Chapter 83 October 3, 2022
Chapter 83 – First Exam (2)
Skrrt skrrt.
The sound of magic pen tips crossing paper echoed softly in the quiet classroom.
It sounded like bugs gnawing at something, but in some ways, that was not exactly a wrong expression.
—Because the students’ willpower and mentality were being eaten away by a bug called pressure in the real-time exam.
“Aargh. It’s hard. What’s this?”
“The content is in the book, but why can’t I solve it? Is this a real question?”
“I can’t believe I’m this stupid.”
They didn’t say those words out loud, but he could see the students’ thoughts.
‘They must be having a lot of headaches.’
Ludger stood straight on the podium and stared at the students.
As he had notified them beforehand, the examination was going to be an open-book exam.
But if they could know the answer right away from the textbook, could he call it a question?
‘They are not just questions that ask for one-dimensional knowledge. If they can’t twist their minds and see through the traps, they’ll make little mistakes and give wrong answers.’
It was also a method used to measure judgement in the real world.
To set a trap in the middle of a question…
Because such a trap was every exam question, the students must’ve been having headaches.
There were only 20 questions, but that was why they were given three hours for the exam.
‘Oh, my God. This is hard, even though I studied so hard!’
Lynne also felt like steam was gushing out of her head.
Her eyes twirled, and the letters on the exam paper seemed to be dangling and dancing.
Difficult… It was too difficult.
She was a woman who had never missed a review of her lessons.
Even if it was an exam, she was confident because it was only the first exam, meant to verify the basics that she’d learned, but she felt like her hair was turning white from the moment she faced the first question.
[Question 1.
Mana essence serves to store the mana inside of someone’s body through the process of absorbing the mana while they are idle. After 10 years of exposure to nature, mana essence can be converted into a mana stone that supplies mana for wizards to use. In order to refine these mana essences into pure forms and induce crystallization into the mana stone…]
First of all, the connection between mana essence and mana stones was basic knowledge that she’d learned in spellcasting class.
Mana essence that had matured for more than 10 years was crystallized and turned into a mana stone, and from the mana stone, it would be processed to create artifacts or magic tools used by wizards.
The wands that the wizards usually used were made by mixing these mana stones with special wood.
‘I expected this to come out in the exam. The professor also said repeatedly that he’d have this subject in the exam.’
So she’d studied carefully and reviewed the subject several times so as to not forget anything.
‘But it’s still too hard!’
Lynne didn’t stop reading the question, even though she had passed out inwardly.
[…Hereinafter, if the aqueous solution which was contrasting with mana essence was inserted and fused, creating A, and potassium heavy metal was inserted and created B, if you wanted to perform mana stone crystallization with each of these substances of A and B under the same conditions in the same laboratory, describe the formula for which of the two substances could be crystallized into a mana stone first.]
(Keep in mind: The temperature of the laboratory is kept constant at 30 degrees, and the pressure is 0.982 atm. The crystallization reaction of B is applied to the standard rate of change.)
‘This is only one question?’
What was more surprising was that the first question gave the lowest amount of points!
As she was seemingly not the only one who thought so, the other students around her were also suffering.
They were prepared in their own ways, but the questions were more difficult than their preparations, so the pressure that the students felt would be considerable.
‘Let’s get my senses together!’
Lynne glanced over the questions, thinking that it was still fine so far.
Yeah. All of them were difficult, but if she read them carefully, she could see that the questions were presented only from what she had actually learned.
Ludger hadn’t lied.
He’d given the questions from everything that he’d taught, and there wasn’t a single thing on the exam that he hadn’t taught them.
Lynne could be sure because she was the one who’d listened to his class more enthusiastically than anyone else.
‘Maybe it’s because she’s a sophomore… she’s writing the answer right away.’
Princess Elendil, who was sitting next to her, was already writing the answers to the questions.
Was it because she was a princess and a model student? Lynne felt a sense of competition for some reason.
‘I can do it!’
Her eyes sparkled.
‘Hmm. That’s a pretty complicated formula.’
Flora Lumos solved the exam questions with an apathetic face.
Her hand holding her pen had not rested in a while.
Rather, she was nearly twice as fast as other students who were doing their best.
She felt it vaguely, too. Even though the professor said that they were given three hours, the time couldn’t be spent languidly.
‘If we solve the questions as consistently as possible without taking a break, it takes about 2 hours and 45 minutes.’
It was also matched to the level of freshmen that year.
That was possible because Ludger knew the average ability of the students.
Moreover, it was not just a mere difficult question.
‘Hmm. This question follows the basic standards of the empire, but it’s actually a trap. The Luplamosk experiment is from the Kingdom of Durman, not Exileon, so of course he has to follow their standard. From the way it looks, it’s some kind of trick. He taught this to us only a little bit in his class, too. If the students neglect their notes, they’ll have no choice but to give a wrong answer.’
Flora grasped the intention of the examiner at once and wrote down the correct answers.
On the outside, she pretended that it was nothing, but on the inside, she continued to explore the questions and was very amazed at the way they had been written.
‘He’s going to change the magic formula like this? Question 1 and question 2 are similar in appearance, but the direction of the flow of each question is fundamentally different. Students who don’t know will misunderstand. thinking that it’s the same.’
The questions were not bad.
Flora thought she would be able to solve everything in an hour.
Stop.
She suddenly realized something and stopped moving the pen.
‘No way, am I enjoying this exam?’
It was an unbelievable occurrence.
For her, the semester exam was nothing more than a boring event.
To write down and explain everything she already knew in a method that was not too difficult…
What was more boring than that?
The professors who lacked skills might rather turn deadly pale when they were in classes where they talked all they wanted, but in the case of Ludger’s exam, it was annoying for her hand to move on its own.
Nevertheless, she did fail to aim for the top position.
In addition to her natural talent to feel magic, she was also born with an excellent brain to understand magic.
Therefore, it was true that there was no other distinctive stimulus than that to her life in Sören.
She was a genius who solved most of the exams within 30 minutes.
For the first time, a woman like her found interest in the exam questions and thought that they were amusing.
‘This is something that shouldn’t have happened.’
She couldn’t believe she was having fun with an exam!
How could there be such a disgrace!
Flora shook her body while clenching her fist.
‘But even so, I can’t leave the questions unanswered while thinking that I have to build up my pride.’
Flora was imagining something.
—Ludger’s reaction when she submitted the questions blank without solving them.
-Hmm. Blank, huh. I see. So this was your limit after all.
Yeah. He would obviously say that.
No anger or irritation, he would just calmly criticize what she was lacking.
He wouldn’t even ask why she did that or what had happened.
Other professors would make a fuss!
‘No! I will never see such a face!’
So what should she do, then?
There was only one thing she could do to surprise him: she had to get the best result in the exam.
1st place? It was a piece of cake already.
The important thing for her was to aim for a perfect score.
Yes. It was some kind of battle of pride.
It was a battle of spirit between a student and a professor. A fierce battle between her and Ludger that had been going on since the start.
How could she forget those painful days of her defeat?
She recalled the two losses to Ludger previously.
‘Not this time! I’ll get a perfect score to prove that I won!’
In fact, Ludger himself did not think much about it, but Flora had already decided so arbitrarily.
Flora showed strong motivation and began to focus on the questions.
She justified herself by thinking that she was just trying hard to beat Ludger.
But she was not aware that the more she solved the questions, the more she was immersed in them.
***
‘It became quiet, huh?’
At first, sounds of distress were heard here and there, but after about 30 minutes, they all disappeared.
Ludger, who was standing on the podium and monitoring for possible cheating, bobbed his finger at Sedina because he thought that it was enough.
‘Yes!’
She replied meekly but vigorously.
‘It must be a skill to shout so quietly.’
Ludger pointed his fingers to two chairs in the corner without saying a word.
Sedina nodded and brought two chairs to the podium from both sides.
‘What do you plan to do?’
‘Put them here.’
‘Yes! And?’
‘Sit down.’
‘Pardon? Yes.’
Sedina sat on one of the chairs without any hesitation.
Ludger also pulled a chair over and sat comfortably.
‘Take a rest.’
‘Pardon?’
‘There are still two and a half hours left before the exam is over. As it is the first exam, you, the assistant, and I, the professor, cannot leave it, but your legs will hurt if you continue to stand like that for the rest of it, so I’m telling you to sit back and relax.’
‘Pr-professor…!’
Sedina looked up at Ludger with a touched expression.
Ludger, familiar with such a gaze, suddenly realized that another gaze was locked onto him and turned his head.
Among the students who were taking the exam, a girl with white hair was staring at them with intense eyes.
—Both him and Sedina Rochen.
‘Julia Plumheart.’
When she met Ludger’s eyes, she immediately focused on solving the exam questions, but for Ludger, he had no choice but to feel very unpleasant from the insolent gaze that she had sent to him for a moment.
The fact that her main target was Sedina and not him…
‘Well, never mind. I don’t need to point it out, right?’
Ludger sat in a chair while crossing his arms and legs.
The remaining time was two and a half hours.
It was quite a long time for those who waited, but it would feel very tight for the students solving the questions.
—Because that’s how he had set it up to be.
‘The questions only deal with the basics, and even if they solve the questions, I deliberately set them up to twist their minds, so it’ll take a while.’
If they couldn’t solve all the questions, they needed to focus on what they were good at.
The students were also not stupid, so they were solving the questions that they could definitely answer.
No matter how lacking the student was, considering that they had entered Sören, they must have specialized in some fields.
As a result, the students were in a sort of trance and were immersed in solving the questions.
As a professor, it was inevitable that such an appearance was desirable.
Flora Lumos, who was usually busy being offensive, was also staring intensely at the exam questions.
‘There are a lot of students who are doing pretty good, I see.’
Lynne and the princess sitting next to her were also working hard.
Aidan and his friends sitting in the back also seemed to be troubled, but there was no sign of them giving up.
‘The beastperson girl over there is doing good, too.’
Her name was Iona Obeli.
She had brown skin and much darker black hair.
She was working hard on solving the questions in a non-disorderly and modest manner.
Ludger thought that she would have a hard time because she was a beastperson, but surprisingly, she’d adjusted herself quickly.
‘Was it because of a beastperson’s magic?’
Beastpeople also had their own culture, history, and tradition.
And instead of using magic, beastpeople used the power of Mother Nature called ‘Spirit’.
Spirit was similar to the soul of nature, but it was quite different.
If the soul of nature embodied some form of nature’s abundant vitality, Spirit was a big concept that covered not only nature but also the ancestors and beasts.
‘In the Magic Summoning field, it belongs to the specialization of Necromancy.’
Although there was no Necromancy field in Summoning Magic before, it’d been recently added as human beings had suppressed the beastpeople and absorbed their culture.
Of course, the beastpeople were angry that humans had bound their long traditions into the category of magic.
‘It would still be normal for the beastpeople to resist and try to exclude magic.’
But he couldn’t believe there was a beastperson girl who came to Sören, the headquarters for magic lessons, to learn magic.
‘And her last name is Obeli. I know that beastpeople’s surnames are influenced by their own bloodlines.’
Although her surname was Obeli, it was for her to be called comfortably in human society.
In fact, her last name was actually O-Beli, with a little accent.
Her surname itself meant that she was of the Beli lineage, and it was like an aristocratic family name given to a human being.
‘Beli, huh. It sounds like a name I’ve heard before.’
He didn’t know much about the beastpeople, so it was a little vague to him.
He had no choice but to look for it later.
As he was thinking so, two hours had already passed.
“There are 30 minutes left until the exam is over. I won’t accept your submission if you’re even a minute late, so keep that in mind.”
The speed at which the students moved their pens became more urgent as those words were said.
There were feelings of impatience here and there.
‘The next exam will be fun if I give them questions with a slightly different method.’
Ludger felt a strange pleasure as he saw the students’ suffering expressions.
Comment