beast’s fangs had somewhat damaged the shield. He had no other option but to throw it away. Earlier he had taken out one beast with a shield blow before it was damaged, so the shield had done its part he thought.

Melv looked at the beasts and charged at one of them. His heavyweight ability was enough to fight head-on, but he has to avoid the fangs. He bent low as he rushed and caught one warthog in the mouth. He wrapped his body around the beast and choked it to death. He felt a sense of accomplishment but as he turned his sight he saw the other beasts running towards him. The smile on his face evaporated instantly and he sprinted like a coyote.

He reached the end of the cliff and halted, keeping his balance. He looked back to find the beasts and his eyes widened. Two of the beasts rushed at him. One has almost reached him and its fangs up his posterior. His body reacted and he jumped to the side to avoid this imminent danger. The first beast could somehow control its momentum but the one behind could not put on the brakes. As a result, they crashed into each other and ended up falling off the cliff. Melv almost fell off while jumping but he held firm. “Whew...that was close..”

He just stood up on the ground when he heard a snort. The last one was quite angry. It aimed at him with its vivid fangs. Melv was thinking how to avoid the attack when his gaze fell on his damaged shield. It was lying near to him. He jumped towards the shield and as the beast approached, he held the shield at a tilted 45 degrees angle. As the beast hit the shield, Melv thrust it upwards and immediately dashed the beast in the abdomen with the shield to push it off the cliff. He cleared the third wave with a remaining HP of 350.

This match was an amusement to the Examiners and the viewers. They concealed their laughter with great difficulty as it seemed like Melv was doing a comedy act on stage with his activities and expressions.

Most of the participants had already completed the stage or logged out, except for two of them. Kaisha who was stalling time and the slowest of all the students, Noah.

Only a few were staring at Noah’s match, others had lost interest. All this time Noah was avoiding any and all blows from the warthogs. He had cut them a small number of times with his dagger technique but that was not enough. It only bled for 5 seconds and resulted in the loss of some HP, not a kill. If it was real life, he could have tried to take down one of them and use its razor-sharp fangs to hunt the others, but in virtual reality, the corpse would disintegrate on kill.

So the only things he could depend on were his dagger and his wits.

...