The Test Setters Begin to Lose Their Minds

"What do you mean he's already robbed three shops?"

The head of the test-setting team let out a shrill cry.

"Where are the city guards? Aren't those guards supposed to be invincible?!"

He hurried to the proctor's desk and searched for Ram's projection.

Could professional robbers have infiltrated this batch of examinees?

He looked at the projection.

In the image, Ram did not look professional at all. His huge body even seemed rather clumsy. He simply carried a large sack, entered any shop with an open door, and grabbed whatever goods he could find...

Wait, no.

The team leader's sharp eyes immediately spotted something strange.

Although Ram appeared to be grabbing things at random, he always happened to pick up the most valuable items in each shop.

Terrifying!

A horrifying theory formed in the team leader's mind.

On the day the examinees were familiarizing themselves with the environment, Ram had surveyed the target shops in the city, determined the locations of valuable goods, planned his escape routes, and had likely even tested the guards' response. After repeated rehearsals, he had carried it out during the official exam.

And to avoid looking like this had been planned for a long time, he had deliberately acted flustered and nervous. Every item looked as though it had been snatched in a hurry, but in truth, every single one had been carefully selected.

The targets, timing, and routes had all been prepared. He never lingered in a single shop, was completely ungreedy, and acted with extreme efficiency.

This was a professional bandit beyond professional!

Holy shit!

What was a bandit of this caliber trying to accomplish by disguising himself as an examinee and taking the academy's exam?

The team leader had already begun imagining a terrifying conspiracy story.

But there seemed to be no reason to stop Ram. The rules only prohibited robbing other examinees of their belongings; they did not prohibit robbing background characters.

Before figuring out Ram's purpose, though, it was more important to figure out why the guards could not catch him.

"Go notify Mage Leonardo, the one responsible for creating the city guards, and have him come here immediately!"

Meanwhile, in the Phantom World.

Ram breathed evenly and jogged steadily onward, strictly following the tactics Jia Xiu had taught him.

Follow his instincts. Run wherever they took him. Enter any shop with an open door, grab whatever he found inside, and when his sack was full, go to the Adventurer Association and carry out the next step.

It was a plan so simple that he understood it after hearing it once.

At the time, he had asked Jia Xiu one question. "What if the guards catch me?"

Jia Xiu's answer had been equally concise. "Then run. Leave the rest to fate."

Ram now felt that his fate was quite reliable.

He did not know why, but those guards really had never managed to catch up to him.

As he ran, another group of guards suddenly appeared on his left. They were riding in carriages, and another group followed some distance behind them.

Ram looked to the left, then looked back.

He could not figure out how to handle such a complicated situation, where two groups were chasing him at once. So he chose not to think about it and kept running. He passed through a street crowded with pedestrians, and just as he lowered his head and accelerated, he heard a burst of noisy, chaotic collisions.

When he turned to look behind him, he found the two groups of pursuers had crashed into the dense crowd of pedestrians. The horses had been startled as well, and everything was a mess. Someone struggled to get up, only to be stepped back down by a foot from who knew where.

Ram shook his head. Why did they have to chase him? The guards who chased him always ended up more or less like this...

Before the projection, the team leader and the newly arrived Mage Leonardo stared in stunned silence.

"Were the guards you designed incapable of catching people?" the team leader asked slowly.

"Uh, it's like this, Team Leader. You required that every aspect of the city experience be as close to reality as possible. So apart from being unable to die and having unlimited stamina, the guards' pursuit procedures were based on Larven's real conditions. Accidents can happen, with roughly a three-in-a-thousand chance."

The team leader glared at Leonardo.

What did that mean? Was he trying to make him take the blame?

Seeing the team leader's dark expression, Leonardo hurriedly tried to patch things up. "Although accidents can occur, they should theoretically catch him sooner or later, because examinees cannot have unlimited stamina."

"Then why did you make the accidents into such a massive chain collision?"

"Uh, that should have been designed by Mage Buonarroti, who created the traffic system."

A few minutes later, Mage Buonarroti arrived.

"Take a look." The team leader pointed at the projection. "There have already been three traffic accidents along the route this person has taken."

"It's like this, Team Leader. You required that we make it as close as possible—"

"I don't want to hear that! I only want to know why the guards crash wherever he runs!"

"According to the design, the city's traffic accident rate should be around two in a thousand. Three accidents on different roads is not entirely impossible."

Sweat beaded on Buonarroti's forehead as he forced himself to answer.

"You're saying that wherever he runs, he just happens to trigger that two-in-a-thousand chance, rather than there being an error in your work?" the team leader demanded.

"Team Leader, look. He's already been cornered in a dead end. There's a drop of nearly ten meters ahead of him. He can't possibly jump down, and even if he knows Feather Fall, there's no time for him to cast it."

Faced with something he could not understand either, Buonarroti hurriedly changed the subject.

The city had not been built on flat ground. It had been constructed against the mountains, with plenty of rises and dips.

In the projection, Ram had been cornered by the guards on a platform nearly ten meters above the road below.

If he jumped from there, even if he did not die, he would break some bones.

Then, under the astonished gazes of the two mages and the team leader, Ram jumped down without the slightest hesitation.

A carriage happened to be passing along the road below. It happened to have a soft roof, and Ram happened to be cushioned by it.

The carriage was wrecked. He was fine.

The team leader now felt that someone was setting him up—perhaps the God of Fate himself.

Seeing that the team leader looked as if he were about to faint, Buonarroti hurriedly comforted him.

"Team Leader, it's not that serious. Although his journey has been rather bizarre, and there may be issues with our design, it doesn't affect the exam."

"How so?"

"Have you forgotten? We already patched that loophole. Only by earning crowns through commissions can they pass the exam."

Hearing that, the team leader recovered somewhat.

"Right. He can sell all those things he stole, but it still won't count."

"That's exactly it."

"Those things he stole... they aren't targets for any commission quests, are they?"

The team leader was still uneasy. "No, hurry up and bring Mage Sancy, the one in charge of commissions, here."

A few more minutes passed.

Sancy patted his chest and promised, "Don't worry, Team Leader. All commission target items can only appear in dungeons. They cannot be found anywhere in the city."

Only then did the team leader calm down a little.

But when he saw Ram run into the Adventurer Association in the projection, he could not help feeling nervous again.

"If he can't turn in a commission, what is he going to the association for?"

The three key members of the test-setting team all shook their heads.

"Maybe he thinks he can turn one in..."

Ram entered the Adventurer Association and silently rehearsed what he was about to say several times. Only once he felt sufficiently fluent did he walk up to the association's service counter.

"Hello, I want to post a commission."

"What commission would you like to post?"

"Several shops in the city have been robbed. I want to commission adventurers to recover the stolen goods."

"What is the reward?"

"Ten percent of the recovered goods' value will be converted into payment."

"Your commission has been posted."

"Thank you."

After saying that, Ram got up and went to another counter.

"Hello, I want to turn in a commission."

"What commission would you like to turn in?"

"The stolen goods from the shops robbed in the city. I recovered them."

"?!"

Seeing what Ram had done, the team leader's beard trembled.

"He, he... Th-this... why can he post a commission and complete it himself?"

Mage Sancy, who was responsible for creating commissions, looked flustered, but he remembered that this had been done according to the requirements.

"It's like this, Team Leader. You required that we make it as close as possible—Team Leader, are you all right? Team Leader!"

The head of the test-setting team lost his footing, swayed unsteadily, and toppled to one side...