This Time, I'm Done (3/3)

Back at school, it was time to study, then take exams.

This time, it was an academic exam. The five high schools would take it together, and their scores would be updated collectively afterward.

However, there were only so many teachers qualified to proctor, so the order of subjects differed among the five high schools. Some students might use this opportunity to collude, but if they were caught, their Moral Score would be docked mercilessly.

Sports High School took the academic exam first. When the bell rang, everyone had to immediately enter the dreamscape distributed by the teachers, complete the exam within it, submit their answers, and only then leave the dreamscape.

That way, examinees couldn't cheat in reality.

Moreover, time could pass very slowly in the dreamscape. Teachers could also use the time difference there to grade papers quickly and update students' Grades in the grading system as soon as possible.

The academic exam covered all sorts of topics, including general knowledge, history, reading comprehension, mathematics, and more, for a total of three hundred and fifty questions.

Besides multiple-choice questions, there were fill-in-the-blank questions, essays, compositions, practical exercises, and more. Because it covered so much material, the academic exam was also called the Plow Ox Exam. Taking it once was utterly exhausting.

Even someone as tough as Chen Yu felt his head buzzing after he finished.

Leaving the dreamscape, he was just about to head to Little Kitchen to rest for a while and invite his classmates over for a meal so they could help him spend some money when he heard a lively voice call out, "Chen Yu, let's compare answers!"

"Ha..."

With a long sigh, Chen Yu turned to the short class monitor behind him. "I really admire you. You still have so much energy after the exam. Why not compare answers with Ma Daqiang?"

"Compare answers with him? You've got to be joking."

"Just compare them in reverse. If you have the same answer as him on any question, you should worry that you got it wrong."

Liu Qing clapped her hands. "Right!"

"Hurry up and call the others. Let's go eat at Little Kitchen together. I heard they have a nourishing mushroom soup hotpot today. I can't wait to go see the little people."

"Got it. I'll be right back."

Turning around and heading back into the classroom, Chen Yu soon heard Ma Daqiang's dissatisfied voice from inside. "What are you doing, Class Monitor? I don't want to compare answers. I want to play in the dreamscape!"

"That Quiz Melee game from your company has been so fun lately. The Pseudo-humans in it are especially cute. Those Bratty Girls in particular—every time they curse at me, my bones go soft."

"You think I'm a pervert? How does liking being cursed at by cute girls make me a pervert? Besides, I don't let just anyone curse at me. Like you, for example—whenever you curse at me, I get especially annoyed!"

"What are you doing? Gah!"

Accompanied by a scream, Liu Qing walked out in silence, her face livid.

Chen Yu had originally wanted to tell her to look on the bright side. After all, that guy still thought she was a girl.

But when he saw Ma Daqiang's bloodstained phone in her hand, he wisely chose to remain silent.

Liu Qing flipped through Ma Daqiang's phone and found his answers from today. After comparing them, her face turned deathly pale.

"What's wrong?" Chen Yu asked cautiously.

Liu Qing raised a hand to tell Chen Yu not to speak first, then quickly checked the answers again. Her face turned even paler.

Grabbing Chen Yu by the corner of his clothes, Liu Qing said tearfully, "Chen Yu, what should I do?"

"Just say it. If we're brothers, don't wipe your snot on my clothes!"

"I might have failed this time!"

"That bad?"

"I don't know why! I clearly thought the questions were really easy this time! What do I do? Am I going to lose my position as class monitor?"

Chen Yu thought that this lousy position wasn't all that great anyway. If she lost it, then she lost it.

But seeing Little Hamster looking so pitiful, he could only shake his head helplessly. He took her phone, then began checking it.

After a quick look, he checked it again in confusion before asking, "Class Monitor, what do you usually score in academic subjects?"

"Seventy-five."

"You did really well this time. You got seventy-nine. With just a little more effort, you could reach eighty. You've been studying hard lately."

"Huh? But my answers are very similar to Ma Daqiang's."

Chen Yu took Ma Daqiang's phone back and looked through it once more. Then even he lost confidence.

Could they really be this similar?

Ma Daqiang usually only scored around thirty in academic subjects, yet this time his answers overlapped with Chen Yu's by forty percent. By that calculation, he should score around thirty-seven.

Improvements in scores couldn't happen overnight, unless someone was cheating.

So Ma Daqiang had cheated too?

"That shouldn't be possible. What have you all been doing lately?"

Liu Qing fidgeted for a while before saying embarrassedly, "Well, cultivating, reading, and occasionally playing in the dreamscape to earn a little money."

"There's no one else here. Why don't you tell me exactly how often your 'occasionally' is?"

"Just a few hours every day."

"...Isn't that basically playing whenever you aren't in class? What kind of dreamscape is so addictive?"

"It's that dreamscape game from your company, Quiz Melee. It's really fun. I've only earned a few dozen mana so far, but it feels amazing to play. I heard the really skilled players have already found the question bank inside and memorized all of it. That makes answering questions more efficient, faster, and even more satisfying. I memorized some of it too, but not all of it."

Once Chen Yu learned it was that game, he understood.

Quiz Melee was inherently addictive. It was the sort of dreamscape where losers wanted to win, while winners wanted to keep winning.

On top of that, it rewarded players with mana, so once players got into it, they would play like crazy, lose themselves in it, and eventually become addicted.

Memorizing the question bank was perfectly normal, but Chen Yu hadn't expected the players to be this intense. They had actually managed to find so many question banks.

After all, the game had started with the equivalent of three hundred books, and Luo Tong and the others had continued collecting books from libraries at various schools. It should be up to seven hundred by now.

Anyone who could memorize that many questions was truly talented.

At that moment, Chen Yu felt faintly uneasy, though he wasn't quite sure where that unease came from.

Looking at his Constitution interface again, Negative Emotions were still far ahead. He would soon reach his goal of one hundred thousand.

Compared to the barely sixty thousand Positive Emotion, Chen Yu couldn't think of any situation that could one-shot him.

He had wanted to investigate further, but Liu Qing had already grabbed him. "Hurry up, I can't wait any longer. Compare answers with me already!"

"Then let's compare while we eat."

"Sure! My treat!"

"Don't even think about it! I refuse to let anyone spend their own money in front of me instead of mine!"

"...Yu, you've been acting really weird lately."

The exams at Sports High School had just ended when Teacher Zhao immediately took the students' dreamscapes and rushed straight to Culture High School.

To save time, he leaped onto the rooftops and sprinted across them at high speed.

His body was built like a wild bull, yet he moved as lightly as a swallow when he rose and fell. Even when he landed, he did not crush a single roof tile, displaying remarkable lightness skills.

He reached Culture High School in five minutes, climbed through a window into the proctoring classroom, and immediately spotted Wang Chuyun seated in the middle of the room.

As expected of the top student. Even in the face of an exam, her expression did not change. She had the bearing of a great general.

Looking away, he clapped his hands and said, "The exam is about to begin. Everyone, prepare to enter the dreamscape. You all know the exam rules, right? I won't repeat them. All right, begin. Wang Chuyun?"

Wang Chuyun trembled when her name was called, then shakily gripped her phone and entered the dreamscape.

At the moment she closed her eyes, there was only one thing on her mind:

This time, I'm done for.