Adam walked forward with a confidence he didn't truly feel. The only reason he'd been able to get into the school was through his father's wealth. His father was a merchant in the city, buying and selling monster parts from adventurers going into the Great Forest, and he had spent that wealth on tutors and resources for his children to advance their skills and level up all in the hopes of elevating their family. His sisters had been groomed from a young age in the hopes that they would attract the interest of a noble, perhaps as second or third wives, or even as a first wife if they were lucky, while he and his brothers were groomed to take over the business and help it grow.
Adam had shown the most aptitude in the use of magic according to the silver ranked adventurer his father retained to teaching his sons magic and combat, even managing to learn a Novice ranked spell and get it Novice 12, just a few levels from the first evolution!
When he'd first stepped through the gates that morning, he was certain he would do well on his tests and attract attention from the professors at the school, but the first exam changed his mind. The theory test was far more advanced than anything his tutor had taught, and he was no longer confident in his performance. Regardless, his father's favored saying pushed him to swagger as he approached the proctor. Never show weakness in any dealings, and when you don't know something, bluff harder.
"Here sir!" Adam said to the proctor.
"Spells and levels?" the proctor asked, getting right to the point.
"I know [Arcane Missile] at Novice level 12, sir!" Adam said loudly. He could hear several students murmuring his spell's rank, bolstering his confidence.
"Good, Cast your spell at that target as many times as you can until you've exhausted your mana," the proctor said, gesturing at one of the targets on the other side of the room.
Nodding, Adam tapped into his mana as he envisioned his spell form for [Arcane Missile], carefully threading the mana from his core to fill the circle spell form. It took him a few seconds to fill it before the spell coalesced in his outstretched hand and shot off, rapidly flying towards the target and barely grazing it. Adjusting his aim, he cast again and again, finally scoring a direct hit to the center of the target on his 4th cast. Just over a minute and 12 casts later, he was out of mana, having barely squeezed out enough for two final spells with his regeneration. Sweat soaked his brow from the effort, but he couldn't help feeling satisfied as he heard some of the other students talking about his casting!
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Jun watched as the first student repeatedly cast his spell at the target until he was out and was dismissed as the proctor wrote notes on his clipboard. As he casted, each of the proctors called up another student each, quickly cycling through the students until they exhausted their mana and were dismissed.
Other than the first student with a Novice 12 spell, the rest of the students hadn't reported spells greater than Novice 10 which had come from a student with a gold medallion, while most of the silver students were around Novice 6 and the bronze students rarely exceeded Novice 3.
It wasn't long before Jun was called up by the man in the black suit.
"I-I am Jun, sir," she said nervously, her stomach fluttering.
"Right. What spells do you have and what are your skill levels in them?" he asked disinterestedly.
Jun willed her spells up from her screen.
[Piercing Missile] (Apprentice 24)
Cast a concentrated blast of energy meant to pierce armor.
Mana Cost: variable
[Barrier] (Apprentice 4)
An upgraded variant of the basic [Shield] spell. This spell is composed of the aspects for Endurance, Adaptation, Redirection, and Negation. Blocks, absorbs, and redirects force.
Cost: 76 mana minimum, variable.
"[Piercing Missile] at Apprentice 24 and [Barrier] at Apprentice 4, sir," she said nervously. She knew most of the students had only listed one spell, with some of the nobles listing two or three, but everyone was in the Novice ranks. She wasn't sure if Apprentice would be good enough.
The proctor stared at her as she spoke up, several of the students who had been in the middle turning to stare at Jun as they overheard her. Jun could hear as some of the other students began to whisper, making her feel self conscious.
"Apprentice?"
"Is she serious?"
"She has to be lying right?"
"I know, I bet the proctors kick her out right now!"
Jun shuffled nervously, the student's murmuring filling her ears.
"Send me your spell names and levels to me, now," the proctor demand, his eyes narrowing at Jun.
Rushing to comply, Jun willed her screens to be visible to him, only hiding the spell descriptions like Shiori had taught her to. The man in the black suit blinked for a few seconds as he read the screens visible only to him, and wrote several notes down on his clipboard, before looking up at the other students who had stopped casting and stared at Jun. "Did your proctors tell you to stop casting? Ger back to it or you're all expelled!" he barked with a glare.
Jumping, the students got back to casting, though Jun could feel the stares of the others boring holes into her back.
"Right, well," her proctor said, clearing his throat, "use your [Piercing Missile] and cast at the target until you're out of mana."
Nodding, Jun turned to face the target, her eyes glancing left and right at the students who resumed casting. Everyone she saw cast a single spell at a time, and none of them seemed to be altering their spells, so she wasn't sure if she should do the same or not. Deciding to play it safe, Jun decided to simply cast her spell without altering it, hoping that would be enough.
Looking at the target in front of her, she fed the image of her spell striking the center of the target into the spell along with a tendril of mana, just enough to cast the first basic version Shiori had taught her. In less than a second, the spell coalesced and shot off, rocketing into the target and punching a small dent into the target. Even if her spell was lower ranked than everyone else's, she was confident that she could at least cast quickly!
Mana: 289/290 [21.75/min (0.25*MIND + 0.5*SPR)/min]
Checking her mana, she was shocked to see that the spell had only cost a single mana! As she watched, her mana refilled itself back up, covering the cost of her spell. The proctor said she had to cast until she was empty, but if she cast one at a time she would be here forever with her basic spell!
"Uh... sir?" she asked the proctor in the black suit.
"Are you out of mana already student?" he asked, raising an eyebrow at her.
"No sir, uh... do I have to cast until I'm out of mana?"
"No exceptions student. Refuse and I'll expel you immediately."
The proctor's blunt threat sent a jolt of fear through her. She'd just gotten in, she couldn't afford to be expelled during testing!
If she had to drain her mana, she couldn't afford to do such a basic spell one at a time, and who knows how the proctor would react if she took too long. She might get expelled for wasting too much time! Gathering her mana, Jun hardened herself, remembering the swarm of spells she'd cast at the goblins. Casting multiple spells at once had been a bit hard, but it was the only way she could drain her mana fast enough.
Taking a deep breath, Jun fed the her targeting image into her [Piercing Missile] spell form, envisioning a steady stream of the basic spells firing in a swarm. Using the same trick she'd figured out in the forest, she split her mana into multiple threads, feeding each one individually into the spell form. First 2 threads, then 3, 5, 9, and finally 12 threads of mana were connected from her core to the spell form. She quickly pulsed her mana through each of the threads one after the other to form multiple spells, the mana threads preventing her mana from mixing and overcharging any of the spells. The spells quickly coalesced into bright blue shining stars all around Jun and began to thud into the target one after the other in rapid succession!
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With her outsized stats, it took Jun a couple minutes to empty her mana using her basic spell, but she eventually managed it, her forehead beading with a small amount of sweat as the last point of mana left her pool. Sighing, she turned to see the proctor staring at her with a blank look on his face, before he nodded at her and wrote several notes on his clipboard.
"Thank you Jun, please move to the side for the next student."
With a frown, Jun moved off to the side, the other students keeping their distance from her. That told her everything she needed to know. Her spells were a joke.
Jun had been towards the middle of the group being tested, and with five students being tested at a time, it didn't take long for the students to be dismissed. Sara and Cecilia had been the only ones in the room to join her after her testing, but despite their encouragement that she did well, Jun couldn't believe that was the case. None of the other students had approached her, but many like the first student to be tested had already been approached by some of the gold and silver students to be recruited to their families. But not Jun.
After the last student finished their testing, the proctors had dismissed the students for lunch. Sara and Cecilia kept her company the whole time as they ate in the cafeteria, but Jun didn't feel like talking.
After lunch, her friends led her to the rest of her tests for Physical Fitness, Combat Skills, and General Knowledge.
The next two tests the proctors had every student change into provided workout clothes before reporting to a field and obstacle course like something out of military training. The Physical Fitness test had been a brutal workout led by intense proctors that acted more like drill sergeants, one so intense that Jun got a notification saying her STR, CON, and AGI had each increased by 1. More than 1 student had vomited or passed out, and Jun had nearly been one of them. The past few weeks living in the Forest with Shiori had her feeling healthier and stronger than she ever had in her past life, but that was nothing compared to the intensity of the workout demanded.
Once thoroughly exhausted, the same proctors had paired every student off with a 1st year student of the Academy to spar for their Combat Skills test.
Her sparring partner was a muscular woman of average height. They sparred with wooden swords and shields, and Jun didn't manage to land a single hit on the older student. Her sparring partner didn't hold back at all, and seemed to have a personal grudge against her even though Jun had never met her before. The proctors didn't stop the fight until Jun was left a bruised and bloody mess, barely avoiding any broken bones. A student healer with the Academy healed her while she watched Sara restrain Cecilia from chasing down the 1st year woman that had sparred with Jun.
It took a few minutes, but eventually the healer cleared Jun to leave, and then it was time for her last test of the day, General Knowledge.
It was another written test like her first on Arcana Theory, but covering Math, Science, History, Reading, and Writing skills. Thanks to the weird nature of language that Shiori had explained to her, Jun was at least confident her reading and writing skills were fine since she hadn't had any trouble understanding anything she read, and the Math and Science sections felt like refresher tests from high school on Earth.
It was History that she utterly failed at. She'd only been on Merinthia for just under 2 months, and most of that time had been spent with Shiori who focused on teaching her basic magic and how to hunt for food. The past 3 days since she'd met Sara, Cecilia, and the others had barely been enough time to get to know any of them, let alone learn anything about the history of a place she didn't even know existed a few weeks ago.
Sore, tired, and certain she'd failed far more than she succeeded, Sara and Cecilia had to carry her back to their dorm, where she collapsed on the bed
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Leon groaned with exhaustion as he wrote a few more notes down next to a student's profile.
After the students completed their tests, they were quickly graded and assessed on their performance. The tight time frame between testing and issuing final decisions on placement always meant that the proctors would be working into the early morning hours to get through the list, and their group of proctors wouldn't be the only such group doing this work in the coming days. Luckily, each group of proctors only had to do 2 such days of entrance placement examinations each year, and then they'd receive a full week off.
Leon could already taste the cold beers he'd be guzzling after this. He could sleep it off all day tomorrow, or get a student healer to deal with the hangover. Perks of being a Professor.
"Next student, Jun, no family name or parentage provided. Admitted as a scholarship student by order of Headmaster Allister and Professor Merin Nagai," John, the Head Proctor for their group read off.
An image of a pale, beautiful girl with purple hair appeared on a crystal screen in the room, along with her intake scan. Leon did a double take as he read her stats and level. "Only level 17 with average stats but 290 mana? That can't be right," another Proctor exclaimed.
"I did the scan myself," Sean growled.
"Are you sure the scanner was working properly? When was the last time it was checked?" the same disbelieving proctor, an older noble named Tano asked. Leon didn't know much about the man, just that he was another mid-rank noble like Sean.
"There was nothing wrong with the scanner. I checked," Sean said, his eyes flashing dangerously at the other nobleman.
"R-Right, well, there must be something going on with her?" Tano said submissively.
"She brought a war wand in with her and traded access to research it for admission and scholarship," Merin said, finally speaking up. "My preliminary research into such artifacts is that they bind with their owners and can enhance them to some degree. It's possible that it enhanced her mana at the time of the scan, leading to an inflated reading."
"That's possible. How long was it between her last contact with the artifact and the scan?" another proctor Leon recognized from the Arcana Studies Branch asked.
"I scanned her immediately after she returned from meeting with Allister and Merin," Sean said. "It couldn't have been more than a couple minutes."
"Then the artifact's buffs would likely have still remained for some time, explaining her unusual mana reading."
"That wouldn't explain her performance in the Spellcasting practical," Leon said, speaking up for the first time. "I proctored the student myself. She cast over 300 Apprentice level variants of the [Arcane Missile] spell before she ran out of mana."
"Over 300!"
"Apprentice level?!"
"Preposterous, were you drunk?!"
"Enough," John said, his aura filled the room with the soul pressure of a high Platinum ranked being. It felt like a predator had its jaws wrapped around Leon's throat as he unconsciously swallowed. As quickly as John's aura flared, it retreated, leaving most of the Gold and Silver ranked Professors shaking. Only Merin and Sean seemed unphased by it, both being Platinum ranked themselves. "Leon, explain."
"I ordered her to show me her spells directly. She sent the system screens over immediately, confirming that she had a variant of [Arcane Missile] called [Piercing Missile] at Apprentice 24, and a variant of the [Arcane Shield] spell called [Barrier] at Apprentice 4. She cast a single spell and stopped for a few seconds, I thought she was out of mana which would be understandable for someone at level 17 with average INT and SPR casting a high Apprentice spell, even if you assumed the standard mana efficiency decreases as you improve a spell. But she only stopped to ask for confirmation to drain all of her mana by casting. Once I confirmed the test parameters, she began to cast more of the same Apprentice level spell in rapid succession. I pulled the data from her test after the fact."
Leon paused, opening one of his folders to pull out a report that he he held out to John. The papers levitated out of his hand and over to the Head Proctor, who silently flipped through the pages as he read. "The Initiate level target we used for testing confirmed 267 hits over 2 minutes and 12 seconds before it was locked down to begin self-repairs and stopped recording. Her time to drain her mana took approximately 3 minutes and her spell pace didn't slow down once she started, it simply stopped as she began to display the common symptoms of mana depletion. From extrapolation, she cast well over 300 spells in 3 minutes, and if I hadn't been there to see it I wouldn't believe it either. It's a feat that a veteran Silver ranked war mage would struggle to replicate, let alone a level 17 bronze student."
Leon took a deep, steadying breath as he gazed into space. He'd felt the hair on the back of his standing up straight, but he hadn't noticed a drop of mana leakage from the girl as she cast. It was as if she was perfectly efficient, spending the bare minimum to coalesce her spells without waste, a near impossible endeavor. No one would believe him if he said that though, but they would believe the data John was reviewing.
"The target report confirms the accuracy of Leon's account. Catastrophic damage after 267 confirmed spell impacts that forced the partial activation of the building's defensive ward and self-repair enchantment. I propose we admit this Jun as a silver ranked student and recommend her to the Combat and Arcana Branches for development. All in favor?"
"Wait," Sean said, interrupting. "Per Academy Graduation Policy, all students must complete at least 3 Branch majors, including General Studies, unless they otherwise test out of that requirement. How did she perform on her other tests?"
Thomas spoke up from the back. "She was in my Arcana Theory group," he said, pulling out a marked test sheet. "She got a number of the multiple choice questions on basics completely wrong, but her short answers are different. Some referencing basic principles are left completely blank, but other answers seem to defy well known advanced principles, and yet they make sense. There even seems to be a partial answer referencing the equations in Takamori's Lost Mana Paradox, something we don't teach until the 5th year to only the most advanced students. Overall, she passed, barely."
A muscle-bound professor Leon only knew in passing spoke up. "She was in my group for Physical Fitness and Combat Skills. Her fitness was on the low end of average, about what you'd expect from a commoner who's healthy enough but never actively trained. Her Combat Skills were pathetic. No killer instinct, struggled against my worst 1st year student, and the student healer took 10 minutes healing her enough for her last test. Barely acceptable for Fitness. Failure for Combat Skills."
"Her General Knowledge is all over the place. She did well in Math with few errors, though she used several methods I am unfamiliar with to solve problems. Science was passable, as was Reading and Writing. She left the entire History portion blank. Overall, a pass, barely."
"Overall, a pass then," John nodded.
"Wait, but she failed an entire test and left an entire section of General Knowledge blank," Sean said, interrupting the Head Proctor.
The Head Proctor's aura flared, Sean's rising to conflict with it. Sparks seemed to fill the air as the two auras clashed, before two more Platinum ranked auras filled the room, lightening the pressure on the assembles proctors.
"She can learn History easily enough," Merin said, standing to glare at the two men.
"And Combat Skills can be trained," Thomas joined in, rising as well.
Sean relented first, withdrawing his aura, "Fine," he said petulantly.
John held his aura up for a couple seconds longer before pulling his back, followed by Merin and Thomas as the other proctors breathed a sigh of relief.
"I will amend my proposal to recommend that this Jun be referred to the General Studies, Arcana Studies, and Combat Branches. All in favor?"
Sounds of agreement filled the room as the proctors quickly agreed while the petulant Registrar sat with his arms crossed, refusing to vote. John made a note in his notebook next to Jun's name, then moved on.
"Right, next student..."
It was going to be a long night.