The Second Practical Exam
“Ugh, aaah! When is the prep going to be done?!”
“It’s almost finished. Stop fretting and just wait.”
While Joseph traded blows with the golem head-on, Kaede’s unique ability unfurled beneath her feet. Shadows stretched long and thin; darkness swallowed her body until she melted completely into the gloom.
“Good. Everyone else, keep the golems’ eyes off us.”
The students opened fire with whatever ranged weapons they carried, peppering the golem from every angle.
“Artia, raise your barrel eight degrees. We’re not aiming for the core—we’re going for the eyes. Buying time is the whole point.”
“Ah—got it!”
“Turk, two steps left!”
“Haaah…! Th-that thing can attack at range too?!”
“It’s a one-shot, so don’t panic. Nice reaction, by the way. Ah—one step back.”
“Urgh…!”
“Now! Dive in! It just sacrificed an arm joint to throw that attack—if you can take a whole leg, even better.”
I directed the students from the front, analyzing the monster’s movements from every possible angle. Reading its real-time motions, calculating the optimal counter, and feeding the information to the others drained a surprising amount of mental energy. Even when the data arrived instantly, people still struggled to act on it at once. But when the team’s chemistry clicked the way it did now, heroes could process sensory information that far exceeded ordinary human limits. Thanks to that, the students slowly pressed the golem despite their inferior weapons.
“Whoa, this is actually working…! When I first heard the plan I thought it was useless…!”
“You think a monster doesn’t die if you put a bullet through its skull? Death is death. The hard part is just getting the bullet in there.”
Most of the students were using armor-piercing rounds or explosive-tipped firearms—hardly ideal against a C-class monster. At this tier a creature’s natural carapace shrugged off the majority of conventional gunpowder weapons. Still, for stalling, it was more than enough.
“Kaede. When I give the signal, come up.”
No answer came, but the shadow pooled beneath the golem rippled faintly. That was enough to tell me she was still inside it.
“Jack, mind activating your unique ability?”
“Easy enough.”
The student who had been hurling dagger-bombs triggered his power, and the world went black. Total blackout. Every scrap of light that had been leaking into the building vanished; the domain of shadow expanded in an instant.
Kuuuung—
The golem’s twin eyes swiveled, searching. One moment the place had been bright; the next it was pitch dark. Even a golem would find that unsettling. It possessed no special sensory organs beyond the ordinary, which worked entirely in our favor.
“Kaede!”
“Hup…!”
The instant the signal dropped, Kaede erupted from the shadows right in front of the golem’s mana stone. Startled, the creature stomped in a belated attempt to shake her off, but she had already driven too deep. Twin daggers slammed into its chest; the mana stone began to radiate searing heat.
If Joseph and Kaede—who had been buying time right under its nose—were eliminated here, the professors would never give them credit. I had already accounted for that.
Kaede threw herself flat; Joseph’s body was sucked into the same shadow a heartbeat later. The two figures who had stood before it vanished. The golem frantically tried to cancel the detonation, but the mana runaway could not be stopped.
In the end—
KWA-BOOM—!
The explosion tore the golem apart, scattering its body into rubble.
“We got it!”
“Woooah!”
“That was actually easy?!”
While the students cheered, I left the control room with the other assistants and descended to the floor.
“Everyone did well.”
“Thank you for your hard work!”
“Let me check if anyone’s hurt.”
I walked naturally toward Joseph and Kaede, who sat gasping on the ground. Melting into shadow was brutally taxing; even though Kaede had used the ability for less than ten seconds, she looked utterly spent.
“You all right? Drink this.”
“Ah—thank you.”
I handed her an energy drink, then rose. It was time to move on to the next exam.
“W-wait a second!”
“Hm?”
Joseph’s voice stopped me. I turned. He looked exhausted overall, yet a faint smile still lingered on his face as he met my eyes.
“S-so… how about it? The phone number?”
“Ah?”
Right. I had promised that.
“Ah, yes. I did say I’d give you my number, didn’t I?”
“Th-then…!”
“But what a shame. I said I’d hand it over if you landed the final blow on the monster.”
Joseph’s expression crumpled at once. Fair enough—he had taken the hardest role as bait, holding the creature in place, only to walk away empty-handed.
Still, I do feel a little sorry for him…
I should give him something.
“I’ll tell you my name instead.”
“Your name?”
I turned away, glancing back over my shoulder with a smile.
“Seo-hyun Wittelsbach. Oh, and one more thing—if you manage to get into the academy, come to the address I’ll email you at nine o’clock on the first Saturday. You won’t regret it.”
“Wittelsbach?”
Joseph tilted his head at the strangely familiar name. Then something clicked; he lunged after me.
“W-wait! If it’s Wittelsbach—!”
“See you~!”
He flung open the training-hall door a second too late. Seo-hyun was already gone. The space was wide open; an ordinary body should never have slipped his sight so cleanly. He had no idea how she had managed it.
“Haa…”
In the end he never got the number. Yet a moment later he remembered what she had said.
“She’ll send the address by email…”
Still, he had made contact. That counted as a win, didn’t it?
While he thought that, Kaede stared at the scrap of paper Seo-hyun had tucked into the drink she handed over.
“She wants me to come with Joseph to the address she emails… What is she thinking…?”
That idiot whose brain lived in his lower half might not have noticed, but the presence rolling off that girl had been anything but ordinary. Her raw combat power looked civilian—no, worse—yet Kaede’s instincts screamed that something was hidden beneath the surface.
“…I should dig up some information.”
Seo-hyun Wittelsbach, was it? With skill like that, there had to be a file or two floating around.
“Maybe I should ask the organization?”
Leviathan, one of the two powers that split the underworld, would surely have something on her.
After finishing the meal I headed for the second practical exam grounds. Calling it an “exam grounds” felt almost wrong. The place was indistinguishable from a vast national park. The thought that tens of thousands of applicants would be tested here made my heart race.
Master, I’ve uncovered some rather useful information.
“What kind of information?”
Analysis of nearby computer signals shows approximately ten thousand unmanned military units staged around the perimeter of the national park.
“Hmm~”
I could already guess what they had prepared. Not that it concerned me.
“A few people are going to have a rough time.”
I stepped onto the exam grounds as I spoke. The screens guiding everyone were still looping commercials. Even Sirius Academy never seemed to have enough money; whenever the electronics weren’t needed for actual instruction they ran ads. Around the end of the fourth commercial the feed finally switched.
“Oh, it’s starting.”
Every student’s gaze locked onto the screens. A gray-haired man who looked like an academy instructor stood there reading from a script.
“Greetings, everyone. I am Joseph, here to explain the second practical examination. I will now go over the rules in detail.”
His tone sounded more like a teaching assistant than a full professor, yet no one pointed it out. Most of Sirius Academy’s faculty were former heroes; that rough-edged manner of speech had become common among them.
Joseph continued laying out the rules.
“The practical exam is divided into three tracks: Hero Department, Assist Department, and Military Department. We’ll start with the Hero Department.”
“Hero students earn points based on the mana quantity of the mana stones they obtain from monsters inside the exam grounds.”
“An F-class monster is worth 1 point, E-class 3 points, D-class 7 points, C-class 20 points, and the B-class monster at the center of the field is worth 100 points. You may hunt the monsters yourselves or simply take the stones from other students. Oh, and eliminating another student also awards 20 points.”
No student would be walking around empty-handed, so that 20 points was effectively a bonus on top of whatever stones they carried. Most applicants could solo an E-class monster; the rule was basically an open invitation to hunt one another.
“For the record, taking down an Assist or Military student is worth 10 points.”
“If that doesn’t appeal to you, there’s another option. Protecting an Assist student earns you (time protected) × 5 points.”
“The exam lasts six hours, so one person can net you up to 30 points—almost triple the elimination reward. It does require a serious time investment, though.”
“Ah—if the Assist student dies midway or you abandon the escort, every point you earned from them is confiscated and you lose an additional 7 points. Keep that in mind.”
“The top one thousand advance.”
“Now, Assist Department—you can earn points the same way as the Heroes by hunting monsters or other students… but with your combat ability that’s probably unrealistic.”
“Therefore you receive 1 point for every twenty minutes you survive. Additionally, if you successfully secure a Hero as your escort, you gain 20 percent of that Hero’s total score. Note that you may only have one Hero escort at a time.”
“Finally, Military Department.”
“You will be provided with unmanned military robots. Once the exam begins, maintain an encirclement formation and slowly drive the Heroes and Assists toward the center.”
“In simple terms, you’re the shrinking safe zone from a certain game. Thirty points per student eliminated. Easy, right?”
“Easy as hell!”
“Dedicated robots?! I never thought I’d live out my dream here!”
The Military students were visibly thrilled. Getting to pilot the unmanned combat robots they had only ever seen in comics—and hunt with them—was pure fantasy come true.
“All right, everyone—prepare for the practical exam.”
I strapped on my gear with a light heart and a smile. I could hardly wait for the chaos that was about to unfold.