Standing in the atrium's waiting area for the School of Sages, Lanqi was still thinking about the Holy Kingdom-style desserts.
"They say the food you taste in a Shadow World is as real as in the real world. But an artificial Shadow World is only an illusion after all. The pastries I baked for so long earlier didn't have any flavor at all..."
As he pondered this, he overheard many other candidates exchanging their completion times.
It turned out most passing candidates took forty to fifty minutes just to barely meet the completion criteria.
It seemed everyone's legal awareness still wasn't strong enough.
Just as Lanqi's mind was drifting off into space,
"How long did you take?"
A crisp, airy voice spoke not far from him.
Lanqi turned his head and saw a tall young woman about his age looking at him.
Her eyes gleamed amber, cool and proud, as if a single glance was enough for her to look down upon the entire world.
Judging from her clearly lavish attire and jewelry, she was likely a prominent noble of this kingdom.
She seemed to have noticed that there was an extraordinarily relaxed candidate nearby. Someone who appeared not to care about their exam results in the slightest was a rare sight in this testing hall.
"..."
Lanqi paused in silence and made a rough mental estimate.
In truth, his entire process had only taken around ten minutes.
"Under fifty minutes," Lanqi answered amiably.
He sensed that this visibly extraordinary young lady was probably a proud and troublesome person. If his completion time really was faster than hers, saying so to her face would definitely make her unhappy. So being conservative and saying "under fifty minutes" was the best choice.
This was called worldly wisdom.
"I see."
The young lady nodded expressionlessly and paid him no more attention.
*Turns out he's just someone who doesn't care whether he scores well or not,*
Hyperion thought.
She had been misled by his excessively composed demeanor earlier.
In that case, he likely wouldn't become her teammate for the third round of testing.
As the daughter of Duke Aransal, Hyperion had long known about this year's format for the School of Sages' third round: students with different roles would be formed into teams to fight against instructors.
Under this kind of format, a team was typically assigned a support mage or a healer. Depending on the ratio of candidates, a team might sometimes consist entirely of offensive mages.
A good healer or support could drastically reduce the third round's difficulty for the whole team, whereas a deadweight would heap immense pressure on everyone else.
Rumor had it that the team assignments this year would be based on the rankings from the second round. That meant the top-ranking candidates in the School of Sages had a high probability of being teamed together to face stronger instructors.
Bound to rank near the top in the second round, Hyperion—an offensive mage herself—naturally didn't want to get stuck with a subpar support when facing such a difficult challenge.
What was more, there were people in the kingdom who did not want her to enroll smoothly. Being with her would undoubtedly make the practical exam ridiculously difficult. Only with a good support could her chances of passing improve even a little.
Of course, those powerful figures determined to block her enrollment would also do everything they could to manipulate their lackeys within the academy, arranging the worst possible candidates or even saboteurs as her teammates within the rules.
Just the thought of it stirred an uncontrollable murderous intent in Hyperion's heart, spreading like ripples across water.
*Just give me a few more years... I'll settle scores with every single one of you... flay you piece by piece...*
she thought with vicious intensity.
Yet on the outside, her expression remained as serene as ever.
...
As the waiting period grew progressively noisier across the testing hall,
at the edge of the atrium, a cool young man with tousled grayish-white hair leaned against the wall with his arms crossed. He had put on a pair of small, round sunglasses, looking both indolent and a bit arrogant.
He could clearly hear the conversations of the other candidates, most of whom were discussing the details of clearing the second round and the time they took.
Eventually, he closed his eyes in disdain and contempt.
He didn't understand.
Why did these people measure their completion times...
in "minutes"?
Frey knitted his brows, pondering the question.
Evidently, this exam was testing the examinees' borrowing mindset.
Pawn the clothes on your back for cash, and you were done on the spot. Why would anyone take so long?
...
Loren, Chief Examiner of the exam and Dean of the School of Sages, was waiting for the terminal to calculate the final scores for the second round.
Listening to the students' discussions, he knew that some candidates currently gloating over their thirty-odd-minute times would soon question their entire lives.
Under normal circumstances, such a result would be considered exceptionally outstanding.
Having monitored the candidates on the projection screens the entire time, Loren had a rough idea of the completion times that would be registered for each student. Across all examinees from both the School of Knights and the School of Sages, barring two particular fellows, the fastest among the rest was twenty-five minutes and three seconds.
Meanwhile, Lanqi had met the task requirements at around the 9-minute-and-53-second mark. While normal candidates were just beginning their investigation, he had already arrested the target's entire family.
As for Frey, it was seven seconds.
He had resolved everything right from the start.
In a Shadow World with mechanics as straightforward as this, completion speed carried the highest weight in scoring. Frey was guaranteed an utterly absurd base score for speed, but since he bypassed any puzzle-solving process in what was supposed to be a mystery-solving Shadow World, he would hardly receive any bonus points.
As for Lanqi's score, not even Loren had any idea how the terminal would calculate it.
If a candidate successfully passed both the second and third rounds, their scores from these two rounds would be weighted to determine their total score. The final ranking from the entrance exam would influence class placement in their respective school, priority for exam exemptions toward officially registered challenger status, first-year delegate seats for academy exchange programs, and more.
The artificial Shadow World activation terminal was operating as usual, on the verge of producing the candidates' scores.
Just as the calculation reached a certain juncture—
Arcs of electricity suddenly crackled across the terminal's mithril and magic crystals, followed by cocoons of lightning bursting one after another around it!
The display on the magic screens linked to the terminal abruptly froze, all images and indicators locking in place.
A moment later, an eruption of garbled pixels rendered the picture glitched and blurred.
This abnormal spectacle instantly caught every candidate's attention, and a wave of panicked commotion rippled through the seventh-floor exam hall.
Loren's brows knit tight. Without hesitation, he shut down the terminal with a grave expression.
Though doing so risked damaging the precious magical apparatus, the safety of all students and staff present was his utmost priority.
With the shutdown, the erratic arcs of lightning dissipated, allowing many lingeringly shaken candidates to let out a sigh of relief.
However, when Loren attempted to reboot the terminal with his cipher key, he found it completely unresponsive.
It seemed that emergency shutdown had broken it.
"...No," Loren muttered in pain, shaking his head and pinching the bridge of his nose.
He felt utterly exhausted by this exam today, and the last thing he wanted was to go to the School of Magic Engineering and get yelled at by Professor Borao.
Even without calling in Professor Borao, the expert from the School of Magic Engineering, for repairs, Loren already had a pretty good idea of what had gone wrong.
At the end of the day, an artificial Shadow World was not a divine creation like a real one. Tallying results in a replicated artificial Shadow World relied entirely on pre-configured, pre-loaded algorithmic models.
Frey's method of clearing it, while unorthodox, was simple and crude. Even if a few parameters were missing, a score could still be computed.
Yet the replicators had never anticipated that someone like Lanqi would completely subvert the algorithmic model.
That guy had dumped in a pile of anomalous parameter inputs instead!
Thus, the terminal glitched and froze solid.
In terms of completion speed, Frey of the School of Knights should have placed first in this round, with Lanqi of the School of Sages right behind him.
Yet thanks to Lanqi's absurd performance, the specific scores for every single candidate could no longer be calculated!
The mere thought of having to explain the rush repair request to the School of Magic Engineering gave Loren a splitting headache.
At last, Loren let out a long sigh. Deliberately ignoring Lanqi's existence, he looked out at the assembled candidates and announced:
"The results of the second round will be evaluated manually based on the examination logs. Furthermore, the third round of practical combat examinations will be held the day after tomorrow. All candidates will receive notifications regarding the specific schedule before the end of today."
Out of sight, out of mind.
This was all a trial sent by the Goddess. As a priest, he could not lose his temper over such things...
Having finished announcing the essential matters, Dean Loren dismissed all the candidates from the atrium as though shooing away unwanted guests.
Chapter 19