“What’s your problem? Have you no manners?”
“Wanna go, kid? We’ll teach you a thing or two about manners before your entrance exam.”
It was obvious that the upperclassmen were pissed off by the way she’d stood up to them. For a moment, I thought about helping her, but I immediately realized that there was no need. After all, she clearly outclassed them.
“Who’ll teach whom, I wonder?” She gave them an eerie grin as she drew her sword from its sheath on her hip.
Hm, she seems to be pretty handy with a blade. I didn’t think she was just talk. This felt like the first time in a while that I’d genuinely been impressed by someone.
“Eek!”
Moments later, they’d all been knocked to their butts, and found her sword pointed at their throats.
“Get lost. Now!”
“P-Pardon us!” The three upperclassmen skittered off into the distance while Eliza glared at them with her flaming-red Crimson Eyes.
Good grief. We hadn’t even begun the exam and already we’d been dragged into trouble.
“Hey. You,” I called to her from behind.
Though I hadn’t asked for it, I couldn’t deny that she’d helped me out. It was only good manners for me to thank her somehow. As soon as I reached out to stop her from leaving, though, my hand was smacked away.
“You really think a commoner like you can touch me? Know your place!”
“Uh...”
Come again? Looking into her eyes, I saw even more prejudice than I had in the students from before.
“Uh... Weren’t you helping me out?”
“Where’d you get that idea from? I just hate people talking behind others’ backs! But I don’t remember permitting a commoner like you to speak to me!” Oh, give me a break! Is this academy filled with people like her? “Listen, commoner! If you want me to notice you, become the strongest here. I’ve no interest in anyone but the strong,” she spat, before leaving.
Good grief. I was surprised to see that there were still people like her in this world, that were so fixated on strength.
“Master! Wh-Who was that girl?!”
“No clue. How would I know?”
That being said, I had a feeling that I’d met her before. As I passed through the school gate, I started searching through my memories, trying to remember if I’d ever befriended a girl with flowing red hair.
✦ ✦ ✦
The entrance exam for Arthlia Academy had two components to it—a written test and a practical test. Each had a total of a hundred possible points, meaning that your final score was out of two hundred. The room was filled with the pleasant sound of pens scratching against paper.
The test consisted of three subjects: General Culture, Magecraft Syntax, and Magecraft Engineering. The first subject, General Culture, was very easy for me. It tested the examinee’s reading comprehension skills, as well as their grasp of simple math, using numbers and figures. These kinds of things were tested back in my day as well, and it didn’t seem like anything had really changed. Essentially, there was nothing I could get wrong in this section of the test.
Magecraft Syntax almost felt like they were ridiculing me—that’s how easy it was. Not only was the level of modern mages low, but the level of their students was low as well. I fought back yawns as I answered the questions. I couldn’t imagine myself losing even a single point here. In fact, I found four mistakes that the testmaker had made.
Finally, there was Magecraft Engineering. It was harder than the other two subjects. I could almost feel the sadistic personality of whoever had made it. But just because it was harder than the other subjects, that didn’t mean it was hard for me. Good grief. At this rate, I was almost sure that I’d get a perfect score. All I had to do was finish this problem and then I’d be done with the written exam...
Question 12: Depornix’s Final Theorem: Prove that it is impossible to create a human soul with magecraft.
Huh? This is completely different from any of the other questions on this test. It was a lot harder than anything I’d encountered up to this point. Most likely, this question had been included to stop anyone from getting a perfect score. I could feel my lips curling into a smile. After all, I’d been the one who had made this question in the first place.
When I was ten years old, everyone was really interested in human transmutation. Mages everywhere had searched for a way to produce a human soul. There had even been a well-known mage who’d killed a large number of humans for the sake of his experiment. It’d been a big societal problem. He and everyone else during that time period were idiots. It was impossible for magecraft to produce a soul.
That’s why, in an attempt to stop that pointless boom of interest in creating souls, I’d used a fake name and published “Depornix’s Last Theorem.” Well, as an extension of that research, I’d perfected my reincarnation magecraft, so I guess it hadn’t been that pointless for me after all.
But anyway, though this test question was objectively harder than the others, it might as well have been a freebie to me. After all, I’d been the first to solve it when I was barely even ten years old. The name Depornix had come from an old couple’s dog in the neighborhood I lived in. But that was something only I would ever know.
Thinking back, though, my theorem had been unnecessarily wordy, not to mention incomplete. Good grief. Sure, I may have been a kid, but it was embarrassing to look back on that and know that I’d put it out into the world.
After writing what I knew about the theorem’s flaws, I finished the test.