I nodded and resumed my previous pace, walking alongside him.
“We came early just to be safe, but I’m surprised to see so many people have arrived even before us,” I said.
They were all doing warm-up exercises, perhaps in preparation for the test. Some were doing push-ups, while others were running laps through the training grounds.
After leisurely heading over to the reception area, we showed the identification papers Thibault had given us.
We had barely finished when a booming voice yelled at us, “You’re late!”
Our group turned toward the source of the voice with a start. A large, muscular middle-aged man was lumbering toward us, his shoulders squared.
I assume he must be a member of the Royal Knights.
His black hair was styled in a crew cut with a squared-off top, and a menacing look was etched on his suntanned face. He scanned the five of us and narrowed his eyes.
“When do you think the examination starts?! Huh?!” he bellowed.
“Huh?”
Thibault immediately slipped in front of us to reply, as if to prevent us from saying something we shouldn’t. I was impressed by the swiftness of his reaction.
“I-In twenty minutes, sir,” he replied.
“Exactly! In twenty minutes! Is that how lightly you treat this test?!” the unknown man yelled, spittle flying from his mouth as he spoke.
Why was he so mad?
“Isn’t it obvious you should arrive at least an hour early?! Do you think this is a game?! Huh?!”
I had no idea what he was on about.
Why should we come an hour early for no good reason? What would we do for that extra time? Warming up doesn’t take that long.
The instructions said that we should arrive “five minutes before the start of the test, if possible.”
I thought we’d be fine as long as we got here on time.
But seeing how irritated the man was, it seemed I’d been wrong.
I don’t get it. If you want candidates to get to your test an hour early, then why not just state that clearly in the instructions?
“We’re incredibly sorry!” Thibault said before turning to us. The twins, Char, and I were gaping at the man. “C-Come on, you four, apologize!” he added, a frantic look on his face.
We did as he said, bowing our heads to the large man.
I was still just as confused as before.
“As punishment, you’ll be doing push-ups until the start of the test! And I’d better not catch you slacking off, got it?!”
With that, the man turned on his heels. Perhaps he’d had his fill of yelling...or not, seeing as he headed straight to the people who’d arrived after us.
“Just what is his problem?” I muttered.
I now understood that the people who were doing push-ups weren’t voluntarily warming up for the test; they’d been instructed to do so by the burly man.
“Should we all do the push-ups?” I asked Thibault, who nodded vigorously.
He likely believed it was our best course of action if we truly wanted to blend in. However, Char seemed to have something to say.
“Lam, you can’t do push-ups, can you? You can barely swing a broom.”
“I keep telling you I’m fine, Char. I’ll fall to the ground with every single one, but I’ll still do them.”
“It’s not push-ups if you just fall.”
Annoyingly, he still seemed to see me as a frail countess who couldn’t do anything, no matter what I did.
Seeing that my irritation was about to boil over, he tried to placate me. “Well, you can use magic to make it look like you’re doing them, I suppose. If that man sees you collapse on your face with every push-up, he might come yell at us again, and that’ll be a pain.”
“Yes, Miss Lam, please do that. I would prefer you refrain from using magic, but I suppose we don’t have a choice.” Thibault nodded, resignation playing over his face.
As for the twins, they were happily chatting beside us.
“Push-ups, huh? How nostalgic. It reminds me of the schoolhouse,” Fouet said.
“And we only have to do them for twenty minutes. That’s child’s play. When we were kids, we’d have to do them for two hours with no break.” Barre laughed.
The lighthearted delivery of their words contrasted sharply with their contents. Just how harsh had their training been?
“It still sounds like a pain, though. Madam, can you include Barre and me in your illusion too?” Fouet pleaded.
He was always incredibly resourceful when it came to slacking off.
I nodded. “Sure.”
Using my magic, I created an illusion of us doing push-ups and temporarily hid our real bodies with another spell. I also made it so that no one else could hear us, so we were free to converse to our heart’s content.
“By the way, who’s that man?” Char asked Thibault. “He seems a little...unstable.”
A grave look registered on the journalist’s face. “I’m not familiar with him personally, but I believe he’s Gahariet, the captain of the Royal Knights. Consider him the man in charge of the order we’re trying to join. To put it simply, the captain is the person appointed by the king to oversee the order’s operations.”
“He’s the one in charge?” Char asked, voicing what we were all thinking.
“Yes. He may not look the part, but he’s actually the son of a marquis. I would advise against crossing him.”
A chivalric order’s fighting power and political strength were heavily influenced by the leadership skills and abilities of its captain, and from what I’d seen so far, Gahariet’s seemed questionable at best.