The testing arena smelled intensely like burnt hair and bad decisions. Giant obsidian pillars circled a massive floating stone platform, while dozens of nervous students sat in the high metal bleachers.
With Leo's help, or total lack thereof, I found the testing hall. They measured magical strength here from rank D to SSS, and I needed to have a mock fight to prove my worth.
My assigned opponent for today was a guy named Dantalion. He was an evil lord according to the wild hallway gossip. I stood completely still in the center of the dusty ring.
"You dare step into my dark domain?"
A tall guy in a completely black cape glared at me.
"Are you the tester guy?"
He threw his head back and laughed at the glass ceiling.
"I am Dantalion."
I scratched my itchy nose with my thumb.
"Cool name."
Dantalion cracked his pale knuckles extremely loudly.
"I am the descendant of the Supreme Demon Lord."
I nodded my head slowly.
"I am Dylan."
He pointed a pale, trembling finger right at my face.
"You are merely a pathetic stepping stone."
I looked down at my cheap white canvas shoes.
"I just want to get my official rank."
Dantalion sneered, revealing a set of perfectly white teeth.
"You will receive an F minus."
I tilted my head to the left side.
"The gossip in the hallway said D is the lowest."
He swept his heavy black cape dramatically over his shoulder.
"Do you even know how the ranking system works?"
I shook my head slowly back and forth.
"The hallway gossip was pretty vague, honestly."
Dantalion crossed his arms over his spiked black chest plate.
"Rank D is for the totally useless trash."
I thought about the stale bread we threw away at home.
"Nobody likes trash."
He held up a single, pale skinny finger.
"Rank C is for the acceptable battle fodder."
I nodded my head in total agreement.
"Fodder is a very important part of the ecosystem."
He held up a second pale finger.
"Rank B is for the elite frontline soldiers."
I wondered if magical soldiers ate a lot of heavy carbs.
"Carbs give you solid energy for fighting."
He glared at me with total and utter confusion.
"What?"
I waved my hand dismissively in the empty air.
"Please continue the magic lesson."
He held up a third finger very slowly.
"Rank A is for the absolute masters of magic."
"That sounds like a very solid career path."
He clenched his hand into a tight and shaking fist.
"Rank S is for the living legends."
"Legends probably get to eat cake every single day."
He slammed his fist hard into his open palm.
"And Rank SSS is for dark gods like me."
I looked at his skinny pale arms and legs.
"You do not look like a god at all."
He screamed in absolute and blind rage. Black smoke started to pour out of his heavy leather boots.
"Witness the terrifying darkness of my tortured soul."
I yawned loudly while covering my mouth with my hand.
"Is something burning in here?"
The thick black smoke swirled around his legs like a creepy snake.
"My dark past fuels my unlimited magical power."
I really wanted a warm blueberry muffin right now.
"That is legit crazy."
He floated exactly two inches off the stone floor.
"My ancient clan was banished to the Shadow Realm."
I shifted my weight to my left leg.
"Salty."
He raised both of his hands toward the high glass ceiling.
"I spent a thousand years crying in the bottomless abyss."
I mentally calculated the precise yeast ratio for a sourdough starter.
"You look totally great for your age."
He ignored my polite compliment completely and started chanting in a totally dead and creepy language. The ancient words sounded like someone gargling angry rocks.
A giant ring of black fire erupted around his floating boots. The intense heat washed over my face like an open oven. It felt like a perfect 350 degrees Fahrenheit, which was the exact ideal temperature for baking soft sugar cookies.
"Feel the burning heat of the dark underworld."
I closed my eyes and enjoyed the pleasant warm breeze.
"This is actually super cozy."
The black flames surged much higher into the dusty air.
"It will burn your very soul to ash."
I checked the timer on my cheap digital watch.
"You should probably take those out soon."
He stopped his weird dark chanting abruptly.
"Take what out?"
I pointed at the black flames spinning around his feet.
"The fire is getting a bit too hot for cookies."
He snarled like a completely rabid wild dog.
"It is supposed to be incredibly hot."
I shrugged my shoulders casually at him.
"Suit yourself, man."
The air pressure dropped violently as the real show finally began. A bright blue magic circle appeared perfectly above the red one, and the temperature in the large room dropped to freezing instantly.
"Now face the eternal blizzard of lost souls."
Snowflakes the exact size of dinner plates started falling rapidly. I caught a giant snowflake directly on my tongue. It tasted exactly like dirty, metallic tap water.
"This snow is highly unsanitary."
He glared at me through the howling magical blizzard.
"It is the frozen tears of the eternally damned."
I rubbed my bare arms vigorously to stay warm in the cold.
"You really need to see a therapist."
The wet snow piled up around my cheap canvas shoes.
"The cold will shatter your fragile mortal bones."
I thought about the massive walk-in freezer in my dad's bakery. We kept all the excess unsalted butter locked in there. You always needed cold butter for a perfectly flaky pie crust, because if the butter got warm, the crust would be horribly tough.
The complex lamination process for croissants required extreme temperature control. You had to fold the cold butter directly into the stiff dough, and then you had to let it rest in the fridge for hours. It was a huge pain, but totally worth the flaky layers. This magical blizzard was absolutely perfect pastry weather.
"Do you have any butter on you?"
He stopped his freezing chant for a brief second.
"Why would I carry butter into a lethal battle?"
I kicked a heavy pile of frozen tears away.
"I want to make a fruit pie."
His glowing red eyes twitched violently in his pale face.
"I am going to utterly destroy you."
He resumed his weird gargling chant even louder than before. I glanced up at the high metal bleachers, noticing that the spectating students were completely losing their minds.
A guy with spiky blue hair was sobbing openly.
"He has totally mastered two elemental extremes."
A girl with long elf ears was biting her fingernails.
"That poor peasant boy is going to die horribly."
I waved up cheerfully at the scared girl with the elf ears.
"I am completely fine down here, guys."
She gasped loudly and hid behind her thick magic textbook.
"He is too stupid to realize his impending doom."
I turned my attention back to the floating edgelord.
"Your weird fan club is very dramatic."
Dantalion smirked a very arrogant and evil smirk.
"They recognize a true god when they finally see one."
I picked up a solid chunk of ice and threw it. It sailed through the cold air and hit his left knee, bouncing off his spiked black armor with a tiny metallic clink.
"Hey."
He looked down at his knee in total, absolute confusion.
"Did you just throw a literal snowball at me?"
I shrugged my shoulders completely innocently.
"I was getting a little bored."
A massive purple magic circle materialized above the dusty arena. The glowing ancient runes spun rapidly in a clockwise direction, and a harsh violet light bathed the terrified audience in the stands.
I rubbed my dry and itchy eyes with my knuckles.
"Tremble before the ultimate seal of the abyss."
Dantalion floated higher until he was exactly twenty feet up.
"You lack the darkness required to understand my true pain."
I really just lacked a good solid breakfast this morning.
"I am totally ready to listen to you."
He pulled a small silver locket from his dark cape pocket.
"When I was a mere boy, I had a loyal shadow hound."
I liked dogs a whole lot.
"Dogs are legit the best animals on earth."
He popped the silver locket open with his pale thumb.
"His name was Bloodfang the World Destroyer."
I tried very hard not to smile at that.
"That is a very aggressive name for a little puppy."
A single dark tear fell from his glowing red right eye.
"The light faction stole him from my dark nursery."
I felt a tiny shred of genuine human sympathy.
"That is actually super messed up, man."
He crushed the silver locket into dust in his pale hand.
"They forced him to play fetch in the bright sun."
I blinked twice in rapid succession.
"That sounds like a totally normal dog activity."
He shook his head with pure, violent, and unhinged rage.
"Shadow hounds dissolve completely in bright sunlight."
I winced at the terrible and sad mental image.
"Okay, that is genuinely awful."
He spread his pale arms wide open once again.
"I will destroy this entire school to avenge Bloodfang."
I did not see the logical connection there at all. The school did not steal his shadow dog.
"The school did not steal your shadow dog."
He ignored my perfectly valid point completely.
"I am initiating the SSS Rank forbidden spell right now."
The sky above the arena turned a deep, bruised purple. Heavy black storm clouds gathered out of absolutely nowhere, and red jagged lightning cracked across the artificial magical ceiling.
The red lightning struck one of the giant obsidian pillars. A huge chunk of the black stone broke off and fell, crashing onto the arena floor with a deafening boom. I examined the broken stone very closely.
The structural integrity of this entire building was completely compromised. They really needed to hire far better magical contractors.
"You are destroying public school property."
Dantalion spread his hands out wide.
"The world is my property."
I shook my head in severe disappointment.
"The janitor is going to be so incredibly salty."
He pointed a finger at the broken pillar.
"I am the dark janitor of the universe."
I let out a short, loud bark of laughter.
"That is a terrible metaphor."
He flushed bright red with intense, sudden embarrassment.
"I sweep away the utterly weak."
I kicked a piece of the broken pillar away.
"Just stick to the dark lord stuff, man."
The audience in the bleachers started screaming in absolute terror again.
"We are all going to die today."
I looked up at the screaming student in the high stands.
"You guys really need to totally chill out."
Dantalion started spinning in a slow dramatic mid-air circle.
"I summon the blazing meteor of infinite sorrow."
A massive flaming rock appeared below the dark purple clouds. It was easily the exact size of a small neighborhood bakery.
"That is a very large floating rock."
The heat from the giant meteor was getting extremely uncomfortable. It was pushing well past 450 degrees Fahrenheit right now, which was serious commercial pizza oven heat territory. My cheap white canvas shoes were starting to melt slightly against the floor.
"Witness the absolute pinnacle of ultimate magical power."
I looked down at my cheap watch again. He had been charging this single spell for twenty solid minutes.
"Are you going to throw that thing or what?"
He stopped spinning and glared down at me fiercely.
"A spell of this sheer magnitude requires absolute perfect focus."
I crossed my arms tightly over my chest.
"It requires a long nap."
He gritted his teeth so hard they practically squeaked.
"Your peasant insolence ends right now."
The massive flaming meteor started to descend very slowly. It moved at the exact speed of a lazy, tired turtle.
"Is it supposed to be this incredibly slow?"
He strained his skinny arms, pushing the hot air downward.
"The sheer mass of the sorrow makes it incredibly heavy."
I sighed a very deep and extremely tired sigh.
"I have my next class in ten minutes."
He laughed his classic evil villain laugh again.
"You have a funeral in exactly one minute."
I decided I was completely done waiting around for this nonsense. I bent my knees slightly toward the stone floor and jumped straight up into the boiling hot air. The stone floor shattered completely into dust beneath my feet.
I shot upward exactly like a human cannonball, clearing the entire twenty feet in a single microsecond. I appeared directly in front of Dantalion's completely shocked face.
"What?"
I pulled my right fist back tightly. I did not use any magic power at all; I just used the physical muscles built from kneading heavy bread dough. I punched him squarely in the exact center of his face.
There was a loud and very satisfying bone crunch. Dantalion shot backward much faster than his own stupid meteor, crashing entirely through the arena's incredibly thick stone wall. He left a perfect Dantalion-shaped hole in the solid brick.
The massive blazing meteor of sorrow instantly vanished into thin air, and the dark purple storm clouds evaporated immediately, leaving clear skies. I landed softly on my feet in the center of the dusty ring and dusted off my hands casually.
The entire testing arena was completely dead silent. Nobody in the high metal bleachers made a single sound. The official magical examiner dropped his glowing magical clipboard, which clattered loudly on the broken stone floor.
I looked over at the totally terrified examiner.
"Did I pass the mock fight thing?"
The examiner stared blankly at the hole in the brick wall. He slowly raised a badly trembling hand into the air.
"Winner, Dylan."
I smiled and walked casually toward the cafeteria to finally get some lunch.