The Second BMAT Begins
Four days passed faster than light.
And then the day of the exam arrived.
A low murmur rippled through the crowd.
Once again, a massive stage stretched out from the gates of Kizen, and countless visitors had come flooding to Roc Island. Anyone—regardless of rank or nationality—was granted entry, so long as they could prove their identity beyond doubt.
Today, at long last, the second exam of the BMAT—the comprehensive dark magic evaluation featuring all 898 of Kizen's first-years—was about to begin.
“Ladies and gentlemen! Thank you for your patience!”
The very same flamboyant MC from the entrance ceremony exam was shouting into an amplifying crystal orb, dressed in that same extravagant costume.
“It is my great honor to stand before you once more! I am Conrad Hayaborn, here to host the second BMAT exam!”
The crowd greeted him with a roaring cheer, and the host bowed like a true gentleman in reply.
“The BMAT is a test of notorious, brutal difficulty! But the students of Kizen have honed their specialties day after day, all for this very moment! Will a new star rise today to shake the continent to its core? Stay with us until the very end to find out!”
The host's gaze turned to the side of the stage.
“And now, allow me to introduce a Kizen professor who will be joining me to provide commentary for this exam!”
Thud. Thud.
A wave of horrified gasps rose from every corner of the stands.
A woman was walking in, her legs and torso wrapped snugly from thigh to chest in taut black bandages, with only a thin jacket draped over them all.
People stared in astonishment at an outfit rarely seen in polite company—then promptly decided it made perfect sense. This was Kizen, after all, famously crawling with eccentrics.
“Hand it over.”
She marched straight up to the host and simply snatched the amplifying orb out of his hands.
Left awkwardly holding the fresh new orb he'd meant to offer her, the host pressed his own to his lips and did his best to transform his embarrassment into a cheerful smile.
“Now then, Professor! If you could give us a brief intro—”
“I'M BYEOLYA!!”
KRRRAKOOOM!
The sheer volume of her voice sent the crowd scrambling to cover their ears.
“I hear a lot of parents showed up this time, hmm? I'm the one teaching your precious brats Deadly Poison Studies, and let me tell you—they're an absolute mess! You're supposed to raise your kids into actual human beings BEFORE shipping them off to Kizen! These little punks get a fat head and start talking back, and—mmph! MMMPH!”
“Ahaha! So sorry, everyone!”
The host clamped a hand over Byeolya's mouth in a panic.
But the moment his palm made contact, a searing, fire-hot pain shot through it, and he tore his hand away with a shriek.
“Hey! Hands off, pal. Touch me wrong again and you'll really die, you hear?”
Byeolya glared at him. The host, not daring to show even a flicker of his pain, swallowed his tears in silence.
The truth was, Vice Principal Jane had originally been scheduled to preside over this second exam. Then, out of nowhere, Nephthys had barged in, whisked Jane away, and appointed an entirely new figure as examination official.
When asked why, she had simply said:
-Because it'll be fun!
Fun my foot! The host clawed at his hair. Veteran broadcaster or not, how on earth was he supposed to emcee alongside this lunatic of a woman?
“Oi, granny! What are you staring at?”
And now she was picking a fight with the audience.
The horrified host hastily blocked her path and threw out a question before things could escalate.
“My, my, Professor! What a truly beautiful outfit you have on today!”
“Hmph. At least somebody around here has eyes.”
Byeolya flashed a grin full of jagged, triangular shark teeth.
It was her brand-new uniform. She'd originally intended to show up to the official event in her trademark rags, and the academy's stylists had thrown themselves in her path, aghast.
Byeolya's body constantly vented poison straight out of her skin, which meant even normally worn clothing tended to rot into tatters within moments. Layering new clothes over the ruined ones, over and over again—that was how her ragged look had begun in the first place.
But these bandage artifacts vented the poison safely outward, and even if they tore, they regenerated on their own.
The stylists had coaxed her into wearing a black overcoat emblazoned with the Kizen crest on top of the bandage outfit, and Byeolya—perhaps moved by all that effort—had grudgingly allowed this much. Even though it already had holes punched clean through it.
“All right! All right! Now let's get you to your seat!”
The host desperately kept up a stream of chatter to keep Byeolya from brawling with the audience as he steered her toward the commentary booth.
She plopped down into her chair with a thunk! then stretched both legs straight out and slammed her boots up onto the table.
“PWAHAHA! Those sideburns of yours are killing me! Are they supposed to be lightning bolts?”
Byeolya cackled as she yanked on the host's lightning-shaped sideburns. He forced a jolly laugh and played it off as a scripted gag, but inside, he was weeping.
Nelly. Honey. This is how your husband earns a living, day after day.
Still, he was a professional through and through. With practiced control, he kept his emotions in check and fixed a smile on his face.
“Now, Professor! If you'd kindly explain this exam to our viewers!”
“Right, right!”
Byeolya raised her arm and snapped her fingers.
“Screens! Up!”
Fssshhhhaaaak!
A flurry of mana screens bloomed open above her head. It looked effortless, but beneath the stage, dozens of henchmen were sweating buckets as they hauled mana projectors into position.
“The theme of this BMAT is dungeon exploration!”
Every single screen displayed the image of a dark underground dungeon.
Traps with arrows flying across corridors, pits where spears erupted from the floor, giant boulders rolling down passage ways. And finally—a spiked log swinging down whole—and the crowd let out a collective, frightened gasp.
“Dungeons are riddled with every kind of horrific trap imaginable! Students will have to breach them through their own strength alone. There are four stages in total.”
The host jumped in smoothly.
“So then, this exam will hinge on the reasoning and quick thinking needed to pass through these traps unscathed, yes?”
“Stages one and two, maybe. See, the truth is, these traps are rigged to go off just about no matter what.”
“Rigged to go off no matter what?! What do you mean by that, Professor?”
Byeolya smirked and folded her arms.
“Show 'em stage three.”
The screen cycled, and an utterly empty, featureless space appeared.
“Th-that's a trap?”
“Yep.”
On the screen, a lone skeleton stood abandoned in the void—until it received a necromancer's command and began to run.
The moment it crossed the line marked in red—
KKWAKWAKWAKWAKWAKWAKWAKWA!
Hundreds of blades came flying in from every direction, embedding themselves into the floor. The skeleton sprinted in a blind panic until, at last, it was skewered by a spear and dropped. The blades piled up over its body like a mountain.
All across the stands, people covered their mouths or cried out in shock.
“Something like that, see?”
Byeolya shrugged.
The host's mouth flapped open and shut in disbelief—the difficulty was far, far beyond what he'd been briefed on.
“...You're not seriously telling me the students are being sent into places like THAT?”
“Uh, yeah? And stripped out of their Kizen uniforms while they're at it. Bare skin.”
Cries of outrage erupted from every direction. Some parents screamed their children's names at the top of their lungs in sheer panic.
“Too late now! All the kids have already signed their physical injury waivers and they're waiting in the staging rooms. Just sit there and cheer, why don't you.”
Just then, a noble with a bulging belly shouted down at her.
“Th-this is neither education nor anything of the sort! Pull my son out of there this instant!”
“Quite right! This has gone too far!”
As several noble parents rose in protest, Byeolya flipped them the middle finger.
“Shut your yaps and sit down.”
It was the audience, ironically, who found themselves flustered by her sheer audacity.
“Before the semester started, Kizen sent every one of you parents a letter, didn't they? About how this was a pre-thesis curriculum, how it'd be hell on earth, blah blah blah. It was all spelled out, and you all agreed. That's how I heard it.”
“B-but still...! We had no idea it would be THIS severe!”
“Had no idea? No idea? Oh sure—‘our darling boy attends Kizen,' all proud and loud about it, but you never once cared what kind of hell your own children would have to endure. You're not even fit to be called parents.”
The man's face turned crimson, his lips trembling. The host rushed to intervene with a stricken expression, but Byeolya just had to get one last word in.
“Besides, this isn't some backwater, and the safety measures are all in place, so zip it and watch. And above all—before they're your precious little children, they are necromancers of Kizen.”
Indeed, the seasoned parents with real standing were watching the whole spectacle with perfect calm. They knew very well that this was hardly the first time Kizen had pulled something like this.
“What a waste of my time.”
Byeolya propped her head up with one arm.
“Somebody tell them to get on with it.”
Simon had gone outside before dawn and, following the TAs' instructions, moved through a teleportation circle. From there, the entire student body had been transported by teleportation en masse.
There had been two or three more teleports after that, as far as he could tell. At one point, they'd even been moved with their eyes blindfolded by headbands.
When the order finally came to remove the blindfold, Simon found himself somewhere in a gloomy underground chamber lit by a single hanging bulb. Running his palm along the wall, he could tell it was an extraordinarily old place.
And across the room, an iron gate stood firm. It was a mechanism that could never be broken by force, and—perhaps to prevent Spirit Magic aspirants from escaping—dark magic wards had been layered over it as well.
At least they gave us the theme everyone expected.
The place practically radiated dungeon. Anyone could see it.
Simon hadn't studied any treasure-hunter knowledge like 'trap disarming.' Every scrap of time he had, he'd poured into making the new techniques he'd learned this past while completely his own.
Kind of a shame, now that it's actually come to this. Maybe I should've studied up after all.
[KHAHAHA! There was no time to waste learning useless parlor tricks, boy!]
[In the end, everything comes down to real strength! Have faith in the effort you've poured in until now!]
Peer's voice drifted up from inside Simon's jacket—a newly rebuilt avatar of Peer, modified so that Magnus could not detect it.
Yes, Peer. More than that—I'm glad we're together again!
[Kheheheheh!]
He'd been carrying a vague sense of emptiness all this while, but with Peer rejoining him, at least he had someone to talk to again.
Simon sat down and waited, and a short while later, a broadcast echoed down from the ceiling of the isolation room.
“This is Operations Command. We will now explain the rules of the 2nd Comprehensive Dark Magic Evaluation.”
At those words, Simon sprang to his feet, ears straining. The mana projector in the ceiling hummed to life and cast a screen onto the front wall.
“The object before you on this screen is the final target you must destroy.”
The final target was a Holy Chalice displayed on a lavish pedestal. It seemed the exam had been themed around destroying the Holy Chalice of Efnel, in preparation for the Grand Priest match.
“Naturally, the journey to destroy the Holy Chalice will be perilous. Once you have fought your way through countless obstructions and destroyed the Chalice, the exam will end. Your rank will be determined by the time it takes you to do so. Next—here is the button that opens the doors.”
On the screen, a red buzzer was shown mounted on a wall.
“Press this buzzer, and the door leading to the next area will open. That is all. Good luck to you all.”
[Hm. That's the whole briefing?]
Simple enough.
Press the buzzer and the door opens. Keep pressing forward like that, destroy the Chalice, and it's over.
As always, the rules were simple—but the exam itself would be anything but easy.
No Kizen uniform, though. That's a bit unnerving.
Simon and every other student had been handed nothing but a bare gym uniform with no protective magic woven into it whatsoever. Compared to the first-semester curriculum, the danger level across the board had climbed dramatically.
“The exam will now begin.”
With a heavy, grinding rumble, the iron gate barring the way began to rise.
All right.
Steeled and ready, Simon walked toward the opening gate.
Let's do this.