Chapter 57
Chapter 57
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Translator: Ryuma
Chapter: 57
Chapter Title: Can You Solve It? (4)
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"What's this?"
All the students blinked in a daze.
The students staring at the bulletin board were young. Young they may be, but they were mages all the same. When faced with an unknown enigma, unraveling it was a mage's duty.
The students calmly assessed the situation.
Like proper mages, they organized their thoughts.
'What is this thing right in front of me?'
It was a test paper.
The midterm exam paper, no less, scheduled for next week.
'Then why is it posted here?'
They tossed the question around in their minds, but no answer came.
'Unknown.'
No matter how deeply they pondered, it was impossible to infer why the exam paper had been boldly plastered on the bulletin board.
"...".
They blinked.
Silence hung over the group of students.
Rip.
At that moment, someone reached out a hand.
They tore off one sheet of the test paper. The other students watching soon followed suit, reaching out to tear off their own sheets.
A spell had been cast on the papers so that each person could take only one. Soon, the students examined the sheets clutched in their hands.
"...".
Upon closer inspection, not all the problems were revealed. Out of a total of eight questions, only three had been made public.
Questions 6, 7, and 8.
The three problems stemmed from a single circuit diagram.
The first thing that caught their eyes was a circuit that filled an entire side of the page. The moment they laid eyes on it, the students were speechless. All the doubts they'd harbored until just now vanished cleanly.
It was beautiful.
It was the first time they'd seen a circuit this intricate.
It was nothing like the ones they'd drawn themselves.
'This isn't a circuit drawn by outlining an overall shape.'
If the circuits the students had drawn were towers carved from a large block of stone, this was a tower built brick by painstaking brick from the tiniest pieces.
The difference started with that level of precision.
Not a single element was overlooked; the completed circuit was like a work of art. Before the beauty born of perfection, the students fell silent.
But that silence didn't last long.
"Huh?"
Someone let out a puzzled voice. Then they read aloud the problem written on the back of the test paper.
"...Find the error in this circuit?"
Those words made everyone freeze stiff.
The students flipped to the back to check the problem, then looked back at the circuit.
'Find the error here?'
What lay before them was a circuit that had reached the realm of art. No matter how much they blinked and stared, they couldn't spot even the tiniest flaw.
And yet, there was an error here?
Finding it was the exam question?
The students stared blankly at the test paper. Even though staring wouldn't yield an answer, they all did it anyway.
Step, step.
At that moment, the sound of footsteps approached.
The click of shoes against the corridor floor rang out especially loudly in the silence.
"...".
The students turned at the steady footfalls. Their eyes met those of the approaching figure.
Ash-gray hair swayed gently.
Narrowed blue eyes gazed at the students.
Lania van Trias.
The professor who had earned infamy as Aphria's new nightmare.
She was dressed in her usual suit, but today there was no cape draped over her shoulders. Perhaps because the weather was warming up. She'd rolled up her sleeves without the cape.
"Hm?"
She tilted her head at the cluster of students. Her ash-gray hair cascaded with the motion.
"What are you all doing gathered here?"
At her words, the students' gazes naturally drifted to the papers in their hands.
"Ah."
Professor Lania nodded as if she'd roughly guessed.
"Looking at the academic notice?"
The students nodded along.
One of them spoke up.
"Um, Professor Lania. This is...".
"Yes, it's part of the midterm exam. The three highest-point questions, in fact."
"Th-then why post it on the academic notice...?"
Professor Lania gave a wry smile.
"There've been a lot of complaints that it might be too hard for you all to solve, so we've released them in advance like this."
...Wouldn't most people just change the questions in that case?
The doubt welled up to their throats, but the students quietly listened to the professor.
"Ah, it might be good for you to try solving them on your own... but I'm thinking of covering them in more detail next class. If I explain the solutions, wouldn't it make the exam a bit easier for you on the day?"
"...Pardon?"
"I handed out the test papers early in hopes you'd look them over once before class."
She flashed a faint smile.
"Wouldn't that be helpful to you all?"
Her smile left the students speechless.
What on earth was this? Not only handing them out early, but offering explanations too?
'Do people usually go that far?'
It was genuinely touching, but to the students' ears, it sounded a bit different.
Why reveal the exam questions early?
Why explain the solutions?
Because even after all that, the problems would still separate the wheat from the chaff. In other words, they were that insanely difficult.
"......".
The students silently stared at their test papers.
The bewilderment they'd felt moments ago was gone.
The words on the test paper now appeared entirely different in their eyes.
-I'll kill you.
It might as well have said that in bold letters.
"Then, see you in the next class."
With those words, Professor Lania leisurely departed. Her steps were as steady as ever. Her ash-gray hair swayed in the breeze.
The students watched her back.
Someone slapped their forehead with a smack and said,
"This is homework, right?"
A professor assigning the midterm as homework? Unbelievably, one existed. Right here, right now.
◇◇◇◆◇◇◇ 2.
"I want to climb a mountain."
Rak van Grace, from the North, loved training.
He'd entered the mage academy thanks to his talent for magic, but he trained his body without fail every single day.
-Muscles never betray you, young master.
-Strong muscles! Thick arms! Grip strength that can crush a troll's skull! To a warrior, muscles are your first friend and your oldest.
That's what the warriors had taught him.
He didn't look particularly burly, but Rak's forearms were hard as iron.
Rak took joy in that.
Having a strong body meant he could withstand even stronger body reinforcement spells.
To Rak, training was pure pleasure.
When vitality coursed through his body, he felt fulfilled.
"I want... to climb... a mountain."
Right now, though,
"A moun...".
"Please shut up, Rak."
the Northern heir sat in a cafe, blankly staring at the ceiling.
It had been a full week since his last training session. His body itched unbearably.
The reason was simple.
And right in front of him.
"...".
Rak gazed at the table with hollow eyes.
A pile of papers towered there. All of it was homework due by the end of the week.
"...Belnoa."
Rak called out to his rival sitting across from him.
"What."
"I think I studied hard."
"And?"
"I gave it my all. I studied until bedtime...! I did my homework. So why doesn't the pile ever shrink...!"
His voice brimmed with grievance.
Belnoa replied flatly.
"Because you're dumb."
"That's harsh."
"It's the truth."
"Too much, Belnoa...".
Belnoa shook her head at Rak's sighing form.
'Why did I come to a cafe with this guy?'
They were in the same class and both disciples of the Mage Tower Lord, so they often crossed paths. That led to overlapping assignments, and someone suggested doing them together, landing them here... but.
"Ughhhh...".
This barbarian warrior slumped over the table didn't seem helpful at all.
'What homework has him stumped?'
Belnoa glanced over the paper Rak was buried in. At the top of the page, the subject caught her eye.
Mana Trading Studies (Basics).
'...No wonder.'
Belnoa nodded silently.
She took a sip of her ordered coffee. The caffeine made her mind feel a bit sharper.
"...Black water."
Rak, watching her with glazed eyes, grabbed the coffee cup beside him.
Gulp, gulp.
He downed it in one go. Chewing the grounds at the bottom, he muttered,
"The black water is sweet... No syrup, but it's sweet... Why, I can't understand...".
Have I become an intellectual?
His feeble voice echoed through the cafe.
◇◇◇◆◇◇◇ 3.
The 4th Princess, Aila.
She stared ahead wearily. Her gaze fixed on the professor at the podium.
Lania van Trias.
The professor's outfit caught her eye first.
It was the suit Aila had painstakingly designed with the palace designers.
'She wears it well, which is nice...'
Lately, though, Aila hadn't been all that glad to see Professor Lania. It was largely due to the insane volume of assignments.
'How many hours did I sleep last night?'
The question popped into her mind.
Aila spread her fingers to calculate. Seeing the hours tally on one hand, she let out a hollow chuckle.
Like most students, Aila had been shedding bloody tears over the homework.
'Never imagined I'd pull all-nighters outside the royal family, here at Aphria...'
Even amid fierce power struggles, she'd always slept soundly. Perhaps life at Aphria was more grueling than at the palace.
Should she laugh or cry?
Musing on that, Aila glanced sideways.
"...".
Lately, with some professors taking classes, seats had opened up. A rare student sat beside her.
'Resti Eleanoa.'
That was the name, surely.
The ash-gray next Mage Tower Lord.
Scribble, scribble.
She was silently jotting notes. Aila peeked at them. Her eyes widened.
It was a solution.
To the nightmare test paper Professor Lania had distributed. Complex enough that she couldn't follow it... but clearly a solution.
"...Resti?"
"Yes?"
Resti turned to her at the call.
"Did you solve all of those?"
"...You mean this?"
"Ah, yes. That. The exam questions she handed out."
Resti shook her head.
"I didn't solve them all. Just barely managed one."
"...You solved one? That?"
I couldn't solve a single one in three days?
Aila stared at Resti in shock, but Resti herself seemed unsatisfied.
"I had plenty of time, but not finishing them is a shame. I wanted to try solving them once before hearing the explanations...".
It didn't sound like false modesty; she really thought that.
'Come to think of it, I'm second place... and Resti is first...?'
Was this the gap between 1st and 2nd?
No need to search far. The talent Aila sought for her future was right there.
Aila licked her lips.
"Resti."
"...Yes?"
"Let's be friends."
As she abruptly extended her hand and Resti tilted her head,
Dong, dooong.
the bell signaling the start of class rang out. Soon, Professor Lania at the podium spoke.
"Let's begin the lecture."
◇◇◇◆◇◇◇ Professor Lania kept her promise.
In the final class before midterms, she truly lectured on the exam.
"If you do it like this here...".
The blackboard was filled with solutions to the problems. The students blinked in a daze.
They'd absorbed something.
They'd understood something.
The explanations were clean, the solutions straightforward. Watching the professor breeze through the problems made it seem like they could solve them too.
But that feeling didn't last.
Tearing their eyes from the professor's solution to the test paper, they tried mimicking what she'd just taught... but.
'...How did it go here again?'
They hit a wall immediately.
The students felt helpless at the realization.
If only the problems were just hopelessly hard.
If they were truly unsolvable.
Problems that absurd wouldn't leave them feeling so powerless.
But after hearing Professor Lania's explanations, it was all familiar content. Nothing untaught was in the solutions.
"That'll do for today."
Lost in their daze, the class ended before they knew it. The students looked at their test papers.
The papers were filled with solutions.
During the lecture, they'd felt unity. Now, post-class, it was like being stranded on a lonely island.
"How was it?"
Professor Lania addressed the students, tapping the packed blackboard.
"Quite an effort went into these problems."
She looked immensely proud.
"Professor Rosel said they were good ones too. Just solving them once should help you all a lot."
She smiled prettily as she spoke.
Her smile was beautiful. A subtle bloom that matched her refined features.
There was no malice in that smile.
It brimmed with pure goodwill, hoping to help the students.
Yet, as always,
good intentions aren't always taken as such. In the students' eyes, that smile looked entirely different.
"Now you should be able to solve them, right?"
-If you can solve it, then do it.
The students felt fear from that smile.
◇◇◇◆◇◇◇ Author's Note
*Aiming for 5 updates per week.
Breaks are usually Mondays and Thursdays.