A Knight Hates Exams (2)
"I-Instructor, c-could you maybe extend the training hours?"
"?"
Chick No. 7. Rose, was that her name?
The passionate girl who had appeared after Levi Fault. Commendable, yes—but Lee Han knew better. A request like that was not made out of any wish to become a knight.
"A-and if possible, I'd like to improve my stamina and athletic ability. W-would that be possible?"
"If you want that done in a short time, it's going to hurt in more ways than one."
"Y-you didn't say it was impossible. Then I'll do it."
"...Your athletics grade must be hanging by a thread."
"Yes."
It was a flailing for survival.
How many did this make? Today alone, more than ten students had already come begging him to rebuild their training from scratch. Some even arrived with potions, fine chocolate, or whiskey, as if the whole thing were a bribe. It wasn't a real bribe at all, though—only a plea to raise their stamina and coordination somehow—and knowing that left Lee Han feeling hollow.
This wasn't a gym. It felt more like summer closing in and people panicking for a crash course in abs.
Even so.
"Enough with the bribes. Anyone who wants better stamina and athletic ability, be here every morning by seven, and don't miss a single day. I won't promise your coordination, but I'll build your stamina for certain."
"Yes! Yes!"
The chicks left with bright faces, wearing the look of people who had just gained a mighty army at their backs because he had said he would help. Anyone who had actually been ground under Lee Han, though, would have known the truth. They had dodged the snake only to run straight off a cliff.
"They're going to regret this."
"Looks like a lot of them will die tomorrow."
Garand and Arno wore pitying expressions, already picturing the chicks wailing.
And yet.
"Ugh!"
"Wh-why is there so much to memorize!"
"...Can't we just be good with a sword? Why does a knight have to study!"
"Because you aren't a knight yet."
"...Right."
Some would be crying tomorrow. Plenty were already crying now.
Scratch. Scratch.
The training yard should have held only the whistle of rough wooden swords and the snap of jump ropes. Instead, a great many students sat studying with ballpoint pens and graphite pencils in place of swords. The library and the study halls had already been claimed down to the last seat, so they crouched out here to work. The bear cubs, clever as bears putting their own hides to use, spread the pelts like mats and studied on them, and they looked remarkably comfortable doing it.
...He had told them to use the things instead of armor.
"Still better than the ones wasting money, I suppose."
Worse than them, though, were the young masters who had bought desks and turned the training yard into a study hall outright. Lee Han had given them leave to use the place as they liked, but the sheer waste of money left a sour taste in his mouth. Rich boys, itching because they couldn't show off that they were rich boys.
"This is why I call you young masters."
"W-we can hear you, Instructor."
"I said it so you'd hear it, you brats. So why didn't you study before, instead of doing this now?"
"...We were busy."
"All tongue and nothing else. Tsk."
"......"
They had plenty they wanted to say, but they didn't rise to him. Better to memorize one more line than to argue.
"...Hm."
Watching this untimely fever for scholarship sweep the training yard, a saying came to Lee Han.
"Comedy from a distance, tragedy up close."
It was funny, just as the line said, and yet the spectacle was not one he could quite laugh at. He shook his head and decided to squat in silence.
Just ten thousand. That would do.
For the citizens of the Royal Capital, the exams of Pendragon Royal Academy were a famous big event.
Why the sudden bark, like a gnoll?
No. That wasn't a bark. It was a statement of fact.
Of course, one might ask why exam season should be classed as a big event at all, but in a sense it belonged to the same order as the War Game held the day before.
"Do you know when the debate opens?"
"Been a while since I've seen a polo match. Oh! Does it overlap with the tennis too?"
"Mm. I'll wait for the cricket."
"Why that boring cricket? I'd sooner watch the yacht 'exam.'"
"Cricket has a charm all its own!"
"Terminal case."
The Royal Academy prized excellence in both letters and arms, and so more than ninety percent of the students were required to take a sport as a mandatory general course. A sound mind in a sound body, or something of the sort? It was a line one had heard entirely too often.
In any case, for the sake of that balance, students had to show excellence not only on written exams but in sports as well. At the very least, they had to reach the average. To the students it was a desperate test taken for a grade. To commoners, it was nothing more than a rare chance to watch high-class leisure sports.
Yes. Absurd as it was, during exam periods such as the midterm evaluation, the Academy opened its gates. As with the War Game, the public was permitted to attend. The stated aim of the opening was publicity—to show the general populace the students' level, and the Academy's authority—but in truth the rumor had hardened into certainty: the nobles did it to display their own superiority.
Even so, watching these sports was a great entertainment for the people. Whatever the age, nothing worked its way into a crowd's heart and set it humming in harmony quite like sport. Perhaps someone who understood that psychology had slipped sports into the curriculum on purpose, to gather the hearts of the people.
But even an event this enormous was only a side dish. What the kingdom's learned class and ruling class awaited as the greatest event of all was something else entirely.
"Now whose idea was it to replace written exams with debates and presentations?"
The debates, the exhibitions, and the presentations—these were the greatest subjects by which a student's grades were judged.
It was brutal. Step into law, military studies, literature, or art, and a debate had to run a hundred minutes at minimum. For all hundred of those minutes, one had to draw examples without fail from the terms, cases, and papers covered in class. Judgment belonged to the professors and to renowned scholars who had received formal invitations, and if a student failed to leave a strong impression and an intellectual presence through the debate, the score was cut on the spot.
The exhibitions and presentations were no different. Experts and professors from each field gathered to evaluate all of it: as with debate, how much expertise was on display, how thorough the preparation, how fully the knowledge had been made one's own, and how one handled sudden situations, questions included. It felt less like an exam than like the real thing.
To that impression:
"What the Academy wants—no, what the kingdom wants—is not talent that merely scores well on tests, but excellent talent that can actually be used in the field. Study, after all, is a common enough thing. If one's memory and comprehension are good, the grades come easily, don't they? So on a grand stage like the debates, the Academy watches carefully how sound a student's adaptability and judgment are, and how much of what they have learned they have truly made their own. And thanks to exams like these, the Academy has always sent quality talent out into the world."
"......"
"Why are you looking at me like that?"
"Because that sounded insufferable."
"Pardon?"
Damian Paulet tilted his head, wondering what strange thing he had said. He had only said what was obvious. What was odd about it?
Contrary to his face, Damian Paulet was a gifted student, and Lee Han thought the heavens heartless. Why was a personality like that so versatile? Honestly.
So anyone who can't memorize is a goldfish?
How hard it was to actually put that memory and comprehension to use, and the boy reduced it to a trifle. Lee Han wanted to twist his joints on the spot, but he held back. He couldn't afford to lose the one he dumped the work on.
Still, the practicality is good.
Credit where it was due: he could see how serious this country was about raising talent. The will to graduate only those who were solid, and to do it by practical means. A holy ground of early education for the gifted, wasn't it?
If I'd gone here, I think I would have quit on the spot.
He didn't know about the rest, but debates and presentations were not something he could stomach.
"So each student has to do at least five debates and presentations?"
"It isn't strictly required, but if you aren't confident you can make a good showing, padding it out with volume is best."
"And if you still can't perform above average, it's expulsion."
"More than the debate itself, anyone who can't properly answer the professors and the scholars is eliminated on the spot. So those whose ordinary studies are lacking will be at a great disadvantage."
"And you're fine?"
"Nobles often enter the Academy having already studied the expected questions and debate topics with private tutors. So we have a relative amount of room."
"Well, well. No wonder."
The chicks—the noble young ladies—threw themselves into sports rather than preparing for debates and presentations for a reason. They had already locked in their early education with tutors, so they had less to worry about. They focused only on the subjects where they were weak.
"Sly little things."
"Noble young ladies are like that. They look pure and innocent, but they're no different from foxes."
"I'll pass that along to the chicks, word for word."
"!!?"
"I'm joking."
"I-Instructor, my heart nearly stopped. You seemed as if you really would."
"Don't be dramatic."
"...I'm not being dramatic."
Ignoring Damian, whose face had gone pale, Lee Han understood why the Academy's dropouts were so absurdly numerous. That as many as ten percent graduated after exams like these was surprising in itself.
"......Hm?"
While he was checking that brutal schedule, Lee Han doubted his eyes. He thought he had seen something strange.
"What is this? Why is it like this?"
"What do you mean?"
"The last day of exams."
Exams that ran for nearly two full weeks. And yet the very last day had no exam of any kind. Only—
"Why is the sword faculty exam set up like the main event?"
The sword faculty exam. It was written into the schedule as if it would close the show, and Lee Han blinked. Damian, however, spoke as if it were obvious.
"Shouldn't it be? It's effectively the biggest spectacle—no, the biggest item on the exam schedule."
"Did you just call it a spectacle?"
"A-a slip of the tongue. ...M-more importantly, look! You left the whole schedule to me and never checked it yourself, so of course your information is late."
"Since when do you lecture me."
Smack!
"Aaaagh!"
A slave—no, an assistant instructor—daring to talk back. Still no manners. Lee Han turned his attention from the assistant, who clutched the back of his head and writhed in pain, and read the schedule and the plan properly, to learn why the sword faculty exam was the finale.
A moment later—
"...No wonder so many of them drop out."
It was absurd, and he thought he understood why the commoner students of the sword faculty were withdrawing in a line. This was an exam a commoner could never pass—a swordsman who had not learned Fighting Art.
And yet.
"......Why does this sit so wrong?"
A bitterness, rising from the notice that a troll—something that stirred a sense of kinship—was to be hunted. Lee Han had no idea why a troll should feel familiar, and he tilted his head through a strange, sour unease.