Passing the Entrance Examination
Waihiemhai.
Upon hearing that absurd name, the first person who sprang to mind was my head butler, Jona Waihiemhai.
"That is my butler's surname, though?"
"As expected, Examinee Orknodi was indeed a prospective scholarship student of the Foundation."
"I know nothing about that. I am simply Papa's daughter."
"Papa? What an endearing title. And what might examinee's father's name be?"
"That... I cannot tell you."
"Naturally. All scholarship students of the Foundation are orphans."
Did that mean the butler had no family?
A sudden pang of remorse struck my chest.
How on earth had I been treating him all this time?
—No more spinach!
—I told you I don't want to eat the exact same dish two meals in a row!
—I'm just going out for a one-hour night walk. Please?
—My Lady. Where have you hidden yourself this time?
—Did you soil your clothes with dust yet again?
—I have warned you on countless occasions that you must not sneak outside to consume stones.
All this while, I had scurried into every nook and cranny to grind up my [Hide] skill behind his back, gnawed on rocks he expressly forbade me to touch, thrown fits demanding different side dishes, and tormented him in so many petty ways. If the only reason he had silently tolerated every single one of those tantrums was because he had no family of his own...
Could it be that the butler truly considered me his family?
"Uuu..."
Tears prickled the corners of my eyes. It felt precisely like that shameful, stinging ache when you reminisce about the dreadful ways you took your parents for granted in the past!
"Speak. What is the Waihiemhai Foundation's objective? What wicked scheme are you plotting this time around?"
"Do not speak ill of the Waihiemhai name! Do you have any idea how well the person carrying that name treated me?!"
"...As expected, you are entirely oblivious. Oblivious to the kind of monstrous entity the Waihiemhai Foundation truly is. Oblivious even to why your Foundation amasses parentless orphans."
"Why do you keep saying such awful things? I have a Papa!"
"A parent whose very name you cannot even utter?"
Damn it. I really did have one!
My Papa had even dispatched Jona to accompany me so I could enroll in the academy, and he had personally given me a hundred gold coins!
"Whoa, hold on. Examinee Orknodi. This examiner had no particular desire to make you weep..."
"I have a Papa! I really do! I have a Papa, so why do you keep saying I don't?!"
Overcome by indignation, I screamed through brimming tears, throwing Minerva's summoned beast into utter disarray as it flustered and scratched its head.
"...Right. What fault does a child bear? This examiner was thoughtless. I apologize."
Examiner Minerva abandoned her interrogation on the spot.
"Were you crying, by any chance?"
"I wasn't crying."
"Your eyes are bright red, so what is the point of lying?"
Even as Orknodi averted her gaze in sheer humiliation, Giselle relentlessly probed for details.
Son Ocheon went a step further, his coarse fur bristling with savage rage as he bellowed, "Which bastard dared make our little pip-squeak cry?! Just give the word, and I'll go tear 'em limb from—"
Appalled by the men's catastrophic lack of tact, Isabelle viciously pinched both of their flanks.
"Guh!"
"Yeeowch!"
"Read the room, you blockheads! Stop prying into things! When a kid is under this much strain, she's allowed to cry once in a while!"
"You could have just used your words! Why the pinch?!"
"Damn it all, why are all the women in this party so terrifyingly fierce?!"
Though they grumbled under their breath, Giselle and Son Ocheon prudently yielded command to Isabelle. It was easy to forget because Orknodi carried herself with such bold, brilliant wit, but she was fundamentally a child molded as an aristocratic assassination prodigy. One could never presume she possessed the emotional constitution of an ordinary girl.
"It's all right. We might not know what upset you so terribly, but every single one of us is on your side. You know that, right, Orknodi?"
Orknodi offered a faint, reluctant nod.
When Isabelle gently dabbed the corners of her eyes with a handkerchief, Orknodi recoiled, scrunching her nose with an audible grimace.
"It smells like sweat."
"Sorry. It's the one I've been lugging around through the forest."
"...Still, thank you."
"That's all that matters."
"Would you like a candy?"
"You eat it. You need it more."
While Orknodi's party rested in leisurely comfort, the other powerhouses who had deciphered the teleportation circles trickled into the goal one by one.
Jigoku, captain of the apprentice pirate crew.
Irene, daughter of the Northern Grand Duke.
Andersen Pretzel.
Without exception, every single main and supporting character who wielded true prowess had made full use of the magic circles. After another full day elapsed, the examinees who had chosen to brute-force through mosquito swarms or take the grueling roundabout paths arrived in sparse, haggard clusters.
"The examination has concluded."
Minerva snapped her fingers, and every candidate carrying an intact ticket-watch scattered across the woodland was sequentially summoned into the clearing.
The Second Gate was officially over.
It was time for the results.
Examiner Minerva stepped forward and declared, "The trial of the Second Gate, Hunter's Forest, has come to an end. Of the 185 examinees who challenged this gate, 23 successfully crossed the finish line. 102 were eliminated after having their watches torn. 47 forfeited. 13 exceeded the time limit."
"Naturally, those eliminated and those who forfeited were not summoned to this ground. The only ones called forth alongside the finishers are the 13 who ran out of time."
Among those who had exceeded the allotted hours stood Dorothy. Judging by the lingering regret etched across her features, she had managed to tag a black-hat instructor before the bell, but simply ran out of time to reach the goal. Had he been trailing her until the final moment? The guilt-ridden ranger Rockfell was also lumped among the time-out group.
It was quite surprising to see the conniving merchant girl Yui clinging on, but a single glance at her hollow expression told the entire tale: she had ultimately failed to touch an instructor in time.
"Hey, pip-squeak. Those folks failed anyway, so does keeping track of their points even matter?"
"You never know."
Minerva had explicitly categorized the survivors: successful finishers, eliminated failures, forfeits, and time-out examinees. Indeed, 'time-out' had never been classified under 'eliminated.' That was a hidden rule of the Second Gate that novice players and oblivious NPCs would never deduce on their own.
"Instructor!" an examinee shouted. "Why were the time-out candidates summoned here at all? Aren't they all disqualified?!"
"This instructor does not recall ever making such a claim."
"Then are the time-out examinees going to clear the Second Gate just like those of us who crossed the finish line?!"
The time-out candidates, who had slumped in despair preparing to reapply the following year, jerked their heads up in sheer astonishment.
"To ease Examinee Hertz's grievances," Minerva explained, "every candidate who successfully crossed the finish line was awarded a 50-point completion bonus. Those who ran out of time shall receive zero bonus points."
"You may wonder what purpose points serve once a gate has ended, but these scores are directly linked to early graduation from the testing process. Any individual who amasses 100 points or more across the entrance examinations earns Immediate Admission."
"What?!"
"Those who have accumulated 100 points or higher are Orknodi, Giselle, Son Ocheon, Isabelle, Zhuang, and Weather. These six candidates have satisfied the criteria during the Second Gate, and I hereby announce that they have secured Immediate Admission."
Son Ocheon unleashed a deafening roar of triumph.
Isabelle grabbed Orknodi's hands, swinging them wildly in euphoric disbelief.
Giselle flashed a satisfied smirk, remarking on how splendid it was that the entire group had passed together.
Her comrades rejoiced openly, while the surrounding examinees glared at the roster with unmasked resentment.
"It seems many of you harbor bitter complaints. If you fail to grasp the core ethos of the Second Gate, it is only natural you would think so." Minerva's gaze cut across the crowd like ice. "Some among you may possess greater physical strength, superior magical arts, or deadlier combat prowess than those who qualified today. None of that holds the slightest interest for this examiner."
Her standards were uncompromising.
"The wise surge past the strong. And should one lack wisdom, they must wield combat supremacy beyond all peers to cleave their way through. A score of 100 points is the undeniable token proving such capacity."
"Do not succumb to premature despair. The moment your remaining balance surpasses 100 points during the Third Gate, you too shall be granted immediate qualification."
If your head is sharp, your body suffers less. If your body is an absolute powerhouse, you don't need to bother using your head at all. That was the unyielding law of the Second Gate!
"There may be examinees among the time-out group whose scores technically exceed 100 points; however, to preserve equity, all scores belonging to the time-out pool shall be reduced to one-hundredth of their total value."
"Naturally, that mercy applies solely to those who successfully broke free of the taggers. Those who failed to escape shall proceed to the subsequent gate burdened with a flat penalty of minus fifty points."
"If you feel wronged, look inward and repent. Repent for settling comfortably for the bare minimum qualifying threshold of 50 points. Repent for squandering your hard-earned points on mosquito repellent and camping luxuries."
While this harsh decree was of paramount importance to the miserable wretches bound for the Third Gate, it had absolutely nothing to do with our party, who had already crossed the threshold of enrollment.
"Then what about those who held out until the very end before forfeiting?" someone called out.
"If one lacks ingenuity, they ought to possess the martial caliber to survive, alongside the unyielding grit never to surrender until the final breath. No salvation exists in this world for those who discard their own chances."
Minerva's ruthless doctrine extended zero mercy to those who gave up.
"Those who passed shall follow Monk Myeongho to the lounge. Examinees bound for the Third Gate, follow this instructor to the subsequent testing grounds."
As the massive herd of examinees was herded toward the Third Gate, countless venomous glares drilled into our backs. Their eyes burned far fiercer than when I had claimed top honors in the First Stage; having realized that while a single triumph might be a fluke, a second was undisputed capability, they were sharpening their fangs in earnest. For someone like me who desperately coveted harmonious peer relationships now that I was destined to share academy life with canonical game characters, those spiteful stares stung my delicate gamer heart.
"Ohoho. To think matters would unfold precisely like this. I harbored not the slightest doubt that Lady Orknodi would achieve early admission by the Second Gate."
Monk Myeongho offered a serene chuckle, gesturing warmly as he ushered our cluster toward the candidate lounge.
"Hey. You're an assassin too, aren't you?"
Along the quiet corridor leading to the lounge, a petite girl wearing a fox mask drifted alongside me, initiating conversation.
This girl is...
The candidate from the Second Gate's second sub-quest—the frantic scramble to snatch the golden sphere suspended within the thorny vine cage. The 0.1% instant-death landmine I had bumped into back there: Zhuang, the Assassin of Bindings.
"I'm not, though?"
"Liar. You saw right through my secret techniques."
"That was..."
Because I'm a hardcore veteran player who logged thousands of hours. In fact, in my previous gaming life, I had been eliminated by Zhuang's insidious bind techniques more times than I cared to count.
"See? You really do know them."
"I told you, I don't!"
"Then where did you learn all that?"
"Learn what?"
"What else? Your assassination techniques."
"From my head butler and the maids."
"Heh. Homeschooled, huh? Must be nice. I had to learn mine from my master."
Zhuang's casual, chatty demeanor felt profoundly disorienting. Normally, she was the type of sociopathic character who radiated an overwhelming urge to eliminate anyone who so much as made eye contact with her, snapping violently at the slightest provocation. Yet here she was, initiating friendly banter like an ordinary schoolmate.
Was this the miraculous sociability of little girls?
Perhaps reincarnating as a petite young lady instead of a hulking, muscle-bound meathead had its perks after all. Just as I was sinking into that warm, fuzzy delusion, a massive, furry hand came crashing down, vigorously mussing my carefully combed hair.
"Look at our little pip-squeak! Making friends with someone who looks just like her already, eh?!"
"Aah, stop it!"
As I grumbled and swatted at his palm, Zhuang's eyes narrowed behind her mask, gleaming with razor-sharp interest.
"Want me to discipline him for you?"
Her pitch-black pupils locked onto Son Ocheon with unnerving stillness. Far from showing the faintest intimidation before a towering ape beastman, the lethal aura she had compressed deep within her marrow leaked out through her gaze—a terrifying display of raw instinct.
She was, after all, a certified Tier-1.5 supporting assassin.
I knew perfectly well that optimal gameplay dictated I should flatter her, agree with her impulses, and farm her favorability points. Yet strangely enough, an instinctive discomfort surged within me.
"Don't do that."
His manners were undeniably crude, and there were times he proved thoroughly exasperating. There were even moments when I felt the overwhelming urge to blast him with dark mana myself.
"Uncle Ocheon is my comrade."
Though this motley crew lacked even a single prestigious, named powerhouse from the original game's main roster, Son Ocheon had already become one of the cherished companions walking this path beside me.