… Math (250)
Kai stared blankly at the spirit, thinking that they had gone even more mad than they already were, but at the next moment, a large wheel appeared out of thin air.
It consisted of various triangles, each on a different colour and having a different category on it. Some categories were tame ones, like geography and general knowledge, but then there was also some like... math.
"Now that you are all able to see the wheel, how about we spin it and see what topic these next ten questions will focus on. You should hope that you get a topic you don't want to have to face later on now, because this wheel will be coming back for questions eighty to ninety, so you better hope you get lucky!"
Kai sighed to himself. Even though he didn't want to do any in the first place, he would much rather get maths done while it was relatively easy questions being asked than later on when the questions would get much harder.
But Frosty wasn't done speaking.
"As you all know, I scanned your memories for these topics, so all of these could work out.
And just in case one of you is blind and I didn't end up noticing, here are our ten topics.
We have maths, spelling, general knowledge, geography, history, science, love, riddles, animals and movies. Aren't all of these topics just so exciting?"
Kai sighed again, resting his elbow on his stand and using it to hold up his head.
"Yep, Frosty, all of those topics sound just incredible to get asked."
Glaring down at Kai, Frosty pouted slightly before turning away with a huff.
"Well, you're no fun. Because of that, I won't let you spin the wheel, not that I was going to let you spin it in the first place. Child, you get over here and spin it."
After only a single second, as if they had a conversation in that small amount of time, Petunia shrugged and approached the wheel.
Compared to her, the wheel was about double her size in height and maybe quadruple her size in length. Honestly, the sight was rather comedic.
"Go on, child, spin the wheel and hope you land on a good topic."
Gripping onto the edge of the large wheen, Petunia pulled down on it her with surprisingly large amount of might. The wheel began spinning rapidly, showing no sign of slowing down.
Of course, that was just an illusion, the wheel was much to large to spin for too long, so after a couple of seconds it began to slow down.
The arrow at the very top of it that would decide the category slowly went through various different triangles.
Geography, animals, science, all of those were off the table as the wheel crawled along at a snails pace.
Until, eventually, the wheel landed on...
"Maths, ooh, you contestants are so lucky. I swear, this child must have a guardian angel or something, to get maths out now and not have to face it later on."
Kai sighed in relief, his entire body sagging a little as the wheel landed on maths.
Thank god they would be getting it over and done with now. Even when he had to do the mental maths of where to put his stats before fighting Ezekial he had wanted to cry, imagine what he would have done if he had to do ten incredibly hard maths questions in a row.
It was times like these that he was eternally grateful that he ended up with a skill like Presets, its value of taking away the need to do maths was just too immense to be overlooked.
"Now, who here would say that they are the best at maths?"
Kai glanced over at his companions. Remy was obviously off the table, considering that they were a rat, but maybe the other two would be better than him.
Petunia shrugged, but that shrug was enough to say what needed to be said, she was, like, nine after all.
But a moment lated, Cecilia smiled weakly and shook her head. Sighing to himself, Kai could see why she wouldn't be confident in her maths skills. Even though she possessed street smarts and knew how to stick to her uses, Cecilia hadn't gone to school, meaning...
"I'm the best at maths, I guess."
An ever so slightly shocked expression appeared on Frosty's face for a split second before vanishing a moment later, making Kai resist the urge to scowl.
"Ken, you believe that you are the best here at maths. That was a statement, not a question, so don't even try to weasel your way out of that one."
Kai rolled his eyes in response.
"My name is Kai, and I already said that I am, so why are you still asking?"
Frosty smiled mischievously, their eyes twinkling with something strange.
"Oh, no reason, just the fact that the person who believes they are the best at maths will have to answer the first question by themselves, just that."
Kai inwardly cursed.
"Now, first question of our maths round. Name ten prime numbers."
In his mind, Kai was thanking himself for actually remembering what a prime number was, otherwise he would have been screwed already.
"Uh... two, three, five, seven, eleven, thirteen, seventeen, nineteen, twenty-three and twenty-nine."
The light shining down on him intensified once more, signifying that he was once again correct. A moment later, the light returned to normal.
"Good on you! Just so you know, if you got that question wrong it would have been only you fighting the cage that got opened."
Kai shrugged in response. It didn't really make much of a difference anyway, considering that he was the only one who did the fighting in his group anyway.
"Okay then, next question, and everyone is allowed to answer this one. Of course, the questions with get slightly more difficult as time goes on, so the next question is... what is nineteen squared?"
Kai blinked... then sighed... then mentally cursed.
"Is there a time limit for each question, or is it only the three hours we have to worry about?"
Frosty stretched and leaned back on their non-existent chair, the gesture making it look like they had all the time in the world, when in reality they had a little under three hours.
"If you wanted to, you could spend all of your remaining time answering this question, I won't stop you. Although I'm sure that you probably wouldn't enjoy what would come after. If you do somehow survive all of these lovely beasts attacking you at once, I'll applaud you, but you haven't even seen the worst of them yet."
Kai frowned.
"What do you mean by that?"
The feline spirit laughed for a bit before flying down to be a little closer to Kai. Then, they lightly poked his nose with their tail and said:
"You think these are the only beasts I have in my collection? Gods no! I have some much rarer and much stronger ones, but I only bring them out after question eighty, have to spice it up a little, you know?"
Kai knew all too well how certain people liked to spice things up that didn't need spicing, some things were better left as they were.
"Fine, I get it, you people and your theatrics. Just be quiet and let me count."
An overexaggerated appalled look appeared on Frosty's face, but they did in fact remain silent, letting Kai add nineteen in his head over and over again.
"Done, the answer is three hundred and sixty-one."
Once again, the beam of light shining down on him got a little brighter, a small celebration that he had gotten the question right.
"Correct, now, moving onto question thirteen!"
Now that they had a little bit of a better understanding of the rules, the group was much more efficient and much more calm when answering all of the questions.
The remaining maths ones were a little tricky, but did not take too long to complete.
Question thirteen was all about multiplication, while fourteen was about division. Fifteen incorporated some fractions, and sixteen made use of some trigonometry.
Question seventeen caused them a little trouble, considering that it was algebra, but it wasn't too bad and they figured it out after only a few minutes.
Even though they were still on a relatively early question, Kai could feel the questions getting increasingly difficult.
Question eighteen and nineteen both caused the group a few more problems, costing them some precious time, but they would rather get them right and be a little slow than have to fight something.
Plus, it would probably only be the maths ones that would take them a while, considering that maths was their weakest subject by far.
Finally, after getting question twenty right, Kai let out a sigh of relief, leaning on his stand for some support.
Meanwhile, Frosty giggled as they soared around the air. After performing a few theatrics, they calmed down and sighed contently.
"Well, shall we continue?"
It's not like Kai had a lot of a choice in the matter.
*Author Note*
Damn, a whole 250 chapters, even though we practically only just celebrated ch 200, 250 is also a milestone worth celebrating, a quarter of the way to 1000.
To celebrate, I'll reveal some more things that were potentially going to happen in the novel.
1. Wa'rak was not originally going to have a redemption arc, they were meant to remain a dickhead until the end of the tutorial, but I'm happy with how their character turned out.
2. Inside the castle, the food Kai was eating was originally going to be human meat, Anastasia and Castillian being cannibals, but I decided to cut that out.
3. It was only after Ezekial's death that I realised I had been spelling the name wrong the whole time, the actually spelling being Ezekiel. Still, I prefer it with the a and not the e.
And finally, I know it was a long time ago I promised character arts, but I don't really want to use ai for them, so... in tandem with some other reasons, I'm learning to draw so I can make my own semi decent character art, it will still be a while before its made though, so sorry.
Anyway, thanks for reading up to this chapter, all like 18 of you.
-Kerplunkered