A Carriage Ride Without a Skip Button

My month of training was finally over.

It had been an exhausting grind, but an opportunity to rake in massive exp with minimal effort wasn't something a veteran passed up. I'd thrown myself into it wholeheartedly. Leveraging every scrap of player meta-knowledge I possessed to juice my exp yields, I'd driven my swordsmanship and archery proficiencies sky-high. Both skills were practically overflowing with lethality.

Wait... am I kind of cracked at this?

At the very least, before stepping foot into the academy, no one on the continent would dare claim my blade or bow work was lacking.

"I am uncertain if you are aware, Lady Orknodi, but Gift Academy is an institution dedicated to cultivating the world's finest talents. It accepts applications from anyone aged twenty or below."

"Ugh. Even I know that much, you know?"

"Then you must also be familiar with the qualification trials, established to screen applicants due to the sheer volume of candidates vying for admission."

Of course I knew. The qualification trial was the quintessential primary exam.

If you were a solo player starting ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠with nothing, gathering intel alone bled your pockets dry, and traveling to ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠the trial grounds rinsed whatever pocket change you had left. There was a reason destitute players ended up in dark back alleys taking shady gigs—selling blood, doing clinical trials, or volunteering as living guinea pigs for experimental bio-assays. When it came to scraping together the necessary funds, beggars couldn't afford to be choosers between safe work and suicide missions.

Of course, for a pampered, silver-spoon starter like Orknodi with a hundred gold coins in initial funding, part-time labor belonged to an alternate dimension. I had the luxury of doing nothing but pure, unadulterated grinding.

"There are three examiners within reachable distance from here," Jona explained. "Two are low-tier examiners carrying only a handful of tickets. The last is a high-tier examiner entrusted with several dozen."

"Then obviously we're going to the high-tier one!"

"Your confidence in skipping any inquiry regarding the trial's difficulty is quite bold. Are you certain you will not regret this choice?"

Hmph. Low-tier? Mid-tier?

Examiners holding just one or two tickets, or ten at best, were strictly for beginners and casuals. For a veteran like me, burning travel time just to pick up a generic ticket yielded pathetic efficiency.

"Where is this high-tier examiner?"

"At Mount Shinjung, towering twelve thousand five hundred meters above sea level—better known as the Garden of the Gods. It is listed among the world's top ten sights, renowned as a pilgrimage every wanderer must visit before they die."

"Oho."

"You seem remarkably unbothered."

"Don't you worry. Who do you think I am? I'm Orknodi!"

"Judging by confidence alone, your acceptance is already a foregone conclusion."

Fortunately, Mount Shinjung wasn't far from my spawn point. The trial sites an examinee could reach were practically constrained by travel distance. If you were swimming in filthy lucre, you could charter an airship to scout out easy examiners across the continent, but even on the Aristocrat Father route with a hundred gold coins, airship travel was a massive financial stretch. Maybe on a Grand Duke route starting with a thousand gold, sure.

There are shortcuts, though.

One could always flex their wallet and buy a ticket outright, but this was just an entrance exam. The street price for a black-market ticket hovered around ten gold coins. Shelling out that kind of cash while rolling the dice on whether the ticket was a forgery sounded sickening. A guaranteed, authentic ticket cost a cool hundred gold coins. That would completely wipe out my starting capital. As a veteran gamer with pride, I'd rather die than take that humiliating L.

Besides, my stat grinding in this run went insanely well.

Thanks to Jona's attentive care, I'd been able to focus entirely on training, rocketing my swordsmanship and archery proficiencies through the roof. And by using an elite maid as my sparring partner, my sneaking and concealment abilities had seen absurd gains as well.

"Allow me to reiterate," Jona said firmly. "Your wandcraft remains strictly sealed until you formally matriculate into the academy. Do you understand?"

"Yaaay~"

Instead of mouthfuls like 'Entrance Examination Qualification Trial,' players and NPCs colloquially dubbed it the 'Ticket Exam.' And in this exam, where the RNG gods ran wild, luck naturally played a decisive role.

Surprisingly enough, the examiners aren't randomized.

What was randomized was the trial the examiner assigned. You had no way of knowing what nightmare task awaited you until you arrived in person and the NPC dispensed the quest dialogue.

An examiner stationed at the Garden of the Gods... this won't be boring.

A spark of genuine anticipation began to flicker in my chest.

"Are you truly content with this being your only luggage?"

"This is more than enough."

Jona stared down at my traveling pack with a deeply dissatisfied scowl. It contained preserved rations, dungeoneering tools, first-aid potions, and survival gear—the textbook Adventurer Starter Kit, paired with a reliable weapon to protect my own skin. That was all I carried.

He was probably thinking none of this suited a refined 'young lady.' But even I had lines I refused to cross.

"Things like stuffed teddy bear pillows to cuddle at night, or clunky ribbon headbands... carrying around those weird noble-girl novelty items is just a giant nuisance, okay?"

"The Master will be heartbroken."

"Hmph. I don't mind rigorous training, but count me out of playing into frilly little girl fantasies."

My body might have been swapped into a petite young girl's, but inside beat the heart of a red-blooded gamer dude. Just because I'd been gender-bent overnight and shoved into a fantasy video game didn't mean I intended to live like an actual doll. Before I was a girl, I was a player. That identity took absolute priority. It was the only tether I had left to remember who I used to be.

The result of that stubborn mindset was pure, unadulterated min-maxing. A cold, practical baseline outfit that gave zero fucks about cosmetic fashion: Adventurer Starter Set (Female).

"It suits you wonderfully, Milady."

"Thanks, Leaf."

Unlike Jona, who always spoke with bitter medicine coated in etiquette, Leaf the maid only offered sweet, agreeable words. As a result, I found myself leaning on her quite a bit, though being handed free snacks whenever I stood near her meant I wasn't complaining in the slightest.

Oh, today's candy crackles on the tongue. Is this pop-rocks flavored?

"We're going to get school uniforms once we enter the academy anyway," I pointed out.

"A photograph is required to submit in our progress report to the Master."

"...Those cost an absolute fortune, though."

In a world where the prevalence of magic had stagnated scientific advancement, mana-powered magic tools like 'cameras' were exorbitant luxuries with strictly limited capture counts. To burn such an absurd luxury item just to check what his daughter was wearing... this run's father figure was an overprotective doting parent of the highest order.

Then again, if he can assign an absolute monster of a head butler like Jona as my personal escort, he can't be an ordinary noble.

To an aristocrat who handed out a hundred gold coins as casual allowance, what was a single photograph?

"Just this once, alright?"

At the carriage stopover station, Jona had actually gone out of his way to purchase a plush teddy bear and a ribbon headband, prompting the other passengers sharing our carriage to burst into chuckles.

"Whew~ Look at that, isn't she precious?"

"Hey now, old man, quit hitting on a little kid."

"Hey, mister bard! I'll give you three copper coins, so quit flirting and sing us a tune, will ya?"

Between the scruffy hunter in the corner silently sneaking peeks at my legs, and the middle-aged hiking couple treating me like a cute neighborhood toddler, the attention was suffocating. Even the bard kept locking eyes with me and throwing theatrical winks.

"Then for my next piece... allow me to perform The Fair-Skinned Maiden."

Please, God, no. Someone end this public humiliation ritual!

The trial grounds were packed to the brim with every hotshot under the age of twenty on this side of the continent. The tavern situated at the base of Mount Shinjung was completely overrun with aspirants seeking an audience with the examiner.

"Every single year, the Ticket Exam draws an absurd crowd," the bard remarked, leaning against the rail. "Every nimble scout and brawny rookie adventurer within three provinces has gathered here."

"Mister, aren't you way past twenty? What are you even doing here?"

"Haha! What else is there for old folks like me to do, little lady? Spectate, of course! Though naturally, my cheers are reserved exclusively for the most enchanting contestant here."

Unlike the other travelers who had disembarked along the way, this bard had ridden the carriage with us until the very end. He brought his fingertips to his lips and blew me an exaggerated kiss. At first, I'd pegged him for a creep and kept my guard up, but during that agonizingly dull, endless road trip, I'd come to appreciate the vital necessity of a traveling bard. My opinion of him had done a total one-eighty.

In a world without a 'Fast Travel' map pin or a 'Skip Cutscene' button, a bard aboard a horse-drawn carriage was a god-tier social butterfly, commanding entertainment value comparable to an idol selling out an arena. If not for him serenading the cabin to ward off the sheer boredom of the trek, the suffocating atmosphere cast by my butler and maid—who radiated an aura like a permanent Silence debuff—would have driven the passengers insane.

Well, that social atmosphere got doused in ice water the moment the bard tried to get too friendly.

Even so, I couldn't defend the guy when he got tipsy and tried to 'accidentally' sling an arm over my shoulder. Jona's fist had moved faster than speech, which explained why one of the bard's eyes was still bruised black as a panda's. Once the other passengers realized how terrifying the butler was, they'd practically bailed out of the carriage the moment we hit the foot of the mountain, leaving the vibes completely wrecked.

"Milady is far too generous with her warmth," Jona muttered coldly. "Do not harbor affection for wandering bards who peddle secondhand gossip and cheap tavern rhymes."

"Oh, come on, what's the harm? Thanks to him, the ride wasn't totally boring."

I gave the bard a casual wave goodbye as he wandered off, only to notice ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠Leaf subtly shifting her footing toward the crowd.

"Where are you going?"

"I have a brief errand to attend to."

"Can't I come with you?"

An inexplicable chill ran down my spine, prompting me to grab the hem of her maid apron. Leaf let out an almost imperceptible sigh.

"...Lucky bastard."

"Huh?"

"It is nothing. Let us proceed together, Milady."

Leaf-san looks so cheerful on the outside, but she barely talks at all.

The way she occasionally muttered sinister things under her breath made her seem pretty socially challenged. She definitely fell into the category of maids you couldn't leave unsupervised for five minutes.

"The crowd is immense," Jona observed.

"If you wish, I can hold our place in line," Leaf offered. "Since this is a rare journey, perhaps you might enjoy some brief sightseeing, Milady."

The plaza was bustling. A serpentine queue snaked endlessly across the dirt square, resembling ravenous foodies swarming a viral restaurant. Looking at that suffocating mass coiled like an anaconda made my head spin. Just seeing the sheer length of it crushed any lingering resolve I had to help Leaf socialize. At this rate, there was no way we were getting inside within the next forty-eight hours.

It was a universal law of crowds: people saw a long line, blindly shuffled to the back of it without thinking, and only realized after an hour of waiting that they had queued up for a roadside skewer stand. Plenty of people were currently stomping away from the cart in red-faced frustration—though the fact that almost all of them were munching on meat skewers as they left proved the vendor was a certified hustle genius.

"Do not even consider it."

Catching my wandering gaze, Jona immediately laid down the law.

"That meat could easily be gutter rats bred in mud puddles. So long as breath remains in my lungs, I will not permit such unhygienic filth to cross your lips, Milady."

"Butler Jona, you're way too uptight! If you nitpick like that, there's literally zero street food you can eat out in the world!"

"Then it is quite simple: you need only consume the meals I prepare for you henceforth."

"Hmph. It's not like you're going to stay with me forever."

Jona's expression darkened noticeably.

If I had to describe it, it was the exact face of a father suddenly struck by the realization that his little girl would eventually grow up, marry some strange man, and leave his protective wing forever. Feeling a twinge of guilt for being so blunt, I quietly reached out and slipped my small fingers into his hand. His harsh features instantly creased into a fierce, troubled scowl.

Squeeze.

For all his scowling and pretending to be stern, his massive hand closed around mine with agonizing gentleness—as if he were holding a delicate sugar sculpture that might shatter under the slightest pressure. People always said male tsunderes were gross, but when it came to our head butler, he was actually kind of endearing.