The Written Exam (3)
Idel worked through the problems with both hands. His speed was so inhumanly fast that the scratching of his pen tickled Jernya’s ears.
‘Ugh, seriously.’
Jernya turned her head without thinking and nearly dropped her pen.
‘What the hell is that guy even doing…?’
Her concentration shattered. Once she slipped out of the zone, all she could see was the white test paper and black text.
She tried to steady her mind.
It didn’t work.
Idel’s aggro was top-tier. Even if she hated it, once she’d seen it, her eyes kept drifting back.
Idel didn’t stop at simply using both hands. He crossed his arms in an X shape. With his left hand he solved the right-side paper, and with his right hand the left-side paper.
It was a feat worthy of a veteran circus performer. He tore through the questions at blinding speed, toying with them. Jernya’s mental state was toyed with right alongside them.
She let out a hollow laugh at the absurdity. Her eyes widened. She twisted her head as far as it would go and buried her face in her own test sheet.
She gathered her focus and locked onto the problems. The blurred equations slowly came back into view. Even in a situation like this, Jernya had trained herself to maintain concentration. Before long, she had regained her composure.
Ding. Ding. Deeeeng—
The bell signaling the end of the exam rang out. Kendra, who had been staring blankly at Idel, wiped the drool from her sleeve and stood up.
“Time’s up! Put your pens down!”
Only then did Jernya finally look straight at Idel. He had been moving his arms furiously right up until the final second.
Had he really failed to finish despite that pace?
Or was he the meticulous type who double-checked everything until the end?
No one, not even Jernya, could say for sure. One thing was certain: Idel was a far stronger opponent than anyone had imagined.
‘Well, even so, I’m still taking first place.’
The moment the morning exam ended, the students scattered in every direction. They were off to eat. They had one hour.
Idel’s gaze passed over Jernya and drifted toward the back row. There, Rustilla and Seti were chatting.
The next instant, Rustilla’s eyes met Idel’s. With a tired look, she gave a small wave.
‘Flirting before you’ve even passed? How charming.’
Jernya clicked her tongue.
Romance was something only pathetic fools bothered with.
Especially for test-takers. It was a poisoned chalice. It might look dazzling on the surface, but in reality it was just one of many factors that could ruin your chances of passing.
Yet Jernya couldn’t quite convince herself. The Idel in front of her somehow seemed like he would actually pass. She still lacked information. In any case, his written skills were outstanding.
“Sister, what’s wrong?”
Seti, noticing Rustilla waving, asked with a tilt of her head. Rustilla waved her hand dismissively, saying it was nothing.
‘Thanks for last time.’
In truth, that was what Rustilla had wanted to say.
She recalled what had happened a month ago. The visit to the Rheinland family estate, the home study session, and the events that had led her to meet Idel by chance.
There had been a storm of complications, but in the end, he was a good person. The only problem was that an Outer Deity had latched onto him, slowly eroding his mind with madness.
Hadn’t the scene earlier proven it?
A human couldn’t solve problems with both hands at once. That was something only a computer capable of parallel processing could do. Since a person couldn’t possibly be a machine, it had to be an Outer Deity from the Maxwell Legion invading his brain.
‘I have to save him someday.’
One more reason for Rustilla to pass Stellarium had just been added.
“Haa…”
Contrary to that resolve, however, her own written exam performance had been far from stellar.
“How did Korean and math go?” Seti asked.
“Not great,” Rustilla said, shaking her head.
“I saw the proctor put tissues on your desk earlier.”
“I think… I might have messed up.”
Like the other students, Rustilla desperately wanted to get into Stellarium. If she passed, she could even attend school by doing forward rolls every morning.
But despite her efforts, it felt like she had bombed the morning exam. While reading the Korean passage, the world had started spinning. Maybe that was why she had cried.
Yet from Seti’s next words, Rustilla finally understood the real reason.
“Now that I think about it, there was a passage in literature today. It was about soldiers buying time to evacuate citizens from a planet on the verge of being consumed by erosion.”
“…Ah.”
So that was why she had really cried.
“It was pretty sad. Honestly, if I were Merilda, I would’ve run away. How could someone keep fighting even after their limbs were torn off by monsters?”
“…Because that was the only way to save the citizens.”
“I found that part admirable. Even though it was just a novel. I wonder how many soldiers like that would actually exist in a real war.”
Rustilla nodded.
She was right.
Now that she thought about it, she had cried after reading that passage.
The protagonist in that text was exactly the kind of soldier she wanted to become. The future she aspired to. Even in the face of adversity, he never bowed to the Outer Deities.
From that brilliantly burning figure, she had felt both sorrow and respect at the same time. Rustilla wanted to become a soldier like that. She wanted to stand on the front lines, slaughter monsters, and protect this beautiful galaxy of ours.
It was still a distant dream.
A difficult one to achieve.
That was precisely why she had no choice but to enter Stellarium.
She had made a deal: if she passed this academy, her father and mother would no longer interfere with her life.
‘I have to pass.’
Rustilla clenched her fist tightly.
She ate lunch with Seti and chatted freely for the first time in a while. Even the androids that usually monitored her stayed quiet. It was a special day, a rare taste of freedom.
Wishing that freedom would last until the very end, Rustilla finished the afternoon exam as well.
The afternoon exam was easier compared to the morning.
That didn’t mean the time-attack format had disappeared. Since it fell under the exploratory section of what would be the college entrance exam, the time pressure was intense.
That was why I had to achieve a triple core beyond dual core. It was a grueling process of turning myself into a Bitcoin mining rig.
“Ugh.”
My neck was stiff from keeping my head down for over two hours. I set down the third pen I had rolled up and secured in my headband.
I could hear people whispering about me. The proctor, Kendra, couldn’t take her eyes off me.
“Student…”
“Yes?”
“Ah, it’s nothing. After all, there wasn’t any rule against sticking pens in your headband while solving problems…”
She laughed awkwardly and gathered the test sheets before hurrying away. The way she practically sprinted out suggested she was in desperate need of the bathroom.
“Haa.”
Anyway, the written exam was over.
The practical and interview still remained, but those were problems for tomorrow’s me. Today, I planned to swing a sword a few times and relax.
The God of Wisdom and Curiosity is eagerly awaiting how spectacularly you will fail the practical evaluation.
“Tsk.”
As I clicked my tongue at the message an Outer Deity had sent, someone approached. Silver-white hair. It was Jernya.
“You’re a real freak.”
She spat out only those words and left first.
Next, another head of white hair approached me. This time it was a familiar face. Seti looked up at me and let out a deep sigh.
“Did you come here to film a variety show?”
“What?”
I had no idea what she meant. I tilted my head. Seti glared at me and pressed on.
“Didn’t you hear what the proctor said this morning? The entrance exam here isn’t a joke. She told us to give it our all. So what the hell was that? Sticking pencils in your hair while solving problems? Are you completely insane?”
“It was the only way I could write out all the solutions.”
“You think other people only have one hand and solve everything with just one? You really are something else. You completely broke my concentration. I almost screwed up because of you.”
“Hey, come on. That’s unfair.”
If I had just written down the answers, one hand would have been enough. But if I wanted to go beyond a high score and aim for a perfect score—or even beyond that—one hand wasn’t enough. That was the nature of this test. Getting a perfect score here was like plucking a star from the sky.
In other words, there was a reason I had activated my three-sword style.
Of course, if I told Seti that, she’d just say something like “What the hell is this idiot talking about?” Since I couldn’t explain, I simply sighed and stepped back.
“Let’s go, Sister.”
“I told you, you don’t have to call me Sister…”
“Even if you were born earlier in the same year, you were still born in a different year, right? So you’re my sister.”
“Then would you call this guy ‘Brother’ too?”
Seti’s face went blank.
“Oh shit.”
Seti pretended to retch and urged Rustilla to leave quickly. But Rustilla didn’t move. She stared at me intently and said,
“…Your name was Idel, right?”
I nodded instead of answering.
“Other people might not know, but I do.”
“……?”
“So do your best.”
Only then did Rustilla walk away. She gave me a gentle smile. It was as warm as if the Goddess of Charity had descended.
Hearing words I hadn’t expected, I was momentarily stunned. So I reflexively blurted out,
“You too. Do your best.”
Seti’s expression went blank again.
Kendra entered the main examination headquarters carrying the collected answer sheets. She was panting. Her colleague, Teacher Karlen, asked indifferently,
“What’s going on?”
“Hey, hey. I just saw something insane.”
“What happened?”
The nosy Kendra couldn’t hold it in. She hurriedly pulled out three answer sheets. On the first page of each were the following names:
Jernya von und zu Trisha Adelbain
Seti von Adelbain Rheinland
Idel von Rheinland
“That lineup is crazy.”
Karlen burst into laughter from sheer bewilderment.
“Does that mean at least two people will pass from the test site you supervised this time?”
“That’s what it looks like to me.”
“Wait, but that last one… isn’t that the guy?”
Kendra knew exactly what Karlen meant.
Idel von Rheinland. The universe’s greatest lunatic and the Rheinland family’s infamous troublemaker. When the rumor that he was applying to Stellarium turned out to be true, the entire examination headquarters had briefly fallen into chaos.
“I checked his school records. He skipped almost every class during middle school, only showing up for the minimum required hours. We’ll have to deduct points from his basic documents. And that alone should be enough to disqualify him. So don’t worry about him passing by some miracle.”
“No, that’s not the issue right now…”
Kendra trailed off.
She was dying of curiosity.
Just how high would Idel’s test score be?
‘I’ve never seen a crazy bastard solve problems with both hands. And his handwriting was surprisingly clean… Ah, whatever. I don’t know anymore.’
She headed to the grading room and fed Idel’s test sheet into the AI analyzer. The machine slowly devoured the paper and spat out the multiple-choice answer key.
Perfect score in Korean multiple choice.
Perfect score in math multiple choice.
Perfect scores across the board.
“Holy shit.”
After the multiple-choice section came short answers and essays. Short answers could be graded quickly by machine, but essays could not. Kendra passed the first grading room and headed to the second, which handled only essay questions.
This place was a battlefield of endless toil and forced camaraderie where 1,200 faculty members and over 300 professors worked nonstop from the day the written exam ended.
Kendra sat down with the essay grading rubric in hand.
“Ah…”
“What’s wrong?”
“Th-this…”
Kendra, who had been about to start with the physics essay, turned around and requested backup.
“Could you please bring Professor Feynman from the Physics Department?”