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[WEST TRINITY ACADEMY: TRIAL ANNOUNCEMENT]
Phase Zero: ’Leap of Faith’ — PASSED.
Status: Mutual Trust Verified.
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[PHASE ONE: THE ISOLATION LABYRINTH]
Objective: Navigate to the Central Extraction Point.
Setup: Examinee Pairs are separated by enchanted Mana-Glass.
Protocol: One side sees the hazard layout; the other controls the environmental gates.
Notice: Casualties will result in immediate failing grade.
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A trial of trust? Between the two of them?
What was there to trust?
Sure, they had technically paired up for this, but they barely knew each other.
Ironically, Corvina was still the person Callista had spoken to the most since transmigrating into this world.
"Callista?!" Corvina’s voice echoed from behind the thick stone wall to her left, muffled by a tiny, iron-grate speaker.
"I’m here!" Callista called back, rapping her knuckles against the stone. "Can you see anything on your side?"
"Nothing but a glowing wall map of your corridor! I can’t see you at all. Where are you standing?"
Callista looked around, her eyes landing on a glowing, rune-covered terminal on her side of the wall. It clearly controlled the locked blast doors on Corvina’s end. Total visual deprivation.
I hold her physical exit key, Callista realized, and she’s steering my movement blind.
"I’m right at the start. So, I am literally walking blind into a death trap, relying entirely on your directions?"
"Listen to me very carefully, you reckless stray. There is a pit of mana-spikes three paces in front of you. Take two steps forward, then stop. If you miscalculate by an inch, I will never forgive you."
"Lead the way, boss," Callista replied, stepping forward. "Just remember: if I step on a landmine, there’s nobody left over here to press your door button."
This felt like playing a high-stakes competitive game with a sweaty, tryhard teammate while Callista was just a filthy casual, and the rest of the team was dead so everyone was spectating her clutch attempt.
Sounds way too specific... but the feeling was definitely like that.
"Callista, I said left! Are you deaf, or just actively trying to get us disqualified?!"
"I did step left!" Callista yelled back, freezing with one foot hovering over a floor tile that had just sprouted six-inch obsidian spikes. "My left! Your right! You need to specify cardinal directions, boss. I don’t have a HUD over here!"
"Don’t you ’boss’ me! Take half a step back, duck under the pendulum, and smash the glowing red rune on your right panel so my blast door opens!"
"If I crouch, this dress is going to rip!" Callista complained. She ducked anyway.
A massive, guillotine-style blade swooped through the darkness right where her neck had been a microsecond prior, whistling through the air with terrifying force.
Okay, durability hit, but neck intact, Callista thought, wiping cold sweat from her forehead.
She reached into the wall slot, channeling a tiny, precise thread of Suture Magic directly into the door controls. With a soft click-clack, the circuit fused, and a distant, heavy thud echoed from Corvina’s side.
"Door’s unlocked!" Callista shouted. "Now where do I step next, or do I just stand here and let the ceiling crush me?!"
"Hold your horses, you ungrateful brat!" Corvina snapped back, her voice slightly winded as if she’d just stomped through her own set of obstacles. "Three paces forward! And if you die before we reach the extraction gate, I’m reviving your corpse just to kill you myself!"
"A simple ’thank you for opening the door’ would suffice!" Callista muttered under her breath, taking three quick steps into the dark as the floor behind her caved in.
"Shut up and listen! Step on tile three, skip five, and hit seven! If you touch four, lightning will literally vaporize your shoes!"
Callista squinted into the gloom, her eyes finally adjusting to the faint purple glow of the active spell-runes ahead. "Tile three... skip five... hit seven. Got it."
She delicately hopped across the path like a very expensive, very stressed-out cat. Three. Seven.
CLICK.
The tiles settled under her weight. Across the wall, a heavy metallic mechanism groaned, and the final blast doors groaned open, flooding both of their isolated corridors with blinding daylight.
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[WEST TRINITY ACADEMY: TRIAL ANNOUNCEMENT]
Phase One: ’Blind Isolation Labyrinth’ — CLEARED!
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Callista stumbled out of the dark chute and into the sunlit, ruin-strewn central arena, coughing softly into her sleeve.
A second later, Corvina burst through her respective exit archway. Her dark hair was wildly windblown, her pristine collar slightly askew, and her red eyes burned with pure, unadulterated fury as they locked onto Callista.
"You," Corvina gasped, striding over with long, aggressive steps. "You almost got us flattened three times!"
"And yet," Callista said, smoothing down her torn silk skirts and offering a serene, unflappable smile, "we cleared it. You’re welcome, boss."
Corvina stopped right in front of her, opening her mouth to deliver what was bound to be a lethal verbal roasting.
Then her gaze dropped to Callista’s trembling, dust-covered hands.
The villainess let out a long, frustrated hiss through her teeth. Her tense shoulders finally relaxed.
"Unbelievable," Corvina muttered, grabbing Callista by the wrist and pulling her toward the main arena floor. "Come on, stray. We still have fifty combat points to harvest."