Entrance Exam (1)
Entrance Exam (1)
The academy was both familiar and somehow strange today.
"Exam numbers 100235 through 101460, please take the practical exam at Albreum Hall 2!"
"Excuse me, how do I get to this building?"
"Marking pens for sale! Five donghwa each!"
The campus bustling with applicants was a rare sight, seen only once a year.
Just last year, I had only watched this scene as if it had nothing to do with me, but now my heart pounded at the fact that I had become part of the crowd.
I calmed my breathing and headed for the Lubter Liberal Arts Hall.
I tried to head there.
"Hey! You look really weird!"
A high-pitched, squeaky voice smacked me in the back of the head.
Turning around, I saw some little runt staring me down. She was draped in an ill-fitting robe and, to top it off, was carrying a bag so large it seemed like it would topple her over backward.
With so many people around, I figured she must be talking to someone else and was about to continue on my way.
"Are you ignoring me right now?"
The kid scurried over and landed right in front of me with a thud.
I hadn't had many proper meals since landing in this body either, so my growth was on the slower side. The fact that a girl who was a full head shorter than me was shooting off casual banmal out of nowhere left me speechless.
"What's with the color of your eyes?"
She was a hopelessly rude kid. I shot back immediately.
"What's with your height?"
"Ever seen a dwarf before?"
"I saw the height and thought you were a kid. Who'd guess you were a dwarf? And I heard dwarves went extinct a long time ago."
"Nope? I'm alive and well right here, aren't I?"
"Hey, little one, did you get lost? There's a guide over there, so you can ask them to help find your parents. Our brave little one can do it, right?"
"Hey, you! That's racial discrimination─!!"
She looked like a child to anyone. Though, since she knew a difficult term, she might have been like me—someone whose appearance didn't match their actual age.
I wondered if dwarves were a long-lived race....
I had no idea. When I studied Continental History, it had only said they were extinct; the book hadn't listed things like lifespans.
Ultimately, I privately concluded that this kid was just a short squirt who admired dwarves.
"I'll have you know I'm an applicant. Once I pass this time, I'm gonna show the jerks back home who made fun of my height."
"Alright, good luck with that."
I needed to enter the exam hall in the best condition possible, and I couldn't afford to waste my energy now. Humoring the little runt, I hurriedly escaped all the way to the liberal arts building.
But why was she following me?
"You still haven't answered my question from earlier! I've never seen yellow eyes before. Where are you from?"
"South Korea."
"Is that a country?"
"Yeah."
"What kind of country name is that? You're lying to me, aren't you!"
Seeing her act like that made me want to give her a knuckle sandwich right then and there, but laying hands on someone I wasn't close with went against my life principles. Besides, I had no hobby of hitting children to begin with.
I decided to just think of her as a tomboy who'd latched onto me for a moment. Today was the most important day of my life, more than ever before, and I couldn't afford to waste mental energy on some weird little squirt.
"Come to think of it, we're in the same exam building, aren't we? Oh, but you said you had to go that way? I guess our exam rooms are different. Anyway, good luck on the written part!"
The unidentified little squirt and I split at the midway point and entered our respective exam rooms.
I hadn't expected her to be a real test-taker.
I pulled out my admission ticket from my hip pack. The ticket contained not only my exam number but also information on the procedures for the entrance exam.
The entrance exam started with the written portion. The practical came next.
Tillet Academy's written exam was notoriously difficult. The rumors clearly weren't unfounded, because when I first saw the practice problem book Professor Herlein had brought, I had wondered if it was even possible to solve all of it within the time limit.
To exaggerate a little, the Suneung looked like child's play in comparison. That sense of crisis, rather, had been the driving force that allowed me to study diligently.
Anyway, it was a prestigious school where prodigies from across the world gathered. If the questions weren't set at a certain difficulty, they'd fail to distinguish the cream of the crop.
I thought it would be nice to have some Woohwangcheongsimwon at a time like this. I was so nervous I was going insane.
With trembling hands, I matched my exam number against the desk numbers and looked for my seat.
Several examinees had entered the exam room before me. Most of them were clustered in small groups. Two among them stood out the most.
One male student, and one female student.
The male student had long ears. An 'Oh' of admiration escaped my mouth before I knew it.
Was that really an elf?
Ah, we made eye contact.
Perhaps my stare proved burdensome, as the elf student also began staring right back. His complexion looked a bit poor, so he had probably overdone it the day before.
Considering my current condition, I probably had a similar look on my face. As expected, cramming was bad for the body.
After a brief staring contest, the male student averted his gaze first. My eyes then shifted to the girl across the room.
She looked like a young lady from a respectable family with no particular distinguishing features. If I had to pick a characteristic, her short red hair and crimson eyes were about it. That was all, but she looked somehow familiar, so my gaze naturally drifted toward her.
She met my eyes and smiled faintly.
"Lady Rote, what's wrong?"
"Nothing."
Right. If she was that pretty, it made sense she'd have a lot of friends around her.
I stopped sizing up the competition and prepared for what I had to do.
As I took out my writing tools and read my summary notes, a few students glanced over and whispered. If they had just been simple water-cooler chatter, I wouldn't have cared, but the fact that the sounds carried all the way to me was the problem.
"Who's that? I've never seen yellow pupils before."
"She must be from the Gold-Eye Tribe."
"That race that's even harder to meet than High Elves or Vampires? Seriously?"
True. If it was their first time seeing one, that kind of reaction was only natural.
"Have you heard the legend about the Gold-Eye Tribe? They say they never forget anything they study once. She'll probably ace the written part."
"It's just a legend, right? And the Gold-Eye Tribe can't use magic. Even if she gets a perfect score here, she'll just screw up the practical and head straight home."
"She can't even use magic without a magical device? How pitiful...."
"Then failing the practical is basically guaranteed. She'll fail anyway, so why did she even apply?"
Please. I wished they wouldn't start throwing psychological warfare at us on our first meeting, guys.
My head went blank for a moment from the unexpected mental attack, but compared to the harsh verbal abuse I used to hear from Professor Haspelt in the past, this level felt like a child's tantrum, which made me feel considerably better.
"Lady Rote, what do you think will show up on the Basic Magic Theory this time?"
"I'm not sure. I don't think it'll deviate much from the past exams."
"That's just another way of saying it's still hard...."
"I envy you, Lady Rote. At least you'll get all the difficult questions from the fire-element magic sections right. My aptitude is water, so I just can't do those no matter how hard I try...."
"You've worked hard so far. Cheer up, you can pass."
Time flowed on even as the applicants chattered. The moment the proctor entered, the room fell silent.
The girls who had been more or less badmouthing me while looking my way sat down one by one. The elf boy and the red-haired, crimson-eyed girl also took their seats on either side of me.
Turning my head to the left, the elf male student looked at me with a bewildered expression before quickly averting his gaze.
Turning my head to the right, the female student toyed with her pen with an expression that seemed full of composure.
Based purely on appearances, both people on either side of me looked like they would pass. It wasn't that I believed in physiognomy, but there were always those kids you just looked at and thought, 'That kid looks like a model student.'
Probably every exam room had a few kids like this. No, since it was the world's best academy, maybe all the applicants were like this.
The thought that I had to rank within the top few hundred, overtaking dozens of truckloads of prodigies, was a huge burden. On top of that, my seat was in the absolute center, making it an even more unstable position spatially.
Somehow, even the seating arrangement wasn't on my side.
**
Tillet Academy's written exam consisted of four subjects in total.
Common Language, Mathematics, Continental History, and Basic Magic Theory.
If compared to the Suneung, it was the equivalent of Korean, Math, Korean History, and Science Exploration combined.
Each subject was worth a maximum of 100 points, summing up to 400 points. Since the practical was worth 100 points, just as Professor Herlein had said, Tillet was a school that placed a higher weight on the written portion.
If anything, I was grateful. It meant that as long as I didn't completely bomb the practical, the written part could cover for it.
I wasn't even hoping for a scholarship. This was a matter of life and death.
It was a question of whether I'd keep getting beaten by the illegal slaver who worked me to the bone... and a question of whether I'd be sold off to the imperial family to become the exclusive plaything of the golden bloodline. If I could just solve that problem, what couldn't I do?
Right. If they'd just let me pass, I'd cartwheel all the way to campus every single day.
"As announced beforehand, the exam will proceed for 4 hours. Leaving midway is not permitted except in emergencies, so if anyone needs to use the restroom, please do so now."
During tests like a certified English exam, there was an unspoken rule that applicants rushed out en masse the moment the proctor said something like that. The world was the same everywhere.
"We will now begin checking exam numbers."
One proctor and two assistant proctors walked around the exam hall to verify identities. Once every admission ticket had been confirmed, a thick pile of test sheets was passed over from the front along with the answer sheets.
I took one heavy copy and passed the rest back.
"Please check your test booklets for defects. Once you have verified there are none, signify that there are no issues by placing your hands on your knees and looking straight ahead at the proctor. We will not accept defect complaints during the exam, so if there is a printing error, please inform a proctor beforehand."
Only silence hung over the exam room. I didn't need to look around to know where the students' gazes were directed.
Tick, tick, tick.
8 o'clock sharp. The moment the second and minute hands shared a disgusting morning kiss.
"We will now commence the 1024th Tillet Academy Written Entrance Exam."
"You may flip your test booklets over now!"
Rustle!
The sound of dozens of sheets of paper rubbing together shattered the sunken atmosphere of the exam room.
I uncapped the marker for the answer sheet and started with the language section.
The time limit was 240 minutes. Within that, I had to clear 200 questions across all four subjects.
It was a true time attack. If I couldn't manage my time properly, a high score would remain a distant dream.
Just because someone showed excellent results in research didn't guarantee they'd do well on exams. There was a subtle yet enormous difference between simply solving a problem and solving it within the time limit.
Doing well on a test required a combination of training and know-how. Practicing with a timer, and the process of giving myself feedback afterward on why I hadn't been able to solve something within the time limit. Self-correction was a specialty of mine.
Flutter—.
After finishing the language section, my mind felt much calmer. I decided to skip Math and start with History.
Compared to the language section with its many trap choices, Continental History was set much more easily. At least, it was at the level where I could pick the answer as soon as I saw it.
In any case, there were a lot of problems that were basically free points if you had memorized everything well. It felt rewarding to see the sleepless nights I had spent reading boring history books finally pay off. It felt good.
By the time I finished Math, small sighs escaped from mouths here and there. Some students had made a mistake on their answer sheet and were even asking to replace it at this late stage.
There was just over an hour and a half left. The only remaining subject now was Basic Magic Theory.
Even though it was called Magic Theory, what they focused on was the basics of Elemental Magic.
Most people here received the blessing of one of the Four Great Spirits, so the elemental magic they could use without resorting to a scroll was limited to exactly one type.
If the person had red eyes, it was fire; blue eyes, water.... And so on.
Nevertheless, the basic mechanism for casting spells of the four elements wasn't all that different.
That was why Basic Magic Theory was 'basic' Magic Theory. They mainly tested on parts common to all four elements, and if there was a problem that singled out a specific attribute, it was likely a circuit problem that students of other attributes could also solve.
[11. Choose the component that produces the highest output when placed at point 3 in the following circuit. (0.8 points)]
Something like that.
Because I knew the experimental data, I knew what the approximate value was. There was no need to think too deeply about it; it was number 5.
"10 minutes remaining."
Thanks to the experience I had gained from experimenting and researching for a long time, I saved time. Still, it was a bit tight.
After checking that I hadn't made any marking mistakes, I flipped to the last page.
It was a rule that a killer question was set on the last page of every exam. You could solve it if you had time to spare, and in reality, not solving it didn't affect whether you passed all that much.
But because I wasn't sure how badly I'd screw up the practical, I had to attempt every possible question. Since I had no more problems left to solve anyway, I at least had plenty of time to read it.
My eyes quickly scanned the problem statement.
[50. The following is a top-grade Magic Stone called a <Transistor>. Assume its characteristics are as follows. In the intermediate Fire Magic circuit below, where must the Transistor be placed to amplify and adjust the output section from 50 Sieverts to between 70 Sieverts? Select all correct answers. (4 points)]
My brain froze for a moment. The important thing was when that freeze broke.
"Five minutes remaining."
Kleis, that bitch.