Chapter 10. Departmental Exam (3)
“Ugh, this is frustrating. What is he doing over there?”
Assistant Professor Alfren muttered as he stared at the Magic Screen floating before him.
The screen displayed a cadet inside the Artificial Dungeon from various angles, and the person being shown was none other than Clayton R. Shane.
The older brother of the famous Klein.
It had already been five years since Alfren began working as an Assistant Professor.
He had watched all kinds of cadets during that time, but he could say with certainty that he had never seen one like this before.
“He’s been doing that for three hours already. Does he have some kind of mental problem?”
Normally, this was an extraordinarily busy period.
The Professors and Assistant Professors had to observe the every move of roughly sixty cadets, record their actions, and assign scores.
Yet Shane had already spent three hours sitting in the exact same place, staring blankly at the ground.
Naturally, Alfren, who had to keep watching him, could only find the sight frustrating.
After all, as the person responsible for recording Shane’s performance, he had no choice but to stay focused on him regardless of what he did.
“Haah…… Those guys are busy.”
Alfren glanced at the colleague sitting beside him.
Unlike Alfren’s own thoroughly bored expression, the other Assistant Professor was staring intently at a similar Magic Screen while diligently recording what was happening.
The cadet assigned to his colleague was Bernstein Auston.
Auston was such an exceptional student that there was said to be no one in the Academy who could match him intellectually, but he also suffered from the fatal disadvantage of being Mana-Impaired and incapable of wielding mana.
His body was innately incapable of accepting mana.
Because of that, rumors said that even his own family had all but abandoned him.
Sending him to the Academy had effectively been the final mercy his family had extended to him.
Some might ask whether someone that intelligent would still be useful to his family.
The problem was that noble society was nowhere near so forgiving.
In most noble families, once one child inherited the family, the remaining siblings were expected to leave and return to life as private individuals.
After all, no one knew when a sibling might stab the heir in the back and seize their position.
And they were supposed to keep someone exceptionally intelligent close at hand?
Especially in a marquis family descended from blood related to the king himself, rather than some mere baron or viscount household?
Absurd.
It was simply unthinkable.
That was why Auston was famous throughout the Academy as an obsessive scholar.
There was hardly a single day when he failed to visit the library. He began his mornings there, remained until closing time, then borrowed several books to take with him almost every day.
No wonder the dark circles beneath his eyes never disappeared.
Auston’s diligence was famous even among the Assistant Professors.
“I cannot believe there are times when I actually envy this…….”
With his hands itching for something to do, Alfren smacked his lips idly.
He could also see another colleague observing a different cadet.
Perhaps it was fortunate that several Assistant Professors around him were assigned to particularly talented students.
Alfren passed the tedious hours by occasionally sneaking glances at the activities of the other cadets, until another figure caught his attention.
“Lintberg J. Aneis…….”
She was the daughter of the Commander of the Judgment Knight Order, a figure renowned throughout the Empire for many reasons.
Aneis, the daughter of the late Lintberg K. Robert, was also one of the Academy’s most famous cadets.
If Klein did not exist, Aneis would unquestionably have been the Academy’s top student.
In the past five years, her name had never once fallen out of the highest ranks.
She was almost always listed immediately beneath Klein. Although Auston often surpassed her in written examinations, her overall grades were consistently outstanding.
Even now, Aneis was advancing at the very front, breaking through the Curse Goblins with exceptional tactics.
She was moving even faster than Klein and Auston.
As a result, the Assistant Professor assigned to her looked as though he were dying while frantically recording every single thing she did.
“I do not envy that at all…….”
At least two more days would likely pass before anyone began clearing the dungeon.
If Aneis maintained that pace the entire time, her observer would be exhausted both physically and mentally.
“Still, my situation is hardly good either.”
Alfren let out a quiet sigh as he stared at Shane, who was still gazing fixedly at the ground on the screen.
The sudden change came several hours later.
—
“B-By now, Aneis is probably…… in the lead.”
After his eleven golems efficiently finished eliminating another group of Curse Goblins, Auston muttered to himself.
Auston was aiming to place first in this Department of Command exam, so that was hardly welcome news.
Even so, he did not become impatient.
After all, it was still within his calculations.
Aneis was normally quiet and obedient, but there was never the slightest hesitation in her actions.
While others cautiously advanced and watched for traps dug by the Curse Goblins, she was undoubtedly neutralizing those very traps through sheer aggressive momentum.
Was that because she was simply reckless?
Of course not.
Aneis might have been somewhat underrated because Klein and Auston existed, but objectively speaking, her abilities surpassed those of most leaders of established Adventurer Parties.
Her mana control was extraordinary, and her instincts were exceptionally sharp.
Unless a trap was truly exceptional, there was little chance it would delay her.
Beyond that, Auston’s mind was already running simulations based on the usual abilities of numerous other cadets.
And if anyone could have looked inside his mind, they might have felt not merely a chill, but genuine fear.
The results of his simulations differed very little from what was currently being observed in the control room where the Assistant Professors had gathered.
The cadets’ patterns.
Their personalities.
The types and numbers of golems they had selected.
To Auston, all of it revealed a future so obvious that he hardly needed to see it unfold.
Yet there was still one person he found difficult to predict.
Shane.
“Wh-What…… is that person doing right now?”
Auston could make an educated guess.
But even he could not confidently predict what sort of results Shane had achieved by now.
“I-If…… what I’m thinking is right.”
And if everything was proceeding smoothly at this very moment—
Then Shane’s clearing speed might soon become so fast that even Auston himself would be unable to catch up.
That was Auston’s conclusion.
And astonishingly, his prediction proved itself a few hours later.
—
Several hours later.
Of course, not everyone could remain as composed as Auston or race through the dungeon as quickly as Aneis.
In fact, most cadets were bewildered by the dungeon, which they were experiencing firsthand for the first time.
They often found themselves flustered by sudden situations in the field that differed greatly from what they had learned through books or other people’s stories.
“Fuck…….”
Pollon was a perfect example.
At first, everything had gone smoothly while he confidently eliminated the Curse Goblins.
They were vicious, but they were still only goblins, and the golems performed even better than he had expected.
Pollon had been confident that with the golems’ capabilities and his own excellent command ability, he could clear the dungeon within two days at worst.
That had been a grave mistake.
Because they were golems, Pollon had failed to consider the need to manage their endurance.
The closer the ‘Vitality’ set by the Golemancer approached its limit, the more mistakes the golems began making, and the number of injured golems steadily increased.
Pollon realized the difference far too late.
By the time he fully understood it, he had already advanced too deeply into the dungeon.
From then on, even when he wanted to rest, he could not do so properly.
The smell of blood had spread throughout the tunnels, causing the Curse Goblins to swarm toward them like bees.
The Archer Golems responsible for tasks such as erasing their trail had been sent out separately to scout without Pollon realizing that the Curse Goblins were already agitated, and they had been wiped out.
Apparently, the Curse Goblins had already surrounded the entire area, because even the golems sent toward the rear had failed to return.
As a result, only fifteen golems remained.
Considering that Pollon had entered the dungeon with twenty-one, he had already lost six.
And not even a full day had passed.
Worse still, only eight of the remaining golems were completely uninjured.
“Nothing is going right!”
In truth, Pollon’s performance was far from poor.
Considering that he had never personally entered a dungeon or commanded troops before, he was certainly talented.
It was not as though he had merely suffered losses, either.
Among the cadets, Pollon was still one of those who had advanced through the dungeon relatively quickly.
The reason he was becoming so anxious was simply that this year’s exam was vastly more difficult than the previous year’s.
“Tsk…… The others must be having a hard time too by now.”
Even while grumbling irritably, Pollon was calmly organizing his next moves in his head.
Then, without warning, a notification rang through the air.
[DING- Announcement.]
“What the—?! Wh-What is this?”
Pollon flinched violently at the stiff female voice that seemed to ring directly inside his head, then quickly regained his composure.
“Wait. The manual did say there would be announcements, but…….”
As far as Pollon knew, this was far too early for one.
Had some kind of accident occurred during the exam?
That thought flashed through his mind for only an instant.
[The current time is 11:55 p.m.]
[We hereby announce that the first dungeon clear has been achieved. That is all.]
“What the hell?!”
The announcement delivered the information in the same calm voice, as though nothing unusual had happened.
At the same moment, shock appeared on the faces of the roughly fifty cadets who had not yet been eliminated.
There were only a few whose expressions barely changed.
“Haah. As expected.”
Bernstein Auston, who had predicted something close to this situation in advance.
“……That was fast.”
Lintberg J. Aneis, who remained focused on commanding her golems as she quietly muttered those words.
And—
[Congratulations on clearing the dungeon.]
Shane, who was listening to the announcement meant for him.
It happened at a point when the average cadet had not even completed one-third of the dungeon.
