Chapter 5: Chapter 5. Entrance Exam (2)

Finished.

After writing the answer to the last question on my answer sheet, I set down my pen.

That really wasn’t easy.

Every question was quite advanced.

The very first one had been about The Lament of Partoas, a literary classic from two thousand years ago.

Fortunately, I had read it once, three years earlier.

If I hadn’t, it would have taken me ages just to understand what it was talking about.

The rest of the questions were all written in Standard Scholarly Language, too… Even understanding each question was difficult.

The last question had been particularly hard.

It was written in the traditional Standard Scholarly Language used long ago, rather than its modernized form.

The grammar itself was the same, but the articles and prepositions were incredibly complicated, so it had taken time to read.

I couldn’t understand it straight off as I read.

With that thought, I looked up.

I wanted to check how much time I had left.

“…?”

I couldn’t believe my eyes.

The exam was supposed to last an hour… but not even ten minutes had passed.

Is that all the time that’s gone by?

That was strange.

If the questions could be answered in ten minutes, surely they wouldn’t give us an hour.

Could some of my question paper be missing?

Perhaps it didn’t end at question ten… Perhaps there were actually twenty or thirty questions?

If so, I needed to tell the proctor right away.

A quick glance around showed that the other students didn’t seem to have finished yet.

No, wait.

The answer sheet ended at question ten.

With all that blank space at the bottom, there probably wasn’t another sheet.

What on earth is going on?

While I was puzzling over what to do,

the proctor looked my way.

“You there, number 321. What’s wrong?”

Apparently, the sight of me sitting still with my pen down had caught the proctor’s attention.

“Why aren’t you working on the questions?”

“I’ve written answers up through question ten.”

I chose those words deliberately.

If there were more questions after ten, the proctor would tell me to answer those as well.

“What?”

But the reaction wasn’t what I had expected.

“You’ve answered all ten questions?”

“…?”

The students around me flinched along with the proctor.

If we hadn’t been in the middle of an exam, they would all have turned to stare at me.

“Is there a problem?”

“No, it’s just…”

The proctor looked bewildered.

“Then… check your answers, at least.”

“Check them?”

“Go back over what you wrote and make sure your answers are correct.”

“Oh.”

I hadn’t thought of that.

Right. So when you take an exam, you’re supposed to check whether your answers are correct after you finish the questions.

Since this was the first exam I had ever taken, the thought hadn’t occurred to me.

That’s why they give us a whole hour… so we can check everything thoroughly.

I went back to the first page to review my answers.

Perhaps I had taken it too lightly because it was a work I already knew.

I would have to read it more carefully and make sure my answer was correct.

All right. Let’s be thorough.

My goal was an average score.

If I didn’t want to fall behind the other students, who were used to taking exams, I would have to keep checking right to the end.

---

After the first session ended,

I was quite worn out from fifty minutes of checking my answers.

So I took out a book to relax.

Mathematics is next. I should read something on mathematics.

I had bought the book by setting aside some of the travel money Professor Kaisel had given me.

Of course, reading it now wouldn’t make much difference to my score… but I thought reading would put me at ease.

“Hey.”

Just then,

a boy with a somewhat large build approached me.

“I’m Monark, son of Duke Orson. You’re Eriol Valencia, aren’t you?”

“…That’s right.”

I had seen his face somewhere before.

Had he been on the boat yesterday?

“Did you really answer all ten questions?”

“What are you talking about?”

“Don’t play dumb! You told the proctor you’d answered all ten before even ten minutes had passed!”

Everyone around us turned to look.

“How could you possibly answer all ten questions in ten minutes?!”

“…”

“Did you… know the questions in advance?”

When I didn’t answer, murmurs spread around us.

“Can’t answer, can you? Looks like I was right. Professor Kaisel is your uncle, so you got the questions through him, didn’t you?”

Monark kept ranting, snorting through his nose.

He seemed thoroughly worked up.

“Why aren’t you saying anything? Go on, say something! You’ve got a guilty conscience, haven’t—”

“Hey.”

I cut him off with a cold retort.

“You’re interrupting my reading. Piss off.”

“Wh-what?”

I hated having my reading interrupted.

But I didn’t think that justified being openly rude to someone.

When Senia and Kane had spoken to me yesterday, I had answered as politely as I could.

Someone picking a pointless fight like this, though… I had no reason to be courteous to him.

“If you suspect cheating, report it to the academy through the proper channels. Stop pestering me.”

“You little…”

I opened The World Explained Through Mathematics—Complete Edition to read it again.

I had made it clear I didn’t want to deal with him any further, but Monark apparently had no intention of backing off.

“Hey…!”

Eyes wide with fury, Monark reached for me.

Surely he wasn’t going to resort to violence in the exam room?

“All right, that’s enough.”

But at that moment,

a hand reached out from nowhere and caught Monark by the wrist.

“I don’t know what’s upset you, but you can’t go hitting people. We’ve only finished the first session. Do you want to get thrown out already?”

“Urgh…”

Monark flinched when he saw who had hold of his wrist.

It was Kane Trigger… the boy who had beaten up the terrorists yesterday.

“Sit down and get ready for the second session. All right?”

“A-all right.”

In the end, Monark slunk back to his seat.

A moment ago, he had been so furious he was ready to hit me… but the sight of Kane’s face seemed to have done wonders for his anger management.

“Eriol, how did the first exam go?”

“How did you know I was here?”

“I came out to use the bathroom, and I heard your voice from this room.”

“You’ve got good ears.”

I hadn’t been speaking particularly loudly. Did the Trigger family train their hearing, too?

“Grateful I helped you out, right? You owe me one.”

“I never asked for help.”

“Heh heh heh. What should I ask our dear Eriol for?”

“Listen when people talk.”

“Oh, let’s have lunch together after the exam. How about it?”

“…”

He had helped me, after all. I couldn’t very well turn him down flat.

Reluctantly, I nodded.

“Come here when the exam’s over, then.”

“Great! Senia’s taking hers in the same room as me, so I’ll bring her too!”

“…”

It seemed I wouldn’t be getting any reading time after the written exams.

“So, how was the first exam? Think you did well?”

“Well enough.”

“I answered seven questions. There really wasn’t enough time.”

“…”

Was there actually something strange about my answering ten questions in less than ten minutes?

I began to wonder, but kept my mouth shut.

---

The mathematics exam in the second session was a little harder than the first exam.

It required mathematical reasoning, which took a while.

Still, I managed to answer every question within the hour. I had plenty of time to check my answers, too.

The third and fourth sessions went much the same way… and at last, the written exams were over.

“Hey, Eriol!”

“Hello, Mr. Eriol.”

Kane and Senia came to find me as promised.

I would have liked to run away, but I had given my word. There was no helping it.

“It’s past two now, right? I’m hungry. Let’s get something quick.”

“What are we having?”

“I spotted a hot dog stand on the way here.”

Kane led the way, and Senia and I followed.

“Did your exams go well, Mr. Eriol?”

“Fairly well, thank you.”

“Oh, you don’t have to be so formal with me. I’m only sixteen.”

Sixteen was quite young for someone entering the academy.

“Please, you can speak casually with me.”

“All right. But you can just call me Eriol, too.”

“Thank you. I’m actually not used to people being so formal with me.”

The Artian family was a distinguished house, famous for its swordsmanship… Why wouldn’t she be used to being addressed politely?

“I’m actually aiming for the top class.”

“The top class?”

“Yes. My parents ordered me to come home unless I got into it…”

“…”

It sounded as though her circumstances were complicated.

“Apparently, you need an average of at least seventy across all subjects to get into the top class. But I only managed about eight of the ten questions on each exam… so I think it’ll be close.”

“…”

I had answered all ten questions in every subject… Apparently, that wasn’t normal.

“How many did you answer, Eriol?”

“Well…”

“Oh, here it is!”

Up ahead, Kane raised a hand and called to us.

“The smell of those sausages grilling was so good, it caught my attention. Let’s eat.”

Come to think of it, he had said he’d eaten a hot dog before boarding the boat yesterday, too.

Was he particularly fond of them?

“I’ve never had a hot dog.”

“Wh-what?”

Kane nearly fell over.

“What have you been doing all your life without ever eating a hot dog?”

“They didn’t sell them where I lived.”

As far as I knew, this sort of food was only sold in cities.

The Count of Valencia’s lands were rather rural, so newfangled food like this hadn’t reached them yet.

“Eriol, what are you? One of those sheltered young ladies in novels who’s never even had a snack out on the street?”

“Well, I’ve never had a snack out on the street.”

“A-actually, neither have I…”

Beside me, Senia blushed and raised her hand.

“Wow, you two really have led sheltered lives. Right, that settles it. Hot dogs and soda are on me today. Eat all you want!”

With that hearty declaration, Kane began ordering whatever he pleased.

We took the hot dogs and sodas he had ordered for us to a nearby park to eat.

“Well? Good, right?”

“It’s delicious. I’ve never had anything like this. The drink has such an unusual taste, too, with those little bubbles popping in my mouth…”

“What about you, Eriol?”

“You can hold it in one hand, so I could eat it while reading.”

“Oh, come on, man…”

It actually tasted pretty good.

It didn’t seem particularly balanced from a nutritional standpoint, but having one now and then should be fine.

“The written exams are done… All that’s left is this afternoon’s aptitude test.”

“Oh, that’s right.”

The aptitude test.

It was a test to determine which area of magic you had an aptitude for.

It was only called a test; there weren’t any questions to answer. Apparently, all you had to do was undergo an examination using the academy’s special equipment, and the results came out automatically.

“To be honest… I still don’t really understand this whole aptitude thing. How can a person’s aptitude be limited to just one thing?”

“Hmm, good question…”

“Strictly speaking, the technical term is ‘spiritual origin.’”

I spoke as I gathered up the wrapper from my finished hot dog.

“According to the theory of spiritual origins, a human soul consists of only a single concept when it first comes into being. As it develops, it grows into a soul with a human personality, but that original concept is said to remain deep within it.”

“Oh…”

“Since magic draws in part on human spiritual power, the idea is that you can achieve better results by identifying your spiritual origin and training in magic that aligns with it.”

“I sort of get it, but I sort of don’t.”

Kane tilted his head.

“Twenty-four spiritual origins have been identified so far. Generation, diffusion, convergence, stasis, strengthening, weakening, acceleration, severing, summoning… There are all sorts.”

“Oh, I hope I have an aptitude for strengthening. I hear it has the greatest affinity with magical swordsmanship.”

“I’m hoping for acceleration. I think it would work well with my family’s magic.”

“You can still train in a type of magic even if you don’t have the aptitude for it, so you don’t need to let that limit you too much.”

The academy didn’t divide its classes by aptitude, either. Nor were there any courses open only to students with particular aptitudes.

Even so, the academy examined every new student’s spiritual origin… probably because it wanted to gather as much detailed information on its students as possible.

“What aptitude are you hoping for, Eriol?”

“There isn’t anything in particular.”

I tossed my neatly folded wrapper into a nearby trash can as I answered.

“I just hope it’s a good one.”

The results would determine what kind of magic I focused on studying from now on.

I had just told them not to let their aptitudes constrain them, but I wanted to train as efficiently as possible, so I intended to learn magic in a way that suited mine as closely as I could.

What spiritual origin would I have?

The results… would shape my life at the academy.