End-of-Term Evaluation (6)
First they made us scale a sheer rock face, then ford a churning river, and now the third stage had us doing the exact opposite of the first: descending this very hill.
Even if the first stage had been dialed down for the test, it was still an eight-meter rock climb. They called this a gentle slope, but to someone beside me whose face was as pale and stricken as a rabbit frozen before a predator, it must have looked like a bottomless precipice.
Still, she made it down in one piece.
Renias clearly had a severe fear of heights. A mere glance over the edge had produced a visceral, trembling reaction; high places were evidently her absolute worst nightmare. What impressed me far more, though, was that she had conquered that terror entirely on her own. Had I been placed in similar shoes, I wasn't at all sure I could have pulled off the same feat.
"Good work out there," I said.
It was strange to think about, but the professor who had once drilled me back when I was a raw beginner used to say those exact words. Praise earned after overcoming a genuine trial carried real weight. To me, this whole affair was nothing more than practical review—putting muscle memory to work under simulated combat conditions—but to her, it must have been an absolute nightmare.
"Eheheh... Thank you, Sunbae."
Watching her break into an embarrassed, goofy little grin, I finally saw the bright, familiar face I knew so well. Offering that compliment had definitely been the right call.
"Junon. Renias. Your clearance of the third stage is officially recognized. Follow me to the next location."
An proctor waiting at the bottom of the hill stepped forward to guide us toward the final arena. The end-of-term evaluation consisted of four stages in total. Given that this test was cooked up by that eccentric Professor Muniherr, I couldn't help but wonder what bizarre trial awaited us at the end.
Following in the proctor's footsteps, we soon arrived at a dense, sprawling woodland.
"Your final objective is to camp in this area. First, inspect the pocket watches distributed to you at the start."
I had fiddled with the watch earlier, wondering why on earth they had handed it out, and I had already deciphered its mechanism without needing an explanation. At first glance, it appeared to be an ordinary timepiece equipped with two buttons, yet none of its functions engaged unless those buttons were pressed. Without operating it, one couldn't even tell the time.
"Pressing the upper button displays the hour, while pressing the lower button shifts the shade of the watch face to distinguish between day and night..."
In short, the artifact indicated artificial day and night alongside the passage of time, meaning we were expected to manage our camp in accordance with its cycle. Just to be safe, I had consulted with Renias during the second stage, keeping the lower button depressed to rest for roughly thirty minutes until the face brightened before attempting the next trial. It seemed my hunch had hit the mark.
"The duration you must survive here is three days. Therefore, over the course of three actual hours, you are to rest through the night phases and remain active during the day. Are there any questions?"
"None, sir."
"None!"
Three days spent camping in the final test. Since practical constraints prevented them from running the exam for three full real-world days, one hour was scaled to represent an entire day. That meant we were expected to cycle between rest and activity over a three-hour span.
I had suspected this stage might boast another laughably trivial difficulty, but it appeared we wouldn't even need to exert ourselves physically this time. What on earth went on inside that professor's head? Regardless, having already put my body through its paces, pitching our issued tent and getting some rest before leaving the testing grounds sounded ideal. There didn't seem to be anything more to gain here anyway.
"Your trial will commence in ten minutes."
I figured this was surprisingly gentle for a final exam closing out my second year. Yes... back then, I truly believed it was that simple.
Standing nearly two meters tall, his hulking frame bore the unmistakable marks of relentless conditioning, bulging muscles clearly visible beneath sweat-drenched clothes. The student named Goden bowed quietly in respect toward the proctors and Professor Muniherr before departing the testing area.
"Flawless performance. That boy is a guaranteed shoe-in for Class A."
"...I am of the same mind."
To prevent any breach of fairness, Professor Muniherr had deliberately assigned proctors from Hardia who had no prior acquaintance with Goden. The student had swept high marks across virtually every metric; though he had suffered a deduction for having his pairing severed, his record was otherwise pristine. He had merely suffered terrible luck with his partner, yet he had brilliantly upheld the honor of Hardia's elite graduates who had been forged directly upon real battlefields.
The same holds true for the rest who remain.
While an astonishing sixty percent of the first- and second-year student body had languished at failing grades, the remaining forty percent were entirely different. Some stood firmly upon their own convictions and principles, and aside from lagging slightly behind the vanguard, there was little fault to find with their execution. Factoring in the absence of an explicit time limit, there was virtually no justification to penalize them outright.
A blessing in disguise, perhaps. Thanks to that, the irritation that had flared within Professor Muniherr's chest had begun to settle.
"Excuse me... Professor Muniherr."
Just as his temper cooled, roughly six proctors approached him as he reviewed the assessment sheets, their expressions painted with unmistakable dread.
"What is it?"
Sensing an ill omen, Professor Muniherr pressed for an answer. His battle-honed intuition had a terrible habit of never missing the mark.
"It appears... weather patterns have materialized inside the testing grounds."
A sharp sigh escaped him as he instantly connected the terrain of Mount Utulum with its meteorological reality. Professor Muniherr raised his free left hand and covered his eyes.
"Are you telling me rain is falling?"
"...Yes, sir."
Though Professor Muniherr was the very architect of the artifact known as the Talbrut Ark, climate control remained an excessively volatile parameter, one he had intentionally left untouched. Putting aside the unfinished feature, the most pressing obstacle was that the students had not yet concluded their evaluations. Several candidates had already completed their exams and vacated the field; rescheduling the assessment from scratch carried an overwhelming risk of distorting the established results.
Rain, is it...
Stroking his chin, Professor Muniherr carefully recited the core criteria governing the end-of-term evaluation.
Endurance: how far one could persevere while exercising strict restraint over magic consumption.
Direction: whether one possessed the acumen to question the true intent and objective behind the trial.
Cooperation: how effectively one solidified a bond with their assigned partner to yield practical results.
And the final metric.
Judgment: how one reacted and adapted when an unexpected catastrophe struck mid-trial.
A downpour represented nothing short of a severe crisis for the examinees.
"We proceed as scheduled."
As he moved to push the evaluation forward, the six proctors urgently tried to dissuade him, arguing that such an ordeal was far too punishing for mere students. Yet Muniherr remained unmoved, electing to modify and enforce the testing protocols on the spot.
"Should any student wish to withdraw, their performance shall be recorded as having completed the fourth stage. As for those who remain..."
Upon the students caught between the treacherous slopes of Mount Utulum and a frigid winter rain, an entirely separate trial had descended.
Mount Utulum was no place for human habitation.
Setting an end-of-term evaluation across such terrain had struck me as bizarre from the very beginning. When I realized the difficulty had been toned down for the exam, I had breathed a genuine sigh of relief. But the moment that premise shattered, an unimaginable catastrophe would unfold—one terrifying enough to chill anyone to the bone.
The sole reason I had panicked upon seeing this venue was its unforgiving topography paired with violently volatile weather.
"Phew... It's all set up!"
Renias collapsed inside the freshly pitched tent, basking in blissful satisfaction. Unfortunately, this was no time to celebrate. I had no choice but to pour cold water over the junior currently lounging contentedly inside her handiwork.
"Renias. Get up. We have to talk, and it's serious."
"Huh...? But I'm so exhausted right now... Uuugh. Can't I please rest for just a tiny bit...?"
There was no helping it. I had to be blunt.
"We have to pack up the tent right now."
Renias shot straight up, eyes widening in disbelief.
"What?! But I just finished pitching it! Wait, why? Can't we just ride out the exam now that the hard work is done?"
If this were an ordinary low-altitude hill, it wouldn't pose an issue. But this was a high-altitude peak scaling thousands of meters. The snow might have been cleared from the simulation, but the true nightmare of this mountain lay elsewhere.
"I'm not joking. If we stay here, we're going to get a front-row seat to living hell. Unless you want to forfeit the exam, tear it down immediately."
"Whaaaat?!"
This was no ordinary mountain. If rain fell upon this ground, the unstable geological foundation would inevitably collapse into an all-consuming mudslide. Why had Princess Ophelia chosen to launch her expedition into the Moras Grand Wetland during the dead of winter instead of the humid summer? To avert natural disasters!
Look at the sky. Look at the clouds gathering in the distance. Those were unmistakably cumulonimbus clouds. When storm clouds gathered over a mountain like this, they would unleash a torrential deluge, and that runoff cascading down these slopes would trigger a massive landslide.
This wasn't speculation. It was personal experience. I had lived through it firsthand once, and I had nearly been swept away to my death.
Anyone who thought this was just loose dirt and sand washing downhill was dead wrong. It was a full-scale natural catastrophe where the earth itself shifted and liquefied beneath your feet. There was no countering it. This was no time to leisurely pitch tents; we had to take immediate measures to mitigate the threat, or at the very least scout high, solid ground that wouldn't be swallowed by a collapsing mountain.
I knew this was going too smoothly...
Talk about a bolt from the blue. Perhaps the delay caused by our failure to clear the earlier stages quickly had caught up to us, but no announcement halting the exam had reached our ears.
Or did he intentionally let it run?
...Knowing Professor Muniherr, that was entirely within character. In that case, I had only one course of action. Enduring a freezing winter rain was cruel enough on its own, but who had the leisure to sit around taking a test under these conditions? Renias and I had to pack our gear in a hurry and secure a vantage point that could withstand the coming landslide.
With our Break Time already burnt and unavailable for escape, I had zero intention of getting buried alive under tons of mud and suffering an ignominious disqualification!
"Of all the times for her partner to show up right there..."
She had been forced to back down. Words meant for him could never be allowed to reach another person's ears.
Sylvia was unraveling with anxiety. The chances to meet him were dwindling by the minute, and time was running desperately short. The fourth stage underway right now was her absolute last window of opportunity to negotiate with Junon.
"Please... Just hurry and show yourself..."
The moment she was cast out from the count's household, her life was over. And toward Sylvia, who stood clutching that frantic thought, dark and frigid storm clouds began to gather.