No Dark Secrets In This Book

Episode 58

Ding dong dang dong.

The exam papers start being distributed.

From now on, no one should open their mouth. Everyone knows that fact. Palms are damp with tension, but the sound of papers being flipped is dry. All the pages are arid and dry. The grayish recycled paper looks pale, but warm yellowish paper that is far from paleness follows. It’s the OMR card. A set with a sign pen engraved with sorcery. It calculates the score by matching the test-taker and the answers one-to-one.

Cassice Demillang recalled his memories from his past life and placed the pencil lead on the exam paper.

’30 seconds per question pace…’

In his senior year of high school, the teacher gave many students college entrance exam tips. Among them was advice to eat a little less than usual so you’re slightly hungry during the exam to avoid drowsiness, but Jeong Eui-an called him separately and said this. Please eat a proper meal before coming, I’m asking you. He hasn’t forgotten that memory yet. So he ate two slices of sandwich before coming.

The magic department’s exam combines calculations and memorization. Quickly scanning through the passage, underlining key words and concepts, solving the problem, and moving on to the next – the interval it takes flows naturally and quickly like water. If you want to get good grades, study. It was an elegant and noble appearance as if reciting a just argument.

However, some humans want to become hippos. They don’t care even if they roll in muddy water as long as their grades are good. Those humans…

There were those who dropped the magic department exam and tried to cheat on all the questions. Or those who tried to peek only at the parts they couldn’t solve.

It doesn’t matter what desires they had.

The important thing is the fact that during the exam, magic was cast by someone.

“…”

Ryuseong, who was calculating formulas while gripping the pencil like a baton, finally thought, is it starting?

He was used to it. It wasn’t common for 1st years to do this already, but starting from the 2nd year, the grand cheating operation naturally occurred.

– The grand cheating operation.

In fact, cheating could be called a tradition of the Academy. If you ask what kind of tradition this is, there’s nothing to say, but Ryuseong knew for what dog-like reason the professors implicitly legalized this. First of all, it turned out this way because the founding principal was a great person.

The founding principal thought it was absurd that the exam to nurture prospective conquerors wasn’t practical from the beginning. If you judge pass or fail just by writing letters well on paper, when do you determine if they can survive against the black fog?

So during the founding period, they went through an even more amazing curriculum than now…

‘…That crossed the line.’

As the concept of human rights became prominent with the flow of time, the harshness of the founding period also weakened.

‘This won’t do! We must follow the will of the founding principal…!’

‘No matter what, wouldn’t it be problematic to drop young children off a cliff?’

So from the 20th century, the Academy decided to only accept adults. That’s because the Academy had created a field that was too harsh to expose to teenagers.

Failing means expulsion. Acceleration of competitive structure. Disclosure of grades. Do anything for the goal… Under the agreement that such sadistic flow is inappropriate for teenagers to experience, the cut line decided was age twenty.

Of course, being an adult doesn’t mean they can endure a harsh environment well, so not only dropouts but also voluntary withdrawals are overflowing, but…

‘The Academy doesn’t want many graduates in the first place, so no one cares.’

Saying this may make it seem like a school full of only trashy people, but surprisingly, it’s not.

The professors only wish for the survival of the cadets. Nothing else. The Academy wants people who can survive, not fair and moral people.

‘Just because in a world where you can become a hero just by returning alive…’

The black fog and monsters are occupying human territory, and Named are imitating humans and aiming for calamity at every moment. Recently, thanks to conquerors successfully preventing the appearance of black fog, there is an illusion that it’s a prosperous era that has taken over people’s minds, but veteran conquerors knew. ‘Those fucking bastards are taking it easy.’ Their instincts were telling them. ‘A big one is coming…’

So if you want to have the job of a conqueror, you shouldn’t crumble just from this much.

That job is more harsh and more cruel.

The professors were saying that.

‘…I think that’s true.’

Ryuseong realized his knuckles had turned white without him knowing and loosened his fist.

‘Because it means a conqueror who can’t even endure this much can die at any time.’

The professors at the Academy twisting the cadets wasn’t because they wanted them to be expelled.

It was simply because they wanted them to survive until the end.

‘I don’t know what that has to do with cheating though.’

Well, it’s funny to make them sit still and write neatly when testing their qualifications to become a conqueror. Ryuseong, who chuckled under his breath, twirled the end of his ballpoint pen and formed a hemispherical barrier around himself. From now on, no one would be able to peek at his exam paper.

Judging by the gasp from behind, there must have been someone trying to steal a look at his exam paper, but it won’t work.

But what’s curious is Cassice Demillang.

There’s no way he can’t form a barrier, but he’s just quietly solving problems without taking any countermeasures.

‘What is he thinking this time?’

***

When a person lives, they naturally have various desires. It becomes the driving force that makes them break promises and also keep them. Unfortunately, in this case, it provided propulsion in the direction of breaking the promise.

It was none other than Ryuseong hiding his exam paper.

‘Ah! How competent!’

It’s not a compliment. It’s resentment for him noticing and hiding it in an instant when I carefully took out magic.

A, who attempted to cheat, had intended to drop the magic department exam from the beginning.

A, who was originally a physical martial artist, hated the Academy’s policy of making them take all subjects like integrating liberal arts and sciences.

Why the hell does a martial artist need to know magic?

Of course, they understood in the sense that knowing a lot of knowledge allows for better response, but their brain couldn’t accept it. It demanded to build a wall with the subject, saying it was absolutely impossible to study magic too.

There was a spell that printed different exam questions for each selected department when entering student information, so they thought it was fortunate that Class 1 took the exam together as a whole without dividing the class by elective subjects. Because they predicted that since Class 1 was the honor student class, the exam papers to steal a look at would also be of high quality.

The problem was the level of the students.

‘Is, is this what they call birds of a feather flock together?!’

Everyone was taking the exam like shit.

‘Wh, what the fuck, the answers are all different?’

Even for just question 1, all the numbers were evenly distributed. It was to the point where it seemed like no students picked the correct answer. Five people for 1, five people for 2, five people for 3, five people for 4, five for 5… Hey, guys. Did you study properly? Is this really the level of Class 1?!

But in places other than Class 1, they couldn’t even try to solve and were bursting into tears first.

The exam was just dirty as hell.

But it was their first exam since entering school. There was no way they could know the average difficulty level of the questions, so A, who tried to target Ryuseong but failed, cursed him inwardly and eventually decided to commit the taboo…

‘Stupid dog! Sea anemone! Sea cucumber!’

B was in a similar state of mind. He had a relaxed attitude of attempting to cheat if he encountered a question he didn’t know while solving, but when he witnessed question 1, his mind went blank. He thought the professors were playing a prank on us.

So he used magic. As higher-level magic beyond the curriculum was cast, separate from the professor thinking they should have studied with that much effort, B, who shared a downward-targeting vision like an eagle’s eyes, felt a throbbing headache like someone before him. What the fuck, no one was solving it properly. Some students were already writing a letter to the professor. Elaborately even artificially making tear stains…

So B also ended up committing the taboo.

That is, he decided to steal a look at Cassice Demillang’s exam paper.

‘You, you wouldn’t kill me, right?’

Still, he didn’t copy everything. He conscientiously stole just a few. Only about 30 out of the 34 questions.

‘Haha! Ha…’

C agonized while pulling his hair, thinking cheating isn’t right no matter what, and eventually pushed all in a row.

D endured the desire to cheat by pressing his thigh with a ballpoint pen. Honestly, when a fucking question came out that made him want to cry, he wanted to steal a look, but he just let tears flow and wiped them away.

When E couldn’t solve anymore, he rolled his ballpoint pen like rolling dice. I’ll go with the score given by the heavens.

F was the same. He was praying to the World Tree to let him pick the correct answers, saying he would offer a sacrifice.

And ding dong dang dong.

When the exam ended and the OMR cards were collected, the students were desperate to at least self-grade each other’s exam papers. When those who were silent opened their mouths all at once, a commotion like a marketplace rose up boiling. Therefore, it was natural for the cadets’ pleas to flock to Cassice Demillang, who studied the most.

“Ca, can you show me your exam paper? Demillang, please…”

Then Cassice Demillang smiled embarrassedly, unlike his usual self.

“Hmm, it would be of no use though.”

“Just show it to us and we’ll self-grade it…!”

“I only wrote wrong answers on the exam paper. I only marked the correct answers on the OMR card.”

Huh?

Suddenly, the tops of two people’s heads started trembling as if struck by lightning. At that sight, the remaining four began to alternately look at them and Cassice Demillang, but…

“No matter what, I only checked the questions that would definitely deviate from the correct answer, so it might be helpful when checking incorrect problems, maybe…?”

Cassice Demillang only smiled brightly.