Final Exam Preparations Start Now
The final exam preparations began right now.
Up to three artifacts allowed, excluding the staff.
Mana potions count as artifacts; potions of superior grade or higher are prohibited.
Order of matches will proceed from lowest to highest combat capability as evaluated in sparring classes.
Karnarof added a few more lines beneath the notice and cast some kind of spell with his staff.
“Do your best, then.”
Karnarof left the room, but nobody spared him a glance. The moment they saw the notice, everyone’s minds snapped into focus.
“What the hell is this?”
“The examiner is Karnarof?!”
“A grand mage who might be close to 7th rank!”
The students who had stayed behind seemed just as stunned. I didn’t know exactly how strong Karnarof was, but even an A-rank hunter would be brutally difficult at this stage. Just the mana radiating from him felt like S-rank or higher. I wasn’t even sure if dragon mana would make a difference.
Suddenly, Karnarof’s parting words echoed in my head.
“I should’ve realized the moment he told me to use the staff freely.”
It hadn’t been permission to break it. He’d been telling me to save it until the final exam….
Between this and that nightmare of an herbology class, everything was ridiculously hard.
“A magic duel with Professor Karnarof, though…”
Aris wore a genuinely shocked expression. Linia and Robert walked over with similar looks of disbelief.
For now, we headed back to the dorm and threw together a quick strategy session.
“Even thirty seconds is gonna be brutal…”
Honestly, I’d barely seen Karnarof use proper magic. But the feedback he gave during sparring classes was on another level. Even if I had been the instructor, I would’ve done it exactly like that. There were plenty of points I hadn’t even considered. It was enough to make even me feel like I still had a lot to learn. His fundamentals in defense and offense, plus his proficiency with every other spell, completely overwhelmed every student in class.
“Winning is impossible, right?”
“Completely agree.”
Linia and Robert both nodded. Robert spoke up first.
“The opening thirty seconds will likely follow a set pattern.”
Probably. Linia yawned loudly.
“Yaaawn… using only the average student’s mana output means they’re testing mana control techniques…”
“Overwhelming him with raw mana is…”
Aris offered her thoughts. It was average student mana output, after all. No matter how efficiently you handled it, surpassing a noble’s reserves would be nearly impossible.
That was the theory, but…
“It’s impossible. Karnarof has no mana restrictions when it comes to defense,” Robert said, cutting straight to the point.
“I see…”
“So for the top ranks, the real key is lasting the full thirty seconds with minimal mana consumption. After that…”
Linia’s voice trailed off, so I finished for her.
“After that it’s do-whatever-the-hell-you-want territory.”
Still, losing was absolutely not an option. Why? Pride. The biggest reason I took first place back at the training camp was simply because I hated losing to the other brats. That was it. Nothing more.
Perfect score. I’m getting it no matter what.
Since things had come to this, I decided to visit the one person who could at least put up a fight against Karnarof. Or rather, the one who could actually beat him.
“Huh? The examiner is Karnarof? Why’s he bothering to proctor first-year exams?”
Adrian stretched her wings wide and tilted her head, looking genuinely puzzled. Today’s offering, by the way, was dessert. Less a tribute and more of a gift.
“No idea. That’s just what they announced. But is Karnarof really that strong?”
“Hmm… for a human, he’s quite powerful.”
Suddenly I remembered the Observation Eye. It hadn’t worked on Karnarof. I wondered if it would work on Adrian.
The gap between you and your opponent is far too large! Observation Eye cannot be used!
As expected, it didn’t work on Adrian either.
“Hm? What’s with that eye? I sense a faint trace of divine power.”
“Eh.”
Startled, I quickly deactivated it.
“Ah, it disappeared. Well, it’s probably nothing important.”
“Divine power?”
“Sister, there was a touch of divinity in your eyes just now! Did you receive some kind of blessing?”
“That’s the first I’m hearing about it.”
Was the Observation Eye actually a holy skill? What a ridiculous idea.
“Anyway, could you hit me with the strongest spell you can cast right now?”
“I don’t want to use dragon mana since it shortens the staff’s lifespan.”
If I was going to use it, I wanted to save it for the actual final exam.
“Then something else.”
“Casting. Bullet. Penny. Explode.”
I fired them off without hesitation. A familiar white mana bullet. It carried enough physical force to punch cleanly through a thick steel plate.
—BANG!
Adrian simply grabbed it and crushed the spell in her fist. The mana scattered like water from a popped balloon. Not a single scratch marked her slender hand.
I already knew she was on another level, but seeing it blocked so effortlessly still felt incredibly anticlimactic.
“Hmm… stronger than I expected, but still too weak.”
“What exactly were you expecting from me?”
“Huh? Sister just needs to stay as my sister, that’s all.”
Adrian twisted her body cutely and looked straight into my eyes.
“Oh my, is that so?”
I reached out and vigorously ruffled Adrian’s hair. She squeezed her eyes shut and let out a happy little hum. She used to give off the aura of a mighty dragon, but lately I just treated her like a little sister. With a kid like this, what was there to be scared of?
“Still, your specs keep rising.”
“Huh?”
“I don’t know if you’ve been eating strength elixirs or something, but your physical abilities have improved, haven’t they?”
“You can see that too?”
“To an extent. I may not look it, but I’m actually quite capable, you know?”
Adrian laughed brightly. “Nyahaha!”
“You’re steadily getting closer to becoming a real dragon!”
“What exactly are you trying to turn me into?”
She wasn’t seriously trying to make me her older sister, right?
“Anyway, since the mana seems to have settled nicely, shall I put in a little more work?”
Ah, wait. This was heading exactly where I thought it was!
“Hmm? This time I can put in quite a lot. It might hurt a bit more than usual?”
Watching Adrian smile like she was having the time of her life, I simply gave up and accepted my fate.
“Gyaaaaaaaaaah!!!”
It hurt even worse than before.
I should never have given up.
Of course, the results were delicious.
“This time even my stats went up.”
The procedure’s effects were incredible. Every single stat had risen. Stamina and durability saw especially large jumps. Even my Technique rank had increased. It had been sitting at S-rank, so I’d deliberately left it alone instead of using a selection ticket. I’d heard that starting from S-rank, normal methods barely worked. You needed either extremely high-grade selection tickets or the finest elixirs. But Sera had told me the effects were guaranteed, and she was right.
Every little movement I made with my hands felt far more precise than before. I had this overwhelming sense of omnipotence, like I could stack a tower out of individual dust particles if I wanted.
Even so, I still felt it wasn’t enough. To get a perfect score, I needed to push at least one stat all the way to A+.
In the end, it was the tower again. But this time I wasn’t alone.
“Aris, let’s take a quick trip before the exam.”
“…Yes?”
Aris, who had been fiddling with my phone, turned to look at me.
“So you still couldn’t find her!”
He was on the verge of losing his mind. If they could at least confirm her identity, they could either exploit a weakness or make an offer so good she couldn’t possibly refuse. But she hadn’t shown up anywhere in Korea. Damn it.
He had managed to get a statement from Lee Se-ra that the person in question was cool-headed and reliable. Since the information came from Jupiter’s Eye, it was trustworthy. They had investigated every awakened woman in her twenties or thirties across the entire country.
But she didn’t appear.
If that kid hadn’t burst in at the worst possible moment, they might have gotten more concrete information.
“Team Leader! We have new information!”
“What is it?”
“This person was a 1st Generation Hunter.”
The situation room erupted the moment the words left his mouth.
“1st Generation?”
“You mean that 1st Generation?!”
Everyone reacted differently. Some had never heard of them, while others recalled old memories.
“Um… Team Leader. What exactly is a 1st Generation Hunter?”
Someone raised their hand to ask. Park Hyun-young thought back to the past.
“There was a time when awakeners were still immature.”
No matter how many towers had appeared, the number of awakeners was far smaller than today. Sudden gates were frequent, and urban areas were far too vast and complicated to suppress with tanks.
“Back then, the ones picking up guns and swords were ordinary civilians who had never awakened. And among them were a few who stood out…”
They made money by selling monster materials. Not only that, they protected people by hunting the monsters themselves.
“They were called hunters, and that name has continued all the way to the present.”
“According to our investigation, Hunter Yumia participated in 1st Generation Hunter activities right up until her awakening.”
“What? Then isn’t she just an unlicensed hunter?”
The term 1st Generation Hunter was nearly obsolete these days. Still, he had heard that a few people quietly carried on the legacy. They weren’t particularly outstanding in the current world of awakeners, but…
“That would be accurate. However, her achievements…”
Park Hyun-young picked up the report, then his eyes widened dramatically.
“These numbers are from a non-awakener?”