The Entrance Exam (1)

There was a game called Surviving the Academy—SurvAcad, for short. Decent gameplay, a ridiculous amount of content, and graphics beautiful enough to stop you mid-click. For an indie title it had far too much going for it, which is why it enjoyed one brief, glittering season of popularity. I got swept up in that wave. I played it happily enough, and even afterward I'd drift back whenever an update dropped and pick it up again.

…Looking back now, that was the one thing I never should have done.

"How the hell did it come to this."

I turned my head and looked out the window. The buildings weren't a modern forest of skyscrapers, but they stood plenty tall, and the fantasy city spread below was as beautiful as a painting. Carriages rolled along the broad avenue through the center, while students in spotless white academy uniforms strolled the sidewalks in little clusters, laughing as they went. Oh—and for the record, I was wearing that same uniform.

Possession was actually a thing?

By now you've probably caught on. I had been dropped straight into Surviving the Academy. The body I'd landed in belonged to a character I'd made last night. His name was… Philip, wasn't it? I'd hit random generate, so I barely remembered.

Weren't there plenty of people more worth possessing than me?

It's true I'd enjoyed SurvAcad. Enjoyed it as a casual, though—nowhere near what anyone would call a veteran. The community had achievement completionists, even a madman who'd cleared the final boss without taking a hit, as far as I knew. Why they'd chosen to possess a fair-weather bird who only migrated in for updates was beyond me.

Fine. I'll concede it a hundred times over and say possession was possible.

I still couldn't accept it, but if you live long enough you run into things you never asked for. When that happens, what matters is keeping your head and pushing through, not collapsing into a panic. There's a reason for the old saying that even dragged into a tiger's den, you'll be all right so long as you keep your wits. My situation right now, though, was more hopeless than meeting a tiger that hadn't eaten in a month with all four limbs bound.

"Status."

On the off chance—and the chance was nearly zero—that I'd misread it, I called the status window up again. A translucent blue pane bloomed into the air with a flash of light. I forced my nerves down and read it through once more.

All stats F. A trash build for the ages. The only things walking around with a statline this miserable were the lowest-grade monsters—slimes. But stats weren't why despair had its hands around my throat. Stats you can raise, can't you? Among the possessed these days, the ones who didn't start at F were the rarer breed.

The problem is the trait and the curse.

I clicked the trait slot to check it.

"Still cracked, no matter how many times I look."

As I said, I only ever came back to SurvAcad when it updated, and the trait hanging in front of me was this patch's new toy: ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠the unlocking of EX-rank traits. The name alone was enough to set a gamer's heart on fire, and the actual performance was no joke.

Creating sword arts? Ascending to godhood? Broken just from the wording.

The old wisdom holds that the cooler the name, the better it is, and the shorter the description, the more broken. By that measure Ultimate Sword Body—a fine name and a brief write-up—was a broken trait in the flesh. Even with my pitiful stock of game knowledge, a better one was hard to find.

"If that had been all of it, how nice that would've been…"

But if the world gives you something, it takes something too. To obtain an EX-rank trait, I had to accept a single curse. I had no complaint about that part. The developer had to mind the balance; in exchange for something this busted, they'd hung a debuff ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠on me to even the scales. The problem was the colossal screw-up that followed.

"Heh. Heh heh."

I read the curse through one more time and couldn't manage anything but a hollow laugh. It was unbelievable no matter how many times I looked. Born with a swordsman's gift, and I couldn't use a sword. What kind of nonsense was that? A swordsman with no sword isn't a swordsman. It's a place you go to die. Fuck.

This curse wasn't originally this bad…

I know how strange it sounds, coming from me, but this curse wasn't originally fatal to this degree. You might ask how a curse that forbids weapons could fail to be fatal—doesn't it make the game unplayable? Surprisingly, SurvAcad had plenty of classes that never touched a weapon at all. Mages who cast perfectly well without a staff. Priests who worked miracles with nothing but empty-handed prayer. Martial artists who split boulders bare-handed. Classes that lived just fine without a weapon made up more than half of all of them.

But I'm a swordsman, aren't I?

Of all the moments for it to land, the curse had hit the instant I picked a swordsman-only trait. As far as I knew, there were hundreds of curses. A coincidence so perfect it was almost funny, right?

Right, you piece-of-shit developer?

Calm down. If my head breaks here, it's actually over.

If I could have had my way, I would have buried myself in a corner of the room for three straight days and despaired at the world. My situation wouldn't allow it. What's so urgent that I'm losing it like this? Soon I had to leave for the exam hall and sit the academy entrance exam. It had been three hours since I was possessed. Three hours, and I was about to be thrown straight into a fantasy world.

Shameless bastard of a dev.

I'd played SurvAcad more than a few times, and yet I'd never known an entrance exam existed, because the game began at the entrance ceremony. I'd nearly walked right past it without realizing it was a test at all. I'd only sat by the window to settle my nerves, and I'd barely caught on by overhearing the prospective examinees talking.

"…What the hell am I supposed to do."

Calling my situation grim didn't begin to cover it. I had to pass into the academy, and I wasn't prepared for the entrance exam in the slightest. The written portion was a fail, no discussion required. Even the practical—my one hope—was nearly impossible to sit, thanks to the deranged collaboration of trait and curse.

Isn't there some way?

From the moment I'd heard about the exam, I'd been turning it over. I'd scraped together every scrap of knowledge I had and didn't have and come up with a few ideas. Hold the sword in my mouth, like that pirate hunter from a certain manga. Strap blades to my legs, like the bladed-leg woman from a certain game. Every last one of them was pure fantasy, and my sanity had checked out completely.

This won't do. I have to get into the academy…

SurvAcad is not a game that keeps running without a protagonist. Assume the protagonist does nothing, and the academy is shut down in the second year while every major NPC dies or falls to corruption. And then what? A world stripped of its heroes slides slowly into the abyss, until every living thing on the continent passes into the hands of an evil god.

"That, at least, I have to stop no matter what."

Dozens of SurvAcad bad endings flashed through my head. Most of them were ordinary deaths, but if things twisted the wrong way, you could suffer something worse than dying. The living-battery ending. The eagle-and-the-heart ending. The punishment ending. I had not the slightest desire to meet a finish like that, and I had to enter the academy no matter what it took.

How?

Round and round, and I was staring at the same problem again. I had to get into the academy, which meant scoring high on the practical. Scoring high meant using the trait, and the curse meant I couldn't use the trait.

"There's no answer."

If I'd had time to spare, I would have found a way somehow. What I had left was about thirty minutes, and twenty-five of those would ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠go just to reaching the exam hall. Effectively a timeout. I had no more time to prepare. Whatever remained, I'd have to improvise once I was in it.

"Hell if I know~ It'll work out somehow~"

I chose to believe that either I'd miraculously awaken some second power, or a brilliant way around the restriction would occur to me. Surely this wouldn't end with me simply failing the entrance exam. The developer must have seen some kind of potential in me. Otherwise, why possess me at all?

They didn't possess me just to screw me over… did they?

A bad feeling flickered through me for an instant, and I forced it down. I left the inn as I was and started toward the entrance exam hall. Today, of all days, my steps felt unusually heavy.