“Everyone, silence! Place your number placard on top of your desk!”
A proctor none of them had seen before called out in a commanding voice. His voice boomed and rang out without the aid of any arcane tool. Kale and the other candidates set their number placards on their desks. This proctor wore a Dragon Knight Order uniform none of them had seen before — he looked to be of high rank. It would have been nice if Al had been among the proctors, but the Dragon Knight who shared a name with Kale’s childhood friend was not someone easy to spot.
“The final exam is a written test. You are to write what you believe to be the answer to each question on the exam sheet. The time limit is one hour. The exam ends when the sand in the hourglass on the table runs out and the whistle blows.”
As the proctor spoke, the proctor beside him set an hourglass down on the table. The other proctors standing behind them held stacks of paper in their hands. Those would be the exam sheets for the final test.
“Touching your exam sheet after the whistle has blown will be considered cheating. Using suspicious arcane tools or looking at another person’s answers is cheating. Disguising yourself as another person is also cheating. The moment cheating is detected, the exam sheet will be torn up on the spot. Do not come pleading to me afterward — it will be your own fault for failing to follow the rules. The Order has no need for those who cannot abide by them. Understood?”
The fact that so many rules existed was likely because there had been people who had actually done all of those things and gotten caught. The candidates responded loudly in the affirmative to the stern-faced proctor’s words. A shiver ran through Kale’s body. So this is the kind of person you have to be to stand alongside a dragon.
“From this moment until I blow the whistle, do not lift your hands from your knees. Disobeying my instructions will also be considered cheating. When the whistle blows, write your name, your number, and the same number as assigned to you on the exam sheet. If the number does not match, that too will be considered cheating.”
Not wanting to be found guilty of cheating, everyone quietly placed their hands on their knees. Proctors moved down the aisles, distributing upside-down exam sheets and ink-filled pens. Once the distribution was complete, the proctors lined up along the back row like sentinels. One wrong move and it felt as though your exam sheet would be torn up and you’d be thrown out on the spot — the atmosphere was that sharp.
At the sound of the whistle, the proctor flipped the hourglass. Everyone simultaneously lifted their hands from their knees and turned their exam sheets over. The moment Kale actually looked at the sheet, his eyes swam — the text was so small. Black letters on white paper. He squeezed his eyes shut and opened them again, then bent down close enough to nearly press his nose to the page and slowly read through the words.
The first question was as follows:
‘The name of our k… ki… ngdom is?’
Fortunately, it was a good start. This was a question even Kale could answer.
One might point out that it seemed too easy — but there were countless people in the world far less educated than Kale who couldn’t even read. The people of a domain were not permitted to leave their territory without permission, and so those from the countryside spent their entire lives confined to a single village. The majority of them might know the name of the village they lived in, but had no idea what their own country was called.
Nobles and wealthy freemen could attend academies, but that had nothing to do with Kale, who was an orphan and a refugee from another country. Aware of his own shortcomings, Kale had made an effort to keep his ears open to news of the surrounding world while working at the inn. Carter Village, where the Dragon Knight Order was garrisoned, drew all manner of factions to it, so by the average standard of Charlemayna’s citizens, Kale did at least have a decent grasp of general knowledge.
[Charlmayena]
Kale scrawled his answer to the first question in crooked, uneven letters. He didn’t know the correct spelling, so he simply chose characters based on the pronunciation he could remember. As he wrote the last letter, ink bled out in a great blot and Kale jerked his pen away with a start. Having learned to write by dragging a stick across dirt floors back at the orphanage, writing with a small ink pen for any extended length felt awkward to him.
After barely catching his breath, Kale moved on to the next question. There were unfamiliar words from the very first character, so he skipped ahead to look over the whole exam sheet. The test was five pages in total, and the questions — numbered out — exceeded a hundred. Reading through all of this and writing out answers within one hour was completely out of the question at Kale’s current reading and writing speed.
Uaaagh. This feels harder than last year. What part of this is “common sense”? No. Don’t waste time on thoughts like that — focus, Kale. Read as many questions as you can. Even if I don’t pass this year, I need to read through the questions carefully so I can have a shot next year!
Kale started picking out the shortest questions first, reading through them and carefully writing down what he thought the answers were. The hourglass drained on, indifferent. The further he pushed through the questions he could answer, the more unfamiliar words crept in to take over entire sentences.
Even when he succeeded in reading a question, the question itself was too difficult and he got stuck on the answer. He loved dragons, but Kale hadn’t had the environment to study them properly — there was no shortage of things he couldn’t give a clear answer to. While Kale struggled and agonized, others around him were filling in their answers with ease.
Mm. As expected, it’s simple.
When the hourglass had reached about the halfway point, Hirse was already reading the questions on the final page. The later questions — ones Kale could barely even read — were so densely packed they looked like the opening pages of a book. Starting from the history of how dragons, as sentient and mana-bearing creatures, came to cooperate with humans, to dragon ecology, characteristics, and methods of countering the monsters of the Black Lands — questions that required real depth of learning. Hirse wrote out his answers to all of them smoothly and without hesitation.
Kale had just barely managed to understand the fifty-fifth question — [What is a dragon’s universal weak point?] — and was drawing a diagram to express his intended answer of [the gap between scales on its back], when the hourglass finally ran out. The exam was over.
“Stop!”
The whistle sounded as if it could freeze time in the examination hall. Remembering the rules, Kale immediately set his pen down and placed his hands on his knees. The proctors who had been standing at the back walked forward. They compared the number on the metal placard on each desk with the number written on the exam sheet, then collected the papers. One candidate who had still been writing even after the whistle blew grabbed the exam sheet the proctor was about to take and pleaded shamelessly.
“Wait. Just a moment! Just one more. I only need to write this one thing—!”
“Committing an infraction results in elimination regardless of your score.”
The proctor had already announced the rules in advance — and so he tore that candidate’s exam sheet on the spot. The candidate, who had assumed there would just be a warning and that it would be overlooked, was so shocked they couldn’t say a word. And it wasn’t just that one person — the exam sheets of every candidate who had not put their pen down after the whistle blew were torn apart without mercy. They cried out in protest that this was too cruel, but there were no exceptions. Rules were rules.
I only paid attention because I went through it myself last year — if I hadn’t, I really might have…
Watching the sheets get torn apart despite the protests of the others, the remaining candidates swallowed hard and kept even their fingertips perfectly still. They were afraid that any little thing might be taken as cheating.
In the meantime, the proctors collected every last exam sheet. The head proctor sealed the gathered papers into a sturdy envelope, stamped it with a wax seal, and walked out of the examination hall with his subordinates. The cold, businesslike attitude — as if they had no further use for anyone in the room — was utterly devoid of any warmth. At least the one proctor who remained last gave them this before leaving:
“The entrance examination is now concluded. If you wish, you may follow the signs to the dining hall in the adjacent building for a meal before you go.”
The moment the last proctor stepped out, the people who had been trapped in that suffocating atmosphere finally let out their pent-up sighs and complaints. Everyone gathered with their acquaintances and talked about the difficulty of the exam, while those whose sheets had been torn left in a fury without looking back. Kale was about to head off to eat as well, but he missed his window to leave after overhearing Hirse and Lien talking in the row next to him.
“How did you find the exam, young master?”
“Question ninety-eight was a bit tricky, but nothing worth mentioning.”
“I found the earlier questions manageable enough myself, but it certainly got harder toward the end.”
“You still have much to learn. Do better.”
Even to his own attendant, Hirse never stopped with the condescending remarks. Far from finding the questions manageable — Kale was even more drained than he had been during the physical exam. He’d already wrung out every drop of stamina, and then had to use his head on top of that; he was dizzy and exhaustion was rolling in.
His stomach had been growling throughout the entire exam, and he’d been so on edge worrying it would disturb the people around him that his concentration had suffered for it. Passing or not passing aside, all Kale wanted right now was to put something in his mouth and silence this humiliating noise.
“Well then, shall we have an early taste of what the finest Order in the kingdom serves for dinner?”
“Even so, it will hardly compare to what the Liguit family manor prepares.”
“Ha. If you become a Dragon Knight, that’s something you’ll have to make your peace with, won’t it?”
Hirse, already certain he had passed, left the examination hall with Lien. With no reason to linger, others followed. No one showed it outwardly, but they’d all been pushing themselves since morning — they had to be starving. The complimentary dinner was the Dragon Knight Order’s own way of showing appreciation to the candidates who had persevered all the way to this point.
I was so anxious my stomach was acting up, so I ate lightly to avoid heartburn — and that really did me in.
Desperate to put something in his mouth, Kale made his way out into the corridor as well. The candidates from the room next door had apparently finished at the same time, and they came pouring out all at once. Thinking it would be nice to have dinner with his golden-haired friend, Kale decided to wait in the corridor until his friend came out.
But even as everyone else filed out, his friend was nowhere to be seen. Since his friend was always unusually slow, Kale decided to wait just a little longer — but when it seemed he was now the only candidate left in the building, he couldn’t hold back any longer and started peeking into the other examination rooms one by one.
“Hey, you there. What do you think you’re doing?”
Kale, caught peering into an empty examination room, spun around with a start. Someone bearing the Order’s insignia was glaring at the lone remaining candidate with a severe expression. It was a proctor who had come to secure and lock down the building now that the outside visitors had finished using it. Kale hadn’t done anything wrong, but he felt guilty all the same, and he flailed his hands as he stumbled over his explanation.
“My friend doesn’t seem to have come out yet. I was just checking, in case—”
“There’s no one inside. Stand aside — I need to close the door.”
The proctor said it coldly, then shut the examination room door and began chanting a spell, casting a peculiar enchantment over it. A complex array of sigils rose to the surface of the thick door. Once the casting was complete, the proctor rattled the handle — the door would not open.
