Skill Assessment (2)
The written exam had been fine.
All you had to do was guess the answers.
No need to trouble my brain with actual thinking.
Thanks to walking in already knowing the correct answers, I'd blown through the questions at lightning speed. It was the kind of test-taking where, quite literally, I already knew the answers.
We'd been given forty-five minutes, and I'd closed my answer sheet in less than five. Then I'd flopped face-down onto my desk and recovered my energy. Between the IV drip in the infirmary and resting whenever I could, my body was in far better shape than before.
The plan was simple: pass the practical exam and the sparring matches with perfect marks, and lay the groundwork for Chloe's path to the student council presidency.
I believed in this plan's success without a shred of doubt.
"The practical exam will begin shortly. Students waiting in the auditorium, please make your way to the field within the allotted time."
At the announcement crackling through the auditorium speakers, the students gathered their things and filed outside.
We followed the long line snaking toward the field, moving in order one by one.
A wide field carpeted in grass — a facility built so students could run and play freely. Just yesterday it had been empty except for the grass itself, but now it was covered in equipment brought in with deliberate care to evaluate the students' abilities.
"Ugh, hah... I can do this."
The moment Eva stepped onto the field, she held her face up to a hand mirror and spoke to herself as if putting herself under hypnosis.
Soon, in the sparring matches, she would be battling other students in earnest. For someone as shy as her, it would be a stimulating experience unlike anything she'd had before.
Granted, I, Chloe, Marin, and the others had taken turns serving as her practice partners, but that hadn't done anything to soften her social anxiety.
"You can do it, Eva. I'll be right here cheering you on."
"O-okay!"
Chloe gripped Eva's hand tightly and encouraged her. Eva beamed back with a wide, goofy grin.
Good grief, she's going to split her mouth open smiling like that.
"Good luck to you too, Solis."
"Uh, yeah, sure."
Chloe flashed me a smile as fresh and radiant as an angel's. That bloom of a smile, like a cluster of flowers lifting their heads to the morning sun, made me stumble over my own words.
She's beautiful when she smiles.
Truly the cream of the noble crop. No wonder Eva fell for her at first sight — the face earns its price.
THWACK!
"GWAAH!"
"Hm? What's wrong?"
"N-nothing happened at all..."
An ear-splitting pain had suddenly shot up my shin. If I hadn't scrambled to catch my balance, I would've gone down and cracked my head on the ground.
"What is your deal?!"
I glared at my attacker — Marin, who was whistling off to the side and feigning innocence.
"Solis, why staring?"
"That's my question! Why'd you kick my leg, you little—"
"Not my problem."
Marin gave an indignant huff through her nose. She kept playing innocent, flatly ignoring me the whole way through.
Wait, hold on. More importantly — hey.
Didn't she just lie to me?
Her expression was as unchanged as ever, so nothing about her face felt off, but her behavior was markedly different from the Marin I knew.
"Hey, listen..."
I put a hand on her shoulder. If something was bothering her, I was going to tell her to spit it out instead of sulking.
"Solis!"
Just then, a voice called my name from across the field.
"Instructor Yupi, good morning!"
The instructor — dressed in the utterly shameless combination of a leotard and bikini armor. Yupi, who had thrown dignity to the wind the moment she became a Purity Academy instructor, came sprinting toward me with a beaming grin.
"Fancy meeting you again here. Have you been well?"
After our date, Yupi and I had exchanged the occasional call and message, but we hadn't actually spent time together in person. I'd joined Chloe's study group and been busy with the girls ever since.
Once I proved my abilities to them, I'd earned some freedom under Chloe's leave as group leader — but the truth was, back then I'd been running all over the place, focused on training.
Yupi, for her part, had been swamped with preparations for the skill assessment as a Purity Academy instructor. She was in charge of the written exam for the first month, and since she was one of the people who authored and submitted the questions herself, there simply hadn't been a good window for us to meet and talk.
Not that the window had ever been generous — less than a month, all told.
For Yupi, fresh into a relationship and eager to do all the things new couples do — youth(?), in other words — this moment must have been one she'd been aching for.
"As you can see, fit as a fiddle. How about you, Solis?"
"Me? I've simply been striving to fulfill my duty as a proud student of Purity Academy."
"Aww, how did our Solis get so adorably diligent?"
"Haha."
Yupi grabbed my cheeks and stretched them out long, like pulling taffy. They say even a whale will dance when praised — and when it's praise from your lover, all I could do was scratch my head in embarrassment.
"Hwawahh!"
Eva went red in the face at the tender, devoted, saccharine atmosphere the couple was giving off. Her eyes darted back and forth between me and Yupi, brimming with equal parts envy and mortification at the shape of love we displayed.
"Urk."
Chloe hid a retch, her face twisted in disgust. Her narrowed, slitted eyes turned toward Yupi.
Judging by the look of her, she wasn't frowning at the sweet mood between me and Yupi.
No — she seemed to take issue with the mere existence of a person like Yupi: a woman old enough to be her parent flirtatiously circling a student exactly her own age.
"The practical starts soon, so everyone, do your best. Solis, can you spare me some time afterward?"
"I'll squeeze blood from a stone if I have to. Just say the word."
"Thank you. Then I'll be off — the assessment prep won't run itself."
With a parting wave, Yupi vanished like the wind. I stared at the empty spot where she'd stood, then let out a long breath of relief.
Phew. Smoothed right over.
My heart had nearly dropped through the floor when she'd come up to me.
What if she knew I was sick and came to drag me out of it? What if she told me to toss the assessment aside and go to the hospital right now, hoisted me over her shoulder, and carried me off? The thought had made my chest pound with dread.
Chloe was a fellow student, so I could brush her off — but Yupi was an instructor who oversaw the entire assessment. Here, her word was absolute.
If she'd pulled me out of the test site on grounds of student safety, there'd have been nothing a single student could do to refuse.
Well — crisis averted. Time to focus on the exam and nothing else.
THWACK!
"GWEHEHK!"
And the searing pain came rushing in yet again. Both my legs trembled as if they'd been crippled.
"Seriously, what is it this time?!"
"Nothing."
And with that single word, Marin bolted for the test grounds. She mangles a man's legs and then just leaves him behind?
"You could at least tell me why."
I couldn't make heads or tails of it. Had Marin ever in the original story hit someone for no reason? I didn't recall any scene like that.
Right up until yesterday we'd been friends who got along fine. One night passes, and she comes back as my sworn enemy.
I'd have to ask her directly later what her deal was.
Let's get moving.
Either way, right now it was all about the practical! The sparring!
Finish it fast, get the instructors' blessing, and go to the hospital. Then have another IV drip hooked up and rest in a hospital bed. That was the dream.
"We will now begin the practical exam."
Once they'd confirmed all the students had arrived, the instructors brought out the next test event.
"This practical event is a simple mana measurement."
"Students, when your name is called, step forward and strike this punch machine with mana behind your blow."
"You will have three attempts. Your highest score among the three will be recorded as your final score."
Just as advertised — a simple test where all you had to do was slam a mana-infused fist into the machine in front of you.
It might have looked crude, but for gauging a person's latent potential and current ability in broad strokes, nothing else came close. It worked on the same principle as measuring the accuracy of aiming and firing a bullet at a target, or gauging power and velocity.
"Mirine — 72, 60, 55. Final score, 72 points."
Silvia, Yupi, and the rest of the academy instructors each called students to their assigned machines and graded them one by one.
Unlike the written exam, there was no calculation involved — you just put your weight into the punch and you were done — so the lines dwindled fast.
"100, 100, 98. Chloe Opal, 100 points."
"82, 70, 100. Eva Amethyst, 100 points."
"100, 100, 100. Marin Light, 100 points."
"AWESOME!"
And the others are cleaning up too.
An unbroken parade of perfect scores. Chloe's whoop of joy rang out across the field, and the students huddled together, whispering among themselves.
"Look over there. They all got 100s."
"Well, what else would you expect from the children of storied noble houses?"
My group members' abilities stood out in blazing contrast. True to their roles as the main cast of the novel, they snagged the top scores as casually as breathing.
Now all that remained was me.
"Solis, step forward."
At Instructor Silvia's call, I walked up to the machine with confident strides. I stretched, rolled out my legs with a light warm-up, and loosened the stiffness from my body.
Go get 'em.
Yupi, watching from the side, winked one eye playfully at me. I answered her cheer with a smile and set my stance.
There was no reason to hesitate. Without a second's delay, I thrust my fist at the machine.
BOOM!
A straight punch, delivered straight and fast. The fist shot out in a clean line trailing a burst of wind pressure and hammered into the measurement pad.
I'd have sworn on my life there was no more perfect straight punch in existence.
"Solis — zero."
"Huh?"
Something was wrong here. Why wasn't a score coming up?
I examined the device carefully, wondering if it had glitched, but the display stubbornly pointed to zero.
Impossible.
One more time!
CRACK!
This time, too — form, speed, power. An flawless punch smashed into the machine.
I'd given it everything, same as always.
"Solis — zero points."
But Silvia, the grading instructor, coldly recorded the score on the chart in her hand. She looked visibly shaken herself, watching me with worried eyes.
Forcing my trembling hands still, I analyzed the situation with a clear head. I couldn't say whether this counted as a blessing, but I found my answer to the question I'd asked myself almost immediately.
My mana's gone!
The shimmering golden mana that should have surged up from the core of my heart. I searched every corner of my body, top to bottom, and couldn't find so much as a trace of that power.