Asta wakes up in his room, his breath heavy and fast while his body feels a strong sense of pain of tearing flesh and skin that he experienced when the dragon gave him the so called race change. "Huff Huff, what the hell was that? A dream?. No, it felt too real to be a dream bu-.." he slowly sits up while clutching his head and looks around. "Didn't nero say they couldn't move in memories of their dreams... But I have never lost any memory... Whatever" he stands and walks as he leans against the wall and reaches in front of the mirror, he removes his headband to reveal the scales and horns. "What? Why are they bigger now?" He became even more confused as he notices that the horns have grown from just a bump to actually small horns about 4 cm in length and 2 cm in width and seems to made of bones, the scales have also spread more across the neck forehead and some has appeared on his back as well. 'I hate this looks, I look like some maniac who glued some scales to his skin, I wish these will atleast go back to just the neck.' Then his eyes burst open as the scales retracted into the skin but the horns and the scales on neck stayed.
Asta spent the next few hours in the room trying to see what exactly was going on with his body, the scales seems to following his will and can disperse into the skin except the ones on the neck and a certain portion of the mana he recovers seems to getting used to change his body whenever he uses magic.
'Dragon blood.. i didn't expect it to be controllable, but I have got to do something about this eye.' asta says as he looks at his right eye which has a red pupil now and sclera is lighter shade of red and his pupil also has diamond like area of black colour in it. " I should go get some excercise to... How much time has passed?" A fear rises from Asta's heart as he quickly opens the door as he reverts his eye to normal.
He finds A dwarf nearby who seems to have just got off his work, "ah new boy how is it going?" The dwarf says with a smile as he laughs loudly, "Somewhat good, how long was I asleep for?" " About 2 days. We almost thought you will miss the exam this evening." Asta breaths in relief as he finds out that he still has few hours till he needs to reach the exam site, he thanks the dwarf and quickly freshens up and leaves for the site after meeting Argon who let him leave because of the hurry.
****
"Quite a big crowd this is" asta says to himself as he looks at the thousands of people who seems to have come to give the exam, many carriages of noble crests are lined up and children of age of 16 or below seem to be waiting for the exam to begin as they stand in shade of the trees far away from the normal crowd while talking to their servants. Asta passes through the crowd and soon reaches a counter where a old man seems to talking to participants "the exam may cause injury and trauma so if anything happens we will not be responsible. Here take this.. NEXT." The old man warns a excited kid as he hands him a number token and calls for next person, soon asta reaches the old man.
"Quite a body you have kid, what's your name?" "Asta" "age and field?" "15, knight trainee" "any reference or token?" Asta hands the old man a token and letter from his teacher and Town's guardian 'raven', Asta was introduced to him by Ragon and spent quite some time learning about techniques for different types of weapons.
"Raven's pupil? That cocky guy actually had a student?.... You must kidding me right?" The old man turns to asta, his eyes filled with anticipation and says "Are you seriously stage 3 in ki and magic? At the stage of 15 no less?" "Yes" the old man leans back into his chair while laughing and soon his laugh becomes even louder. "Wonderful.. kid take this and go to the 3rd chamber, I will be rooting for you." The old man hands Asta a token and a small tag that looks like a mini sword and points towards a somewhat bigger dome in the distance, asta nods and leaves completely unaware of what turmoil he has just caused.
"A duel stage 3 at 15? Just which family does he comes from?" "Isn't this even better than lord winojin and xavier?" " I guess I found myself a good rival" the nobles and peasants mumble among themselves as they watch asta leave towards the dome.
***
"Why is there only a few people here?" Asta talks to himself as he looks around himself, there are only a few people about his age that seems to be here, the guard waves to asta and asks him to come with him, "Another potential elite... What token did that old man give you?" "There are different tokens?" Asta says as he brings out the token, it has 3 lines forming a triangle which contains a single sword and shield. The guard takes the token while his hand shakes and sweat begins to fall from his forehead as he maintain his smile.
' i didn't expect a top ranker to be so humble, i expected him to be just another elite but this is the expert token!! ' "No problem let's go, this is the place you are supposed to go to." The guard thinks in his mind as he leads asta to a giant arena where a middle-aged guy with a beard seems to trying to fight against a 16 year with a rapier. The boy looks even smaller than asta and his build completely balanced, even his skin is too bright to be called a warrior's.
Asta watches as the child gracefully avoid the sword before stabbing at the guy but misses and instead retreat, he brings out his grimoire and seems to caste some sort of lightness spell because next second his speed burst up even further and he appeared right behind the middle-aged guy swinging the sword at his neck, "wonderful. Good combat sense and talent, stage 2 mastery of magic and stage 3 in ki... You will admitted to class 1-Z, young glace." The guy says as he grabs the rapier and throws the boy out of the stage, he looks content with the performance. "Next participant" says the examiner as he again goes to middle of the platform.
Asta watched as 3 more people gave the exam before him, a yellow haired guy wearing red medium armor and used a pair of gauntlets, a white haired guy wearing medium armor who used a glaive and blue haired guy who wore heavy armor of cyan colour and wields a hammer. The yellow guy managed to push back the examiner and was sent to class 2-Z alongside the blue haired guy who managed to land a decent hit on the examiner, the white haired girl managed to disarm the sword and earned the class 1-Z which asta no idea about the difference.
Next Asta was called to the stage by the examiner who observed him from the distance, "quite confident and strong-willed, well built muscles and a aura of someone who has seen war. What's your name kid?" The examiner asks, Asta smiles and replies while bringing out Goliath from the grimoire alongside a medium armor "Asta","then show me what you can do, you will graded depending on you-" before he could finish the sentence asta had already closed the distance and attacked with a heavy swing, the ground caves in beneath them as a wide smile appears on the examiner's face. "Quick and decisive.. that's good." With swing of his blade asta flew away and landed again at the place where he was before.