After enjoying both their individual date nights, the day had arrived for the trio to take the trial of Haven and the Trial of Haven for nobles.
Zander and Sophie spent the entire day relaxing, watched a movie, enjoyed a day in the city at the shops and Zander had cooked her a great dinner. It felt like the good times they had before Haven, which put them both in a good mood, with a fresh mindset for the trials.
Cyrus and Juno continued to hit it off and Cyrus was much more himself in a one on one date setting. He had taken Juno shopping, to which Juno said was unnecessary, but it was something Cyrus wanted to do.
He found out he had missed her birthday, despite being in Haven at the time, as it was July 17th so he bought her a very nice bracelet before their date and let her pick out whatever she wanted, to which she picked out a heart shaped necklace with a ruby in it.
The shopkeeper didn't want to accept Cyrus's money, to which Cyrus felt embarrassed, so he had Zander stop by after and pay for it for him. This made Juno smile, as she gave Zander and Sophie a hello and thank you and they were on their way.
After shopping, Cyrus asked Juno what she did for fun in Haven and she laughed and said, "these last two days have been the most fun I've had in a long time."
Cyrus asked her if she wanted to go to his place for a movie and dinner, and she agreed and was surprised at how well Cyrus could cook.
After a great evening, Juno gave Cyrus a big hug and a kiss and wished him good luck on his trials.
Much like the day the three arrived, the entire town square had been converted again. This time, it was converted into a giant watching area for the citizens of Haven to gather and watch the trials via livestream.
Courtesy of the King and Queen for the special day, food, drinks and snacks were provided for everyone in Haven, as it would be a long day.
Cyrus, Zander and Sophie stood nervously on stage, not knowing what to expect. The council was there in their traditional robes, as were the King and Queen on a platform and the King began to give the opening speech.
"Citizens of Haven, thank you for attending this joyous event! As you all know, my son has come home and returned with Zander Elrod and his beautiful, yet unexpected wife Sophie Elrod. Because of that, we have decided to make today's order of the trial random! Please look at one of the screens and if you are watching from home, we hope you enjoy today's ceremony," the King declared.
On the screen, it showed three faces. Cyrus, with a determined look and his typical bald fade and black hair, Zander, with his typically natural spiked golden hair, hair that reminded you of an anime character, just not as long and tall of spikes and finally Sophie, with her beautiful silver hair tied up perfectly, her beautiful pink eyes with makeup to match and a big smile on her face.
The men gave loud roars for Sophie, to which she just shook her head
Zander,
The tv then started shuffling between the three faces, starting at a great speed showing one after another, always in a random pattern until it eventually landed on Sophie.
"And it looks like our first participant will be the lovely Sophie Elrod. Sophie, Cyrus and Zander, please make your way with Zoey to the Monoliths at the Castle.
The three of them walked, with confidence, to the two giant monoliths that stood outside the castle.
In front of the castle now stood a machine, which looked kind of like the VR capsules Zander at his home, but were much different.
"Sophie please step inside the machine, as it will give you your recommended beast level to fight," Zoey said with a smile.
Sophie stepped in, and the entire crowd could see Sophie's potential beast rank move up from F to E to D to C and finally stopped at B.
"Your recommended level of opponent is B. Percent of participants who face a level B opponent in their initial trial. 1%," the capsule played for all to hear.
Sophie could hear all the roars outside, as apparently it was quite rare for someone to draw a beast rank this high.
The King stated, "Sophie Elrod starts us off impressively with a B ranked beast! What a show we will have today! Sophie, you have the option of accepting a B rank, a C rank or an A rank, which do you choose?"
Seeing on her VR screen, Sophie immediately clicked B, as the A rank showed 0.5% and C rank showed 8%.
The crowd roared again and then another randomized started for terrain. Fortunately for Sophie, she drew desert: a high temperature terrain with sand and high winds. She wished she could go back and choose the A rank option.
Zander tried binding with her, but in the capsule it wouldn't work.
Next, a final randomizer went off and Sophie watched carefully as all the beasts sped past her on the screen, eventually slowing down and ending "King Scorpion," which showed a large, black and orange beast, around 15 feet in size with three tails, all with large stingers protruding from them.
Each stinger had a different color, one was red, one was green, one was black. It's pincers were large and looked like they could chop someone in half if they got ahold of someone.
"The King Scorpion, a tough draw, as it is widely considered one of the most fierce of the B ranked beasts because of its use of the terrain. We wish you luck Sophie and if at any time you wish to surrender, simply yell those words and we will teleport you out of that world," the King stated.
The VR capsule opened and Sophie looked confident as ever. She walked up to Zander and said "dual blades, light armor, both ice infused please babe," and gave Zander a big kiss, which got roars from the crowd and applause from the King and Queen.
"Which weapons and armor will you be using," the King stated, surprised to see she already changed into her gear and had her swords on a sheath on her back.
Zoey walked up to the blue monolith, said an incantation, it lit up and a teleported appeared, to which she stepped through with Sophie. The monolith then reappeared in its original shape.
"For those of you who have not seen a trial, they are specially designed for those at the age of 18 to help decide which faction to join while highlighting their skills. The objective is simple. Kill the beast as quickly as possible and you will receive a score on a scale of 1-50. The current high score for B rank is 44. Good luck," the King stated.
Everyone's screen now showed Sophie, in a desert terrain and Zoey gave her a wink and a thumbs up.
A timer counted down from 10 and when it hit 0, Sophie immediately changed into her Phoenix form and shot up 40 feet in the air, using her Phoenix eyes to spot the beast, who was underground.
She shot three fireballs and the sand and the rumbling began, as the giant scorpion had risen from the desert and flung the three fireballs back, using each of his tails. Sophie simply ate the fireballs, to which the crowd gasped and cheered.
"It seems like I can't rely on my Phoenix eyes too much to have the advantage of seeing his aura move first like animals, but I can always find him. I just need to avoid those stingers," Sophie thought.
Just then, the scorpion began shooting stingers from each of its tails, which Sophie avoided and when she saw an opening, she drove in and swung both swords, still infused with ice, at the red stinger tail and although it didn't cut right through, it made a deep enough cut to draw black blood, and a screech from the scorpion.
Angry it had been hit, it went to grab Sophie with his claw, but she was too fast and flew back upwards.
"Impressive, she's avoiding the poisonous stingers like they're nothing. I wonder how she has magically infused gear, that's very, very rare," the King had mentioned to the Queen, the council and Ethan, who was also on the podium watching.
"I'm guessing the terrain is to her advantage as well. It's a desert and phoenixes are attracted to and give off immense heat, so it's good she has that advantage otherwise this scorpion might be troublesome," Ethan stated.
Sophie started casting fireballs, to which did little to the beast, but did irritate it enough to have it shoot out its stingers. Using her Phoenix eyes again, they were easy to dodge and she dashed in and finished off the red stinger tail.
Enraged, the King Scorpion began to grow in size and almost caught Sophie off guard with a claw grab. She did a backflip and kicked off his claw to get further away and watched the beast burrow.
Tracking it with her Phoenix eyes, she dove down and stuck both her swords into the desert surface as hard as she could and wasted no time flying back up to 40 feet in the air as she could hear the Scorpion shriek and resurface, bleeding from the center of his body.
Sophie wasted no time finishing the green tail, then the black tail and eventually was able to defeat the Scorpion.
The crowd went wild, as people were giving standing ovations and even the King and Queen stood up giving their applauses.
"Cyrus, you keep good company, I look forward to what you can show," the Queen thought.
As the beast disintegrated, a beast core appeared, and Zoey reappeared and told Sophie, 'that's yours,' as she lifted it and gave a wave to the crowd with a 'thank you this one is prettier than the others I've seen.'
Zoey explained that the higher level the beast, the more clear the crystal would be.
Sophie and Zoey had walked through a teleported not shown on screen and reappeared via the monolith, and Sophie could hear the roars, cheers and 'we love yous,' from the crowd.
Zander had a huge smile on his face, as did Cyrus, who pointed up to the large screen that showed Sophie's highlights with the words "awaiting council scoring,"
Zander used his dimensional void to bring out a large cloak for Sophie, with clothes to put on inside the cloak. She took off her armor and swords, changed and it was all back in his dimensional void before anyone even cared to pay attention.
The King finally hushed the crowd and was walking back from the council table, where each of the 6 council members, excluding Zoey, who wasn't a judge in the trial, had entered their scores, one a scale of 1-50 with a faction recommendation, which the person could accept or decline.
No one had objected to the faction leader's claim, although all 5 had put in for her, but one in particular had his heart set on her.
"Ladies and Gentlemen, let me be the first to tell you we have a new record for B rank beasts. The councils votes are in," the King stated as 6 scores appeared next to five faces, with the average score in a giant circle, next to Sophie's face in the middle.
"Juno Smith: 50/50, Bruno Smith, 47/50, Eldrick Richmond, 49/50, Zion Burke, 48/50, Tempest Shroud, 48/50, Vincent Skullcrusher, 50/50. Average score, rounded to the nearest whole number: 49/50,
Congratulations, all five factions put in a bid for you; however, Onslaught has put in a special request, based on your training history," the board read.
Beat red in the face, Sophie couldn't believe it. She started crying tears of happiness as Zander, Cyrus and Zoey stood and clapped as the crowd roared.
Ethan had come over to give an interview, which Sophie kept short and sweet
"I want to thank Zander, my wonderful husband, Scarlett, to which without her none of this would be possible, Zintan, Cyrus, my parents, Zoey and all the wonderful people of Haven for being so welcoming. I'd also like to thank Ricardo and Lana for the wonderful designs on our clothing for Haven and on the special requests for the wings," Sophie said in a very humble, grateful tone.
Again, the crowd erupted and Sophie was escorted back to the platform with the King and Queen. She was greeted with a hug from the Queen, a firm handshake, that turned into the King lifting up her arm and pointing at her in celebration and a bow from Vincent.
"You don't have to give me an answer now, I'm sure you're anxious for what else is to come," Vincent said.
"Thank you," Sophie said.
"With that, let the randomizer begin," the king exclaimed and it eventually landed on Cyrus's face.