'Wow.'
That was the first word that came into Ashton's mind as soon as the city of Contingent came into view. Maddencreek was nothing in comparison to this city which was to be expected as Contingent was a city that was not only funded by the royalty of Lycania but from other werewolf kingdoms as well.
The kingdom's capital was the only city that was bigger than Contingent. But even then, some said the security of Contingent was much better than that of the capital. Ashton did not know how much truth the claim had to it.
But it must have been true if even the mistress could not enter this city as she pleased when she could freely roam around the capital whether she was invited there or not. Also, the city had multiple gates one could use to enter.
However, all of these gates were heavily guarded by guards who seemed to be on Donovan's level or maybe a couple of levels below. Either way, they weren't people with whom anyone in their right minds would want to mess.
Contingent was a city that defied the odds of architecture and engineering. It was built on top of a mountain range. while the other mountains were covered in snow, the mountain Contingent was made on, was weirdly warm with not the slightest bit of white snow covering it.
In fact, the areas around the mountain were covered with lush green fields. To say that this planet was weird would have been the understatement of a century. Even though they were yet to enter the city, Ashton could see the skyline is riddled with elaborate skyscrapers and each was more impressive than the next.
However, the academy was not the only place of importance there. Since the other kingdoms had funded in its creation, Contingent acted as a trade centre as well. Which would account for all the carts and trucks laden with valuable resources Ashton was seeing around them.
According to the mistress, the trade in the city was at an all-time high and thus, it has attracted a lot of attention from other kingdoms as well. As a result, Vampire had also established an embassy within the city.
Also, the academy also hosted courses for the vampires as well. As weird it was, Contingent was a safe place for them all. at least that was how the others were led to believe. However, only the vegetarian vampires who survived on animal blood were allowed to attend this place and their admission test and process varied a lot from what Ashton was going to take later that day.
Due to this odd combination of various cultures, it has left its mark not just on education, but also upon the city's identity. What historically was a city of no variation has grown into a large melting pot and it's this that unites a little over one million people to this day.
But more importantly... it was the food and delicacies this place had to offer that made even the stoic mistress drool with excitement. After seeing her reaction, Ashton was seriously thinking whether the mistress only accompanied him because she wanted to try the food once again.
"It's crowded quite a bit today..." The mistress mumbled, "Then again today is the admission test so it's expected to be that way."
"Hm..." Ashton just nodded along.
He still didn't know what the admission test was going to be. He had asked the mistress about it priorly, but she did not know anything either.
"The test changes every year. One year it's about academics and the next it's about duels. Not even the professors and trainers know about it. Only the director of the academy knows what she is going to do for the test."
That's was what the mistress told him. Even the teachers and other faculty members got to know about it mere minutes before the actual test began. It was done so that none of the teachers leaked the news to give any student an unfair advantage over the others.
Ashton thought this to be a wise move. If the teachers knew about it then there was a high probability that the noble families would try to pry the information out of them. Which would have placed the honest teachers in a hard position, while the others would try to sell the information at a price.
"You never told me what your test was?" Ashton asked the mistress as he got bored from sitting in the car for hours.
"We were made into makeshift teams and had to hunt monsters. Each monster had a certain amount of points and to qualify you needed to obtain an unknown amount of points. However, all of us will get individual points for slaying monsters. On top of that, we were allowed to attack the other participants and steal points from them. So you can imagine the chaos that ensued afterwards."
"And how many points did you need to qualify?"
"None. As I said, the director had always been unpredictable. After the test finished we were informed that none of the top ten participants qualified. But the rest of us did."
The mistress had a smile on her face, as she continued, "It wasn't a test to check our strength, but our teamwork and all of the top ten participants had betrayed their teams and stolen their points from them. Thus they were disqualified. So you would need to be extremely careful of what you do within the duration of the test."
Ashton nodded and was lost in his thoughts, 'Looks like this isn't going to be as easy I thought it would.'