In the next day, at the capital of Centaur Three.

Two guards kept watching people in a queue using the teleportation array. It was the most tedious job of a guard but also the most safe, because no one would cause a ruckus there and risk damaging the array.

“Next”

Shouted one guard, seeing the people used the array and left the planet.

Centaur Three didn’t have a two-way teleportation door,like the majority of planets, so the only way to leave the planet was using a teleportation array and inputting the correct coordinates for the planet and place they wanted to go.

Normal people could not easily remember coordinates, nor they knew how teleportation arrays worked. Because of that, by the side of the array, they had to put a board with the most common coordinates.

If people didn’t know how to input the coordinates, then a guard would do it for the people and charge an extra fee.

.

“Next”

Shouted the guard again, and seeing that an old man and a guy in black clothes passed by him, he raised his hand for the rest of the queue to wait.

The other guard, a few steps behind, seeing people approaching, asked in a low voice,

“50 crystals for each one, and an additional fee of 20 crystals if you need me to activate the array”

“No need”

Said the old man, using a common-tongue dialect, already extending his hand and giving a hundred crystals.

The guard grabbed the money and waited by the side. His job was done. But because he had to wait for them to leave, he kept looking at the coordinates the old man was inputting. He had to make a report of unusual coordinates but in the end people only used common places and it had become a habit of him watch peoples input their own coordinates and try to calculate the destination planet using before people activated. A thing he did to pass the time.

Seeing the old man imputing the coordinates, he started to try to figure the destination as usual.

‘ZrCy?….’

But when he saw two runic letters in the coordinate, his eyes grew, and he looked up. The dark smile on the old man’s face was anything but a reassuring one.

‘Shit….. Shit…. Shit…’

The place was outside the borders of the mage alliance.

“RUN!!!!!!”

Screamed the guard, using all the air in his lungs to alert the people behind, because he knew what happened when someone input those kinds of coordinates. 

They were fugitives, or criminals, wanted by the mage association.

And if they really wanted to escape, they could not leave the coordinates behind.

And just as the guard expected, the old man threw a cylindrical sphere pulsing with a bluish glow. The sphere didn’t even have the time to touch the ground and those two guys vanished using the teleportation matrix.

The guard thew himself to the ground, and at the same time, the sphere touched the floor.

A bright bluish light engulfed the entire place, and a second later, the explosion came. 

~boom~

The entire building where the transportation array stood vanished from earth in a single second.

Neither the guards nor anyone close to the building expected such a day, because this day would mark the planet with a permanent scar on its history. 

A day where the mage alliance would send people to rule the planet, instead of letting locals rule.

They could not allow this kind of thing happening again inside of the mage alliance territories.

People normally only destroyed the matrix and used another one when trying to go outside from mage alliance borders. This allowed them to escape and to not leave traces behind.

For the mage alliance, the ones who had the money to buy a bomb like that actually didn’t need to use public arrays. They could easily create their own hidden transportation arrays.

Using something like that on a planet ruled by the mage alliance was akin to slapping them in the face, and the mage alliance could do nothing about, because not a single clue was left behind.

Everyone in the place died, with not even ashes remaining.

A few seconds later, at planet Zamith, outside the mage alliance border, a light glow flashed and two people appeared. It was Mack, and the old man.

Mack took a step forward, and could feel the gravitational force on the planet was a few times stronger than the one he was used to.

Looking around, he could see nothing but trees, it seemed they had teleported to a jungle.

A few seconds, mack noticed a dot moving to their direction in the sky.

The dot grew bigger and bigger until Mack could see it was some kind of machine.

The machine stopped in the air a few meters from them and landed on the ground, while doing so, destroyed all the vegetation around.

[Lets Go, it’s our ride to the trial place]

Mack noticed the machine looked like a truck, but instead of wheels had a few propellers like the ones in planes.

Coming close to the ‘truck’ a door at its back opened and a few people could be seen inside, probably people who would participate in the trial. That’s what Mack thought, at least.

“Come inside. We are late already.”

Shouted a voice from the inside. And just as the voice asked, Mack and the old man entered the ‘truck’ and took a seat for each one.

Barely they had the time to seat and thing was already moving extremely fast, risking the sky.

Mack looked at the people inside, but none caught his curiosity. All of them seemed to be ‘humans’ or humanoids at least, and all had different clothes or hair. Mack could not pinpoint a single thing in common between them.

[There is no use trying to figure them out, most of them are just trying their luck here.]

‘So people volunteer for this?’

[Not exactly, but the organisation has his ways of recruiting from normal people too. After all, that’s how it was first born.]

‘I see. Well, they don’t seem stronger at all, but I guess in their eyes, I’m not either’

[They are just a small fraction of people who will participate in the trial. It’s expected that each trial has at least a thousand people taking part. That is a rule. It can’t be lower than one thousand.]

Barely the old man finished saying his words, and the truck stopped. They have landed again.

The doors opened and people started leaving the truck, and Mack could see that outside there were already hundreds of people waiting.

Mack left the truck but noticed that the old man stayed along with two other people.

[This is where we depart, make sure to stay alive]

Said the old man, using his mind link.

Mack gave a small nod and turned his head gazing at the front.

Hundreds of people were waiting with no clue of what was happening, but Mack noticed that some people seemed to know each other as they kept small groups of two or three, but they were few.

Most people just stood there waiting for something, and once the truck left Mack noticed that behind him, there was a sea, but the sand below his foots were not like on earth, but more like gravel.

‘And the odd things start to appear. finally.’

Thought Mack, looking up at the sky.

Seeing that a man was flying with nothing but his body in the sky.

“ATTENTION EVERYONE!”

Screamed the man in the sky, and seeing everyone paid attention, he proceeded.

“The rules of this trial are simple. You are in an island, and water is a safe place for you. If you want to give up the trial, just go to the water.”

Then, the man waved his hand, and several dots of light flashed in every participant, and Mack noticed that a small pendant appeared around his neck.

“This token represents you. If you want to pass the trial, you need to keep it to the end. The more tokens you get, the more high ranked in the end you will be. We will choose the top 50 more ranked.”

A commotion started and the voice of people talking could be heard everywhere.

“I did not finish yet. You have 30 minutes to decide. The ones who want to take part move to the trees and enter the island and the ones who don’t want just wait at this beach.”

The man took a slight pause and continued,

“The more important thing to note is, once you leave this beach, everything is allowed. I repeat….”

Said the man, taking another pause.

“EVERYTHING”

Screamed the man again to make sure everyone got the message.

“Now! Make your choice, to stay here and leave this recruitment trial, or to proceed. You have 30 minutes to decide. Once the time is up, everyone here is automatically disqualified.”