Ch.3737. Midterm Exams

As time passed, the midterm exams approached rapidly.

Since the invitation from the Imperial Palace was scheduled for after the midterms, I had been relaxed, but time flew by at an unbelievable pace.

Nothing particularly significant had happened during that time.

Celia still clung to my side, refusing to leave me alone. It was so extreme that she even dragged me to the Student Council Hall to study together for midterms. This despite the fact that neither of us actually needed to study.

In truth, Celia probably had no intention of studying either, as we just ended up playing around until Alkine chased us out.

Speaking of Alkine, nothing much was happening with the Student Council.

Midterms? The Student Council members aren’t the type to worry about such things. They’re the kind who can make up for poor academics with physical prowess.

However, when Celia dragged me there, I could feel that the atmosphere was still not good.

Normally, there should have been three or four people hanging around inside the Student Council building, but Alkine was sitting there alone. She seemed quite lonely, as she was noticeably happy to see Celia and me visit.

She could have just left the place empty, but she was always there keeping watch, looking so solitary that I started visiting whenever I had free time.

As for Lilith, she would either go straight to the library after lectures or return to the dormitory, so I rarely ran into her.

I heard she was dedicating herself to studying to improve her theoretical scores… but it doesn’t seem to have yielded much result. I peeked at her quiz score today and it was 45 points.

It’s definitely better than the 20 points she got before… but still, 45 points after all that studying? That’s a bit disappointing, isn’t it?

“Hey! You saw it!”

“Saw what?”

“You just peeked at my score!”

“No, I didn’t. I didn’t see that it was 45 points.”

“You… come here!!”

Thanks to that, I ended up playing an unexpected game of tag with Lilith, and somehow she had become much faster than before.

Was she secretly training while pretending to study? Otherwise, it doesn’t make sense that her scores improved only slightly while her physical abilities improved so much.

But I was afraid of the consequences if I teased her about it, so I kept that thought to myself.

As for the protagonist, Artes, he continued to grow rapidly with the consistent training I put him through. His strength had increased so much that the improvement in his physique was visibly noticeable.

Not realizing he could become stronger so quickly, he seemed to have developed a taste for growth and began various training regimens on his own. Thanks to this, his already rapid growth began to accelerate even more.

From what I could see, he would be more than ready to advance to the intermediate class after the midterms, so it seemed like he would soon no longer need my help.

[Artes: Will you buy me dinner again if I tell you after I finish all my training today?]

…Though it seems he still needs financial assistance.

Still, it felt reassuring that things seemed to be getting back on track with the original storyline.

So exactly how much time is left until the midterms? 3… 2… 1…

“Alright, everyone in their seats? I’m passing out the exam papers.”

It’s now.

The exam had begun, but the atmosphere wasn’t particularly tense.

That’s because the Academy’s midterm system only allowed for advancement, not demotion.

The system was such that you could be demoted only if you performed poorly in both the midterms and the final exams. So people weren’t too serious about the midterms since the worst outcome would be maintaining their current status.

Moreover, first-year midterms were conducted on a smaller scale.

While second-year students and above take unified exams with a standardized curriculum, first-year students take separate exams for lower, intermediate, and upper classes, as each professor is responsible for their own students.

Because of this, the current exam atmosphere wasn’t much different from the recent quizzes we’d taken.

“Well then. Calculate your time wisely and do your best.”

With Reina’s announcement, the sound of exam papers rustling overlapped.

As I just mentioned, this exam is only for our upper class.

Therefore, this upper class exam was entirely Professor Reina’s creation… and wow, she really went all out with these questions.

-Describe the characteristics of the Grim Blood Sprite and countermeasures against it.

Did she even teach this during lectures? If such an absurd name had come up, I wouldn’t have missed it.

She probably didn’t explicitly teach it during lectures but made it possible to deduce through inference.

I’m guessing she separately taught about Grim Reapers, Blood Kobolds, and Natural Sprites, and this question requires applying that knowledge.

I don’t know for sure since I didn’t pay much attention to the lectures, but that’s probably it.

After all, a murderous fairy dealing with death and blood is a monster that dwells deep in the magical realm, avoided even by demons—there’s no way it would be taught in a first-year lecture. So this must be an application question.

Of course, there were plenty of memorization questions too.

-Goblins rank their tribes based on the number of higher goblins within the tribe. Describe the minimum conditions required to reach the third highest rank.

Questions like this.

Let’s see… for the third highest rank, it was 110 Hobs, 41 Shamans, and 3 Lords, if I remember correctly. And over 30% of the Shamans must be skilled individuals.

This is the kind of question where you’d get partial credit at best if you memorized it carelessly, or get it completely wrong.

Besides this, there were many twisted memorization questions and even trick questions cleverly inserted, so those who had memorized things superficially would likely receive disappointing results.

I’m pretty sure she wasn’t this tough when she was teaching the lower class… The collaboration between Celia and me, who always scored perfect marks on quizzes, probably had a significant impact.

Of course, no matter how difficult the exam became, it was still too easy for me. I even had time to take a nap after finishing everything.

The reactions after the theory exam were quite entertaining to watch.

No matter how much they studied, they would have been drained by the application questions, and even if they did well on those, all the twisted memorization and trick questions would have consumed their mental energy throughout the exam.

Moreover, with the basic difficulty being high, it would be hard to expect good grades.

As I was watching my suffering classmates, Celia approached and spoke to me.

“Ludion. Do you think you did well?”

“I did okay. How about you? The questions seemed quite different from what we learned in lectures.”

“I was a bit confused, but it was manageable. Oh, but I’m not sure about that one question… do you remember question 17?”

“Which one was that?”

“The one listing various monsters and asking to choose the odd one out and explain why.”

“Ah, wasn’t it the Ice Golem? I remember it being the only one with a different ice composition.”

“Right? Phew… that’s a relief.”

While checking answers with Celia, Lilith interrupted.

“…Oh damn. I chose a different one.”

“What did you choose?”

“Frozen Hound.”

“You chose it because it’s the only beast, right?”

“…It’s annoying how accurate you are.”

There were several traps in that question, and you fell for the most obvious one that only fools would fall for?

It seemed I shouldn’t expect much from Lilith’s grades.

The theory exams continued in this fashion, starting with the Understanding of Monsters that we just took, followed by Basic Mana Theory, Magic History, Survival Geography, and other foundational subjects.

Despite being first-year first-semester courses that shouldn’t delve too deeply, Professor Reina had put in considerable effort, resulting in questions of substantial difficulty.

As a result, students were dying in real-time, and judging by their increasingly gloomy expressions, everyone seemed to have given up on getting good grades.

“Haah…”

I could hear Lilith’s sigh from the back. I was already excited about the prospect of teasing her about her grades.

After the unexpectedly difficult exam ended, Reina, upon checking the papers, muttered to herself:

“Everyone seems to be worse at studying than I thought…”

No, Professor, that’s the average level.

But now that she’s aware of the reality, the difficulty should normalize for the final exams.

In the end, with everyone except Celia and me having failed the theory exam, the test moved on to the practical portion.

Everyone was full of enthusiasm, as they needed to make up for the points lost in the theory section with the practical exam.

“I was never good at using my head. Physical skills are my specialty.”

Among them, Lilith was the most enthusiastic. It was natural in a way, as she would finally be able to show the results of her training.

Anyway, everyone moved to the training ground for the practical exam.

Upon arrival, Professor Reina stepped forward to briefly explain the exam once more.

The practical exam was divided into two parts… one was a test prepared by the professor and the other was combat practice… Listening to the instructions that we had heard countless times before the exam was starting to get tedious.

Professor Reina seemed to realize this too, as she suddenly decided to just start the exam.

“Ah, forget it. You all know this already, right? Let’s just begin.”

Flash-!

Something jumped out from the magic stone that Reina pulled from her bosom and stood still.

It was the Lich Knight we had caught before.

Unlike before when it was rampaging wildly, it now showed no movement, but no one found this strange.

Everyone knew that monsters become mere puppets during the capture process.

I recall hearing that after numerous casualties resulting from experiments trying to prevent monsters from becoming puppets, the development of capture technology had come to a halt.

However, even as puppets, once a monster is captured, it can be freely put in and taken out as long as the magic stone’s power remains, so they were often used for various tests and training.

This was one such case.

“Wow, what is that?”

“A Death Knight?”

With the appearance of the Lich Knight, student reactions were divided.

The Lich Knight’s appearance was indistinguishable from a Death Knight.

Death Knights are strong against physical attacks and weak against magical attacks. Mages who recalled this began to get excited, thinking the test would be advantageous for them.

But don’t worry! This creature is a Lich Knight that beats up mages and warriors equally!

“May I go first?”

“Sure, you can decide the order among yourselves.”

Unaware of this, a mage stepped forward confidently and cast a spell.

The mage’s Fireball!

It doesn’t seem very effective…

“Huh…?”

“Hmm, you couldn’t distinguish between a Death Knight and a Lich Knight and acted rashly. That’s a point deduction.”

Reina’s grade cutting!

It was super effective!

“What the…”

“…So it wasn’t a Death Knight.”

“Wow, I could have been in big trouble if I had gone first.”

With the sound of one student’s grade plummeting, the practical test properly began.

Oh, Celia, Lilith, and I were pushed to the last in the order. The reason given was that it would be troublesome if the carefully prepared dummy got too damaged.

And then I realized.

I didn’t have any means to damage that thing.

…It seems I’ve failed this practical exam.

All I could do was fidget with the handle of the short sword at my waist while waiting for my turn.