Entrance Exam — Swordsmanship Department (1)
It was the third day since Ethan and I had arrived on the Isle of Knowledge.
We had finished preparing for an outing early in the morning and set off for the Academy a little ahead of schedule. Today, after all, was the day Ethan would finally take the Swordsmanship Department Entrance Exam to enroll in Luminor.
"How are you feeling, young master? Is your condition all right?"
"Mm. I slept plenty, and I'm fully prepared."
"That's a relief. You seemed to have slept poorly yesterday, so I was worried you might be nervous about the exam."
"...That's your fault, isn't it, maid."
"Pardon?"
"Nothing. Never mind."
Bland as ever.
Well, at least his condition had recovered by exam day, which was a mercy. Yesterday he'd genuinely looked exhausted all day, as if he hadn't slept a wink.
The man was the one who'd said, "If we arrive on schedule, let's do some sightseeing the first day," and then proceeded to sleep straight through until evening from sheer fatigue. What was I supposed to do with that?
Thanks to him, our second day on the Isle of Knowledge was spent almost entirely cooped up in the inn. All three meals were taken at the tavern-cum-restaurant on the inn's first floor, no less.
Still, well.
It was a relief that he seemed back to form on the day of the exam itself.
He'd probably just worn himself out with the long carriage ride — unfamiliar territory for him. Thank goodness we'd set out a day early. Anything beat him groaning and dragging his feet on exam day.
Of course, this year's noble entrance exams were expected to have an absurdly low passing bar — practically a joke in every department except Magic — but the evaluations recorded during the exams themselves would still prove useful for building connections during the first semester.
Naturally, more people would flock to the top student of a department than to its bottom ranker. Simple human nature.
With Ethan's current skill, the top spot is well within reach.
Even if these were mock duels fought with wooden swords, he was good enough to occasionally take victories off a Sword Master.
Even at half his usual strength, he'd chew through most of the student body and post scores to match.
The only real variable was how strong the protagonist character would be at this point in the story...
Well, at least there was no chance of him crossing paths with Ethan today. Today was the day of the Swordsmanship Department's noble entrance exam.
If the protagonist enrolled in the Swordsmanship Department, he'd be taking tomorrow's commoner exam instead.
They might end up competing for the top rank, but actually crossing blades face to face was still quite a ways off.
"The inn is quite a distance from Luminor Academy, young master. Shall I call for a coachman and a carriage?"
"Better to walk. Plenty of nobles arrive at the exam grounds the very morning of, so calling a carriage would probably just slow us down."
"I agree, young master."
"...If the exam finishes early, we can look around the island this afternoon — make up for yesterday."
"An excellent plan, young master."
Thanks to Ethan's wise decision, we were spared reliving my past life's traffic jams in this world as well.
Walking around the procession of long carriages that soon appeared, we entered Luminor Academy.
The Swordsmanship Department entrance exam at Luminor Academy ran from morning until evening.
Fortunately, not every applicant was tested for that entire span — the exam proceeded in order, with students taking it as they arrived.
First, students entering the Academy were grouped into teams of four in order of arrival, and each group took the entrance exam together.
These four prospective students would then face one another in one-on-one sword duels.
Since the rule was to face every opponent once, each group fought a total of six duels — three per person, one against each of their three opponents.
Counting the six duels and the rest periods in between, the whole thing usually wrapped up in an hour or two.
Freshmen who hadn't even enrolled yet had no reason to exchange dozens of blows, and nobody typically held a standoff for ten-odd minutes probing for an opening.
Once that hour or two of dueling was done, the results were posted on the Academy bulletin board the next morning or the morning after that.
In Ethan's case, since he was taking the noble Swordsmanship Department exam, his results would come the morning after the commoner exam concluded — two days out.
Incidentally, placing first in a group of four didn't guarantee passing, and placing fourth didn't guarantee failure.
The four-person group format existed purely to save time and eliminate variables — it was never meant to be a relative ranking among those four prospective students.
Imagine a group containing the students who would go on to take first, second, third, and fourth place in the next Swordsmanship Department class — if the fourth-place student got eliminated for placing fourth in that group, how unfair would that be?
What actually determined the results was the assessment handed down by the supervising examiners who watched the duels. In that sense, you could call it reasonably fair.
Of course, no human judgment is perfect — but then, no exam ever is.
With skill like Ethan's, he wasn't going to go anywhere and lose embarrassingly, so I wasn't worried. He'd long since outgrown the age where I needed to fuss over him anyway.
"Have you packed both swords properly, young master?"
"Yes, right here."
"You haven't forgotten to strap the long sword on your right? Since your style holds the short sword in your right hand, you'll want to draw it quickly when unsheathing—"
"I know, I know. The swords are my responsibility to maintain. You don't need to check on them for me."
"Then allow me to confirm once more that the belt securing them is fastened tightly. If a sword were to slip loose mid-combat, it could become dangerous."
"I already checked it, maid..."
It wasn't that I was worried. I'd watched Ethan's skill up close for too long for that.
Though today's duels would be fought with real blades rather than wooden ones, which gave me slight pause, the Academy's dueling grounds had their own guarantees of safety. There was little real danger.
For one thing, the judges would intervene and halt a duel long before it reached a decisive conclusion, and even if someone took a fatal wound, they wouldn't die — they'd simply be teleported to the Aurelia Church within Luminor Academy.
To prevent loss of life during student duels, the exam grounds were laid with Death-Prevention Magic.
Viewed that way, it was actually far safer than the mock dueling grounds where Ethan sparred with Harold. At least here, the possibility of dying was outright nonexistent.
And if the Death-Prevention Magic really did activate and send someone back to the church, it wouldn't be Ethan — it would be the opponent on the receiving end of his blade. Without a doubt.
"Since these are duels with live steel, you must be all the more careful in reading your opponent's movements. You may not lose your life, but the pain of a sudden wound will be carved into your memory."
"I appreciate the advice, but Father already drilled me on live combat. You don't need to worry on top of that, Lilith."
"There may be opponents who attack in ways entirely unlike your father — not every swordsman strikes with perfect precision and efficiency. Rather than attempting attacks that endure injury, I would ask that you prioritize safety as much as possible and—"
"You don't need to worry, maid..."
I trusted Ethan, so I wasn't worried in the slightest.
However he fought, I genuinely wasn't worried at all. Not one bit.
After Ethan registered his name at the Swordsmanship Department reception desk and returned, the two of us had a bit of free time, so we waited leisurely on a bench near the reception for our duel assignments to be decided.
"It's still early morning, but there are quite a few people here."
"If they miss their chance this year, they'd have to wait until next year. Nobles or not, I imagine everyone is moving with unusual diligence today."
"And yet this maid of yours is a noble herself now, isn't she?"
"I didn't come here as a noble, young master. I came as your maid."
And strictly speaking, my noble authority was practically nonexistent anyway.
I thought of it as nothing more than a hollow title for the sake of graduating from the Academy safely, so it was far more comfortable to just think of myself as not being a noble at all.
Unless I intended to belong to the Blackwood family for life, the title was utterly useless.
...Come to think of it, who's Ethan getting paired with today?
"Young Master Ethan, may I ask what your registration number is?"
"Fifteen."
"Then numbers thirteen, fourteen, and sixteen will be your duel opponents."
"I suppose so."
Incidentally, nobles applying at such an early hour were more likely to be lower-ranked nobles than high-ranking ones.
Most of the high-ranking noble applicants were probably stuck in a traffic jam somewhere on the road in their backed-up carriages by now.
Refusing to walk the road on their own two feet even if it meant waiting hours in a carriage — that was the hallmark of the typical noble. And the higher the rank, the worse it tended to get.
In other words, the opponents he'd face at this hour were likely on the weaker side.
High-ranking nobles generally had larger maximum mana reserves than lower nobles, and their swordsmanship was more developed as well — so it was only natural.
Not that it mattered who his opponents were. Ethan would win with room to spare regardless.
I was mulling over such things as I waited for Ethan's turn to approach, when someone who appeared to be a staff guide began calling the applicants for the next duel to the dueling grounds, one by one.
"We will now prepare for the next examination! Applicant number thirteen — Lord Louis Pin Agonis!"
Thirteen — one of Ethan's opponents, then.
The name had an unfamiliar ring to it, so he probably wasn't a major character.
I'd never heard of the Agonis family either, so they were likely a baronial or lesser house on the frontier.
As I waited for the next name to be called, applicant fourteen's name soon reached my ears.
"Applicant number fourteen — Lord Benjamin Huckleberry Belvin!"
A name I'd never heard before either. Neither Benjamin nor the family name Belvin.
Yep, lots of frontier families among the morning applicants.
Ethan was probably the only high-ranking noble who'd walked here on foot to take the exam at this hour.
With kids like these as opponents, Ethan would likely cruise to an easy, lopsided victory.
"Applicant number fifteen — Lord Ethan Richard Blackwood!"
"Off you go, young master."
"Mm."
I'd just confirmed the calling of Ethan's name as applicant fifteen and was about to move with him toward the dueling grounds when—
The next applicant's name that left the guide's lips made me doubt my own ears.
"And finally, applicant number sixteen — Lord Caraham Samuel Auguste!"
"...Caraham?"
Why is HIS name coming up here?!