The first trap Merin brought up was a rather simple one. It was made of a combination of twigs and seed shells concealed by leaves and spread out over the area so as to ensure any sneak ups would be unsuccessful.

  In all honesty, it was not much of a trap as compared to a warning arm. But the essence of every trap was to increase the defense of a base. If they were caught by surprise, then there was no reason for what they were doing.

  “I’m done setting up that area,” said Park Yuri as she approached Merlin who was gently throwing leaves upon a spread out bundle of twigs. He scrunched his face at the result of his actions. He didn’t like how it looked.

  And he wasn’t the only one.

  “I can see that practicality is vastly different from theorizing, thanks to you,” Park Yuri noted.

  Merlin gnced at her over his shoulder. “That’s rude.”

  “I was joking.” She leaned forward. “Move. Let me take over.”

  Merlin sighed and stood up. “Thank you.”

  He would have loved to keep going, but now was not the time to be hellbent on learning how to set up basic defensive traps. It would just eat into their time. And, sure enough, Park Yuri was able to set the leaves over the twigs so that they were in no way noticeable, and the trap blended in with the environment itself.

  She stood up.

  “What next?”

  Merlin rubbed his chin. He was trying his best not to think up harmful traps, even though Dr. Elias had not said anything about them holding back. But Merlin couldn’t assume that the whole Open field acted in the same way as the simution room and training areas. The Open field was a wide space, after all. The power it would take to power a simution on such a scale would be substantial.

  Of course, an Academy like Prestige Academy should be able to do it, but, again, he couldn’t assume.

  And it was so hard for him to think up harmless traps because Kieran had been a hunter. Most of his traps had been to kill, not repel. However, there was no one who could take his pce, so he had to think of something himself.

  “Let’s see…” Merlin fyed his eyes over the scenery, the rest of the members of their party working diligently to set up the twig traps. At that moment a loud boom resounded through the scenery from at least sixty kilometers away. Smoke rose to the air, and Merlin’s brows narrowed at the sight. “Some aren’t taking it any easy, are they?”

  “I can’t help but feel like you are,” Kim Yiseo said from behind; Merlin turned his attention to her. “These twig traps won’t protect the fg. We need something better. Or don’t you have any?” She folded her arms and tilted her head slightly.

  Well, he did have a whole lot of sickening ideas, but he was not of the mind to send someone so close to death just because they wanted to pass a test. However, it seemed he was the only one who shared that thought. Because Kim Yiseo’s words drew everyone’s attention his way, and their gazes were not ones that supported his decision to hold back.

  In that case, then he could take things up a notch. At least to the extent where it’s risky enough to make their opponents bat an eye, but not to the extent where one might lose their life.

  And besides… He looked up to the sky. He was having a nagging feeling at the back of his head.

  Merlin sighed. “Fine. I agree with you. We’ve been taking things too softly.”

  “I’m overjoyed,” said Kim Yiseo.

  Merlin didn’t reply to those words of hers. He faced the rest of the team. “Does anyone have any ability to fall trees?” Instead of a reply, Merlin got murmurs, which was surprising to him. He thought they wanted a bit more oomph to the traps? “No one?” he asked.

  “I do…” A girl with long bck hair and drab eyes stepped forward. Merlin recalled her introducing herself as Chen—Chen Meilin. He was more interested as to how her Hex worked to produce something so sharp that it could cut trees, so he immediately focused on that instead.

  “How, if you don’t mind me asking?” said Merlin.

  “My Hex is Silver,” Chen expined. “I can construct the fine particles of silver in the atmosphere into any shape I want, which includes something as sharp as a saw.”

  Merlin’s brows jumped up. Oh, that was fascinating. Silver was another Hex that he had not come across in Singurity Mage. But there was only so much diversity one could come across in a single POV novel focused on a main character that was, most of the time, basically a hermit.

  He wondered how the process functioned, imagining it to be somewhat simir to the way Kim Minji linked her mana to the molecules of water in the atmosphere to take control of them, in addition to how Chima also produced and reshaped fire with a simir process. Since they were all Construction Mages, the process shouldn’t be that much different from each other.

  However, magic was a funny thing. It was not an aspect that could be understood through assumptions alone. Those assumptions had to be proven right, because the percentage of them being incorrect was quite high.

  Now was not the time to be focused on the intricacies of another’s magical abilities, though. So Merlin refocused on the task at hand.

  “Alright,” he began. “Then let’s get to work. We only need to cut down a single tree. We’ll split it in half after that.”

  “Are you going to tell us about this trap you need a whole tree for?” Kim Yiseo asked, her expression filled with genuine curiosity.

  Merlin turned to her and smiled. “We’re going to be making a ballista.”

  The brows of everyone fell.

  “A ballista?” they mumbled. “Are you serious? That’s dangerous.”

  The terrain shivered from another explosion in the distance and Merlin nodded.

  “You all said I was taking it too easy, and I agree,” he said. “The rumbles are coming from the traps others have set. Compared to their’s, our’s is a bit juvenile.”

  And, yes, he did know a ballista seemed too much, but it was way down on the list of atrocious traps he had come up with. This was the most moderate one he could think of that was neither too dangerous nor too tame. If only the medieval warriors thought the same.

  “We don’t have the time for this,” Merlin continued. “We have to get to work now if we want to get it done quickly. It’s a massive trap. It’ll eat up most of our time and we probably won’t be able to set up any other traps.”

  “Then shouldn’t we focus on other traps instead of this massive one?” asked Park Yuri. “There’s the possibility we won’t even be able to complete it. Have you ever made a ballista before? You couldn’t even pce leaves over twigs well.”

  Merlin’s eyes twitched. Did she have to mention that? And, besides, that was different from this. Merlin had never been good at sneaking. He’d always been a more ‘attack head-on’ person. And the ballista and the twigs represented that.

  Also…

  “Have you heard the phrase: ‘fear the man who practices one kick ten thousand times over the man who practices ten thousand kicks…” He paused. Park Yuri blinked. “I’m not sure about the rest, but you get the idea. The ballista will do more harm than any other trap. And it will also make our opponents more wary.” That was considering they weren’t smart enough to realize that the ballista would have taken too long to make.

  “I agree with Merlin,” said Kim Yiseo. “Let’s make the ballista.”

  Park Yuri gnced at her roommate and sighed. “I see… Okay.”

  Merlin was gd Kim Yiseo had supported him, after all, she was going to be the main worker in the production of the ballista. She just didn’t know that yet.

  Merlin prayed in his heart that they wouldn’t be sanctioned for cutting down a tree as he and Chen picked out a sturdy one. Then he leaned back and watched the young girl of chinese origin channel her mana from her finger tips and into the atmosphere. He sighed at the sight, exasperated that the details of how a spell occurred wasn’t inscribed in a spell circle as the Mage cast their spell. It would have been a quick way for him to understand how the whole spell was cast.

  He gnced at her dark-brown Grimoire, a wild thought in his head.

  No. He couldn’t peep. That was an invasion of privacy. He would just have to wait until the time was right and ask her how her magic worked. Which was most likely until their victory during the test was assured.

  A second ter, dusts of light grayish white, sparkling in the sun that breathed down from above, gathered around Chen’s hands. They spun like threads, and in the blink of an eye a rough imitation of a heavy duty chainsaw appeared. Chen dropped it immediately, however, its existence only remained because her mana was still serving as a link between the spell and herself.

  Merlin frowned. “What happened?”

  She turned to him with a distraught look. “I thought we would at least need something this big to be able to cut down a tree, but… It’s too heavy.”

  Merlin blinked owlishly and exhaled. He then stepped forward. “Will it be possible for me to make use of it instead, you know, without the spell disappearing?”

  Chen gnced at the saw and back at him. “I’m not sure. I’ve never heard about another taking control of someone else’s magic.”

  “Right?” Merlin clicked his tongue. “If it was a creation spell, like Kim Yiseo’s, I would have been sure of its possibility.” Merlin also recalled the Dungeon raid exam and how Nora had channeled her mana into Minji’s spells so that they could be unched. His brows arched. That could work. “How about this?” he proposed. “It’s going to be tough, since you’ll be channeling your mana in two different pces in real time, but I need you to channel your mana onto my hands, like gloves; that way I should be able to take control of your spell.”

  Chen blinked. “Ah. That could work, yes. But won’t your anti-magic affect it?”

  Merlin smiled. “It doesn’t work that way. Can you do it?”

  She nodded. “Of course.”

  Chen closed her eyes and focused, and then she grabbed Merlin’s hands. Warm energy flowed from her to him, and in a second his hands were covered in gloves of blue mana with traces of white impurities within them.

  “Go on,” said Chen, nudging her head in the saw’s direction.

  Merlin nodded and reached for the saw. His Strength was at Level 12, which had been more than enough for him to lift a human while battered and even run, so he had no problems lifting a heavy duty machinery. In fact, the thing was so light in his hands he almost forgot he had picked something up.

  “So? How does it function?” he asked.

  “I’ll kickstart it. You cut,” Chen answered.

  Merlin bobbed his head and positioned himself in front of their chosen tree. “Ready when you are.”

  “You should have told me,” Kim Yiseo grumbled as she produced another thick strand of web. “Why have you turned me into a sve?”

  Merlin didn’t want to reply to that, but he couldn’t help but chuckle.

  “It’s really not funny,” Kim Yiseo added.

  “My bad,” Merlin apologized, his lips pursed as he watched her spun webs together around a split half of the trunk of the tree he and Chen had cut down. They were currently on their second ballista, and were more than thirty minutes into the test already. As he had expected, the production of the traps had really eaten into their time.

  “Are you sure this will work?” Park Yuri asked, standing a step away “It looks—”

  “Shabby,” Merlin completed her words for her. “I’ll be honest, I don’t know. We’ll just have to wait and see.”

  The second ballista was completed at that moment, a rough amalgam of webs and wood, where the tter was interwoven to make a projectile track and tray, and the wood, which would serve as the ammunition, rested on it.

  A single strand of inconspicuous web stretched from its location, hidden between a cluster of trees, towards the other ballista on the other side of the base. It was the trigger. Once it snapped, the ballistas would fire. The only problem was that the ballistas had ranges. If their opponents weren’t in the range of the attack, they obviously wouldn’t be getting hit. And that range was…

  “I still don’t understand why the ballista is facing the sky,” said Kim Yiseo. “But there’s no point in crying over spilled milk now. The traps are set. What next? We’re running out of time.”

  Merlin nodded and signalled for the rest of the party to come closer. “We’ll now select those who will head to our opponent’s camp. We have no idea who we’ll be facing, so I think it only makes sense that we consider the worst. As such, we should send our best fighters.” They all nodded in agreement. “In that regard, I nominate Park Yuri, Kim Yiseo, and… Whoever wants to join.” Brows fell as everyone stared at him. “What?” He shrugged.

  “You should come with us,” Park Yuri added.

  Merlin jerked his head back slightly. “Why? I’ll only hold you guys back.” And he truly believed it. He had been overwhelmed by Park Yuri, and Kim Yiseo was an S-Css Mage that had defeated another S-Css Mage. There was no space for him in their team.

  Kim Yiseo frowned. “Stop that nonsense,” she growled. “Let’s go.”

  Merlin gnced at everyone, and it seemed they were all in support of him being the third member of the team. He sighed and shook his head.

  “Even if you think I’m strong enough to join you guys, then wouldn’t it make sense for one of us to stay back and defend the camp?” he asked. “We don’t know the course of action of the other team, maybe they have sent their strongest this way already. I have working knowledge on the traps; I should stay back.”

  Kim Yiseo raised a brow. “Are you running from a fight?”

  Merlin snorted. “Absurd. I have never run away from a fight. I’m just being rational here.”

  Kim Yiseo nodded. “Fine. Then I’ll take Man-Shik on the way. His lightning Hex seems like it’ll be very useful.”

  “If you say so,” Merlin nodded. “Send Sofia back, please.”

  “No problem.”

  Kim Yiseo and Park Yuri turned around then, a gnce at their smartwatches showing them the location of their opponent’s camp. However, before they took a step in its direction, two dark clouds appeared, an anomaly in the clear sky above, and followed by a gentle rumbling was a streak of lightning.

  Merlin froze. Man-Shik’s signal.

  “Prepare for attack!” he ordered, and everyone moved after a brief second of clenching their jaws. “They really came all the way over here.”

  Merlin pulled his eyes from the sky and gnced over the surroundings, making certain that everything was intact—that the traps were discreet. And then a cold chill crawled down his neck, which was only made worse by the words he heard next.

  “Hello, brother,” a familiar voice called with a mocking tone, and Merlin turned around to see his twin hovering in the sky above, twirls of air beneath her feet.

  He clicked his tongue. “Nora…”

  It was already bad enough that she was his opponent in this drill, but then her accomplice appeared, he, too, floating in the sky. It was Lee Jaehyun.

  Merlin took a deep breath and exhaled. “Really?”