In the first round, only fourteen participants were able to pass but that did not mean only they would be able to participate in the upcoming test. The people who had failed would also get a chance to compete in the future rounds but their chance of winning the whole thing now was almost non existent. The failed participants needed to show some kind of extraordinary talent if they wanted Elena to consider them.

Actually Elena was satisfied with one of the failed candidate. That person's name was Ullar and his failing was not really his fault. He was just way too unlucky. After entering the forest, he immediately came across one of the overlords ruling the forest, a level 275 viper with extremely strong poison.

Ullar knew that he had no chance of survival against an opponent of this calibre so he immediately decided to run away instead of fighting it. His decision was instantaneous which was a good quality in Elena's eyes. But not only his decision making, Elena was also impressed by his intelligence and quick wit.

When he noticed that the viper was coming after him, he used various ingenious methods to avoid it. To use those methods, he needed to have a good idea about the behaviour of the viper monster and quick thinking capability. So with his performance, Ullar was able to show that he had both of those abilities.

But even after successfully avoiding the viper, his luck did not improve at all. Instead he came across another native monster of this forest. It was a large bear with power level of 267. This bear was not as strong as the viper but with its large and strong body, it was something that Ullar had no hope of surviving against.

So he decided to run away again. This time he was able to make an easy escape as with its large body, the bear monster was quite slow. So Ullar was able to escape easily this time. But as if to show that his bad luck was trying to definitely kill him that day, next Ullar came across the strongest monster of this forest, a level 293 winged tiger with three metallic tails, claws and teeth.

This time Ullar had no chance of running away as the winged tiger monster was just too strong and too fast. So even before he could take any precautions, the tiger monster was swinging its claws down on him. Fortunately Elena was there to save him but he also failed the test because of this. But still facing off again this monster, there was no one who would be able to pass. So Elena was looking forward to his performance in the future rounds. In her eyes, he was definitely the best candidate so far. But his luck was just way too bad.

...

In the second round, Elena was going to test the intelligence of the test takers. This was an extremely important test and Elena was hoping that a decent amount of the participants would be able to do good in this round.

So intelligence could be of many kinds. Some people were extremely talented in research but if that same person was given a job related to finance, there was a high chance that he would not be able to perform well. There were also warriors who were extremely good at planning when they were in a fight but outside of fight they were very dumb. So those people could show their intelligence in different situation and might be dumb for situation that they were not familiar with.

So Elena was going to create various obstacle for the participants in this round. They needed to use their brain to clear the obstacle. All the obstacle would be of different kind and would need different kinds of intelligence to clear it.

For example, one of the candidate found himself surrounded by a group of golems. He was also given two stronger golems to defend himself. But he could only defend two sides with the golem guards so two remaining side's attacks would still reach him.

In this situation, the man needed to plan carefully about how he could use his limited resources to completely defend himself. If he could successfully do the defending, he would prove that he was quite intelligent in the field of defensive war strategies and such. All the participants needed to complete dozens of such obstacles to clear the second round.

...

The second round took quite some time compared to the first round. The main reason for that was obviously because the participants needed quite some time to understand the obstacle and only then they could try solving them. Elena had not given them any time limit as with a time limit, all these people would be in a lot of pressure.

That was the reason why they were taking a huge amount of time. Elena judged that almost two whole days would be needed if she wanted everyone to fully complete the second round. Actually two days was not really that big of a deal when the future of a big city was on the line, so Elena decided to wait for that amount of time.

But just in half a days time, it was almost clear which people were doing good in this round. Just as Elena had expected, Ullar was doing extremely well. Actually Elena had made sure that the obstacle he faced were not really related to luck and instead she made his obstacles to be a little bit more harder.

Ullar was actually able to clear all the obstacles even though they were somewhat hard. But there was one single obstacle that Elena had intentionally left behind which involved the element of luck and just as she had expected, Ullar was unable to clear it. Not only that but he failed miserably with this obstacle.

Now Elena was sure that Ullar was born with very bad luck. This was not something uncommon as many people either had a very good luck or a very bad luck. This was definitely not a good thing for a city lord but there was various ways to counter this.

So if Ullar turned out to really be the best candidate to be the city lord then he could use those methods to get rid of his super bad luck. Elena was even willing to help him out with it. But for that to happen, he needed to do extremely well in the following rounds.

...

Just as Elena had guessed, the second round ended after almost two days have passed. Almost all the candidates had managed to conquer at least one of the obstacle but if they passed the round or not completely depended on Elena's judgement. And according to her judgement, only 11 of the participants were able to show somewhat satisfactory performance. The rest were just below average. The city would face a lot of hardship if any of them became the city lord.

Now with the end of the all important second round, the selection trial was entering its final phase.

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