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Translated By Arcane Translations
Translator: FusionX
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“Wow. Finally, an applicant who doesn’t have that terrible hairstyle.”
Tired eyes scanned me.
It seemed like they were roughly sizing me up.
Could they really make a proper assessment with such exhausted eyes?
“Did you come to the wrong guild?”
“No, I’m here to take the mage guild exam.”
“For someone saying that, your mana is really… Ahem. Never mind. Well, if you want to take it, who am I to stop you…”
She was talking to herself and convincing herself.
The receptionist turned her gaze and handed me a card that had been placed on the side of the desk.
I took the card and examined it closely.
Was this instead of a number ticket?
“The exam will start in 30 minutes. Rest somewhere suitable or take care of other business. When it’s time, you’ll feel a tingling shock from the card. That’s the signal for you to enter, so you can go into that room then.”
“Tingling?”
“It’s good for making sure examinees don’t forget and come on time. It’s quite a spectacle to see them get startled and rush to take the exam every time we send the signal.”
Was that subtle smirk due to resentment towards troublesome applicants or just a bad personality?
…I thought she was normal! I believed her because she had a face like a jaded civil servant!
What kind of place uses electric shocks to give signals?!
The Mage Guild.
Was there not a single sane person among this guild’s members?
Though there were quite a few bizarre quests involving the Mage Guild, I hadn’t expected this.
They were not in their right minds.
Definitely not.
A guild where people seriously had mohawk hairstyles and sent signals with electric shocks.
“Couldn’t you just use normal vibrations…”
“Then some people would forget. That would be inefficient, wouldn’t it?”
“Inefficient…”
“I need to start receiving the next person soon, so could you please go?”
“Before that, I have one question. Where can I take a test to see if someone has the aptitude for magic? My friend wants to take it.”
“Over there.”
The place the employee pointed to was a corner of the lobby.
Don’t tell me that chair that vaguely resembles an electric torture device is the testing machine?
What refined tastes.
Was the person next to it there to check the results?
“If you sit in that chair, you can find out if you have magical talent within a few minutes. Though most end up like that person over there…”
The receptionist trailed off.
As she said, I could see people looking dejected near the chair.
Were they people who had been judged to have no talent for magic?
If was not careful, Millia might join their ranks too.
How would I comfort her if that happened?
“Muscular examinee. I’d appreciate it if you could move along now. The line is long.”
“Ah, sorry.”
“I wish you luck. Maybe?”
What’s with the “maybe”? I left the unsettling greeting behind and moved to join up with Millia.
Millia was peering around near the chair, taking in the sights.
When I approached, she clung to me and said,
“Johann, that looks really unpleasant…”
The torture chair – no, magic testing device – honestly looked too creepy.
It seemed like you’d be tied up or electrocuted if you sat in it.
“You don’t have to sit in it if you don’t want to.”
“…No! I’ll do it!”
Millia looked up at me with a face of firm resolve.
Well, though it looked like a torture device, it was actually designed to easily check if someone had an aptitude for magic, so nothing bad should happen.
I folded my arms and watched as Millia sat in the chair.
As Millia sat down with a very tense expression, a strange reddish light began to leak from the chair.
Wasn’t it blue for the people who sat before Millia?
Tension showed on Millia’s face at the ominous color.
“This is weird…”
“Hmm… The color of your mana is unusual. For that, your talent doesn’t seem particularly outstanding, but you should be able to use simple magic. I recommend purchasing ‘Let’s Learn! Basic Magic!’ from Cellin’s Bookstore, three blocks to the right of the Mage Guild.”
“It says I can use magic!”
The employee recording the results announced in an nonchalant voice.
Still, since she could use magic, Millia got up from the chair with a happy expression and came over to me.
“Congratulations.”
“Hehe, let’s go buy the book quickly!”
“I haven’t taken the exam yet.”
“I know!”
As I was watching Millia jumping around happily like that, I suddenly felt a sharp pain in my chest.
“Millia. I’m going to take the exam, so wait inside the guild. It would be hard to find you if you got lost here-”
“Okay!”
Nothing bad will happen, right?
It’s inside the guild, so what could happen.
I buried my uneasiness and headed to the exam room.
What was this?
“The exam is simple. Use as much magic as you want on that golem.”
The examiner inside the test room explained the conditions of the exam in a dry voice.
It was too simple.
I stared at the golem, which looked like several rocks roughly connected in a human shape, as if making a snowman.
Still, there were blue lines drawn on the rock surface, as if to make it look like a proper golem.
Was that some kind of magic circle?
Whatever it was, it was a bit disappointing.
For all their eccentric exterior, this was a rather dull exam.
Of course, I hadn’t wanted a strange test, but still.
I naturally reached for my shovel but stopped, looking at the civil servant-like examiner who seemed completely uninterested, and asked,
“Can I use tools?”
“Tools are allowed. However, tools that use mana cannot be used due to the magic in the exam room.”
So they were preventing people from getting qualifications through loopholes.
Despite the seemingly lax test, their procedures were more thorough than I expected.
I took out my folded shovel, unfolded it, and slowly examined the golem.
The golem seemed designed not to move from the start, as it didn’t budge even when I approached close enough to touch it with my extended shovel.
Should I use my skill right away?
No, if I was going to do it carelessly that might work, but to get the certification, I shouldn’t waste opportunities recklessly.
I squatted down and tapped the floor with my shovel.
I had felt it when I entered, but this wasn’t an ordinary floor.
It was probably made of some special material.
I wanted to break it a bit to check… but was that allowed?
I turned to the examiner with a questioning look, and the examiner glanced at me and spoke.
“You can do anything in this exam room. However, attacking the examiner is grounds for disqualification.”
Then I guess I’ll try breaking the floor a bit.
I put all my strength into driving the shovel into the floor.
After a few attempts, the shovel blade made of bone harder than steel penetrated the ground.
Though it was only about two finger-joints deep, that was enough.
I picked up a broken piece of stone and examined it closely.
The grayish stone fragment didn’t look particularly special on the surface, but I could feel a kind of repulsive force on my fingers.
Was this a special material made with magic?
“Crafting.”
The stone fragment became a marble-sized ball rolling in my palm.
Fortunately, it seemed my skill worked on it.
Then this would be easy.
“Crafting.”
A gray pillar collided with the golem’s chest.
The golem wobbled for a moment, then returned to its original position and stood still.
Literally a punching bag, it seemed.
So I just had to keep using my skill until it broke?
“Crafting. Crafting. Crafting. Crafting. Crafting. Crafting.”
“Quick reuse possible, no signs of mana, but considerable destructive power…”
Was he reverse-engineering data from the golem or something?
I looked up at the still intact golem with my arms folded.
I had been pounding it with pillars as I usually did, but the golem was fine.
It seemed to absorb physical impacts.
This golem certainly wasn’t carelessly made, as expected of one for a certification exam.
“Does the exam continue until the golem is destroyed?”
“You can end it when you want. Almost no examinee has destroyed the golem. They usually hit it for a while and leave, and we grade accordingly.”
The answer came quickly, as if it was a question people often asked.
Look at him talking as if to say ‘You think you can destroy it?’
…Should I break it?
If I used every means at my disposal, there was nothing I couldn’t destroy.
No matter how tough it was, it couldn’t be tougher than a hydra.
Though I’d need to change my strategy.
“Crafting.”
This time, instead of pounding the golem, I erected two pillars to trap its arm between them, immobilizing it.
With the golem’s arm forcibly fixed, next was…
“Crafting. Dismantle. Crafting. Dismantle. Crafting. Dismantle. Crafting. Dismantle. Crafting.”
I frantically pounded the trapped arm.
The pillars I erected, maximizing their size and mass, were each powerful enough to make the golem’s body sway, unlike the casually made ones from earlier.
As thick pillars that could be mistaken for temple columns mercilessly struck the rock that could be called the golem’s hand, repeatedly being created and dismantled, visible damage began to accumulate on the golem’s body as it shook noticeably.
After about 30 such strikes on the same spot,
Bang!
It finally fell off.
“Golem’s arm part damaged. Power is ambiguous, but still intact after 32 uses of magic. Excellent efficiency. However, the range at which magic can be used doesn’t seem very far.”
The evaluation was subtly trending upward.
But I wasn’t going to stop here.
I immediately approached the fallen golem hand and used my skill.
“Crafting.”
The rock that had been the golem’s hand became a sharp, flat blade that wedged into the seam between rocks.
Being of the same hardness, unlike the pillars made from the floor material, the seam visibly widened.
The forcibly widened seam was desperate to close again like a magnet, but I pushed the golem-made sword deeper in and used a pillar made from the floor material to strike the rock.
“Able to interfere with materials that have lost ownership. Interesting.”
I wondered what kind of reaction I’d get if I destroyed it like this.
Out of curiosity, I focused even more enthusiastically on turning the golem into a pile of rocks.
Creating, destroying, fixing, creating, destroying, creating.
After using my skill so much that my mouth tasted sweet, I was finally able to put emotion into the examiner’s voice.
“Interesting magic. Would you like to become a test subject?”
“Are you crazy?”
So this guy wasn’t normal either!
I quickly left the exam room, escaping the chilling gaze that looked at me not as an interesting talent, but as a lab rat.
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“…Johann, do you know what all this is?”
Renny sighed and pointed at the pile of letters and documents on the desk.
Glancing over them, they seemed to be from the guilds where I had taken exams.
I had forgotten how many exams I had taken in the week of rushing around to every possible place, but it really was a lot.
“The exam results are in.”
“That’s right. But what on earth did you do?! Why are those picky old men so desperate to take you away? Do you know how annoying it was for me to write polite replies that don’t even suit my personality?”
I picked up one of the fancy-looking letters on the desk and opened it.
It must be from that old man.
I threw the letter back on the desk and read another.
“Are they all like this?”
“Yes. I only thought about getting a few minor certifications. I didn’t expect you to get enough certifications to build a card tower! It’s certainly a good thing, but…”
Renny looked at the pile of certifications stacked on one side of the desk with a complex expression.
This would be too much to carry around.
If I listed all these when introducing my experience, people would look at me like ‘What the hell does this guy do?’
Roughly counting, it seemed I had passed almost all of them, with only a few exceptions.
“Is this enough to get a job as an escort knight?”
“Well. At least the possibility has increased significantly… Sigh. I’m planning to write rejection replies to these letters until I’m sick of it, so could you leave? This is really annoying…”
I left the room, leaving Renny’s grumbling voice behind.
Now the result would be up to the heavens.
I stopped walking in the corridor and looked at the Academy visible through the window.
If I became an escort knight, I’d be able to intervene in the events happening at the Academy.
I was finally about to stand at the true starting line.
“Survival Academy…”
I’ll definitely survive.
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