Academy Entrance Exam (1)
The moment I was subdued by the examiner, Rania and Yuria pulled their energy back as well.
"Grab hold and get up."
"……I don't need it."
Yuria sank straight to the ground, but it didn't look like the kind of injury that would get in the way of the exam.
Problem on that side: solved.
Which meant the only problem left was over here. Pinned to the floor as if I'd been slammed into it, I looked up at the examiner and opened my mouth.
"I think my arm's about to break."
"Does it hurt that much?"
"It really, really does."
The examiner looked down at me with a chilly gaze and added, deadpan:
"Still better than a broken neck, I'd imagine."
"I actually like pain. Yeehaw! Pain's the best thing in the whole world."
"……Right."
Yes! I'm alive.
My wrist felt like it was about to shatter and my shoulder was a breath away from popping out of its socket, but hey—beats having my neck snapped!
I was busy consoling myself when the examiner formed an opaque barrier around us and said:
"Explain yourself. Now."
A completely isolated space. I barely managed to turn my head and look at the middle-aged man currently crushing me into the dirt.
Disheveled black hair. Eyes hung with heavy dark circles. And yet, a rugged, solidly built physique. Head of the Swordsmanship Department at Academy Zion, and one of the Heroes. His name was K-Charles de Lumière.
"Pfft—HAH!!!"
"?"
Ah, fuck.
I burst out laughing before I could stop myself. The nickname original-novel readers had given him—Kim Chul-soo de Lumière—had just popped into my head.
I need to salvage this.
I opened my mouth in a hurry, and—
Admiration (Ex)
"Ding-ding ding-a-ling? How does a human being end up named Kim Chul-soo de Lumière?"
I drove the stake in all the way.
"Hahaha. The computer's malfunctioning again."
"Ah, I see. I'll just smash it for you, then."
"Uh, well……. Would you, please?"
I'd overshot any hope of salvage by such a cosmic margin that I found myself staring into the middle distance.
"So you're the one."
"Pardon?"
"To think we'd have to borrow even the hands of a lunatic like this. I can only imagine what the Headmaster is going through……."
"Pardon?"
What the hell is he talking about?
"……So that's how it is."
Chul-soo arrived at some conclusion all by himself, then released the hand he'd been pinning.
"Say what you said earlier again."
"Ding-ding ding-a-ling? How does a human being end up named Kim Chul-soo de Lumière?"
"……Not that. The thing you said to drag me into this."
"Ah."
The words I'd mouthed so only Chul-soo could see them, just to stop the skill from firing.
"Does the Headmaster know about this too?"
Right after Chul-soo had ordered the brawl. An event that never existed in the original novel had cropped up, so I'd tried, in my own way, to reason out why.
"Kihihi, no idea."
"Eugene? Why are you acting like this all of a sudden?"
"Dunno?"
"Eugene?"
And I'd failed spectacularly. With only the information I had, there was no way to guess why the flow of events had changed. All I'd managed was to drag Chul-soo in by exploiting the fact that he followed the Headmaster blindly.
But now.
"The Headmaster knows. If anything, he was the one who ordered me to do it this way."
New information, added to the pile.
The Headmaster is the one who changed the exam?
But why? I didn't have time to dwell on it, though.
"We'll talk details after you pass."
Click.
Chul-soo handed me a black token, his name crudely engraved into it.
"Why are you giving this to me?"
"Make sure you pass."
"No, I think there's been some kind of misunderstanding—"
"I hope you're not just all talk."
Shrrrk!
This guy just steamrolls through with whatever he wants to say, all the way to the end.
Chul-soo gathered the iron sand back in, dropped the barrier, and returned to the arena. Then, infusing his voice with aura, he asked:
"Have you all warmed up?"
The examinees' gazes, most of which had been locked on me, swung back to him.
"Good. From this moment, the entrance exam—"
"Cut the bullshit!!"
Someone cut him off. I turned toward the voice and found an injured examinee clutching his forearm. He shouted, voice raw with fury.
"This isn't anything like what we were told!! Do you have any idea how many examinees got hurt?!"
That was the spark. Voices of discontent erupted from all over the stands.
"You said we were attacking a scarecrow!?"
"You think you can just change the exam however you want!!"
"My arm is broken!!"
Couldn't blame them for feeling cheated. They'd come here after preparing so hard, only to have the exam contents arbitrarily swapped—and to get injured on top of it.
But.
"That was merely me talking to myself."
Unfortunately, this was Zion.
"Getting spooked by those words and throwing yourselves into a brawl, getting wounded in that little scuffle that might as well have been a game—wasn't all of that the result of your own choices?"
This was not a place for the weak to become strong. It was a place for the strong to become even stronger—the finest academy on the continent.
And so.
"Anyone with complaints can leave. We'll make sure your medical bills are well taken care of."
There was nothing wrong with Chul-soo's attitude.
"Damn it, damn it!!"
"That kind of person is a professor?!"
"Forget it!! I wouldn't enroll in this garbage academy even if they begged me!!"
A few examinees rose from their seats.
"What are you all doing?! Get up!"
"Let's get out of here!! This isn't fair!!"
"Yeah, we should file a formal complaint……."
The injured examinee looked around, and his words trailed off as he swallowed.
Sharp gazes. Indifferent eyes. A killing gleam as cold and keen as a drawn blade.
Because he'd realized that, in this place, the only ones feeling wronged were themselves.
"Monsters……."
In the end, the injured examinee walked out.
"W-wait! Where are you going!?"
"Damn it, I'll file a formal complaint!!"
"Our house will not stand for this!!"
The rest of the discontented crowd came to a similar realization and hurriedly made their exit. And so, once even the faintest trace of commotion had vanished, a faint smile playing on his lips, Chul-soo calmly declared to those who remained:
As previously mentioned, the exam itself was simple.
"Examinee number 127. To the arena."
The called examinee would leap down into the arena, while the rest waited in the stands. The called examinee would then walk up and stand before the five seated judges.
"Name?"
"Evan. No surname."
After that simple identity check.
"You may begin."
"Then."
You attacked a scarecrow set to indestructible with everything you had.
"Hoo……."
Golden hair and blue eyes. A solid build and a worn-out sword. Light armor that still carried the marks of long use. Evan, a commoner-born hero candidate who would one day become Rania's companion.
"Always give it everything you've got."
He opened his aura in successive stages, and at last swung his longsword.
CRAAACK!!
A vertical slash, learned alone without a master and clad in aura, slammed into the scarecrow. The examiners scored the technique; the battered scarecrow calculated the total volume of aura.
That was when someone started yelling at the top of their lungs.
"Holy moly!!"
"That's a pretty decent strike!!"
"Wait, looking at it again—actually, no!!"
That someone was me.
I'd admired him three times in a single breath, and yet Admiration hadn't activated even once.
"Eugene? What on earth have you been doing this whole time?"
"Hold on. I'm trying to figure something out."
I ignored Rania's attempt to stop me and turned over every activation condition I'd figured out so far.
One: Admiration only seemed to activate when I was genuinely impressed. In other words, faking it would never, ever work.
Two: if I was genuinely impressed and didn't say it out loud, it would force itself to activate anyway. I could delay it the way you'd hold in a yawn or wait to eat, but eventually I'd have to let it out.
Three: even insincere admiration would activate—if a certain condition was met. For example, if the Admiration I voiced actually moved the other person's heart.
"Hey, Evan!! That's so over-Evan!"
"That fucking bastard, I swear!!!!!"
Admiration (Ex)
Admiration activated. I checked the system window with a swell of satisfaction.
By the Unique Trait of caster Eugene, one random skill is borrowed from the detected target.
Borrowed Skill:Single Sword (A-)
Remaining Uses:0 (+1)
That's Evan for you! He may have only ever learned Single Sword, but that one Single Sword is the real deal!
"Let go of meee!! Exam or not, I'm taking that bastard's head off firs—!! Mmph!! Mmmpphh!!"
Having safely finished his exam, Evan was escorted out of the testing grounds by the staff.
Appreciate the hard work, Evan!
"The technique is lacking, so a B+……."
"I think an A would be fair……."
"But the technique really is……."
While the examiners were doing a preliminary scoring, Chul-soo, who was running the proceedings, called the next examinee.
"Examinee number 128. To the arena."
"……."
"A dropout, I take it. Then, number 129……."
The roll call went on for quite a while. The people who'd walked out earlier must have been clustered in a similar number range, because examinees were slow to appear. The numbers climbed all the way to 143.
"Examinee number 144. To the arena."
"That's me, huh?"
My turn had arrived. I was still blanking out from the sudden call when Rania gave me a small smile, just for me to see.
"So even you get nervous."
"No, it's not nerves……. Ah……. It really shouldn't be my turn right now."
"What do you mean?"
"Just a second."
Leaving a puzzled Rania behind, I moved to the railing of the stands and shouted.
"Any chance I could go last?!"
A stir ran through the crowd at that, but Chul-soo didn't care in the slightest and cut me off.
"If you don't come down, you fail."
"Haa……."
And here I was, trying to be thoughtful. Well, nothing I can do about it.
"I'll be right down!"
"Just jump."
"My knees aren't great, you see."
"……You've got one minute."
Having bought myself a little time, I went back to Rania, who looked like she had a question mark floating over her head.
"Sorry, Rania."
"Hm? What are you apologizing for all of a sudden?"
"For the wasted trip."
"Wasted trip?"
"The scarecrow's, I mean."
I finished getting ready to go down, then jerked my chin toward the scarecrow.