Lanchi stood in the Sage Institute's waiting area in the courtyard, still thinking about the desserts with the Holy Kingdom's distinctive flavor.
"Apparently, the food in the Shadow World tastes just as real as food in the real world. But the food in the Artificial Shadow World is only an illusion. The desserts I spent so long baking just now didn't have any flavor at all..."
As he pondered, he overheard quite a few other candidates discussing their respective completion times.
It turned out that most candidates who passed needed forty or fifty minutes to barely meet the completion requirements.
It seemed everyone's awareness of the law was still lacking.
Just as Lanchi's mind began to wander into outer space.
"How long did you take?"
A light voice came from nearby.
Lanchi turned his head and saw a tall young woman of about his age looking at him.
Her eyes were amber, cold and proud, as if she could look down upon the entire world with a single glance.
Judging from her clearly expensive clothes and jewelry, she was probably a noble with a prominent family background in this kingdom.
She seemed to have noticed that there was another candidate nearby who looked unusually relaxed.
Someone who looked as if he didn't care about his exam results at all was a rare sight in the entire examination hall.
"..."
Lanchi fell silent and roughly calculated the time in his head.
In fact, the entire process had only taken him about ten minutes.
"Less than fifty minutes."
Lanchi answered amicably.
He felt that this impressive-looking young lady was probably a proud and troublesome person.
So if he had really completed the test faster than her, telling her that to her face would definitely upset her.
It was safer to say that he had taken less than fifty minutes.
That was what social skills were all about.
"I see."
The young lady nodded expressionlessly, then stopped paying attention to Lanchi.
So he was merely someone who didn't care much about whether he got good results.
Hughberlian thought to herself.
His excessively composed demeanor had misled her earlier.
In that case, he probably wouldn't become her teammate for the third-round examination.
As the daughter of the Duke of Aransal Family, Hughberlian had learned long ago about the format of this year's Sage Institute third-round examination—
Students with different roles would be grouped together to fight against a teacher.
Generally, under this kind of examination format,
a team would be assigned either a support mage or a healing mage.
Sometimes, depending on the ratio of candidates, a team might consist entirely of damage-dealing mages.
A good healer and support could lower the difficulty of the entire team's third-round examination, while a deadweight could greatly increase the pressure on the other team members.
According to what she had heard, this year's grouping rules would refer to the candidates' rankings in the second round.
In other words, candidates ranked near the top of the Sage Institute would most likely become teammates and then be matched against stronger teachers.
Hughberlian was certain to rank near the top in the second round. As a damage-dealing mage, she naturally didn't want to be assigned an incompetent healer and support when facing a high-difficulty third-round challenge.
Moreover, there were people in the kingdom who didn't want her to enroll successfully.
Being with her would undoubtedly make the practical examination much more difficult.
Only a good support could slightly increase her chances of passing.
Of course.
Those powerful figures who didn't want her to enroll would also do everything they could to manipulate the hounds they had planted in the academy, assigning her the worst possible teammates from among the candidates allowed by the rules—or even actors pretending to be candidates.
At the mere thought of this, an uncontrollable killing intent spread through Hughberlian's heart like layer upon layer of ripples.
"Give me a few more years... I'll settle accounts with every one of you... and torture you inch by inch..."
She thought viciously to herself.
Yet her expression remained as calm as ever.
As the examination hall gradually grew noisier during the wait,
at the edge of the courtyard, a cold young man with gray-white, tousled hair leaned against the wall with his arms crossed. He was now wearing a pair of small round sunglasses, looking lazy yet somewhat cocky.
He could clearly hear the conversations of the other candidates.
Most of them were discussing the details of their second-round examinations and how long they had taken.
Finally.
He closed his eyes in disdain and contempt.
He didn't understand.
Why did these people calculate their completion times...
in "minutes"?
Frei's brows furrowed slightly as he pondered this question.
Clearly, the examination was testing the candidates' understanding of loans.
Pawning their belongings for money would have solved everything directly. Why had they needed so much time?
The chief examiner for this examination, Loren, the Dean of the Sage Institute, was waiting for the terminal to calculate the final scores for the second round.
After hearing the students' discussions, he knew that some candidates who were still smug about completing the examination in over thirty minutes were about to question their entire lives.
Originally,
that result could have been considered excellent.
Loren had been observing the candidates' states on the screens throughout the examination, so he roughly knew the completion times that would be assigned to each student.
Among all the candidates from the Knight Institute and the Sage Institute, aside from two particular individuals, even the fastest had taken twenty-five minutes and three seconds.
Lanchi, meanwhile, had completed the required task at approximately the nine-minute-and-fifty-three-second mark.
While ordinary candidates were still investigating,
he had already arrested the entire target family.
Frei, on the other hand, had taken seven seconds.
He had solved every problem right from the start.
In this Shadow World, whose mechanisms were not particularly complicated, completion time carried the greatest weight in the scoring.
Frei would definitely receive an absurdly high base score for his speed.
However, because he had gone through virtually no puzzle-solving process in this puzzle-type Shadow World, he would receive almost no additional points.
As for Lanchi's score, even Loren had no idea how the terminal would calculate it.
If the candidates successfully passed the second and third rounds, their results in those two rounds would be weighted separately and recorded as their total score.
The rankings in the total enrollment examination would affect their subsequent class assignments in their respective institutes, the priority of officially registered challenger recommendations that exempted them from examinations, their seats as first-year student representatives in institute exchange activities, and so on.
The Artificial Shadow World Activation Terminal was about to operate as usual and calculate the candidates' scores.
Just as the calculations reached a certain point,
arcs of electricity suddenly flickered across the Mithril and magic crystals of the Artificial Shadow World Activation Terminal. Electric cocoons then began exploding all around it!
As the image on the Magic Screen connected to the terminal suddenly froze, all the images and indicators stopped moving.
The next instant, chaotic pixels began appearing one after another, making the image repetitive and blurry.
The disturbance clearly attracted the attention of every candidate, and a wave of panicked chatter surged through the examination hall on the Seventh Floor.
Loren's brows knitted tightly. Without much hesitation, he forcefully shut down the terminal, his expression grave.
Although doing so might damage the valuable magical device, he had to prioritize the safety of every student and staff member present.
At the same time, the chaotic arcs of electricity on the terminal dissipated.
Many candidates finally breathed a sigh of relief.
However.
When Loren tried to restart the terminal with the Secret Key,
he found that the terminal did not move at all.
It seemed that earlier incident had broken it.
"...No."
Loren shook his head painfully and pinched the bridge of his nose.
He felt utterly exhausted after today's examination, and he especially didn't want to go to the Magic Engineering Institute and endure Professor Bora Ao's scolding.
Even without calling in Professor Bora Ao, the expert from the Magic Engineering Institute, to repair it, Loren already had a rough idea of what had gone wrong.
No matter how one looked at it, the Artificial Shadow World was not a divinely created product like a real Shadow World.
The evaluation of a reproduced Artificial Shadow World could only be conducted using preset algorithmic models that had been entered in advance.
Frei's method of completing the examination, though unconventional, had been simple and crude.
Even with a few parameters missing, his score could still be calculated.
However, the reproducer had never considered that someone like Lanchi might completely overturn the algorithmic model with his method of completion.
Instead, this fellow had produced a whole pile of abnormal parameter inputs!
That was why the terminal had malfunctioned and frozen.
Judging by completion time, Frei of the Knight Institute should have ranked first in this round, with Lanchi of the Sage Institute just behind him.
But because Lanchi's actions had been too bizarre, the specific scores of all the candidates could no longer be determined!
The thought of having to explain the subsequent emergency repairs to the Magic Engineering Institute gave Loren an unbearable headache.
Finally.
Loren let out a long sigh. As if ignoring Lanchi altogether, he looked toward the numerous candidates and said:
"We will manually evaluate the second-round results based on the examination records. The third-round practical examination will be held the day after tomorrow, and all candidates will receive notification of their specific examination arrangements before the end of today."
What he couldn't see couldn't bother him.
Everything was a trial given to him by the Goddess. As a priest, he absolutely could not lose his temper so easily...
After announcing the important matters,
Dean Loren saw all the candidates out of the courtyard as if he were dismissing guests.
Before you continue