The first student to strike the boulder presented himself as an example of what not to do to the other children.
"Next!" elder Joules called.
A boy walked forward and presented his weapon against the boulder. He took in sharp breaths of air. He was obviously nervous, but nevertheless, he channeled his energy into his sword and striked hard.
The sword went through, but it only went about five inches in.
"Good!"Elder Joules congratulated him, "Even though you have C-Grade Dantain, You still Managed to balance your Spirit energy with your sword and cause some damage to the Boulder.
Hearing her praise, the Student was excited and came down the podium.
"Next!!!" She called out again, and another student took the stand. This time around, his sword went a full ten inches deep. This one was also C-grade.
"Next!"
This time around, it was a B-grade student. Surprisingly, he did worse than the C-Grade student.
Elder Joules shook her head. Evidently, just having a Higher grade in Dantain alone, was not enough. One needed incredible control of their spiritual Energy.
And so it continued. Many of the students made good grades while some others did not. However, C-grade and B-grade did not pass twenty inches in depth.
The students soon understood that the task they had been given was not as easy as they thought it would be.
Many of them panicked and didn't get control of their spiritual energy right and were flung off into the distance. Some unfortunate ones even had their swords broken by the boulder.
Most of such people were the ones that had terrible swords.
As time passed, those that had not yet attcked the boulder learnt from the mistakes of those that had attacked the boulder.
However, it was now time for the first A-grade Dantain student to strike the boulder. It was a girl. her name was Carla. She was the other person aside from Cablen to have come out with an A-grade Dantain.
She approached the Boulder and all eyes remained on her.
It was one of two things. Firstly, the students were curious as to how a person with A-grade Dantain would fair against the boulder as compared to the others.
The second reason was that this particular student had a very shitty sword. Even though she had A-grade Dantain, she came from a not so well to do background.
Rumors had it that she was currently using her dead grandfather's sword. Her parents were not cultivators and had only barely through some special means gotten the invitation for their daughter to become a Cultivator.
A-grade Dantain cultivators were valuable. And if it was in another circumstance where a S-grade Dantain cultivator like Nora did not appear, she would have been the one receiving the attention the elders were giving Nora.
However, no one was ever ready to settle for less best when the best was staring them in the face.
But this did not deter Carla. She was hard-working and was willing to prove that. Especially now that the Chief of the clan was watching. She had to give it her best.
And so she did. She channeled her spirit energy into her sword and hit the boulder as Hard as she could.
"HUH!!!" every one that was watching gasped in surprise. The reason was simple. One, Her sword went a full twenty-five inches into the boulder.
This was the highest record so far. The second reason, however, was because, the sword broke as soon as she hit the boulder, with half of it landing sharply directly in front of Dona's crouch area.
For a few seconds, the entire place was silent, and Carla kept on bowing again and again in apology.
However, Dona showed his generosity as a leader and even laughed the entire process off which eased the tension of the place.
On top of that, he even promised to help a bright student Like Carla get another sword.
Naturally, this move won the reverence of the children for this generous leader some more.
Next, came Cablen's turn. He made it thirty inches into the boulder. This was naturally expected since he had a much better sword as opposed to Carla or most of the students.
Cablen had a proud look on his face as he stepped down. He now had the highest record.
"Congratulations chief Dona!" Elder fatso congratulated the moment Cablen made the record, and Dona nodded his head enjoying the praise.
Finally, it was Nora's turn.
The moment her name was called, the entire place went silent. Everybody knew deep down without a doubt that Nora was going to do well.
In fact, some even speculated that she was going to crush the entire boulder. Even Chief Dona and the two elders behind him sat upright to see how well she was going to do.
Nora stepped up to the podium. With the amount of eye and attention she was dragging, any girl her young age would be nervous. However, Nora had been a star for a while now. At this stage, she was already well used to it.
She unsheathed her sword. It was thin and the slight blue glow it gave seemed further amplified by Daylight.
She channeled her spirit energy into it. Her spirit energy was pretty to look at. And as it entered the sword, it made the blue of the sword glow some more.
And then she attacked.
*Swannnn!!!*
A slicing sword was heard.
Elder joules nodded, "Very Good! Very Good!"
"Wow!!!" the students could not help but applaud.
Nora made it a full sixty inches into the boulder. This was an outstanding impressive score. This simply meant that at her age, she could drop a very big tree in just one move.
Dona also applauded as well as the other elders.
And so the Boulder Cutting test ended.
Elder joules called out some names that were lucky enough to have received their swords while the class was going on and they also came and displayed their skills. However, none of them were impressive, with the highest only making it to ten inches.
The exercise had ended.
"Is there anyone else that has not presented!?" Elder Joules asked and the crowd remained quiet.
However, Nora was worried. In the end, Chiron was not able to make it. If he did not present, he would effectively be kicked out of the Academy.
"Since there is no one else we will now be mov..."
A low but audible voice interrupted her.
"I did not hear my name!"
Everyone turned to the sound of the voice.
To their surprise, a lone figure wearing very baggy clothes pulling along an abnormally big crooked sword slowly made his advance...
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