69. Getting a Job Is Hard Here Too (6)
69. Getting a Job Is Hard Here Too (6)
"Wow. Finally, an applicant who hasn't done that hideous thing to their hair."
Fatigue-dulled eyes swept over me. The receptionist seemed to be sizing me up. Could someone with eyes that hollow size anyone up properly?
"Did you come to the wrong guild?"
"I came to take an exam at the Wizard Guild."
"For someone saying that, your mana is rather... hmm. Never mind. If you say you want to take it, who am I to argue..."
She talked to herself and reached her own conclusion.
The receptionist shifted her gaze, picked up a card that had been resting on the desk, and held it out to me. I took the card and examined it closely.
Was this instead of a number ticket?
"The exam begins in thirty minutes. Rest somewhere or attend to other business. When the time comes, the card will give you a tingling shock. That's the signal to come in, so at that point, enter that room."
"Tingling?"
"It's excellent for making sure examinees don't forget. The sight of them startling and scrambling in to take the test whenever we send the signal is quite an amusing spectacle."
Was that faint smirk the grudge of dealing with nightmare applicants, or was she just mean-spirited?
...I had thought she was normal! She looked like a jaded civil servant, so I had trusted her!
What kind of place used electric shocks as signals?!
Wizard Guild. Did this guild not have a single sane member?
I knew the quests routed through the Wizard Guild had a fair share of absurd ones, but I never expected this.
They were insane. Absolutely insane.
A guild full of people who seriously wore mohawks and used electric shocks as signals.
"Couldn't you just use a normal vibration...?"
"Because then some people would forget. That would be inefficient, wouldn't it?"
"Inefficient..."
"I need to see the next person now. Would you please move along?"
"I have one question first. Where can someone take the test to see if they have the aptitude for magic? A friend of mine wants to take it."
"Over there."
The staff member pointed to a corner of the lobby. Surely that chair, which subtly resembled an electric torture device, wasn't the testing apparatus? What refined taste. Was the person next to it the one who checked the results?
"If you sit in that chair, you can learn within a few minutes whether or not you have magical talent. Although most people end up like that person over there..."
The receptionist trailed off. As she had said, several people near the chair looked devastated. They must have been judged to lack magical talent. Millia could end up joining them if things went badly. What would I say to comfort her then?
"Big guy, would you mind stepping aside now? The line is long."
"Ah, sorry."
"Good luck. Probably?"
What did she mean, probably? I left that unsettling farewell behind and walked over to Millia.
Millia was lingering near the chair, gawking. When I approached, she clung to my side and spoke.
"Yohan, that thing looks so creepy..."
The torture chair—no, the mana testing apparatus—honestly looked far too unsettling, so it was inevitable. It looked like sitting in it would get your legs twisted or result in electric torture.
"You don't have to sit if you don't want to."
"...No! I'll sit!"
Millia looked up at me with a resolute expression. Well, it only looked like a torture chair; it was actually designed simply to assess magical aptitude, so nothing bad would come of it. I folded my arms and watched Millia sit in the chair.
When Millia sat with her face rigid from tension, a strange dark red light began leaking from the chair. It had glowed blue for the people before her, had it not? The ominous color tightened her expression.
"This is weird..."
"Hmm... the color of your mana is unusual. For all that, your talent doesn't seem exceptional, but you should be capable of using simple magic. I recommend purchasing 'Let's Learn! Basic Magic!' at Kelin's Bookstore, three blocks to the right of the Wizard Guild."
"They said I can use magic!"
The employee recording the result delivered the verdict in a completely matter-of-fact voice. Still, perhaps because she could use magic after all, Millia rose from the chair beaming and approached me.
"Congratulations."
"Heehee, let's hurry and buy the book!"
"I haven't taken my test yet."
"I know!"
I was watching Millia bounce up and down in delight when it happened. A sharp pain suddenly jolted through my chest.
"Millia. I'm going to take my test, so wait inside the guild. It'll be hard to find you if you get lost here—"
"Got it!"
Nothing would go wrong, right?
It was inside the guild. What could possibly go wrong?
I buried my unease and headed for the examination room.
------------------
What was this?
"The test is simple. Use as much magic as you like on that golem."
Once I entered the exam room, the proctor I faced explained the test conditions in a flat voice.
Too simple.
I stared at the golem, which looked like a rough human shape assembled from several rocks like a snowman. At least blue lines had been drawn across its surfaces to make it look somewhat like a golem. Were they some kind of magic circle?
Whatever it was, I was a little disappointed.
The test was remarkably dull compared to the guild's bizarre appearance. Not that I'd wanted a strange exam. I almost drew my shovel out of habit, then stopped and asked the civil-servant-like proctor, who seemed to have no interest in me,
"Can I use tools?"
"Permitted. However, tools that use mana cannot be activated due to the exam room's magic."
They were making sure no one could cheat their way into a license. For such a sloppy-looking exam, they were more thorough than I had expected. I unfolded my compact shovel and slowly examined the golem. It appeared to have been designed not to move; even when I approached close enough to touch it with the extended shovel, it remained still.
Should I just hit it with my Skill?
No. That would've been fine if I was just half-assing it, but I could not waste the opportunity if I wanted the license. I crouched and tapped the floor with my shovel. I'd sensed it upon entering: this was no ordinary floor. It was probably made from a special material.
I'd like to smash some of it and check... but could I smash it?
I looked toward the proctor with my question written on my face. The proctor glanced at me and spoke.
"You may do anything in this examination room. However, attacking the proctor is grounds for disqualification."
I decided to try breaking the floor first. Putting my entire body behind the blow, I drove the shovel down. Its blade, made of bone harder than steel, bit into the floor after several attempts. It only went about two knuckles deep, but that was enough. I picked up one of the broken fragments and examined it.
The gray fragment looked ordinary, but I felt something like a repelling force against my fingers. Was it a special material created through magic?
"Craft."
The stone fragment became a bead the size of an airsoft pellet and rolled around my palm. Thankfully, the Skill worked on it.
That made things easy.
"Craft."
A gray pillar slammed into the golem's chest. It staggered briefly, then returned to its original position and stopped. It really was a literal punching bag. Did I simply have to keep striking it with my Skill until it broke?
"Craft. Craft. Craft. Craft. Craft. Craft."
"Rapid reuse possible, no signs of mana detected, yet possesses considerable destructive power..."
Was he back-calculating data from the golem or something? I looked up at the still perfectly intact golem and crossed my arms. I'd pummeled it by raising pillars like I usually did, but the golem was fine. It seemed to absorb physical impacts.
As expected of a license exam, they hadn't slapped the golem together carelessly.
"Does the test continue until the golem is destroyed?"
"Stop whenever you wish. Almost no examinees have destroyed the golem. Hit it a reasonable amount, leave, and it will be scored."
Probably a common question—the answer shot back the instant I finished speaking.
'As if a guy like you could break it.' That was exactly what the proctor's tone implied.
...Maybe I should break it.
If I brought every means to bear, nothing was unbreakable.
No matter how sturdy it was, it couldn't be tougher than the Hydra.
I would need to change my strategy, though.
"Craft."
This time, instead of striking the golem, I raised two pillars and wedged one of its arms between them. With the arm forcibly fixed in place, the next step was...
"Craft. Dismantle. Craft. Dismantle. Craft. Dismantle. Craft. Dismantle. Craft."
I battered the trapped arm relentlessly.
Unlike the rough pillars from before, the ones I raised now were maximized for size and mass. Each impact made the golem stagger. Pillars thick enough to pass for temple columns repeatedly smashed into the rock that served as its hand, then disappeared through Dismantle. The accumulated damage soon made the golem shake visibly.
After the pillars had struck the same spot at least thirty times—
Boom!
Finally, it came off.
"Damage to the golem's arm. Power remains uncertain, but the caster shows no visible strain after thirty-two uses. Excellent efficiency. Effective range appears limited."
The assessment was subtly trending upward.
But I wasn't going to stop here.
I walked straight to the severed golem hand and used my Skill.
"Craft."
The rock that had been the golem's hand became a sharp, flat blade and wedged itself into the seam between rocks. Because it was a material of equal strength, unlike the pillars made from the floor, the seam visibly gaped apart.
The forcibly widened seam strained to close again like a magnet, but I drove the made-in-golem sword deeper and struck the rock with a pillar formed from the floor material.
"Can interfere with materials that no longer have an owner. Interesting."
What would he say if I broke it like this? My curiosity stoked, I threw myself even more zealously into reducing the golem to rubble.
Making, breaking, fixing, making, breaking, making.
After using my Skills until a sweet taste rose in my mouth, I finally managed to put emotion into the proctor's voice.
"Fascinating magic. Would you have any interest in becoming a test subject?"
"Are you insane?"
I knew it, this bastard wasn't normal either!
The chilling gaze treated me less like an interesting talent than a laboratory rat. I hurried out of the examination room.
------------
"...Yohan, do you have any idea what all this is?"
Reni sighed and pointed at the pile of letters and documents stacked on the desk. Glancing over them, it looked like they'd been sent by the guilds where I'd taken exams. I'd hit every guild I could over the course of a week and had lost track of how many tests I'd taken, but it really was a lot.
"The test results came in."
"Right. But what the hell did you do?! Why are those fussy old men practically desperate to recruit you?! Do you know how annoying it was for me to write polite replies that don't match my personality at all?!"
I picked up one of the fancy-looking letters on the desk and opened it.
[In the history of our Carpentry Guild, there has never been a talent like you. Please...]
Must be that old man.
I tossed the letter onto the desk and read another.
[Someone like you could aim for the summit! I'll support you in every way, materially and otherwise, so...]
"They're all like this?"
"Yeah. I was only thinking you'd casually pick up a few licenses. I never imagined you'd collect enough licenses to build a card tower! It's definitely a good thing, but..."
Reni stared at the licenses stacked on one side of the desk with a complicated expression. It'd be a pain just to carry all these around. If I laid them all out in a row when introducing my career, the sheer volume would probably get me looks that screamed, 'What the hell does this guy even do?'
Counting them by eye, it looked like I'd passed all but a few.
"Is this enough to get hired as an escort knight?"
"I don't know. For now, you should consider the odds to have gone up significantly... Ugh. I'm planning to write rejection letters until I'm sick of them, so could you leave? Seriously, what a pain..."
I left Reni's grumbling behind and walked out of the room.
Now, the outcome would be determined by the heavens.
Walking down the hallway, I stopped and gazed at the academy visible beyond the window.
If I became an escort knight, I'd be able to intervene in the events that happened at the academy.
At last, I could stand at the true starting line.
"Survival Academy..."
I'd definitely survive you.