The sound of pages flipping at breakneck speed, the tense presence of examinees breathing heavily as they tore through the questions, pens racing across paper everywhere with furious, stabbing strokes. Jolted awake from my daze by the bizarre atmosphere, I could only sit there in sheer disbelief.
"...I have to solve these."
Even if I had no intention of passing, I couldn't very well leave without answering a single question. My parents had sent me off with at least some degree of hope. I needed to leave behind at least some mark of my effort.
It looked like the exam was compiled into a booklet. Binding more than ten thousand copies of something like this for just a single day's exam was astonishing, though this was hardly the time to marvel at the capital's printing technology. Let's see, time to flip through it...
"Huh?"
A separate sheet of paper was tucked into the middle of the booklet, so I pulled it out. Yet there was nothing written on it, just a grid pattern....What was this sheet?
Suddenly, the application process came to mind. Could there be some sort of magic woven into it? Like text appearing to reveal questions, or maybe my exam wouldn't even be graded unless I did something to this paper. In any case, I should use magic to check—
"...No, wait."
A sudden chill brushed against the back of my neck....Was I even allowed to use magic during the exam? There were bound to be several mages keeping a watchful eye over the hall. The moment I made any move that could be mistaken for cheating, there was a very real chance I'd be struck down with fire magic.
If that was the case, I'd better not take any foolish risks. Perhaps Sophie had gone over the rules while I was asleep, but... there was no point dwelling on that now.
Either way, I shouldn't draw any attention to myself. I had taken a liking to the royal capital, but I certainly wasn't prepared to die far from home. If I failed to bring back souvenirs, who knew what my sister would say over my grave.
"Hmm..."
Giving up on any clever tricks, I decided to simply examine the sheet. I turned it upside down, then flipped it over. I wondered if the grid pattern held some deeper meaning, but it really was just packed with identical rectangles.
"Wait."
Looking closely... there were markings in the corners of the boxes. No, not letters. Numbers!
"...It's an order."
The box in the top-left corner was "1," and the numbers continued sequentially to the right. Once it hit "10," it moved down to the next row, starting at "11." Following that pattern, it seemed to end at "200." What were these numbers for?
"...Could it be?"
I reflexively flipped through the booklet and checked the first problem. The number "1" was printed beside it, and the next question was marked "2." When I checked the very last page, there was a question numbered "200," matching the box in the bottom-right corner.
I see. I got it now. I was supposed to solve the questions in the booklet and write the answers in the corresponding boxes. I thought I understood how exams worked, but there really were plenty of things you wouldn't know until you actually took one. Though, this was probably second nature to regular examinees.
"Well then."
Starting a bit later than everyone else, I finally got down to business. First, the opening question. Let's see here...
Select the most appropriate figure who clarified the directivity of magic from the following choices.
Well, that was obviously the great mage Viktor Geldner. Let's see, Geldner's option was... "4," huh. I see, having people answer with numbers like this saved them the hassle of grading.
I had braced myself for an onslaught of impossible problems, but this was surprisingly simple. Was there really any examinee who wouldn't know this? With ten thousand applicants, could they really establish a proper spread of scores with questions like this? Whatever, on to question two.
The diagram below illustrates the relative positions of a mage and a target. Select the most appropriate angle of elevation for unleashing fire magic from the following choices.
Just when I thought they were testing pure theory, they threw in a remarkably practical question. A textbook approach would probably require a trigonometric table, but... I could tell just by feel. It was around thirty-four degrees. The closest option among the choices was "36 degrees," so answering "3" would do it.
What do you know, I was breezing through every single question without breaking a sweat. I'd completely wasted my time worrying. If I kept up this pace and finished all 200 questions... wait, 200 questions?
"..."
Careful not to arouse suspicion, I stole a glance around the room. Every examinee was still scribbling away furiously. Why were they all so desperate when the questions were this easy—
"...The time limit?"
It hit me then and there. Right, exams had time limits. If you were allowed to take all the time in the world, anyone could easily score a perfect hundred. Yet the other examinees were plowing ahead as if they were being hunted down.
I finally realized the predicament I was in. I had no idea how much time was left before the end of the exam....Which meant I had no clue whether there was enough time to solve the remaining 198 questions.
This was bad. Sophie had probably explained the duration of the test, but unfortunately, I'd missed the whole thing. Easy as they were, time might run out while I was only halfway through, around question 100.
I could solve the problems, but I didn't know how much time I had left. What was I supposed to do?...There was only one logical conclusion to draw from this.
"...Solve them as fast as humanly possible."
—Looking back, I must have been entirely, single-mindedly absorbed. I flipped through the grimoires stored inside my head, bounded across vast coordinate planes of my own design, and rode the turbulent waves of the history that magic had carved out.
The moment I read a question, the answer felt as though it were rising right off the page. Every scrap of knowledge I had acquired throughout my life intertwined, forming a single, clear solution. Rather than actively seeking the answers, it felt as though they were already waiting wherever my mind naturally wandered.
I was so deeply immersed that I didn't even care whether I passed or failed. Even so, one thought crossed my mind. Unfit for farming and having spent my days drifting without a purpose, I felt as though I had finally found something solid to anchor my existence.
Maybe this kind of thing really is what I was made for, I thought.
Somehow, before the chime of the ending bell rang out, I managed to fill in every single one of the 200 boxes. It was only much later that I learned a passing score on this exam was under 120 points—meaning there had never been any need to tackle all 200 questions in earnest to begin with.