At the Olivinus Conspectus, when Skyl knocked and stepped inside, the classroom had already been arranged as an examination hall. He was the only candidate, but there were no fewer than ten examiners.
Seeing an entire row of people in glintstone crowns seated at the proctors' table, Skyl felt as if he'd somehow wandered onto the set of a reality competition show. Those glintstone crowns were honestly pretty creepy.
Chief Instructor Nabler spoke in an unusually gentle voice. After all, it was hard to be strict with someone when he'd been treating you so well. He pointed toward the long desk in the center of the room. "You may begin. You have three hours for the theory exam."
Several of the other instructors chimed in as well. Their tones were remarkably casual, and some of them were practically hinting that they were willing to cut Skyl a little slack.
"Don't be nervous. Just answer as many as you can. These questions are drawn from a century's worth of material accumulated by the Conspectus, so there's no way anyone could finish the whole thing. You only need to complete ten questions. Seven correct answers means a passing grade. The written portion accounts for thirty percent of your final score."
The examination paper on the desk was a scroll nearly two inches thick. Once unrolled, it stretched ten or twelve feet across the desk. The questions themselves were all extremely short, yet the blank spaces provided for the answers were enormous. It reminded Skyl of those math exams where the shortest questions were inevitably the most terrifying.
Skyl hadn't bothered asking about the graduation examination rules beforehand, and he had come in completely cold. If these sorcerers had wanted to sabotage him, all they had to do was keep quiet and let him bury himself in the questions until he was mentally exhausted and completely rattled. There was still a practical spellcasting examination afterward, and wasting too much brainpower on the theory section would obviously leave him in poor condition for that.
"Thanks for the warning." Skyl smiled pleasantly, then casually added, "Dinner again tonight?"
"That'd be great!"
The instructors nodded eagerly before suddenly remembering that this was supposed to be a solemn examination hall. With portraits of the Academy's distinguished predecessors watching over them, they were administering an official assessment to determine the qualifications of the next generation. They promptly cleared their throats and adopted more dignified expressions.
"Begin answering. Don't waste your valuable time."
Today was examination day at the Academy, which meant that the instructors of the various Conspectuses were mostly free from their ordinary classes. Every officially recognized school had sent an instructor representative to the Debate Parlor so the examinations could be collectively supervised.
The representative of the Carian royal family was the last remaining Carian Knight. He normally stood guard outside the Grand Library, preventing anyone from disturbing Rennala, Queen of the Full Moon. Today, Rennala had sent him to attend in her place.
Every desk had been neatly arranged. Each seat held an examination scroll, two quills, a bottle of ink, a stick of charcoal, a wooden ruler, and a wooden compass.
Thops sat at the very edge of the proctors' section. His reputation and status matched the location of his chair rather perfectly.
Years ago, he too had been one of the candidates sitting along the sides of this room, scratching his cheek and the side of his nose with a quill while he thought, then bending over the desk and silently writing his answers.
Looking back, he could almost still see the ink staining his fingertips. Yet everything had changed since then.
There were two categories of candidates taking the examination. The first consisted of advanced apprentices who had already passed a Conspectus's graduation assessment but had not yet qualified as instructors. The second consisted of junior apprentices who had yet to pass the graduation assessment of any Conspectus. Naturally, the two groups received different examinations.
The junior apprentices were tested on general knowledge, while the advanced apprentices received far more specialized and difficult questions.
Thops kept anxiously staring toward the entrance.
Melina entered while pushing a wheelchair carrying his young apprentice, Moli. The little girl was still grinning cheerfully. She was probably the only person in the entire room who was smiling, looking like a little white rabbit that had somehow wandered into a pack of wolves.
Moli might have been the one taking the examination, but Thops was far more nervous than she was.
Many of Raya Lucaria's rules resembled those of a modern university. Just as schools had standards for final examination pass rates, the apprentices of a Conspectus were required to maintain a passing rate of at least sixty percent. If they failed to meet that threshold, the Academy would hold a public discussion to determine whether the Conspectus should be dissolved entirely.
The rule had been established by the Academy's earliest founders to restrict the unchecked growth of tiny Conspectuses and splinter schools. Otherwise, any advanced apprentice could simply hang out a shingle and declare himself the founder of a new school, and Raya Lucaria would have turned into the Wild West of competing magical traditions.
Still, the rule had undeniably improved the Academy's overall teaching standards.
When Millicent entered, she raised her head and looked toward the depths of the Debate Parlor.
She immediately noticed the cold gaze directed at her from the instructors' section.
It belonged to Botari, Chief Instructor of the Karolos Conspectus.
Glintstone crowns were modeled after the heads of the founders of their respective Conspectuses, their rigid faces resembling those of corpses. Anyone would have felt uncomfortable being stared at by a dead stone head like that.
Millicent knew Botari was planning something unpleasant. He would undoubtedly exploit every scrap of authority his position afforded him to make things difficult for her.
Still, with so many eyes watching, she doubted he could resort to anything too outrageous.
Millicent understood hatred. Far too many people in the Lands Between had grown numb to everything around them, to the point that hatred itself could almost be considered a precious emotion.
Skyl had even told her the story of Harry Potter and Severus Snape, so the present situation gave her a peculiar sense of déjà vu.
Of course, she was quite certain the professor across from her wasn't some lovesick old virgin secretly pining for her mother.
Before the examination began, the Chief Instructor of the Twinsage Conspectus rose and recited the Academy's ancient examination regulations.
The rules listed thirty different forms of cheating.
One of them involved concealing glintstone cheat sheets inside one's own body. Apparently, an alchemically constructed glintstone oscillator could encode a passage into a fixed-frequency vibration. Someone with sufficiently sharp senses could detect those vibrations and translate them back into written information.
Just hearing the explanation was enough to make the whole thing sound completely insane.
Millicent was deeply impressed. The way she looked at the sorcerers around her immediately changed.
One candidate beside her apparently couldn't endure that judgmental stare any longer and hurriedly defended himself.
"That was an extremely rare isolated case!"
"Before the examination begins, surrender every glintstone object currently in your possession. If any are discovered during an inspection while the examination is in progress, it will be treated as cheating and your qualification will immediately be revoked. Serious offenders will be expelled from the Academy. Consider yourselves warned."
Millicent carefully inspected her seat and the surrounding area. Only after confirming that there were no glintstone objects nearby did she finally relax.
Then she opened her examination scroll.
Only at that moment did she realize that the questions themselves were the real problem.
Not a single answer she had stayed up all night memorizing could be used.
These questions weren't from the old question bank at all.
She wasn't sure whether everyone else had received the same examination, though it was probably the case, because it wasn't long before she heard several candidates quietly sighing.
A private message from Thops arrived through the Silver Network.
[What's going on? Why does the atmosphere feel so strange?]
[They changed the questions,] Millicent replied.
Thops immediately turned toward the center of the instructors' section.
The representatives of the four major Conspectuses sat there in silence, motionless as statues.
"Oh God, Moli, please pull through."
Thops stared anxiously at his apprentice.
Moli picked up her quill and casually began writing. She looked so relaxed that she almost seemed to be doodling at random, which made Thops's heart climb straight into his throat.
Millicent stared at the unfamiliar examination scroll.
The words on the page seemed to stare right back at her.
While she hesitated, the person who came to mind was still Skyl.
Far away in another Academy building, Skyl was likewise seated behind a desk taking his written examination. His quill raced across the scroll so quickly that it seemed ready to throw sparks from the friction, answering questions at a speed that left the professors staring in disbelief.
They were separated by space, yet her thoughts remained tethered to him.
Just thinking about him brought a smile to her heart.
Millicent pulled herself together.
There was no reason to despair yet.
Every struggling student eventually mastered one miraculous skill capable of changing their fate, calculating their grade.
How many questions could she confidently score points on? How many points would that give her in total? How much more did she need to reach the passing line?
It was practically an instinct.
Ever since awakening the Spirit Sword, Millicent had successfully connected to the Silver Weave that very same night. By now, she could already be considered half a spellcaster, and she was capable of smoothly performing basic glintstone sorceries.
Her practical score therefore couldn't possibly be low.
Which meant that, theoretically, if she earned full marks on the practical examination, she could hand in a completely blank theory paper and still pass the assessment.
The instructor from the Karolos Conspectus watched her from the professors' section.
His expression might as well have been saying, I saw through you from the beginning. You're nothing but a cheating thief without any genuine ability. I don't even need some elaborate scheme to deal with you.
Millicent did not particularly enjoy the quiet satisfaction radiating from him.
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