Mutagen

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The sudden event that avoided the accident sure surprised Mark and Carlo. They even forgot the severity of the situation.

If Mark was unable to avoid Carlo's stick, who knows what kind of injury would Mark incur. Mark could have gotten an awful bruise under his eye, and that would not be the worst thing that could happen.

Even so, the possibility of Mark getting injured just now passed their minds. While Carlo did apologize despite it being an accident with no one at fault, the topic immediately turned to Mark's unexpected response.

Mark was surprised, but the desire burned more. He never knew that he would be able to do this kind of stuff. In the first place, Mark never really tried it before, fearing that he would end up unnecessarily injuring himself. After all, he definitely lacked practice and training.

And while his actions could be the result of his adrenaline pumping to respond to the accident, he indeed did it.

As such, Mark decided to try it a few times. The fear of getting injured was now erased from his mind. He fell several times as he tried. However, out of his ten tries, he actually succeeded in doing a backflip four times.

It was such an amazing feat for Mark, who did not have any kind of practice in this kind of stuff. Furthermore, Mark found an issue. It was his stamina. His stamina was severely lacking to perform a stable backflip. What he did earlier was nothing but a fluke. But with Mark having enough self-confidence, he decided to include this stuff in his skit with Carlo.

Of course, Mark decided to have some training for himself. He did not want to end up embarrassing himself in front of many people when the day of the event arrived.

***

A few weeks passed. The day that everyone prepared for arrived.

Mark's and Carlo's secret skit brought results that the two did not expect. In the first place, the costumes of the two were of top quality. It was the same for their props despite being handmade.

Carlo made a rubber and wood sword initially. But with Mark's help, the flimsy-made sword was now a large kitchen knife-shaped sword created from scrap metal sheets instead. In the anime, the thin sword of this grim reaper was more powerful. However, the sword's original form, which was gigantic, had more impact on the eyes of those who did not watch the anime.

As for Mark, his red robe was already eye-catching, complementing his silver-colored mask. His act caught the eyes of the audience more when he began spewing blue flames from his right hand. It was unfortunate that there was no way to actually shape the flames. In the anime, the character's flames had the shape of either a winged woman or a blue phoenix.

Even so, the two already stood out among the rest just by showing off their costumes. It stepped up another level. The two began fighting during the unnecessarily long catwalk music during Carlo's portion after Mark invaded it.

The two fought, executing some acrobatic moves, which made the audience yell in excitement. It ended with the red-robed ninja abruptly exiting the stage and the black-robed grim reaper chasing after him.

This contest was supposed to end with just one winner for each gender category. It was a small school contest, after all. However, because of the amazing performance of Mark and Carlo, the judges decided to ramp it to the top three in each gender category instead.

Mark, Carlo, and Markron won the top three for men, while Carren, Elsa, and Charmain won for the women. It was not a surprising result. In the first place, only the six of them had the most dealing with the Otaku culture among the contestants.

The acquaintance party of this year became a good memory for everyone.

***

With the festivities done, the hardest part of college life ensued. The years where the older students had to dabble with their thesis.

For this hurdle, Mark grouped up with Carren, Markron, and one of their closest friends, Saime. Because of Mark's increase in his academic performance, he sure was in demand. Unfortunately, Mark insisted on staying with his friends, in which even the instructors had no way of convincing him.

At first, the instructors tried to balance the groups. After all, there were weaker groups. They needed a pillar to get a fighting chance and pass. But most of the time, the one that became the pillar of that group would end up doing everything for that group.

Mark understood that fact. And if the instructors forced him, he said that he would rather work on his own instead.

Of course, it received bad reactions among their class. It was as if Mark was being selfish. However, Mark, for some reason, was uncompromising. However, shouldering the expenses alone would cause Mark a great amount of trouble. Even if Mark managed to do it on his own, he would definitely fail on the financial side.

It would not be a good thing for the school if a good scholarship student failed. Furthermore, the reason was the instructor forcing the student to do things he did not want.

In the end, Mark got what he wanted.

As students of the Computer Science Course, they were given a few choices to choose from for their thesis. Creating a video game was one, and Mark and Markron immediately jumped for it.

Their first hurdle would be their thesis title defense. Thus, they needed to make a few proposals for the defense, picking a few categories and plans. Since it was not the time to work tightly together, the four of them decided to create their own proposals.

Carren and Saime decided to propose some sort of database software. It was basic but rather complicated.

Markron chose a proposal for a First Person Shooter game. It involved military stuff, and of course, shooting people.

Mark, on the other hand, focused on a Horror Puzzle Adventure game. And something with a pretty unique setting.

Their thesis proposals were going smoothly. It was until an unexpected hurdle came.

***

At their title defense, a guest panel was invited. A terror professor from another college. The old professor seemed to be a friend of the dean.

But that was not the worst thing. Many title defenses failed on the first day. It was because that guest panel put unreasonable remarks on what seemed to be reasonable proposals. Even the instructors were feeling troubled, due to the unexpected result. It seemed that they did not know about the guest at all.

On the third day of the title defense, it was the turn of Mark's group. They prepared a whole lot. Carren even took out quite an amount of money for the food of the panels.

But the moment they stepped inside, without even speaking a single word, the guest panel said that they failed. It was unreasonable that even the two instructors that were part of the panel were appalled.

Carren tried to appeal, asking what was wrong. Apparently, many other groups already proposed database software. It was out of the question anymore. Furthermore, the proposal for it did not include any specific recipient at all for the sampling process.

And as the guest panel did not seem to be keen on mentioning the two video game proposals, Carren brought the topic immediately.

Then, the guest panel agitatedly dumped the printed copies of the two proposals on the table. She began mentioning violence included within the games and even saying about the game maker they decided to use. The guest panel reasoned that the game should be created by the students and not just some drag and drop ready-made thing. And the same with the database software. It lacked specific recipients for the survey and sampling.

There was silence in the room. Among the students, only their group proposed to create a video game. It was among the categories given, after all. The two instructors in the panel were distraught too. The categories were given by them, after all.

The silence, however, was broken in the most disrespectful way.

<strong>"PFFT!"</strong>

Mark stared at the guest panel, almost bursting out a loud laugh. Both the instructors were shocked at Mark's uncharacteristic behavior. Even his group members were the same.

And surely, the guest panel was angry and started to complain to the instructors if they were teaching students like this.

But when Mark spoke, the old hag was unable to refute.

Mark exuded threatening pressure as he pointed out how the guest panel did not actually read his proposal for his game. With a threatening smile, Mark explained that not a single word that could be considered as active violence was in his proposal. The game he proposed was a Horror Puzzle Adventure game. It was mainly a Puzzle Adventure game using the elements of Horror as a time restraint for the player.

Standing in front, Mark asked the two instructors to read his proposal. They had yet to read it since they were supposed to while listening to the defense. And the two were surprised how it was elaborately and professionally made. The details of the game were explained properly. And to top it all, it explained that the game maker was actually a game engine required for the game to run. While it did have default assets, those assets could not pass as a product at all, not to mention that the creator had to do all the coding himself.

The two instructors looked at the guest panel in askance. The two were young and as such, following the more experienced guest panel for this defense.

It seemed that the two decided to report what was happening to the dean. Who would have thought that the guest panel was not judging things properly? She did not even read the proposal and just said it was a fail.

The guest panel tried to argue. But it was futile. Instead, the fact that an old had like her had little to no knowledge about the video game industry came to light instead.

Recipient? Sample? Why would a commercially designed game need to struggle about those? The game would have players worldwide. The survey could be done in-game, too.

And to finish it all...

Mark showed everyone a demo trailer of his game. Yes, a demo trailer. It was what Mark invested on with his allowance, making this game while renting a PC in an internet cafe for a few months. Even the money he got as a prize from the cosplay event went into creating this thing.

Everyone watched Mark's surprise video. The models might be outdated for a game of this generation. After all, Mark only gathered some free placeholder models. Nonetheless, the video showed the essence of the game. Elaborate puzzles, the background of the character's story, and the enemies chasing her. Violence? The character was not even programmed to fight back directly to the shadows chasing her. And if the character was caught, it was programmed to show a black background game over screen.

Without even finishing the video projected in front, the guest panel stormed out of the room, red-faced. The old hag lost. She lost horribly. Her facade was broken by a student.

No one knew what would be the repercussions of this event. However, everyone knew that Mark won this fight. In the first place, Mark would not mind if his proposal was rejected. In the least, give proper reasons and not just the pure ego and narrow mindset. After all, it was not new that many old people were not fond of video games, thinking it was the source of violence and other things that did not make any sense.

The defense abruptly ended, and the other title defense for the rest of the day was canceled.

Mark was called into the dean's office and was scolded for his disrespectful conduct. However, that guest panel did not appear anymore on the next title defenses.

From what it seemed, the two instructors reported the event truthfully. Not to mention that the session was recorded in a video for documentation like all the other title defenses that happened.

And the error also came to light. In the first place, that guest panel was a major of an entirely different field. She was not supposed to be a guest panel for a thesis defense of computer-related subjects as she had no knowledge of it. She was only called because of her connection to the dean and her title as a professor.

In the end, the guest panel was replaced with someone younger but more suitable. The school had to spend more money to invite the new guest, but it was better and more reasonable for the students of the computer courses. The criteria for judging was also revised, differentiating the categories for each college courses.

Mark's game was approved. Furthermore, the new panel was actually happy that there were students here wanting to tackle the video game industry. The new panel knew how poor the video game industry of this country was, after all.

And the most important thing... Mark's name became more popular in the school. At first, he was just a student that changed for the better, and someone hiding his physical skills. Now, he was also being called the brave student that chased off the witch.

It seemed that in the few days that the previous guest panel was in this school, she became hated by the entire student body.