LIGHTNOVELSTORY Chapter 88
Chapter 88
Entrance Exam
He passed the third test.
As soon as Harang confirmed the result, he quickly left the examination hall without even taking a moment to cheer in joy.
Ignoring the wizards who approached him, wanting to ask questions, he headed straight to a restroom tucked away in a corner of the test area. There, he entered a stall and closed the door behind him.
“Uweeeek!!”
Harang retched, then wiped away the tears welling up in his eyes with a tissue.
“…Blood.”
Blood stained the tissue.
Not only was he having a nosebleed, but even blood tears were running down his face.
This was the price of pushing himself to perform a triple casting. Not only had he excessively raised the synchronization rate, but he had also forcefully suppressed his mana to control it, resulting in a delayed backlash.
And that wasn’t the end of it.
The triple casting he pretended to do with one hand was actually achieved by using the White Silver Sky Dragon Heart Technique, forcibly overheating the mana within his body and overloading his mana circuits. It was something impossible to use in real combat.
‘Ugh, a headache.’
For a bit of showing off, the cost was quite high. But considering it allowed him to get into the esteemed Magic School of Arniel, it was a bargain.
“Sigh…”
Harang stepped out of the stall and realized how utterly wrecked he looked in the mirror. He went back into the stall and leaned his head against the wall.
‘I can’t go out looking like this.’
Rumors about the genius of the wizard, Deis, were bound to spread, drawing journalists, officials from the Magic Tower, and professors from Arniel. There was no way he could show himself in such a pitiful state.
He hated looking weak more than anything in the world.
He didn’t want anyone to know that he ended up in this state due to the triple casting he had just performed.
‘Let’s just wait a bit until this rebound subsides…’
Harang lay down slowly on the toilet seat and closed his eyes.
By the time he opened them again…
The time for the fourth test, the “Magic Insight Test,” had arrived.
‘Did I sleep on the toilet for three hours?’
Checking his watch, Harang let out a deep sigh and stood up. His condition was still far from good.
‘Triple casting is useless in real combat.’
His condition remained terrible.
He would probably suffer for several days.
Fortunately, the fourth test required almost no use of magic.
At most, it was said that he would need to use magic once or twice.
However, it was too early to feel relieved.
The fourth test was conducted differently each year, so there were limits to the information he could gather in advance.
After tidying up his disheveled appearance as best as he could, Harang left the restroom.
‘My body feels heavy.’
Recalling the reason, he remembered that not only was he drained of energy, but he was also covered in weight bands.
However, removing the weight bands felt like a loss of willpower, so he gritted his teeth and trudged on, dragging his feet.
As he arrived at the test site half-heartedly, what greeted him was a dome that was larger than a World Cup stadium.
In this pure white space, the remaining 100 eighth-grade applicants gathered. In the previous test, half of the 200 participants had been eliminated.
Among those who remained, at most, only around 30 would be able to pass.
‘…I can’t afford to let my guard down until the end.’
Harang calmed his gaze.
* * *
Citrinne was currently in a very foul mood.
“Ah~ so annoying. Hey, what are you staring at?”
Grumbling and voicing her irritation, Citrinne snapped.
Despite enduring her complaints, the students couldn’t help but glance at her.
‘Damn, she’s really not humanly beautiful.’
‘Wow, an angel…’
‘Can you really say that after hearing that dirty way of speaking?’
‘So what? She’s a princess.’
The reason the students kept sneaking glances at her was all the same: her appearance was so incredibly beautiful that it was hard to believe she was human.
To teenage boys, Citrinne’s looks were overly stimulating. And it seemed this applied to teenage girls as well, as their gazes were also drawn to her regardless of gender.
However, Citrinne herself was extremely irritated about receiving attention because of her appearance.
‘I didn’t want attention for this damned face, but for my magic skills.’
She imagined.
The princess of Herael, who didn’t even belong to a magic household, suddenly enrolling at Arniel and surpassing not only the geniuses but even the Five Great Families to become the best!
But instead of becoming the best, she found herself stuck in a position that was only slightly above the ordinary.
The reason was that a boy named Zelka Ainglass and another named Deis had displayed overwhelmingly superior performances!
‘Ugh, triple casting, of all things.’
No matter how gifted she was, it wasn’t something she could easily attempt.
At the age of fourteen, just being able to dual-cast was already considered a miracle.
There were so many fourteen-year-old geniuses who could dual-cast present here that it didn’t seem like a big deal…
‘Still, it’s fine. I just have to show what I’m really capable of here!’
While Citrinne clenched her fists in determination, someone deliberately brushed past her shoulder.
“Huh.”
The culprit was a girl with sky-blue hair who appeared at least 10 centimeters taller than Citrinne. It was Ailka Willed.
“Hey, you… Are you crazy?” she shouted, only for Ailka to turn around with an indifferent gaze. She smiled softly and waved.
“Oh my, I’m sorry. You’re so short that I didn’t see you.”
“What the hell are you talking about?!”
“My, my, your voice is grating. For the princess of Herael, said to be the heir of the Sun, your dignity seems rather lacking, doesn’t it?”
“Hmph, dignity is something only those who lack nobility have to worry about. I’ve always been noble and virtuous, so I don’t need it.”
“Oh, I see. Well, despite that dignity, it seems your magical talent doesn’t quite measure up to the Five Great Magic Families. I guess dignity doesn’t teach magic, huh?”
“What? You…!”
“I really don’t understand. What were you even thinking when you decided to enroll at Arniel? Did you think your magic was so exceptional that it could rival the Five Great Magic Families? And that you wanted to show that off to everyone? Honestly, how naive of you.”
Ailka shook her head and turned away, walking off.
“Such nonsense…”
She wanted to refute, but halfway, it was true. In reality, she had come to Arniel to show the world that her magic could be proven even there.
But, it was only “halfway” true.
That wasn’t the real reason.
‘…Does she think I’m just a naive fool?’
Would the princess of the mighty Herael enroll at Arniel for such a trivial reason alone? There were countless other ways to prove her magic without resorting to this method.
Moreover, during the time spent receiving lessons at Arniel, she could have learned far more valuable teachings in the royal palace.
The real reason Citrinne had come here.
It was to reclaim her life, which had been taken hostage.
Or rather, to find a way to survive.
Ah, the princess of Herael, who shone as brilliantly as the sun, radiating her light upon the world as its one and only.
She might seem like the most noble person in the world.
‘Noble, my foot. Someone like me…’
All the things she possessed—her beauty and her talent—were simply assigned a grade and value as a “sacrifice.”
People didn’t know.
How precariously the Herael royal family maintained its contractual relationship with the Immortal Guardian, “El Phoenix,” considered one of the strongest guardians now that Kalantatis slumbered.
‘…I’m going to live my own life.’
To achieve that, Citrinne had to act like a naive and reckless princess who, with nothing but her talent in magic, went around thinking she was more than she was.
She had to become either a genuinely overwhelming genius in magic whom no one could touch or a fool whom the world found pitiful, thereby lowering her “value.”
“Ugh, the Willed family… They’re all just insufferable.”
As these negative thoughts crept in, she crossed her arms and huffed in irritation.
For Citrinne, who had always grown up bright and cheerful, having such negative thoughts didn’t suit her at all.
‘I just need to prove it. Here, that I’m a true genius.’
She sometimes thought of her second brother, the Second Prince Castia, who lived his life without a care.
How wonderful it would be to spend a lifetime practicing swordsmanship and nothing else.
Sometimes, she thought of Harang Paul Kaladan, who had been acknowledged for his talent since the age of seven, starting as a branch family member but eventually receiving a higher evaluation than the purebloods.
A world where everyone acknowledged someone based on their talent, not their status, where even the royal family respected that talent…
How happy would that be?
‘…I’ll become like that too.’
She pretended to live thoughtlessly so that she could actually live thoughtlessly.
From now on.
Even if she became a woman who thought things through, she would be one whom no one could ever dare to challenge…
Not just some princess of Herael.
She would become a great mage.
‘Absolutely.’
* * *
“From this moment, the fourth admission exam for the 8th year begins. Most of you will probably find these objects familiar in this space.”
Inside the dome, various objects were laid out: towering trees and rocks, waterfalls and rivers, lakes and deserts, boiling lava, enormous castles and mansions, huts and shacks, ruins and caves.
“Let me tell you just one thing. Ninety-nine percent of what you see and feel here is false. In other words, it’s an ‘illusion.’ Your goal is to find the one percent of truth here. If you find even one, you’ll be a candidate for passing, but if many students find the truth… the one who finds the object closest to the truth will pass.”
A buzz quickly spread among the students.
The scent of grass swaying in the wind, the boiling hot lava, the dryness of the desert—all the senses perfectly explained that this place was reality, and yet, most of it was false?
Even before the explanation ended, the students had already begun various experiments, like scooping up the earth from the sea or punching the rocks.
The examiners did not stop the students’ actions.
The reason was simple.
‘Because it’s meaningless.’
Ailka looked at the students groping the ground, feeling they were pathetic.
That kind would probably be eliminated soon enough. Even if they were lucky and found the real object to pass, they wouldn’t survive their first year and would drop out.
‘I didn’t expect this kind of test, but it’s simple if you know the trick.’
Even the Five Great Magic Families wouldn’t leak the details of the Arniel admission test in advance. This was also the first time Ailka heard about this test here, but she was confident.
Other ordinary students might not have learned how to overcome illusion magic at all, but wasn’t she the prodigy of the Willed family, renowned for their ability to intuitively grasp and control magic with the finest precision?
“Lady Ailka, why did you say that to Princess Herael?”
“…”
One of the applicants asked out of curiosity, and Ailka frowned.
Regret surged in her for having done something unnecessary.
However, the Lady of the Willed Family must not easily show regret on the outside. She had to always remain a confident lady who lived without a hint of remorse for her actions.
She elegantly swept her hair behind her shoulder and spoke gracefully.
“Because it’s disgraceful for an uninvited guest to lack so much tact.”
“Aah, I knew it!”
It wasn’t entirely untrue.
Currently, the Ainglass was the generation entering the academy, known for being the most promising bloodline even among the Five Great Magic Families, and they were in implicit competition with one another.
This meant Ailka and Zelka were also rivals. Zelka might have had a slight head start now, but Ailka firmly believed that she would catch up with him one day.
Even the prophecy of magic had foretold that she was destined to become a great mage…
But then.
While the bloodlines of the Five Great Magic Families were competing at Arniel to learn what “true magic” was, some mere princess from Herael, who wasn’t even of a magical bloodline, dared to intrude?
That was something unacceptable.
“She probably thinks she’s doing some magic tricks… but soon she’ll realize the truth. No matter how great she might be, she can’t match the Five Great Magic Families.”
“Indeed, you’re right. To look down on the mighty prestige of the world’s Five Great Magic Families is utterly absurd!”
Even though none of them had passed yet, the applicants had already clustered around Ailka, forming a small faction.
She accepted them as if it were the most natural thing.
After all, she had always considered the existence of humans who clung to and worshipped the great Willed family as a given since birth.
‘…Annoying.’
Ailka glanced at Princess Citrinne. The princess was peering at someone else.
Following her gaze, she saw a boy with long hair, black with white secretive undertones.
Unlike before, the boy, who now exuded a somewhat gloomy aura, still retained his mysterious charm. With such striking looks, just like Citrinne, he easily drew attention from all directions.
‘That commoner, he’s the same.’
Those presumptuous ones who dare to involve themselves in her and Zelka’s competition, pretending to be another genius.
‘I don’t… like any of them.’