"Eren Idril…"
Jules mumbled the name under her breath a few times before putting a face to the name. She remembered the young man with whom she had traveled to the city of Lionheart from the city of Osan. At that time, she was with Lin Karr and others, trying to find shelter under the protection of the academy.
Jules never could have imagined that such an insignificant-looking boy would one day own a controversial city like White Raven. She was really taken aback by Sharla's revelation.
Sharla laughed at her surprised look before adding up.
"I was the same as you when his message reached me. Hehe. But enough about me. Why did you leave LA? Have you decided to become an adventurer once again?"
Jules' expressions changed when she heard Sharla's question. She quickly thought of wanting to meet one guy before figuring things out for herself. But she didn't want to talk about her problems with someone like Sharla. So she smiled and nodded.
"That's right. We are here to take a look inside Minerva's Utopia. Can you please arrange three entry passes for us, Sharla?"
Sharla looked at the other two women behind her. She looked at Lady Zee and realized that she was an Expert ranker. She bowed to her before responding.
"You have seen the crowd, Jules. Most of the entry passes are already sold out in reserved bookings."
Sharla sighed and looked at the crows that had been gathered at the counter. She looked at Jules and pondered a bit before adding up.
"There's an alternate way you can get entry passes for yourself. But it's going to cost you."
Lady Zee stepped forward and introduced herself when the conversation moved toward getting entry passes. Sharla told the trio that they needed to buy the premium entry passes that were four to five times the normal rates. This was because they hadn't booked their passes in advance.
Another way to obtain entry passes is by bidding. Another set of employees was assigned to the bidding process. It holds bidding events intermittently during the day. Rankers with deep rockets would be able to obtain entry passes that way without having to deal with the reservation.
Sharla offered the trio expensive entry passes through her connection before resuming her duties. Lady Zee watched the former LA staff from behind and laughed.
"Hehe. Whoever is running this place is extremely greedy. As far as I know, Minerva's utopia doesn't really have a limit on the number of rankers it lets in per week.
But someone has decided to make it a limited commodity to drive its prices higher. And people are following these made-up rules like sheep."
Tara also chuckled before adding up.
"We bought the entry passes at higher rates. We are part of that herd now."
Lady Zee looked at Tara with a frown on her face. Her somewhat angry expression soon became one of defeat.
"*Sigh. You are right. The beauty of this rigid system is the fact that even when one knows how it works, one can't help but become part of it. Let's go."
***
The trio eventually ended up in the town of Minerva. The three ladies explored the bustling town a bit before ending up buying basic information from a White Raven information counter.
The separate dimension had four testing grounds located in four different directions from Minerva's town. The safe zone was located in the center of the separate dimension that was bigger than the city of New Beginnings.
They had four days from the moment they entered Minerva's Utopia to walk through the four testing grounds. Furthermore, they could simply explore the area for resources rather than participate in the testing.
The northern testing ground was a giant potion lab building located around 300 miles away from Minerva town. Rankers could use the teleportation array located at the northern gates of the town to reach the testing grounds. Or they could travel there manually to search for other resources.
The potion lab was made for the Test of Wisdom. It would allow potioners to showcase their craft and get rewarded handsomely for it.
Minera was a Sage potioner. So it was only natural that her Utopia would be focused on the craft of potioning. As such, the northern testing ground was what attracted the potioner crowd the most.
The northern lab was a giant building made out of runic limestones. It had four floors that were dedicated to ranks F to C. The rankers would be sent to the floors via another spatial array outside the lab building.
Once inside the lab, the rankers wouldn't be allowed to leave until they either completed or forfeited the task they had been assigned. They had a day to prepare for the task they had been given. Failure to complete the task in a day would also be considered a failure and thus no rewards would be offered to such rankers.
Talented potioners would certainly be able to finish the task before the deadline, enabling them to clear the first testing ground within a few hours. They could then use those hours to explore the separate dimension before moving on to the next testing ground.
The rewards obtained by clearing the Test of Wisdom were various precious potions and potion recipes. Minerva's Utopia had become a sacred ground for all the potioners in the previous timeline from F to C Rank because of this very reason. Even this timeline was bound to follow the same route.
Lady Zee couldn't find the information about the tests themselves because the information was said to be unreliable. The tests would be different every time and there was no set pattern. So there was no way to cheat or prepare in advance for the test.
"Let's check the place out."
Lady Zee said as she headed to the northern city gates. She observed that Arizihana and her friend had the same idea of checking out the test of wisdom first.
