Air Hero

Lunch time

Max then looked around again for an empty spot, and somehow, he spotted Hyacinth not far at a corner. As someone who got a good result on the hero examination test with an A-rank result for sensitivity, it is strange that nobody seemed to be around her.

Max saw that the cafeteria is crowded, and there seemed to be an open spot in front of Hyacinth, so he decided to go there. He picked up his food tray and approached the girl.

“Hello, every seat seemed to have been taken. May I sit here?”

The girl nodded, and Max helped himself to sit down and enjoyed the food. Looking closer at the girl, she also seemed to be having her lunch, but it was something she brought herself as it comes with a lunch box.

As Max enjoyed his food, the two didn’t say anything and made the situation awkward. There are a couple of times when Max thinks of saying something, but it seemed to be impolite since they are still eating.

Trying to finish his food quickly, Max gorging on his food inelegantly since there’s something that he wants to talk about with the girl. As soon as he finished with his food, he looked at the girl who still has some food left and wait for her patiently.

When Hyacinth took her last bite and chewing on the food, Max then started the conversation.

“Hi, I forgot to introduce myself before. My name is Max.”

“Hyacinth. Nice to meet you.”

“Nice to meet you too. May I ask you a question?”

Hyacinth seemed to be a shy girl as she only nods at Max's question to give her affirmation.

“Why is it that everywhere else is crowded, but nobody sits with you?”

“Because I put up a barrier around me. Grandma said that I need to do this so insignificant people won’t be able to disturb me.”

“Barrier? Insignificant?”

Max is confused hearing Hyacinth's answer, but then he got his answer soon.

“You know, Max. the reason why nobody around is because of the barrier that I set up makes this spot unseen from outside.”

“Then, why can I enter and approach you?”

“Actually, I want to ask you that too. Is your sensitivity is A-rank?”

“Eh, what? How can that be? My sensitivity is only D-rank. However, I am more sensitive to other’s elemental imprint.”

It wasn’t totally a lie since, just like when Yuna put the fire butterfly on him, Max could see the fire butterfly on him while others won’t feel or see anything. He has also talked about this with Kalina, and his sensitivity is his greatest weapon.

“Is that so?”

“Yes. That’s definitely is. By the way, do you know what we will have for our second stage of hero examination?”

“As usual, the content of the second stage of hero examination barely changed.”

“I see. If by chance it will become a group contest, please take care of me, okay? After all, we can be called acquaintances.”

“Okay, Max.”

After talking with Hyacinth for a while, Max found out that she isn’t a shy girl, but she is just isn’t open to someone that she just met. So Max talked about daily life things with her, and it makes her open up a bit with him.

“Really? You didn’t attend a school for heroes, Hyacinth?”

“Yes, mostly all the things that I learned are taught directly by my grandma.”

“It seemed that your grandma is an amazing person.”

“I know, right. My grandma is the strongest person in my family. Even my father couldn’t do anything to her. By the way, what about you, Max?”

“Me? I’m from a normal school. I’m lucky that someone sponsored me and good enough to have all barely meet the requirement of D-rank.”

“Really? Why didn’t you take the United Heroes school? What’s it like to be in a normal school?”

“Well, this and that happened, so I didn’t enter the united Heroes school. Normal school, hmm… it’s normal. What else can I say?”

“Pffft… so, there’s nothing special?”

“Yea, I don’t think something is different.”

Just when they want to talk more, an announcement can be heard.

“Attention, for all hero examination participants, the second stage will start in fifteen minutes. Please gather at hall B by following the sign.”

Hyacinth and Max followed the order, and also all of the people that are taking the hero examination test. However, only those who passed the first stage could take the second stage. Those who didn’t pass the first stage don’t have a chance to appeal to the others anymore.

What greeted them is only an empty hall, and that makes everyone confused. Finally, Elrisa appeared on the stage to erase their doubt.

“Hello everyone. How’s your lunch? Since you have refilled your energy, I hope that you could fully showcase your strength in the second stage. I will be explaining it to you first. The second stage is a mock battle test. We will be seeing how you act in a simulation of hero vs. villain. For this second stage, we have 1075 participants. We will release double the number of dummy hostages that could be rescued for points and half the amount of villains that will be hindering the participants.”

The participants didn’t show a surprising reaction since, more or less, the content of the test of the hero examination every year is the same. The only difference will be the setting of the field. The easiest one will be in the city setting, and the hardest one is in a volcano eruption setting.

“As usual, defeating a villain will earn you points too. The safety area where you need to escort the hostages will be marked with a blue flag so that you won’t miss them. Don’t look down on the villain robot that is released on the mock battlefield since they are the newest creation from our tech department.”

There is suddenly a screen, and inside it, it showed the villain robot that they will be facing. The robot's stats are barely D-rank, but suddenly it changed to another robot that looked different from the rest with C-rank stats.

“There is a special villain robot that will immediately grant you a hero license once you defeated them. However, there is a special exception for this. You could form a party of five to take down the C-rank robot.”

Hearing this, many participants immediately get excited and looking around to find someone they know to form a party. Instead of gathering points that are needed to pass the test, defeating the special robot is faster and seemed to be easier.