Written Examination
In the Magic Kingdom, the written examination for the White Card qualification certification consists of four subjects: Rune Studies, Arithmetic, Aberrant Beast Analysis, and Kingdom Law and Mission Conduct.
Of these four subjects, Rune Studies naturally tests a magical girl's knowledge of the mystical aspects of Magic Side, because whether it's deciphering the Kingdom's scriptures, researching Spell Formula, or creating magical items, all require relevant knowledge of runes. For a magical girl, this quality is naturally indispensable.
Next is Arithmetic, which serves to verify and ensure that magical girls possess the ability to handle arithmetic problems in emergencies. This is also recognized as the simplest subject, with its scope and difficulty roughly equivalent to fifth or sixth grade math in the Material Realm. Moreover, it doesn't contain any tricky questions, so it can be said that any magical girl who has received basic education will definitely pass.
However, the Aberrant Beast Analysis, a key subject in the written examination, is much more difficult. It examines not only the classification of Aberrant Beast, their abilities at different stages, and Aberrant Beast common physiological characteristics and indicators, but also many microscopic knowledge points.
Taking the first short-answer question in the previous year's exam for this subject as an example, the question stem was, "Please list three functional changes in the physiological stimulus transmission structure of the consciousness body of the Covered Viscera Type Aberrant Beast after it evolves from an egg to Looper Tier. If it mutated during evolution and became Open Viscera Type Aberrant Beast, what are the functional changes? And try to list more variant types (bonus points)."
Such questions permeate the entire exam, posing a significant challenge to the knowledge reserves of every magical girl candidate. Those magical girls from large cities with experienced seniors in their teams are better off; they can gradually learn from their seniors during daily battles and slowly accumulate this knowledge. However, for magical girls from smaller towns, whose seniors may only have average scores in <Aberrant Beast Analysis>, they won't be able to learn much even if they wanted to.
Magical girls like these can only buy special exam preparation textbooks, but in reality, not all magical girls have the ability to study properly on their own. As a result, there are special tutoring classes in the Kingdom to help magical girls who lack knowledge in a particular subject.
After these three foundational subjects comes the exam on "Kingdom Law and Mission Conduct".
The purpose of this assessment was initially to teach magical girls about the law and regulate their behavior so that they could protect the general public to the greatest extent possible during missions and avoid unnecessary casualties and losses. Therefore, in the early stages of the assessment system, this subject was actually a simple subject, similar to Arithmetic, and was something that most candidates could pass if they were willing to memorize some material.
However, as times changed, to serve as a warning to those who came after, this subject began to include various cases of non-compliant mission execution or magical girls violating Kingdom regulations. Later, to ensure that candidates truly grasped the underlying principles, the questions gradually incorporated analysis and deconstruction of these cases. Today, this subject has evolved into a hodgepodge of mission regulations assessing magical girls' actions against various entities, including Aberrant Beast, urban public infrastructure, civilians, human criminals, and traitorous Fairy and magical girls.
Using a previous year's exam question as an example, one of them was. "A magical girl mishandled the battlefield during an Aberrant Beast operation, causing toxic substances to enter the city's underground water network. To prevent widespread drinking water poisoning, she blew up part of the water supply network, causing partial water supply disruptions and reduced crop yields in some agricultural areas. However, in the process, she also accidentally killed a Gray Magic Organization hiding in the sewers. How should the Magic Affairs Institute handle this situation, either as punishment or reward?"
A magical girl, heartbroken after her boyfriend cheated on her, attempted to lure Aberrant Beast to his house during a battle. However, the house, dilapidated from years of neglect, collapsed that same night. The magical girl, upon arriving at the house, discovered this and, overcome with remorse, immediately vanquished the Aberrant Beast and attempted to rescue the occupants. Unfortunately, after being rescued, her boyfriend suffered a fatal heart attack upon witnessing the Aberrant Beast's corpse dissipate. What rules did the magical girl violate, and how should her actions be punished?
Yes, if you were to ask which subject in the qualification certification exam is the most troublesome and the one that people least want to take, this would most likely be the number one choice if candidates were to vote for it.
No matter how well a magical girl memorizes the rules and regulations or how many relevant cases she collects, the Examination Institute can always find some strange questions that target the candidates' blind spots. In this battle of wits, which is like posing brain teasers, the exam questions for this subject become stranger year by year.
Even more ironically, if a candidate passes the White Card assessment and reaches the Letter Card stage, their assessment subjects will change: <Rune Studies> will become <Spell Formula Synthesis>, Arithmetic will become <Basic Sciences>, Aberrant Beast Analysis> will become <Magical Properties>...
Only the Kingdom Law and Mission Conduct remains.
Yes, the Letter Card exam still tests this skill, but the content is even more tricky and bizarre. So much so that the official Kingdom reference book for this subject, titled "Legal Principles and Norms, From Beginner to Expert," is often referred to by many tormented candidates as "Twisted Logic and Strange Things, From Beginner to Buried."
Of course, these are not things that the Larkspur needs to worry about.
For example, in the current Rune Studies exam, from entering the room to finishing the paper, her expression didn't change at all; she completed the exam without any fluctuation.
Her success in the written exam wasn't solely due to her passing the Letter Card test years ago, even though she had forgotten much of it since, she had gradually picked it up again through tutoring and training younger students over the past year. It was also because she wasn't expecting to achieve a particularly outstanding score in the first place.
"Gentian" is just an ordinary rookie magical girl. Her age on her certificate dictates that she shouldn't have overly mature thoughts or a wealth of knowledge. It's already quite remarkable for magical girls her age to pass the exam. Therefore, Larkspur intends to stick to this fake identity. She only seriously answered 70% of the questions on the exam paper, leaving the rest blank, pretending she "didn't know how to answer."
However, there was a strange little incident during this time. Her examination room was the Silver Gallery's grand hall, which had a total of eight proctors, four of whom were Green Faction magical girls. These Green Faction magical girls passed by her countless times, noticing the blank questions on her paper, and even secretly gesturing to her, trying to tell her the answers. Larkspur shook her head at each of them, almost saying outright that she didn't want to get a high score, before they finally quieted down.
However, this strange phenomenon caught the attention of the other four proctoring magical girls. They suspected that a magical girl in the area where Larkspur was located was cheating, so they extended their time in the vicinity and increased the frequency of their patrols.
The proctors had flipped through nearly a third of Larkspur's exam paper, which she had deliberately left blank. They expressed their disapproval of "Candidate Gentian," a magical girl who simply wouldn't write what she didn't know, leaving large areas of her paper blank and not even bothering to guess the steps involved. More than one proctor had instructed Larkspur to fill in the blanks, and another even came back later to check it again, which was incredibly annoying.
Fortunately, the exam time passed quickly. The content of Rune Studies itself was not difficult, and there was not much cheating, so the first written exam ended smoothly in a short time.
The four subjects will be taken over two days, with each subject taking half a day. Therefore, after this exam, the students will have a full lunch break.
Having finished her Rune Studies exam, Larkspur emerged from the exam hall with droopy eyelids. The first thing she did was take out her phone and type a message to several juniors:
How did you do on the exam?