After drawing his slip, Necrotize made his way into the crowd of students searching for their teammates. He was looking for whoever else had drawn thirty-four.

He didn’t have to look long.

The first match was a boy, and the moment Necrotize saw him, recognition was immediate. They had shared a class before. Combat Department, blonde hair, a build that made the word soldier come to mind before any other. He carried himself with a particular kind of self-possession that sat naturally on him rather than being performed. The type of person who, if you saw him from across a room with no context, you’d assume was a knight.

Dominic Aslan.

Dominic didn’t know yet who his teammate was. He was scanning the crowd, frustrated by the press of bodies around him.

"Anyone here with team thirty-four? Raise your hand."

For a moment, nothing. Then a hand went up somewhere in the middle of the crowd. Dominic pushed through toward it, and when the bodies parted enough to see whose hand it was, Necrotize.

His brain stopped.

He stood there for a second, simply not processing it. His mouth worked without producing sound. The probability of this outcome had not factored into any version of his morning he had mentally prepared for. His luck had never been this kind to him. He had never expected it to be.

What do I do now? I’ve never spoken to a god before. I wasn’t taught how to do this. Nobody taught me how to do this.

He cycled through scenarios rapidly. Most of them ended with him saying or doing something that went wrong in some specific, vivid way. None of them satisfied him. He eventually landed on the simplest available option.

"Hello, sir. Team thirty-four here."

Necrotize looked at him and smiled.

"Hello there. Team thirty-eight as well." He paused. "Let me introduce myself first. I’m Necrotize. Looking forward to working with you."

He said it the way you’d say it to anyone.

Dominic straightened. "Sir, you shouldn’t have to introduce yourself to someone as lowly as me. There’s no one here who doesn’t know who you are." He composed himself. "My name is Dominic Aslan. Third son of the Aslan family. And it would be my greatest honour to be of service to you."

"You don’t have to speak to me so formally," Necrotize said. "We’re teammates today, you can talk to me normally. It’s a pleasure to meet you, Dominic."

Dominic adjusted his tone by one degree, which was about as far as his mind would let him go on short notice.

"And it’s my pleasure to meet you too, my lord."

Necrotize noted the formality was still there but let it pass. He understood how minds worked. You couldn’t simply instruct someone to stop being afraid in the presence of something that inspired genuine awe. It didn’t happen in seconds. He wasn’t going to push it.

"So, shall we find the rest of our team, Dominic?"

Dominic straightened with visible purpose. "Of course, my lord. Leave that to me entirely. You shouldn’t have to trouble yourself with something like this. Please, stay here and I’ll bring them to you."

He delivered this with the complete sincerity of someone who desperately wanted to make a good impression, paired with a look of such earnest appeal that Necrotize, despite having intended to go look himself, found himself staying put. 𝘧𝓇ℯ𝑒𝓌𝑒𝑏𝓃𝘰𝘷𝘦𝘭.𝒸ℴ𝓂

Fine.

Dominic disappeared into the crowd. He returned in short order, three girls in tow, all of whom had apparently just been informed who their fifth teammate was, based on the rigidity of their postures and the volume of sweat involved.

The first to introduce herself had light brown hair, green eyes, and freckles across her cheeks. An open average-featured face that held nervousness with reasonable composure.

"Ah, hello, my lord. My name is Alana Caesar. Fifth daughter of the Caesar viscounty. I’m a student of the Summoning Department. Summoning is our family’s specialisation. I hope to be of use to you."

The second was a girl with black hair and black eyes, her features pleasant but her words arriving in pieces, as though each one had to be retrieved separately.

"Hel...lo. My name is... Hana. I’m a student of the... Alchemy Department. And I don’t have a family name because I come from a commoner family. Please... treat me well."

She stumbled through it visibly. No one had ever taught her how to address a god. She had done what she could.

The third was different from the others immediately.

Her uniform wasn’t blue like everyone else’s. It was white, not quite a uniform at all, more like a religious garment. The kind a nun might wear. It covered her almost entirely, and a veil sat over her head, though her face was visible through it. She brought her hands together in front of her and lowered herself into a posture of prayer.

"All praise be to Destruction."

Necrotize frowned.

She continued before he could respond.

"My lord. This lowly being’s name is Sarliya Verstappen. First daughter of Saint Verstappen, an apostle of Goddess Luna. I am a student of the Divine Studies Department."

The moment he heard Divine Studies Department, her behaviour made immediate sense to him. They trained their students in devotion as a discipline. Of course she was like this.

He let out a breath.

"Sarliya, you can rise. I’ve said this before to others and I’ll say it now. I don’t like this. Please don’t do it again in front of me."

"As you wish, my lord."

He sighed internally. There was nothing to be done about it. He couldn’t change how a person’s upbringing had shaped them by simply asking.

While he was talking to them, his attention drifted toward the forest, and he noticed something he had already anticipated the moment he arrived.

Every creature inside that forest. Every monster, every animal. They had sensed him. All of them. And in response, they had done what living things do when they encounter something incomprehensibly dangerous. They had retreated. Moved as far from his location as their instincts could carry them.

The forest was effectively empty of anything worth hunting and the examination hadn’t even begun.

He didn’t want his presence to ruin the assessment for everyone else. If the monsters wouldn’t come near because of him, the other students wouldn’t be able to fight anything and their rankings would suffer for something that had nothing to do with their ability.

He had one option.

He closed his eyes.

Carefully, methodically, he placed a seal over his power, all of it. Not a compression, which he had already been doing, but an actual seal. A lock. Aura included. He sealed everything down to a remainder of 0.001%, which he judged would be sufficient for whatever a student examination could reasonably require.

The forest would normalise quickly once his presence was no longer detectable.

But, what he didn’t know was what that decision was going to cost him.

It was going to cost him badly.