Hours later, Ivan was back in his lodge. They had finished all of the written assessment today, the physical assessment was tomorrow and the squad assessment would be held the day after.
Though, Ivan was surprised that Team formation had been included as a written assessment and only had a single question that Ivan found quite strange, or rather, he found it interesting.
…..
When facing a foreign environment with an unknown number of enemies, what is the best team formation to approach the situation?
…..
The reason why Ivan found this question interesting was that they didn't specify whether the enemies were magic beasts or humans. But considering that almost everything that students were learning in the academy was to prepare them for killing beasts, the answer to this should be obvious.
Or that was what they wanted the students to think.
Ivan shook his head, no need to think about it now. As a former General, he had written what he believed would be the best approach for such a situation. It was up to the teachers to have enough insight to understand what he wrote.
Thinking to this point, Ivan entered a meditative position and started absorbing.
Some hours later. Inside a large office that looked like a meeting room, a bunch of people sat around a massive table with tall stacks of papers in front of each of them.
These were the first-year students' assessment papers!
To be specific, these were the papers for just the Team formation assessment.
"Same thing,"
"No difference,"
"Just like the previous years,"
The group of people mumbled with disappointed sighs as they glanced through the papers, not bothering to read through everything after checking for just a few seconds.
Each of them looked well over fifty years old and carried extraordinary auras. While they looked like old teachers marking assessment scripts, they were no ordinary people.
Each one of them had very high standings in the empire and was capable of shaking the entire academy with just a snap of their fingers. The reason they were doing this was that they had been assigned by the emperor to do it.
Every year, for the last seventeen years. All the first-year students who entered the academy would be faced with this same question, and every time, they got the same disappointing results.
It wasn't that these answers wouldn't be effective against magic beasts. But after those creatures from seventeen years ago, tension had constantly been spreading amongst the higher-ups of every empire around the world.
For seventeen years, they had hidden the truth from the public. It wasn't an army of monsters that attacked from the dungeon, not even close.
The truth was that there were barely a hundred of those creatures. Yet they had somehow managed to cause a great amount of damage to Earth's forces before they were finally killed off.
Yes, they were all as strong as Level 5 warriors but that wasn't the main reason they had been so difficult to deal with.
It was the first time humans were facing such opponents and they had barely managed to react to the strange patterns which those creatures operated on.
This was why they had presented the idea as a question for first-year students, hoping to see something different.
The only reason they didn't try those from senior classes was that they already had too much faith in the current system.
They wanted something new.
"This!?"
At this moment, an older-looking lady in a long robe suddenly exclaimed, holding a paper in her right hand.
The others in the office immediately turned to face her.
"What is it?" Someone asked. They weren't people who could get shocked easily, especially not from seeing what a first-year student wrote.
"This, might be it. It could be what we have been missing!" The woman exclaimed again. The others were forced to come see what was on the paper that she was holding.
Upon finally seeing what was written on the paper, a glint flashed past their eyes. They immediately looked at the name on the paper.
Ivan Castellan.
"A member of the Castellan family, isn't that Christopher's second son?" A man with an aged face asked.
"Yes, I heard he awakened as a Paladin." Another figure stated.
The office went silent for a few seconds after this was said.
"Should we invite him over?" Someone finally broke the silence.
"No, let's observe for now. We'll only make a move after verifying. In the meantime, give him a full mark while we go through the remaining reports."
"Agreed,"
"Agreed,"
…..
Ivan didn't know that he caused the senior members of the academy to start paying attention to him with what he wrote on his Team formation assessment. If he knew, he would definitely let out a grin because that was exactly what he wanted.
It was morning already when Ivan opened his eyes, he quickly got ready and was soon on his way to his classroom.
Today was the physical assessment, Ivan didn't know what they were going to do yet but he could guess.
Arriving at his classroom, it didn't take long for everyone else to arrive, including Teacher May.
Seeing that everyone had arrived, Teacher May announced that the physical assessment would be held in the training room of the academy.
This meant that the students now had access to the training rooms!
Ivan was delighted to hear this. As a sort of battle freak himself, he had been itching to visit the training rooms to see what was in store for him.
Shortly after, they were led out of the class by Teacher May and headed for the training room. A massive building that wasn't far from the classroom building.
On their way, they met other students and their teachers also heading for the same building.
Ivan saw some familiar faces, well, he had seen all these faces at least once since he entered the academy.
Lucas also noticed him and waved with a big smile. Ivan looked at the kid with white hair and smiled back. They hadn't interacted much since that time they met in the cafeteria but Ivan knew that after that day, those other students stopped picking on Lucas.
Probably because they assumed Lucas was friends with Ivan and didn't want to offend the latter.
Aside from Lucas, Ivan also saw Aiden. They exchanged glances before looking away.
Entering the building, the various teachers led their students to different training rooms to carry out the assessment.
Teacher May and her students entered one of the training rooms.
They entered a large empty room, and the walls of the room were covered in formations. Just a few steps away from the door was a fist-sized crystal that floated in the air.
Teacher May walked toward the crystal and placed a palm on it before turning to face the students, she didn't take her palm off the crystal.
'That should be a sort of control mechanism for the training room,' Ivan thought. Guessing that the formations on the walls would respond to the crystal that teacher May was touching.
Meanwhile, teacher May had already started explaining how the physical assessment was going to be held.
"I'm going to check your attack force and speed, as well as how you'll react when being attacked.
Inside, you'll face dummies with defences at the Level 1 warrior rank. They can also send attacks of similar rank, so be careful." Teacher May instructed.