Just Trust Me and Follow
“Now, before we begin the exam, we will activate the detection apparatus to monitor your locations and record your scores. Everyone, please take out your tickets and press them against your wrists.”
The ticket wriggled and shifted beneath my touch, its parchment texture hardening into a sleek metallic ring that clasped firmly around my wrist.
“This is the Ticket Watch that will assist in your evaluation. Should a wearer sustain a fatal injury that renders them unable to continue, the Ticket Watch will automatically broadcast an emergency distress signal to the nearest proctor.”
Of course, relying blindly on that little gadget was a surefire way to end up dead. All it did was broadcast a distress signal; it wasn't going to swoop in and magically shield your life. Besides, the device had an obvious blind spot. What happened if the arm or wrist wearing the watch was severed clean off? In that case, you could drop dead in complete silence without a soul ever noticing, and no one would ever recover your corpse.
“Therefore, all examinees are urged to look after their own well-being. Should you deem it impossible to proceed, please declare your Forfeit immediately.”
“Given that all of you hold at least a Gold Ticket to participate, even if you forfeit or fail this Upper Class exam, you retain the eligibility to sit for the Lower Class exam.”
“Likewise, holders of a Platinum Ticket will forfeit their Platinum privileges, but will be permitted to sit for the final stage of the Intermediate Class exam instead.”
Whoa, holy crap. There was a safety net like this?
To be honest, I was genuinely shocked. Back when I played the game, characters who failed the test would sometimes pop up out of nowhere in the lower classes, leaving me scratching my head and wondering what kind of buggy shortcut they had taken. To think there was an actual mechanic behind it all along. Having always cleared the Upper Class exam on the first try through sheer min-maxed stats and veteran player efficiency, this was a feature I'd never had occasion to discover.
Now that it's reality, the world is surprisingly generous with its explanations.
Monk Myeongho announced one final word of caution.
“This exam exists solely to identify prospective Upper Class students for Gift Academy. While combat between participants is permitted, should any fatalities occur, the examinee responsible will incur a severe penalty to their score.”
“Be advised that should excessive lethal force be detected, the proctors reserve the right to revoke your candidacy on the spot, barring you from reapplying for up to three years.”
Honestly, it was painfully obvious boilerplate. Do not place infants inside washing machines. Do not feed chocolate to dogs. Do not press hot irons against your thighs. Pointless, nagging common-sense warnings. Yet the sensibilities of this world leaned far closer to American product liability lawsuits than Korean ones. The sole reason such absurd regulations existed was that every single one of them had actually happened before.
In playthroughs set during the war era, things occurred that would make that monk's hair turn white—if he had any.
Fortunately, judging by the roster of participants, this wasn't quite that brutal of a generation. Key main and supporting characters who would never appear at the academy entrance exam during wartime were present and accounted for. With the Northern Grand Duchess in attendance, the "Early Demon Incursion" regional event wasn't active; with the Eastern Empire's swordsman Sing participating, the "Eastern Imperial Invasion" wasn't happening either. Having spotted the key Western NPCs, there was no "Western Civil War," and with the key Southern NPCs in sight, there was no "Southern Pirate King Raid." Every quadrant was completely clean.
“Then let the First Gate commence.”
In short, this was a blessed playthrough free of catastrophic narrative handicaps. All I had to do was handle my own business.
Stack Stone Pagodas as High and as Numerous as Possible!
⏳ Time Limit: 6 Hours
Stacking a pagoda is easy enough, but whether you can defend it until the exam concludes is an entirely different matter.
Defend your own pagoda, smash someone else's, or lurk in the shadows to build in secret—the method you choose is entirely up to you!
Tackle the First Gate in your own way.
An entrance exam, I often reflected, was truly a test of human nature. There are people in this world who take far more pleasure in watching others fail than in succeeding themselves. Achieving success on your own is hard, grueling work; it demands that painful thing called effort. Ruining someone else, on the other hand, is effortless. All it takes is a little violence, and you can tear them down in an instant.
While the law normally exists to shield hardworking people from such malice, an entrance exam ground was, regrettably, extraterritorial. No nation's laws offered any protection here. In other words, it was paradise for griefers and trolls.
“It’s Irene, the Northern Grand Duchess!”
“That haughty wench turned down our faction’s invitation, didn’t she?”
“Let’s teach her a lesson!”
Named NPCs usually had no shortage of enemies, and given Northern Grand Duchess Irene's frigid temperament and aloof demeanor, that was doubly true for her. Disruptors wasted no time, hurling heavy stones toward the pagoda Irene had begun to assemble.
Crack.
Cra-a-ack.
“Huh?”
“What the—?”
“Th-the stones froze right in midair?!”
Son Ocheon, the monkey beastman, let out an appreciative rumble. “Oho.”
I reached up, grabbed the hem of his trousers, and yanked hard. “What are you daydreaming for? We need to run, right now!”
“Look at you, scared out of your wits just like the runt you are,” he scoffed with a grin. “Ain’t you even curious? We’re looking at the raw skill of someone who might be the strongest prospect in the entire applicant pool.”
“You speak of the New Generation 3 Strong,” Giselle remarked knowingly.
“The Northern Grand Duchess, Irene, who has waged war against the Northern border tribes since childhood. Holy Knight Jaydas, famed across the Western Three Kingdoms. And Prince Hector, son of the South’s celebrated general Heather.”
“Are those bastards stronger than me?”
“I cannot claim to know the full extent of your capabilities, Master Son Ocheon, but neither match would prove easy.”
Ah, whatever.
I blurted out, “Um... is it just me, or did the temperature just drop?”
“Oh—good heavens. The sky! Look at the sky!”
Giselle finally caught on to the anomaly. The morning dew clinging to the surrounding branches froze solid into long, jagged icicles. Snapping free from the boughs, they honed themselves into razor-sharp frost spikes, aligning in airborne ranks to point their gleaming tips at the fools who had dared bombard her stone wall.
“R-Run!”
“Aaargh! We didn't even attack!”
“Don’t run this way, you lunatics!”
The unfortunate examinees who had provoked Irene were caught in an inescapable barrage of frost spears, collapsing in spurts of blood one after another. Those who dove into the surrounding crowd barely escaped puncture wounds, but the bystander victims swept up in the chaos weren't about to let it slide.
“Where the hell do you think you’re dragging us, you crazy bastard?!”
“You almost got us disqualified too!”
Competition only works when opponents are somewhat evenly matched. Facing a seasoned war mage like the Northern Grand Duchess, everyone was paralyzed with dread, scrambling merely to stay out of her line of sight. The aristocratic young lords and ladies who had acted high and mighty without knowing their place were promptly impaled by frost spikes or battered down by furious examinees whose exams they had endangered. In mere moments, most of them were eliminated.
“Brrr, that’s disgustingly cold.”
“Wait, you took that directly with your bare body?”
True to his brutish beastman nature, Son Ocheon had deflected most of the flying spikes with his spear, but the one he missed he simply absorbed with sheer bulk. While everyone else was nursing puncture wounds or terrified of frostbite and gangrene festering in their flesh, he merely had a faint dusting of frost coating his thick hide. His physical resilience really was something to behold.
“What’s with that cloak of yours?”
“One of the fine perks of civilization,” Giselle replied smoothly, brushing off his shoulders. “It is an Anti-Frost Cloak, optimized to disperse cold-attribute assaults.”
“Hey, what kind of exam lets you breeze through on pay-to-win gear?”
“There was no rule forbidding the use of superior equipment.”
“Damn, that’s so unfair.”
As Giselle and Son Ocheon bickered, they finally took notice of their surroundings.
“Wait, where did the runt go?”
“Lady Orknodi? Are you there?”
“Right here.”
At their calls, I poked my head out.
You have successfully evaded an area-of-effect attack by hiding beneath tree roots.
[Stealth EXP +3]
[Rapid Maneuver EXP +1]
As I crawled out from beneath the tangled roots, both of them stared at me as if dumbfounded.
“What are you, a mole person?”
“Good grief. You were standing right beside us until the ice began to fly—when on earth did you dive under there? Your talent for concealment is truly remarkable.”
“It's all thanks to my daily training.”
Routinely ducking into every hiding spot had paid off. As expected, the Stealth skill was unmatched in cost-efficiency. Invest in it, and it will never betray you.
“...Daily training, you say?”
“I practiced hiding all over the place to prepare for moments like this.”
“What kind of moments are you referring to?”
“Why ask the obvious? You know, like getting hit by magical bombardments, or being hunted down by killers.”
“Do you mean to tell me,” Giselle began, his voice tightening with horrified gravity, “that at barely ten years of age, you have already accumulated routine experience dodging assassins and magical artillery?”
“Hey! I am not ten years old! If you knew my real age, it’d knock you flat on your back!”
In my previous life, I was well over twenty, thank you very much. Giselle stared at me, opening and closing his mouth in utter speechlessness, before finally pressing a hand over his face with a heavy sigh.
“I am finding myself with a great many things to say to that butler and maid of yours.”
“Why?”
“It is nothing. Let us vacate the area before we invite unwanted aggression.”
Irene surveyed the clearing with icy eyes that dared anyone else to test her resolve. Naturally, not a single soul wished to catch her eye.
Tsk. Guess I’ll have to give up on that achievement.
As a side note, a Stat Stone had a guaranteed one-hundred percent spawn rate at the apex of the stone pagoda Irene built. It was one of those rare fixed drops, but unless your character had a Northern background starting perk, getting anywhere near it was practically suicide. Hanging around one of the New Generation 3 Strong—someone capable of wiping out dozens of candidates single-handedly—without any prior rapport was pure madness.
“This territory belongs to the Western Mercenary Union! Clear out if you don’t want to get hurt!”
“We have no intention of admitting country bumpkins with no noble lineage into the Aristocratic Coalition. Move along.”
The surrounding clearings were being claimed one by one by examinees driven back by Irene. Large coalitions at least bothered to issue verbal warnings; solitary powerhouses didn't even offer that much courtesy.
“A stone head is still a stone, right? Yes? No?”
“Aaargh, it’s a maniac!”
“Stop running and hold still for a second!”
A lunatic trying to use living people as building materials for his pagoda.
“If I just knock everybody down first, nobody will be left to get in my way.”
“Please, stop! We don’t even care about you!”
A belligerent spearman charging at every candidate in sight.
Every corner was crawling with bloodthirsty maniacs running wild.
“Tch, does my pride really have to take a hit climbing all the way up a mountain? The ones grouped up down here look like easy pickings, and I’m itching to test the ones standing alone.”
Son Ocheon looked visibly displeased at the prospect of scaling the rocky slopes. For someone hot-blooded enough to pick a fight with High Examiner Mihael, he had shown remarkable restraint just holding out this long. Faced with Northern Grand Duchess Irene's wide-area spell, even he had backed off with a wary 'Yeah, let's not,' but having to avoid the rest seemed to wound his pride.
“Just trust me and follow. Most of the stones you can scavenge down at the base are practically pebbles anyway.”
Mighty lone wolves or large groups relying on raw numbers staked their claims near the foot of the rocky mountain, while weaker solo applicants and small factions trudged upward. Yet climbing the mountain wasn't necessarily a disadvantage.
“Don't underestimate the Upper Class exam. If all it took was squatting on a spot and piling rocks anywhere, do you think they’d use this as Gift Academy’s entrance test?”
This event hid a colossal surprise that first-playthrough NPCs could never anticipate.
Five hours from now, was it?
The stone pagoda stacking event on the rocky mountain.
Exactly one hour before the exam ended, a massive landslide would strike this place.