Wizards Also Stir Up Trouble During Exams (2)
Clothing, food, shelter.
These are the three essential elements of human life.
So what exactly would we be tested on under the practical exam theme of survival?
Clothing?
They can't exactly make us take the exam naked, so we'd at least have whatever we were already wearing. But if the weather turned extreme, our everyday clothes would be useless. Preparation, then, would simply mean packing extra layers to wear underneath.
Food?
The exam grounds would presumably be set up with an environment where we could procure what we needed to survive — but that was merely the realm of being able to procure it. Since this part, in particular, was likely to become an area of direct competition with the other students, only thorough preparation would ensure we wouldn't come up short.
"Which is why we're packing food."
I stuffed jerky that would keep for ages and high-calorie chocolate bars into the bag. Then I packed some water too, which took priority over food itself.
Lily, now saddled with a bulging bag, waddled unsteadily forward like a penguin. Her face made it clear she could barely move under the weight.
"Wh-why is it so heavy...?"
"I packed a lot in case the exam runs for several days. Was it too much?"
"This won't do...!"
Lily flung the bag off and said it firmly. That was rare, coming from her.
"I mean, this exam is about evaluating how well we can survive in that kind of environment, isn't it? So I think these kinds of shortcuts are bad — for our own sakes."
I wondered what she was getting at, but she had a point. There was no denying that such a shortcut would give us a huge advantage. The only problem was that we'd fail to actually learn the survival skills we were supposed to take away from this exam.
Still, if another student had figured out the clue, this is exactly the level of preparation they'd have made. Apparently, for Lily — blessed with a temperament far too righteous — this was preparation she simply could not condone.
"Fine, fine. Then we'll take just a little."
I respect her wishes. Doing what Lily says is probably good for Lily herself, too.
I pulled out the absurd quantity of jerky and the water canisters that made up the bulk of the weight. Lily gaped at the endless stream of contents spilling out like Doraemon's four-dimensional pocket.
"Were you planning to live out the rest of your life in there?"
Just then, Lily, who had been crouched down peering into the bag, pointed inside.
"Then what are these?"
"Ah. Those."
The things Lily was pointing at were items I'd made after checking the theme of this practical exam. Nothing groundbreaking, mind you — just things that would come in handy if you had them.
"These are what let you carry on a luxurious and magnificent life even in an unknown environment."
Allow me to introduce them.
A survival kit with barely anything in it.
A tent that folds and unfolds with ease.
A sleeping bag I slapped together from plucked duck down.
The end.
I hugged those items tight to my chest and glared at Lily.
"I refuse to remove these."
I'd done more than my share of sleeping rough. I had no intention of suffering through that raw hardship ever again.
"O-okay..."
"I made a set for you too, Lily, so let me show you how they work. Come here."
First I spread out the sleeping bag, which needed no explanation.
"You climb inside and sleep so you don't freeze. Other than that, there's really nothing to explain. Want to try it?"
"Okay, sure."
Lily slipped into the sleeping bag. Once I confirmed she was in, I zipped it all the way up to the very top, and finally cinched the cords around the opening where her face poked out.
She looked exactly like a cocoon.
Lily was left completely unable to move her arms or legs, her head the only part of her sticking out.
"O-Owen? I can't move!"
"I know."
I pulled a quill and ink out of my coat. Watching me dip the nib into the inkwell, Lily instantly divined what was about to happen and squirmed her body — but it was a futile resistance.
"Don't tell me you were holding a grudge over the jerky and chocolate I took out?!"
"I'm not that petty a man. You were right, and I was convinced, which is why I removed most of it."
I sat down on top of Lily without putting my full weight on her and aimed the dripping quill at her face.
"But did this guy get convinced, though?"
"KYAAAAH! You WERE holding a grudge!"
That day, Lily became a panda.
On the day of the practical exam.
The faculty of Trinity Academy were still in the thick of adjusting the practical exam, busier than ever with no time to so much as blink.
"Professor Gode, how does it look?"
Gode, who had been inspecting the mana amplification devices to ensure mana was delivered to every corner of the exam grounds, straightened his back and wiped away the sweat trickling down his face.
"No problems here. Is yer side all set?"
The Professor of Illusion Magic, charged with a crucial role in this practical exam, nodded while looking over the students waiting in line.
"Then let's verify."
Gode went through the exam plan line by line, checking for anything that might have been missed.
"First, the theme of this practical exam is survival. An exam confirming the students' survival capabilities in a deserted-island environment. Correct?"
The other professors mentally retraced what they'd been told in advance, confirming nothing was out of place.
"What's being tested is whether the students can adapt to and survive a harsh extreme environment, and all of it will be conducted through illusion magic."
"The difficulty will adjust in response to the mana of the students entering the illusion, and both cooperation and competition among the students are entirely permitted. Yes?"
"That's right. To benefit the students who discovered the clue to the exam's theme, the exam will proceed with each student exactly as they arrive at the grounds, and any student who drops out mid-exam will regain consciousness once the exam is over."
Nothing deviated from what they knew. The entire faculty confirmed there was no discrepancy with the design.
"The exam will run until the mana of the students inside the illusion can no longer sustain it. Then let us begin."
Once every check was complete, an announcement followed for the students: the exam would begin shortly, and those waiting were to enter through the prepared gate under the professors' supervision.
Vrrrmmm——
As the students entered the gate, a blue orb atop the round table at the center of the control room began to glow. It was a monitor projecting the interior like a holographic map — and simultaneously a display of the total mana of the students currently inside.
The professors gathered around the table chatted idly as they watched it.
"How do you think this year's practical exam will go?"
"They're all excellent students, aren't they? I'm sure they'll manage."
"That they're excellent is precisely the problem, no? Last year the exam became far too difficult because of how skilled the top students were, didn't it?"
Arms crossed, Gode did not share the professors' opinion. He simply didn't believe exam scores alone could measure a student's caliber.
'Even if ye wash out early, I'll still rate ye highly, Owen me lad.'
The weaker one's magical finesse, the more likely one was to turn to engineering. After all, artifacts could make up for one's lacking talent.
In that sense, Gode did not consider Owen an outstanding mage. The Iron Man Suit or whatever it was he'd shown off the other day — surely that too was born of the same reason.
But while Gode wouldn't call him an outstanding mage, he could say with complete confidence that Owen was an outstanding man.
'The lathe and milling machine he showed us before. And now the Pneumatic Hammer on top of that. The man's a god...!'
Not that his reasons were entirely unbiased.
"Hm?"
Gode, who had been silently cheering for Owen and Lily — his own club's students — felt his gaze drift toward the mana-woven map on the round table. When something in one's field of view changes abruptly, one's eyes follow. A perfectly natural reaction.
"What in the world is this."
And then, Gode and every professor present had no choice but to voice their bewilderment.
"Is this thing working properly? The total mana of the students inside the illusion just spiked."
The Professor of Illusion Magic hurriedly checked the spell. But no matter how many times they inspected and re-inspected, they could find no anomaly. The system had even been examined for days by the Lord of the Magic Tower himself for the sake of this exam — there was no way something was wrong with it.
Which left the Professor of Illusion Magic only one possible answer.
"There is no anomaly..."
No anomaly. The spell is operating normally. The sudden increase in the students' total mana is not a malfunction, either.
"Then you're telling me this absurd quantity of mana is real?"
Cold sweat beaded on the professors' foreheads. Because if it were true... there was no predicting how punishing the exam would become, its difficulty scaling in proportion to the students' total mana.
"Should we not halt the exam?"
"...Is there really a need to stop it?"
One professor, after careful thought, offered his opinion to the others.
"It's illusion magic anyway, so there's no danger of the students being hurt, no?"
"That's true, but... the psychological damage will remain."
"Muscles must be torn to grow, and the mind is no different. Children grow by getting hurt — all of them. Why, in my day, I clawed and thrashed on the battlefield, fighting to survive while watching my friends die around me. Compared to that, this is nothing, no?"
"Hmm, there's logic in that. Besides, the exam's hardships are calibrated to be surmountable through the students' cooperation with one another, so it should be fine."
It wasn't unanimous, but the professors' opinions tipped toward letting the exam proceed as planned.
"Besides, when we ran the exam ourselves — including the Lord of the Magic Tower — our total mana was about the same as this, and we cooperated and overcame it just fine, didn't we?"
"Haha, quite right. Well, if we managed it, the students can too."
The exam isn't too hard = the professor next door tried it and solved it easily.
The fallacy professors so commonly commit was not, as it turned out, unique to the modern era.
And so the exam continued.
Meanwhile.
Having entered the illusion under the professor's guidance, Owen looked around and let out a whistle of admiration.
"Ooh, it's realistic. Do you get to cast a Unique Magic Domain once you're a professor at Trinity Academy?"
The scent of grass and trees. An eerie cry, belonging to no creature he could name. Even the soft, velvety feel of the fuzzy leaves under his fingers.
It was a level of vividness so complete that if you hadn't known better, you'd never realize it was an illusion.
"I wasn't expecting much, but maybe I'll actually get something out of this."
He was completely at ease.
Entirely unaware that he was the very culprit who had escalated this practical exam's difficulty into hard mode.