With the turn of midnight and in front of anticipating crowds, the members of the Lockhart Villa, formed an orderly queue before the entry point. In spite of their wanton behaviors, if there is anything students at Helmholtz have learnt well, it is public discipline. As a military academy, public order was considered one of the most important etiquettes to have. In this light, the Villa members unsurprisingly formed an orderly queue.

The so called entry point was nothing but a placard placed beside a stone path that led directly to the door. On the placard were instructions to enter the house. One had to walk on the stone paths, approach the door and turn the door knob. If they successfully turned the door knob completely, the door would begin glowing golden yellow. The examinee could then directly walk past the door. If the instructions weren't followed in order, the door would not glow.

The first in the queue was doubtlessly the Boss of the Lockhart Villa. The fat guy trepidaciously walked along the stone steps. Gradually he began feeling some kind of pressure on his body. There stepped stones were 10 in number. He had barely taken the fifth step when he felt an incredible bout of dizziness and fainted on the spot. Some members of his villa arrived to pull him to the side. He had failed before he even reached the door.

"Pfft. Haha! He got so nervous he fell before he even reached the door!" There were laughs all around.

However it didn't last long. One after another, the villa members began falling on the fourth or fifth step. Some even on the third step. At this point, the Boss had returned to try again.

The laughing crowd had now gone quiet.

"What's going on? Why are they falling unconscious?" Elena asked Claire.

"Considering that this is a music class, I'm guessing that the tutor has set some sort of trap to make us fall dizzy on the fourth or fifth step."

"Are you sure? What about the guy that fell on the third step? And even if they fell on the fourth or fifth step, they had begun staggering by the second step itself."

"Then the possibility is that the trap probably lies on the entire stepway, and gradually gets tougher to resist."

"I get it!" Suddenly Elena's eyes gleamed in delight. "Music! The stones are emitting sounds that are somehow making the people stepping on it dizzy."

****

Right at that moment, a powerful guy pushed away the Villa members.

"You fools have already lost! Stop hogging our turns! Go change your club name already! If you want to retry it, go to the end of the queue!"

The Boss remained indignant. "How can this be? We still have 10 days! We have been tricked with an impossible test!"

"Who asked you to take it loser?" The crowd jeered and booed at the Villa. Having been often bullied by the gang, they lost no opportunity to push them down. 'Change your name' chants rang loudly and repeatedly, causing the Villa members to flee the scene.

The powerful guy then began taking strong steps towards the door. However, he fell down, dizzy at the third step! The crowd was finally getting serious and the competitive spirit rising!

As half an hour passed by, no one had gone beyond the eighth step. Professor Doe, who was sitting on a tree branch overlooking the whole scene while smoke a lit leaf wondered if he made the test too difficult.

Finally a thin boy with no armor, wearing what looked like the black attire of a thief decided to take his turn. Other than his eyes, everything else was covered in black cloth, making him impossible to identify. He gently and daftly walked skipped over steps as he got to the door without any effort. Seeing that John Doe smiled.

"Ooh, surprise surprise!" He then disappeared from the tree.

As the shocked crowd looked on, the scrawny thief like figure gently rotated the door knob without any problems. The door began glowing a bright golden yellow. The person confidently walked past the glowing door like it wasn't there.

The crowd went ballistic.

"It's possible! That scrawny kid did it! We definitely should be able to do this! There has to be a trick to this!"

****

Meanwhile, inside the Musical Palace, the scrawny thief had entered a blissfully white room with a large drum. Confused, the thief looked around, hoping to find instructions. Suddenly a voice sounded across the room.

"Congratulations. You are the first student to actually be eligible to take my test. Before we begin, I want to ask you a question. Are you deaf from one ear?"

The question mightily shocked the examinee. The thief looked around shocked, before nodding. What had shocked her was not just the fact that the teacher had figured out her condition in a go, but that his voice sounded so young!

"Ha ha, I guessed so. Didn't you wonder why you could walk naturally towards the door without any obstruction despite everyone else fainting?"

"So it was because I'm deaf from one ear that I cleared the obstacle to the test?"

The voice of a girl spoke out.

"It might've helped you clear the stone steps, but you couldn't have rotated the knob without ability. Looking at your attire, you probably wanted to clear the test to get a gold tier equipment to sell right?

"You... How could you possible know that?"

"Are you stupid? Look at your attire, can you possibly be well off? You are in dire need of money that you sold your own gear. Don't worry about the gold tier equipment. From now on, till the end of the test duration you can freely enter this room and continue trying. When you go out, sell the information about how you cleared the stone steps. You will make more than you would from simply selling the golden tier equipment."

The thief silently nodded. However, there her eyes had grown misty. How many days had she been haggling along like a thief, she couldn't remember. But she would definitely remember the music teacher's kindness.

"Oh, your test. Right, it is very simple. On the bass drum in front of you, there is a drumstick. You have to use the stick to shatter the drum. Be careful, because what I said is very simple, it isn't simple at all. Remember, although it appears to be a test of power, power is not important at all! If you get injured the room will automatically heal you.

You can begin!"

****

Outside several hours have already passed. Only two people had managed to reach the door apart from the thief. The girls Elena and Claire. Even though they had decided to wait a day until they attempted, the excitement led them to try their hand. When they reached the door, there were many cheers. However, both failed at rotating the door knob. Nevertheless, having tried rotating the door knob once, the analytical duo had already partially figured out what their mistake was. The crowd too had considerably dimmed.

Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.

As they were discussing, a blonde male walked up. He resolutely walked along the stone steps, to the door. When he rotated the knob, he felt his entire blood roil. His body cramped up, but he didn't give up. However, just as he was about to succeed, his legs gave way from the chaotic blood flow and he fell down. Despite this, the blonde male did not give up. He staggered up again and began rotating the door knob.

"Its Ryan, the sword carving idol. He cannot accept a roadblock and only move forward no matter what." The crowd remnants began murmuring.

"He has no grasp of what the door knob does, but is plowing through with sheer endurance. What a block head." Claire smiled.

Right at that moment, on his third attempt, Ryan had succeeded. He finally staggered into the glowing door. It was the second person to slip through the door. When he appeared, although he appeared in the same room, the first person was not visible anywhere. A voice smirked.

"You are looking for the first person to enter? Although you enter the same room, you also enter different rooms! No two examinees can meet inside this room. Your test..."

****

After 5 days, the placard before the stone steps had a change. It began reporting the number of test takers. Currently it reported 70 test takers. But the number who had attempted to enter were several thousand. Which only meant that 70 had managed to enter the room.

"The number shot up after the informant began selling information about clearing stone steps. It seems people began figuring out the mystery of the door knob once they understood the information regarding the steps."

The scrawny thief had once again returned to the test room. She had struggled for 5 days, yet she was barely able to make the bass drum make a sound.

"Heh..struggling huh?"

"What do you think?" By now she had gotten used to the playful jibes from the music teacher. However, whenever he spoke, she would learn something new so she did wish he spoke more.

"Well I would've been surprised if you didn't struggle. After all what let you easily enter room is what's stopping you from grasping the trick. There's another guy who is cluelessly hammering the drum just like you. However, he is just a dumb guy with limitless perseverance. Think about it, if you don't need power, what exactly do you need to do?"

"The people I was selling information to, they would often mumble how the sound head by each ear was different, but only slightly. Moreover it was extremely difficult to hear them in the first place."

"Correct. In that case what was tricked was actually the brain which was trying to correlate two contradictory sounds making people dizzy. You on the other hand cannot hear from one ear making such attacks useless on you. However that was two sounds that were in destructive resonance that attacked a humans perception. Here however you have to physically destroy the drum's membrane. Okay, I've got to see what the others are doing as well, Ciao!"

"Professor wait..." However she was already resigned. She knew he had disappeared.

The reason Doe disappeared was because at that moment Elena was close to passing the test. Just as he visited her exam room he saw her making 15 cleverly positioned hits on the drum whose vibration constantly got louder, but then consecutively muffled before becoming completely silent despite the drum membrane clearly vibrating chaotically. The membrane then shattered.

The bass drum then disappeared and a door appeared behind it. Elena walked through, knowing she had completed the test. The entire time Doe had not interfered and so she was curious to know what kind of genius set up this test. When she entered what she left her flabbergasted. A beautiful silver haired man not much older than her greeted her with a smile, hands clapping.

"Well done miss. You have cleared my test. You can now choose to join my music elective. About the prize, you can choose your golden rank equipment, just think about it and it'll equip itself onto you. However I have another possibility of a gift for you. You can have the equipment or a technique on which the stone steps were based. If you choose the technique, I'll will directly impart it to you, and you will be unable to share it with anyone else unless you have my consent."

The young professor then stayed silent, as he crossed his legs and hugged them while sitting on the chair, looking curiously at the girl in front of him, who was in deep thought.

After prolonged thought she ventured "Professor, could you tell me the details of the technique?"

Laughing, Doe replied. "Haha, I thought you would never ask! It is a D rank AOE sound attack magic that uses destructive resonance to paralyse and disorient foes. However, its direct effect is pretty poor considering you folks managed to reach this far."

But Elena had already figures this out, she smiled when she realised that he had left out precisely the information she was seeking. After finding out that he was looking for her to ask without condition she spoke again.

"Could this technique be a part of a greater ranked skill?"

Hearing that Doe had a wide grin on his face. His deep eyes looked into Elena's as if she were an open book in front of him.

"Heh, What do you think?" He smirked.

Hearing that Elena already knew what she would choose.

****

The remaining 5 days also passed by. The test finally came to an end. Five days later, with his sunglasses and bizarre fashion choice for an academy teacher, Professor John Doe went to meet the Dean.

The Dean was seated on a roundtable with the teachers for the other electives. When they saw him, they could only sigh.

"You've wrecked pandemonium in the first 10 days of your tenure!"

Hearing Phillip's jibe, Doe could only scoff playfully.

"Muscle bro...could you be feeling jealous? Don't worry, I most probably have fewer students than you do. Heh.."

"Bastard! My name is not Muscle bro!"

"Don't worry bro, it's just between us bros."

"Who is your bro! Brat you are a curse on the academy! You turned the Lockhart Villa into Cinderella's Villa!"

"Pfft... So you found out. Cheh, I wanted to fantasize being a secretive protagonist in a light novel!"

"If you became a protagonist in a novel, I'll really change my name to Muscle bro!"

"Haha, looks like you have bad luck muscle bro.. How did you figure out it was me?"

"Who else could have a Cinderella fetish here, Professor Doe?" The graceful Camelia interjected.

"What the...I don't have a Cinderella fetish! I'm just jealous she had a fairy godmother! I wish I had one! Dance teacher, please become my Godmother, I promise I'll lay off the Cinderella jokes!"

"I'm too young to be your Godmother, I'd at least have to reach your age to try to aim for that status."

"Fufu, Godmother is really good at roasting. I wish I was there to see those lackeys change their name first hand."

"They already disbanded the Villa after changing the name. Cinderella's Villa is now an empty Villa." Phillip responded.

"Cool, Dean, can I take it then?"

"Sure Professor. But what will you with it?"

"Prevent injustice! Just kidding, I was looking for a place where my music students can perform after all."

"Ah, you've already selected your students then?"

"They selected themselves, fu.." He shot a funny look at muscle bro goading him to get enraged.

The Dean rightfully stepped in, as he brought back the focus on the list of students who have chosen to take the electives.

"I'd like a brief report on how you selected the students and how many there are so we can organise the class areas for you."

The scholarly literature professor spoke first.

"It is unfortunate that the students of Helmholtz don't appreciate the beauty of long form literature and poetry. I barely was able to get 100 students out of all the thousands."

How could Doe let it go?

"Wind, flag, mind moves,

The same understanding.

When the mouth opens

All are wrong."

"What?" The scholarly professor looked at John Doe, flabbergasted. The poem that he just recited was like a slap onto the arrogance of the scholar, who had no retort. Doe just shrugged in response to the non sequitur. Everyone else chuckled.

"Looks like Professor is quite the poet."

Camelia commented.

"I have a few that can capture a woman's heart. But it's a tragedy that your heart is made of stone, miss Camelia." Doe's retorts flew quicker than the wind.

Hearing that the Dean coughed, while professor Camelia blushed ever so slightly.

As others described their numbers it finally ended up with Doe.

"A hundred and fifty five students managed to appear for my test, seventy of which managed to clear it with a lot of help and advice from me. Of these only thirty passed the final test and they have all applied for the class and I accepted them."

"Final test?"

"I presented them a choice between the gold tier equipment and a D rank skill. Those who accepted the armor failed."

"Why did they fail?"

"Despite me showing them the power of music and sound, they didn't believe in it enough and chose material gain. I could do without such students."

"Aren't you a crouching tiger now, Professor Doe?" The Scholar finally grasped his chance to respond sarcastically after being chastised by a poem.

"Wow professor, you even figured that out? And I was considering that you were irrelevant. Damn, was I ignorant or what?" Professor Doe's poisonous tongue knew no bounds. He responded in kind ten times over.

The Dean intervened again and the chaotic meeting was finally brought to its conclusion.