Chapter 490: Don't You Think This Joint Exam... Is a Bit Bland?
Translator: RaidenTL
Chapter 490: Don't You Think This Joint Exam... Is a Bit Bland?
Watching the two of them in that state, I naturally felt no sympathy.
Recalling how they hadn't hesitated to take my storage card back then made me laugh in exasperation, but as time passed, I couldn't be bothered with them anymore. To be honest, the "water army" and the manufactured public opinion they stirred up on the Academy Network had near-zero impact on me.
A group of people engaging in a circle-jerk of self-indulgence—I wasn't interested in trying to correct them. Faced with a lack of information channels, those people were incapable of analyzing right from wrong. When their own lives were going poorly, they vented their emotions on the Academy Network; no one was going to use their last shred of sanity to perform a rational analysis for a complete stranger.
Even if I hadn't proposed this wager, they would have had to face the consequences eventually. The reason I gave them such an opportunity was purely out of curiosity: under what circumstances, and to what extent, must a person who knows they’ve done wrong go... to earn forgiveness? Or is some forgiveness simply impossible to obtain?
Actually, during the period I was being "cyberbullied," the person who disappointed me most was Tan Han. She had completely lost control of her fan club; even her own statements carried no weight. And yet... now that the Joint Exam was underway, everyone had gathered together again for the sake of profit, identifying as Tan Han's followers, standing by her side to enjoy the protection of a powerhouse and the sense of belonging that came with being at the core.
This blatant contradiction still hadn't broken through Tan Han's indulgence. She either didn't realize it, or she did and chose to do nothing for the sake of "the big picture."
The one who had interacted with those two just now was, of course, my Knowledge Shadow. I was watching the scene unfold from a short distance away.
Using this method was mainly for the convenience of making a quick getaway and avoiding being caught red-handed. Although I wouldn't be breaking any rules even if I were caught, proving my innocence would be a massive hassle. I hate hassles.
Now that this trivial matter was settled, it was time to get down to business. Although I had previously scouted the Wizard Academy's side and found nothing particularly exciting, I did gather some intelligence that I felt deserved serious attention.
It concerned the situation of the Wizard Academy candidates.
Just as the Witch Academy relied on powerful Mana Sources and spellbooks as the foundation of their strength, and the Elves relied on their own bloodlines—the Beast Academy was the same.
There are many Transcendent Academies, and for newly enrolled students to master transcendent power, mental power alone isn't enough. They also need a "talent" that allows them to instinctively drive that power. Most Transcendent Academies rely on their own bloodline power as that driving instinct. However, the Wizard Academy claims to be the "Orthodox Human Race," and humans don't have transcendent bloodlines to wield such power, let alone the ability to resist the suppression of the Main World Great Weakening Spell.
Therefore, mental power plus knowledge plus Wizard Tools are the standard means for a Wizard to wield transcendent power.
Wizards are the type of people best at utilizing external objects, simply because they have no other choice.
But that’s just the standard case. In reality, the methods employed by the Wizard Academy students seemed far more terrifying than anything the naive girls of the Witch Academy had mastered.
They used tactics that ordinary people would consider "dirty." Poisoning! Breeding insects! Traps and arson! These were their most common tools.
They would poison the water sources of resource points they couldn't occupy. Or, after killing a large number of monsters, they would poison the leftover meat they couldn't finish. If anyone tried to scavenge a free meal, they were finished.
Breeding insects was another "playstyle" entirely—a high-end tactic within the Wizard Academy.
In the early stages, they would nurture a mother bug to constantly develop, eventually leading to a massive swarm. If these insects were poisonous, it was even more ruthless.
Insects modulated through witchcraft were truly horrific. The further the exam progressed, the more they grew exponentially. Their consumption of resources was equally staggering; they would devour all vegetation like a plague of locusts, not even sparing the monsters.
This insect-breeding behavior was arguably more terrifying than arson. A swarm spreads faster than a forest fire and is incredibly difficult to eradicate unless one uses large-scale spells to wipe them out entirely.
Even a massive forest fire can be extinguished gradually with water-based Evocation magic. But if even a few insects from a swarm escape, they will reappear before long, continuing until they have exhausted all the resources of the Bobapus Archipelago.
There was no need to doubt whether the Wizard Academy possessed such terrifying means. They did, and it wasn't even difficult—it only took one person carrying such a mother bug.
Witchcraft is quite miraculous, isn't it?
Fortunately, this Joint Exam was taking place within a false world. If these methods were spread to the outside world, the consequences would be unthinkable; it would be a devastating blow to the ecology of the Main World.
So, my purpose in coming here was to send this intelligence back. Such things either needed to be nipped in the bud or prepared for in advance to withstand a potential attack.
It could be said that almost every student from the Wizard Academy had their own little schemes. Compared to the students of the Witch Academy, they were far more professional.
As the weaker students in the Witch Academy used up their one-time alchemy items, a segment of the academy was bound to fall into a state of power depletion.
Rather than saying they were here to compete in the Joint Exam, it was more accurate to say they were just here to grind enough points to pass.
* * *
Daylight soon arrived.
I continued to fulfill my duties as a patrol teacher, wandering around aimlessly. When I had nothing better to do, I sent eliminated students back. It was honestly quite boring.
Especially since I had placed teleportation marks across the entire Main Island and the other affiliated islands, I could essentially go anywhere I wanted in an instant.
As the Witch Academy candidates dispersed, their presence began to spread across the Main Island, and my role was gradually diminishing. This was exactly what I hoped for; I couldn't exactly stay busy until the very end, could I? The point of my layout was to reduce trouble, not to take on more burdens and keep myself perpetually busy. Otherwise, what was the point of all my previous effort? I wasn't here to work a 9-to-5.
I had to admit that the intelligence exchange group Tan Han had established on the affiliated islands was proving incredibly useful now. Through phones and group chats, one could understand the situation and shifting trends of the entire Main Island.
The people from the Witch Academy had basically made contact with every other academy. Some were cheated, some were in a standoff, and some fell directly into traps. These scenes played out continuously across the island.
Overall, it was a mix of wins and losses.
I, on the other hand, was enjoying a rare moment of leisure.
The live broadcast feeds generally didn't focus on the teaching assistants, so I took the opportunity to enjoy myself.
"I knew you'd be here. I didn't expect you to be so relaxed, sunbathing of all things."
"The rules don't forbid me from slacking off. Do you only feel happy if I'm busy? If I actually got busy, everyone else would be the ones worrying," I joked. Even without turning around, I recognized the voice as Lin Yi.
"I suppose that's true. Is there another beach chair? I'd like to lie down for a bit too," Lin Yi said as she walked over.
"You're planning to slack off with me? The chairs are... over there. Just grab one," I said, pointing lazily.
"Thanks... I didn't come for anything specific, just wanted to chat. I've realized I can't quite read you. I don't know what you're actually trying to do."
A moment later, Lin Yi lay down beside me.
"After about two days of development, the Joint Exam is progressing faster than we anticipated. The number of candidates has plummeted to less than half the original total. Monsters have been hunted to near extinction. The only way to get points now is by occupying resource points. Even the competition between students from the same school is becoming fierce..." As Lin Yi spoke, she turned her head toward me, seemingly curious to see if my expression would change. She was destined for disappointment.
"It's a normal progression. After all, you know the Witch Academy has the most people, and most of those students are quite mediocre. This was inevitable."
"So, has the way things developed exceeded your expectations?"
"Hmm... it's outside my expectations, but within reason. I've noticed you all seem very focused on my thoughts. Do you have some preconceived bias against me? Surely you all have done quite a lot yourselves, haven't you?"
"You're joking. We've only done what we should; we haven't touched what we shouldn't."
"Then what if I told you there are no live broadcast angles on us right now?" I asked with a smile, turning to look at Lin Yi, curious about her reaction.
"You can see them?"
"Hmm... want to guess?"
"I'm not guessing."
"Fair enough."
The brief exchange seemed to reveal a lot of information, yet it also felt like nothing had been said at all.
After that, our conversation became a bit more relaxed.
As we talked, the topic drifted back to the Joint Exam.
"You said this exam lasts a week. Given how things are going, do you think they'll end it early?"
"I think so." The further it went, the more it became a "clash of titans." For ordinary students, this exam was basically a chance to broaden their horizons and see some real action. The peaceful atmosphere of the academy had made the students a bit too soft.
Of course, there might be another, more important factor...
But putting that aside, in the current environment of the Joint Exam, it was actually the candidates from the Wizard Academy who were frequently shining. Look at what they’d done over the past two days.
They had burned down large forested areas across the Main Island, forcing the Elves out of the jungle terrain where they were most skilled.
Every accessible resource point or desalination site was guaranteed to be poisoned. As the Wizards dispersed across the island, a massive number of water sources were contaminated. Even if flushed or diluted, the voodoo could still give someone a nasty case of diarrhea.
With the monsters being cleared out, if one hadn't stockpiled enough food, they might go hungry.
If you found a perfectly preserved monster carcass by the side of the road, it was almost certainly a trap set by the Wizard Academy. Poisoning the carcass was the least of it; they had many methods—curses, Gu insects, they used them all.
No one wanted to be tormented by a curse until they were forced to withdraw, and no one wanted to see disgusting insects burrowing into their bodies to devour their flesh.
And that was only a fraction of what the Wizard Academy was doing.
By comparison, the Witch Academy seemed almost "harmless." The elimination of a large number of ordinary students even gave candidates from other academies the illusion that "the level of Witch Academy students is only this much."
"So, who do you think will win?"
"I think... there are no winners," I said after a moment of thought.
"No winners? What do you mean by that?"
"Don't you think this Joint Exam... is as bland as water? Maybe it's because I'm not personally involved, but it feels a bit dull."
"Bland?"
Lin Yi was stunned by my assessment. If an academy confrontation of this scale was called "bland," then what counted as "exciting"?
Did someone have to blow the entire Bobapus Archipelago into the sky or trigger the dormant volcano?
"You seem confused by my evaluation. It really is just a personal feeling, Lin Yi. You should know about things like 'Children of Destiny' and those concepts, right?"
"I do. Wasn't that all over the news a while back? How could I not know? Or rather, even without that recent surge of information, I already had a rough understanding of it before. Though, not a deep one."
"I see." I remembered Sister Bai; she had also known about the related secrets and had even been forced to sign a contract forbidding her from revealing them.
But plans can't keep up with changes.
The matter had been made public just like that.
"Then... tell me, is this Joint Exam a confrontation between academies... or a confrontation between Children of Destiny?" I continued.
I hadn't been lying when I said there were no live broadcast angles nearby, and Lin Yi had understood my implication.
"This..." Lin Yi hesitated.
She didn't know much about concepts like Luck or Scripts. She had only looked into them slightly after being bombarded by information recently. It wasn't that she didn't believe in them or wasn't interested; it was because she knew she wasn't a Child of Destiny. She had rationally chosen not to delve too deep, knowing that craving what didn't belong to her would only increase her internal friction.
"To be honest, I've never really thought about it. Xiao Han, what do you think? I remember the Academy Network saying you were a Child of Destiny too, but that you personally destroyed your own Luck Seed?" Lin Yi admitted this openly, then threw the question back to me.
"Something like that~ But back to the question: I'm more inclined to believe this is a struggle for Luck, a battle between the 'protagonists' of this world. However, I won't negate the efforts of those who aren't Children of Destiny."
"Because I am proving that even if I'm not a Chi—sorry, ignore my last sentence." I pressed a hand to my forehead, leaving the sentence unfinished.
A keyword in that last sentence had triggered me. I was actually saying I was trying to prove something.
Prove what?
Prove that I could do better than a Child of Destiny even without being one?
To whom was I proving it?
What was the point?
Why did I need to prove anything?
In those few brief self-questions, I realized... I was trying to prove it to myself. Because deep down, there was a part of me I didn't want to admit—a part that still feared the power of a Child of Destiny. That was why I felt the need to self-justify.
But self-justification is usually foolish and unnecessary. I seemed to have discovered another source of my own internal friction...
"Is something wrong?"
"Oh, it's nothing. I just suddenly realized a few things. Let's talk about something else. But I should warn you, I don't have much talent for conversation. I've been called a 'conversation killer' before."
"Is that so? Then congratulations."
Lin Yi didn't care about the "conversation killer" comment. She was just a bit envious. To suddenly have an epiphany in the middle of a casual chat—that was truly a formidable talent.