The Academy's Mad Exam
In my hand was a photograph showing a black golem. To be precise, it was a golem standing motionless like a lump of stone on the ground because no mana had been injected into it. Aside from its somewhat intimidating appearance, it looked ordinary at first glance, but the reality was anything but.
I knew exactly what this thing was.
‘A fourth-generation combat golem from the National Arcanetics Corporation.’
It wasn’t the kind of thing an academy would use for education or testing. No, this was a suppression golem deployed when hunters engaged in violent acts or attempted coups. I wondered why the academy even had something like this, but when I thought about it, it wasn’t that strange.
After all, the academy was a bastard child born from the unholy triangle of military academy, university, and outright violence. Because the students inside were constantly armed, accidental incidents could happen at any moment. That was why the academy always kept suppression golems on standby to prepare for such disasters. If they added heavily armed academy security forces on top of that, it would be fair to call it perfect preparation.
Such excellent contingency measures against accidental hunter incidents.
One might then ask how they prepared for accidental firearm accidents among hunters. The very appropriate answer to that was go fuck yourself.
Puerto Rico was essentially American territory, and America had always been a nation that loved its guns. There was no extreme need to prepare for hunters’ firearms, even if they did for their blades. Decisively, if someone could die from a mere gunshot, it meant they possessed a body unfit to survive in America, the land blessed by the Gun Devil. It was essentially a natural death.
“Sian, my eyes are a bit blurry, but is that label on its chest really saying ‘test use’?”
“Test use. Yep.”
Anyway, in this case, there was indeed a note labeled “test use” stuck to the golem’s chest. It seemed they were boldly planning to repurpose one of their suppression golems for testing. As expected of a top-tier academy, they really were on another level. The sight of them pouring every resource into improving students’ skills was downright shocking.
I could already imagine students getting wrecked in real fights against the suppression golem and being carted off to the hospital one after another. It wasn’t exactly a pleasant future to envision.
“T-test use? We’re supposed to fight this thing?”
“That looks impossible no matter how you look at it.”
“If there’s one per team, we might be able to subdue it… Sian, what do you think?”
“Since it’s an NAC product… if you guys keep the aggro drawn for a long time while I attack, it shouldn’t be impossible.”
Of course, that was assuming everything went relatively smoothly. The reason I recognized the golem the moment I saw it was because of a certain gimmick from the game. Due to a design flaw, it would go berserk. In the game, berserk golems had appeared in massive numbers, abandoned on the outskirts of Shareltea. The difficulty had been quite high too. There was no way I could have missed it.
Whether Mari would recognize it, though, was uncertain. Even a regressor had limits to what they could remember.
“Mari, what do you make of that golem?”
“What do I make of it?”
“Well, roughly speaking, how’s its performance? Any issues?”
“It just looks… pretty average? Oh, but looking at its condition, it seems a bit outdated. Its performance might be lower than we think.”
She didn’t know. It was natural that she wouldn’t. This was a model now classified as old, and even if not this exact one, other manufacturers’ golems had gone berserk from time to time. She probably remembered it as simply having the bad luck of fighting one that went on a rampage.
The future looked worrisome in many ways. The one silver lining was that berserk incidents themselves were relatively rare. Even if one did explode, the chances of it blowing up on me were low. I decided to trust in that possibility.
After all, I was the kind of trash hand who only pulled commons in gacha games. Surely this time too, I’d hit the highest-probability outcome and be done with it.
It was right as I was lost in those thoughts.
“Ummm… but you know.”
The power mage girl’s voice trailed off unusually short. I turned my head to look at her.
“The academy clearly pulled some tricks to lure the students in… but doesn’t this seem off?”
“…Honestly, it feels like we could just follow the paved road.”
“Yeah, no matter how you look at it, that seems to be the case. Making side paths to confuse us and placing obstacles feels completely pointless.”
“They must’ve thrown this together in a real hurry.”
The more photos we gathered and videos we reviewed, the stronger the conviction became. It was literally just following the road connecting Arecibo to Ponce. At this rate, whenever an obstacle or golem appeared, we could simply detour around it. Since we already knew the route, there were plenty of ways to get through even if we had to climb mountains with a demon’s resolve.
With fifty thousand test participants, they wouldn’t be able to monitor every detour. It was truly the pinnacle of sloppiness in an entrance exam.
“This really isn’t what I came to the academy for. What the hell are they even doing…?”
“You’re not wrong.”
“I agree.”
“Same here.”
But no matter how unreasonable it was, this was an exam we couldn’t avoid. We began selecting the equipment we’d need to walk more than sixty kilometers, one piece at a time.
The scene was impossible to tell whether the world was driving people insane or people were driving the world insane. The exam site of Palaestra Academy was an unparalleled disaster.
Tens of thousands of new students were occupying the streets. Tens of thousands of current students watched in horror from the sidelines. All kinds of equipment were flying through the sky. Academy officials were spouting nonsense from atop some building. Citizens were filming it all as if it were some fascinating spectacle.
A sight one might encounter once in a lifetime. Actually, it was better not to encounter it at all, yet here everyone was, experiencing it anyway.
As the crowd density slowly made the air grow hotter and heavier, Kang Sian wiped the sweat dripping down his forehead, his bag and equipment already slung over his shoulders.
“Everyone’s gone crazy.”
“That’s just how hunters are.”
Beside him, Cheon Mari, who was wrapping bandages around her hand, spoke as if she had already given up on everything. Her gaze soon shifted away from the trembling Shannon and the still-energetic power mage girl, landing instead on the platform atop a building.
There stood the Chancellor and other high-ranking academy officials. Naturally, the new students who spotted them began hurling curses in voices just loud enough to be heard.
Desperate screams begging for this situation to end. Furious outrage at how this could possibly be a top-tier academy. But sadly, the Chancellor simply stepped down from the platform without a word. No one knew exactly why he left, but one thing was certain: the new students’ wishes would not be granted.
“Whose speech is it this time?”
“The Vice Dean of Admissions, apparently.”
Soon, the person who introduced herself as the Vice Dean of Admissions stepped onto the platform. She began proudly spouting various clichéd lines along with how excellent this exam was. Her skill at innovatively packaging the fact that they were all screwed gave a pretty good idea of how she’d climbed to the position of Vice Dean.
However, being good at packaging and being interesting were two entirely different things, so many students weren’t really listening. The moment they actually started paying attention was when she said one particular line.
“Students who reach the upper ranks of the exam will receive rewards so incredible they border on terrifying!”
A single word—reward. It was as if the world had come to a halt. Only then did the gloomy eyes begin to clear, filling instead with hope. How far that hope would go was unknown, but having a goal was a powerful motivator for humans.
That was why the Vice Dean of Admissions delivered an even more innovative announcement. It was clearly something she believed the new students would love.
“Priority selection rights for graduate school! Serious one-on-one meetings with professors! Priority selection for campus events! And much more awaits you!!!”
Just one paragraph. A tremendous stir rippled through the crowd.