Entrance Exam (2)
By the time the feverish heat Nia had stirred up finally began to cool, the announcer's voice rang out across the grounds, reigniting the smoldering embers like fresh kindling thrown onto burnt-out logs.
—Next, applicants 171 through 175, please come up to the testing field.
"That's our turn."
"Yes. Good luck, Lucian. I do hope I'll get to see you at the Academy as well."
"Haha, I'm getting in no matter what, so don't you worry."
With that, I rose from my seat alongside Celia, and we made our way down from the spectator stands together. But the moment our feet touched the testing field—
"WOOOOAAAH!!"
"It's the Princess of Levenstein!"
"Lady Celia, you're so beautiful!!"
The crowd, which had died down, erupted into chaos as if the earlier lull had been a lie. And at the very center of it all, of course, stood Celia.
Even as a storm of adoring cheers rained down on her, she maintained her silence, quietly fastening her mana restraint bracelet.
Well then, I suppose I should too….
Following her lead, I strapped the bracelet around my wrist.
Whoooosh—!
Ugh?
In an instant, my body's vitality began draining away. My strength drained all at once, and the degree of it was beyond anything I'd imagined—I froze for a moment, caught off guard. If I had to compare it to my pre-transmigration experience, it felt like being forced through seventy rounds of shuttle runs in three seconds flat.
In a word: it was brutally exhausting.
"Hm… the bracelet works better than I expected."
"You're telling me."
Celia was scowling at her delicate features, so apparently the restraints were harsher than she'd anticipated as well.
"Better run before any more strength drains out of us."
There were five parallel tracks. I took my place on the fourth lane as I spoke, and Celia, standing beside me, gave a small nod in place of a reply.
Once the exam began, the relaxed demeanor she'd shown until now vanished completely.
Right. I'd better do my best too.
Seeing her like that steeled my own resolve, and I fixed my gaze straight ahead. How long did I wait like that? Seconds stretched into what felt like thousands of times their normal length, and just as I was shaking off that strange distortion of time, the examiner's voice—so familiar I was sick of hearing it—cut through the world.
"Everyone, get ready… Begin!"
Crack!
The sharp snap of the examiner's fingers rang out, and the instant I heard it, I drove strength into my legs and kicked off the ground.
Maybe it was the weight of so many eyes on me, but my head had gone white with nerves—and yet somehow, my body was moving on its own. How should I even describe this feeling?
Pah-at!
The scenery flashed past in an instant, endless and sluggish yet so fast it felt like I could barely keep up with it. When I came to my senses and looked left and right, the others who had started with us were nowhere to be found—only Celia was still running beside me.
Yes, the two of us were sprinting down the long track side by side, at a speed no one else could hope to match.
…?
In that moment, our eyes met. She clearly hadn't expected me to be this fast, and her eyes went wide with surprise.
Ah.
And just like that, my mind—which had been blank with tension—snapped back to me. My ears, which had gone muffled for a moment, cleared, and the sounds around me came flooding in through my newly opened senses.
"As expected of the Princess! Look at that speed—absolutely overwhelming!"
"I guess they don't call someone a top candidate for nothing… She doesn't lose a bit even compared to that assassin girl from earlier."
"True. Wait, no—then who's that guy running right beside her?"
"I've never seen that face before…."
"He's been talking with the Princess this whole time, hasn't he? And he's handsome too—could he be the son of some noble house?"
The crowd's reactions were positively scorching. The Princess of Levenstein was one of the biggest draws of this entire exam, so it was only natural. She was living up to every expectation, which only fanned the flames further—and inevitably, attention was gathering on me too, for keeping pace with her stride for stride.
"Hah… hah… hnngh…."
H-hard… this is hard.
But regardless of where the attention fell, once my senses returned, I was in agony. When my mind had been blank with tension, I hadn't really registered the strain—but now that everything was vivid, I could feel each and every one of my cells screaming.
Maybe I should have put a few more points into stamina after all. I'd covered about two-thirds of the track, and it was so much harder than I'd expected. Two-thirds in, but the track was so long that a good hundred meters still stretched out ahead of me.
They really… don't hold back on the selection process here, do they?
It struck me anew just how formidable the real Union Academy was. The participants before me had lower stats than mine—had they actually pushed through this?
I suddenly felt ashamed of myself for cursing the earlier applicants inwardly, telling them to grit their teeth and finish the run. They had all possessed the iron will of superhumans, the kind of resilience truly worthy of the Academy.
Maybe that willpower was what the Academy had actually wanted to test all along. Thinking that, I felt strength surge into my strides, and for good reason. I'd already come this far—no matter how brutal it got, I couldn't stop now. No, if I stopped here, I might not get into the Academy at all.
Driven by that thought, running on pure spite and desperation, I found myself mere steps from the finish line.
"Huuuugh! Hah, hnnnngh…!"
Thud!
The moment my own two eyes confirmed I'd crossed the white line, I collapsed right where I stood. Then, without wasting even a second, I tore the bracelet from my wrist and hurled it away.
"W-water…."
"Here you go."
I accepted the water the examiner kindly offered and drank it down, and as the strength the bracelet had sealed came flooding back into me, life started to feel worth living again. Wiping the sweat streaming down my forehead with the back of my hand, I turned my gaze.
"Whew… whew… Lucian, you're incredibly fast."
There stood Celia, wiping her own brow as she looked at me.
"Haha."
I didn't bother hiding the empty laugh that slipped out, and answered with a touch of bravado.
"Didn't I tell you? I'm confident about getting in. Something like this is nothing."
"Is that so? For someone who's 'confident,' Lucian, you look awfully worn out."
"You're one to talk, my lady. Are you sure your precious body can handle the strain?"
"Oh my, am I allowed to take that as a provocation?"
She asked, one eyebrow arching delicately. She was clearly every bit as exhausted as I was, and yet the corners of her mouth were curling upward.
Haha?
Maybe it was the heat still burning through my body, but my competitive spirit was rising fast. And honestly, the situation was pretty fun. So I decided to provoke her properly, no half measures.
"Of course. If we're enrolling anyway, might as well do it as the top student, don't you think?"
"Ambitious, aren't you, Lucian. But it won't happen that way. Not that you're not impressive—but the world is wide, and there are plenty of remarkable people in it."
"Well, we won't know who's longer and who's shorter until we race, will we."
Hahaha.
And so, while Celia and I traded barbs in a bold war of nerves—
"Uuurgh… I'm gonna die…."
Thud!
The other spent participants collapsed across the finish line one by one. Soon, four people had gathered beyond it. A single applicant, unable to overcome the limits of his stamina and willpower, lay sprawled somewhere around the middle of the track.
That person was probably a fail, I figured. The examiner must have judged that he couldn't continue the exam, because he called for medical staff, and soon the boy was escorted out of the arena with people supporting him on either side.
Only four of us remained in the testing field. We headed straight off to take the next exam.
The first test had measured stamina and agility, so the second was strength's turn.
My strength isn't exactly spectacular, though.
I summoned my Status Window in my mind as I thought it over. My current strength, excluding equipment bonuses, was 26. By entrance exam standards that was certainly a high number, but with my agility and mana both clearing 30, it somehow felt lacking by comparison.
Then again, my current competitor was Celia, a swift-sword practitioner—her strength couldn't be that much higher than mine.
"Hnnnnnngh…!"
"That's enough."
Just as I'd suspected, Celia was groaning as she barely managed to heft an enormous dumbbell, and the moment the examiner recorded her result, she dropped it straight to the floor.
BOOM!
The floor shuddered with the crash. The dumbbell she'd been lifting was so monstrous that most applicants wouldn't have dared touch it—but looking at it, I could feel it in my bones.
My strength is higher than hers.
I didn't know how that was possible, but I was confident I could lift that thing with considerably more ease.
"Applicant 173, well done. You may step aside and wait."
"Phewww…."
"Next—applicant 174."
Just then, Celia stepped back and the examiner called my name. I flashed a gratuitous smile toward Celia, who was watching me from over there with a smug expression, then strode forward with my head held high.
"Same one, please."
And I picked up the same dumbbell Celia had—the heaviest one on the rack.
"Once you're ready, you may begin."
I nodded along to the examiner's businesslike instruction and lowered my stance. Just like the first test, this second one measured pure physical strength with no mana allowed.
"Hnngh!"
I drew in a deep breath, then lifted the dumbbell with both hands. The heavy weight rose smoothly along my arms in an instant. Perhaps because the endurance test had been so punishing, the strength test felt almost easy by comparison—and indeed, holding the dumbbell up didn't leave me gasping.
One, two, three…
Still, determined to finish what I'd started cleanly, I lowered the dumbbell back to the floor very, very slowly.
Thoom.
Because I released the tension only at the very end and set it down with control, unlike Celia's dropped weight, it produced only a soft, low resonance.
"Well done. You may step aside and wait. Next—applicant 175."
Having exited the stage, I walked toward Celia with a swaggering gait, a confident smile spreading across my lips.
How's that?
When I asked with my face, Celia turned her head away with a huff of "Hmph!"
"Not bad, Lucian."
"Right? I lifted with ease the dumbbell you could barely raise—could it be that I really will end up as the top student?"
"'Ease,' my foot. Worry less about bragging and more about your panting. Your breath stinks."
"Mine is perfectly fresh, I'll have you know?"
"…Anyway."
I'd kept up my grooming routine even after arriving here. There truly wasn't any odor—only a light, fragrant scent—and Celia, left with nothing to say, hesitated for a moment before simply turning her head away.
"Nnnngnnnnnngh…!!"
"That's enough. Return to your position and wait. We will proceed to the next exam shortly."
In the meantime, applicant 175—apparently spurred on by watching the two of us hoisting the heaviest dumbbell with such ease—had tried to lift the same weight and collapsed, unable to move it an inch.
Leaving behind his frantic, desperate eyes chasing after us, we moved off at once to follow the examiner. Applicant 175 stood there in a daze until we were well out of sight, and only then seemed to come to his senses, slapping his own cheeks hard before belatedly trailing after us.
That one's probably a fail too.
Setting everything else aside, his failure to read the room and stubborn overexertion would be a major deduction. Offering him a silent word of sympathy, we arrived at the third test.
What awaited us there was a crystal orb that looked expensive even at a glance.
"The third test measures your mana."
While I stood momentarily spellbound, admiring the first genuinely magical-looking object I'd seen since arriving here, the examiner began the explanation.
The third test was, at long last, the measurement of each applicant's mana.
Easy victory.
This was the event I was most confident in. And no wonder—with stats like mine, how could I not be? When playing a standard character, any stat over 25 earned a perfect score on that section of the exam, and my mana was 33.
Haha, my dear Princess.
I believe the title of top student will be coming home with me?
Grin—
Shooting a sidelong glance at Celia, who was clenching her fist as if nervous, I let a sly, scheming smile curl across my face.