After graduating from school, I still had until the first of next year, which was still a quarter of a year away. In this time I did what I always did: I trained, hunted, and fought. I could even eliminate many Wig’rys at the time and hunt many more animals in the forest. But I didn’t only do this; I also explored more areas along the stream, coming from the east. There I found new species I never saw, I studied them because they were kind of interesting.
I now had much more time for this, thanks to having no school to attend to, but I also used the new won time to finally finish my carving. The carving of the whole chasm with Aldorem in it – I made it inside a cut-off tree. It has many details; every house is a masterpiece, and the chasm itself looks exactly like it does in real life. I am really, really proud of myself, and now the carving stands at my favourite-place–under the ancient tree, beside the stream. On the carving itself, I put a class panel, and now I use it as a table. The masterpiece itself is a meter high and half a meter wide.
In the middle of the winter, as a huge snow layer covered the region and Aldorem–through which the world seemed to be colourless–the year approached its end. My last few days have come in my beloved home; next week I will be sleeping and living at the military academy, located outside the chasm. The last day, my parents used to make a huge party for me, and to celebrate the new year.
The first day of the year was a Thursday–a pretty cold one. Going outside with my parents early in the morning, I could already see the military carriage standing beside our house to pick me up. So I went inside, took my already packed baggage–with the help of my parents–and went to the carriage. Once I am inside of it, I will not see my parents again until the two weeks of summer vacation. So before going inside, I hugged them for the last time, said goodbye, and wished them prosperous lives. They waved goodbye at me and probably shed a tear or two, as well as I did.
I hopped on the wagon, in it were already three guys my age and one adult driving. We drove further through Aldorem’s streets until the carriage came to a stop, there we stood for around a minute until another guy my age came out of a nearby house. He greeted us nicely, and then the trip continued. Firstly, to Aldorem’s main road, then out of the city, following the, due to it being early, nearly empty street. Then, after a long climb out of the chasm, the road advanced further south-west for some miles, until there was finally a sharp turn of the carriage, which then followed a field way coming from the north. Then it only took another five minutes to see a giant building coming nearer and nearer.
On the way to the academy, I got to know all the guys in the wagon; the adult is an instructor at the academy. The guy coming last into the carriage is a second-year student who is one of the best in his class and talked much about his achievements, which I gave no attention to. While the other three dudes in here were all newbies, like me, one of them was the shy type of person who nearly said nothing the whole way. The other two were quite open, and we spoke a lot.
The academy is a renown institute in the whole region, as it is known to be one of the best. All the students here are the best of the best when it comes to fighting and so on. And once a student graduates from the academy, he can go instantly to the army with quite a high rank or even become an imperial knight.
Every year, the military academy only accepts around a hundred people. For this, all the best guys graduating every year get an invitation to a great test, where the best get selected to get a place in the academy. All the others get another chance the year after and are sent home again per carriage. The carriage I was in was the one that brought all the qualified people from Aldorem with it; all the other hundred wagons, that were parking in front of the academy brought even more people from all over the region.
We all left the wagon, and the instructor told the second grader that he should go through the gate and follow the right path to the dormant. As the guy left, the instructor spun around and went forward, telling us to follow him. We went from the carriage towards the beautiful, with flowers and plants decorated gate. On both sides of it was a huge, around 4 meters high, wall. The wall was built with thick, grey stone. In comparison to the gorgeous green gate, the wall looked weathered, desolated, and imposing.
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So I had my doubts about the academy, but as soon as we went through the gate, a nearly endless area opened up, filled with juicy, green grass; some trees; a little lake connected with some streams; an outside training place, where there were some guys training; and two ways. One of which went straight; the other proceeds right. Following with my eyes the right path, I could see three huge buildings some hundred meters away and four training areas, as big as the one that I saw first.
The other way, which we then followed, went along a small flow and shortly ended by opening up in a gigantic place with no vegetation, but a stage on its other side. The area was filled up to the rim with many hundreds of people, who were all properly here to get accepted into the academy. If I were to guess, then I would say about 750 participants and another hundred or so teachers were gathered here.
I and my group stood silently together at the edge of the mass of people. The instructor left towards where the teachers stood. Over the next few minutes, the area filled even more until the headmaster finally came on stage and began to introduce himself.
We were told by him that the mass gets split up into ten groups, with around eighty people per group. I was included in the last group – the tenth. Each group was then led by a three teachers to one of the training areas. Our group needed to go pretty far until we were finally able to even see the area where our abilities were tested.
At the training place, the teacher tested all of us one after another in different disciplines. Reaching from sprinting, to how far we could jump, how high we could jump, how good our accuracy with throwing daggers is, how fast our reaction time is, how many pull-ups we can do, and so on. For each of the total ten categories, we got points according to our abilities reaching from 1 to 10, which were then added to get our final score.
I was rather lazy and didn’t even give my best, but without much problem, I got the best score in my group–the maximum. I was really disappointed in the test due to expecting so much and a new challenge.
After finishing the examination, we were again led back to the place where we were before the test began. Our group was one of the first to finish, as there weren’t as many people in it. So we needed to wait for the time being until finally all groups were gathered.
The headmaster again came upon the stage; he told us that he thanked us for being here today and he hoped that we would make it, and so on. It was just another boring speech with no real meaning or important message. At the end of it, he ordered another teacher to come onto the stage.
The teacher held some pieces of paper in his hand, which were the results. He was ordered to put them on a stone board, standing beside the stage. Doing so, he was besieged by many students wanting to see their place first, so the headmaster spoke a word of might and shouted all the noisy students down. Hearing the angry principal, all the annoying guys felt kind of dumb and went a few steps away from the board.
As the teacher finally finished his job, all began rapidly to go towards the blackboard. The teacher fled away as fast as possible, as otherwise he had no hope to escape.
Only I and some others stood in the back and waited until the most had seen the results. Standing there, I could see guy after guy and girl after girl leaving the area in a bad mood. While only a small part of them went upon the stage, as the qualified people were told to do. In front of me, I could see many people, and most of them, especially the ones in the huge circle around the black board, were nervous. I wasn’t because I knew I had the full score and, with this, a nearly 100% chance to get accepted into the academy.
The crowed eased down and lessened more and more, so I and all the ones waiting with me there went towards the result paper. And as expected, I was one of the 18 people who got a full score. Looking over the list, I found it quite shocking that to be accepted, one needed at least 94 points. After seeing my score, I went up onto the stage, and behind me came another few. Most of them too waited for the crowed to lessen and seemed confident from the beginning.
When all were on the stage and the not qualified away, we needed to go to the teachers, sitting behind a table. They checked our identities and then gave us keys to our dormant. On the stage were even some guys who tried sneaking in the academy, but all got thrown out, and banned forever because they had no matching identities to the winners.
I got my keys without problem and went to the dorm and into my room as the headmaster told us to do. In my room, I found myself with another three beds, where other guys from this year will sleep; I met them only after waiting for a few minutes.