Chapter 12

Chapter 12: Entrance Exam (2)

‘Hoo....... Still, I have to check what needs checking.’

I kept my eyes on Lloyd as he moved toward the registration desk.

If my memory was correct, she should have appeared around the time Lloyd and I stepped into the registration area.

And only a few seconds later, I was able to spot the person who stepped in front of Lloyd.

“How amusing.”

“Hmm?”

At once, the eyes of those nearby turned toward Lloyd and the unidentified figure.

Someone in a shabby cloak, with a hood pulled low over their head.

Because of that, it was impossible to make out their identity clearly.

“Who are you?”

“Does it matter who I am?”

A beautiful female voice.

There was something strange about the way she spoke, a peculiar blend of maturity and immaturity.

But to me, that voice was familiar.

“What matters is that someone using Forbidden Magic has caught my attention.”

Lloyd’s expression twisted into a frown.

“…Ha! Now that I look at you, you are someone from the Holy Empire, are you not?”

“And if I am?”

“How insolent.”

Lloyd narrowed his eyes and let mana surge from both hands.

The hooded woman also extended her right hand toward him.

A golden light shimmered in her palm.

“You have a lot of nerve. How dare you stand before me, a child of one of the Four Great Houses, and call Black Magic Forbidden Magic?”

“And what exactly gives you the right to speak so proudly when you use other people’s corpses and souls as tools?”

“If it is for the advancement of Black Magic, then such things are necessary. You call that an answer?”

The atmosphere between the two of them turned vicious in an instant, but—

“…Tch!”

“Haa......”

It was not long before the mana and Holy Power aimed at each other were both withdrawn.

No matter how poor the relations between the two empires were, this was still Saengterminum, a neutral zone.

If they caused a scene here, they would not only fail the entrance exam, they would be thrown out of Saengterminum altogether.

While the applicants let out relieved breaths and either avoided the two of them or backed away, I paid it no mind and moved to stand near the hooded woman.

“Ah… I apologize. I must have shown you an unpleasant sight.”

Perhaps thinking that I would question what had just happened, she readily lowered her head and apologized.

“…….”

Even so, I remained silent without any reaction, and the woman tilted her head and looked up at me, still standing in her way.

“Um… is something the matter?”

“It is nothing. My apologies.”

“……?”

“Applicant number 353, please come forward.”

“…Yes.”

Wearing an uncertain expression, she brushed past me and lowered the hood that had been covering her head.

Her golden-brown hair cascaded all the way down to her waist.

Her eyes were a clear, vivid amber.

I felt relieved. In this timeline as well, she had enrolled in Saengterminum.

‘Yulia Yupiter.’

Though she was the same age as me, seventeen, she was known as the person capable of wielding more Holy Power than anyone else on the entire continent.

Her talent with the sword was also extraordinary, great enough to earn her the title of Sword Radiance.

And… she was the woman who had passed her Sacred Mark on to me right before my Return to the Past.

Originally, she belonged to the Holy Empire, but at a young age she had already mastered all the teachings the Holy Empire had to offer.

Because of that, she had petitioned the Order and secretly submitted an application to Saengterminum, concealing the fact that she was the Sword Radiance, in order to hone her techniques for bringing down demons and monsters.

‘It seems her Sacred Mark has not disappeared either.’

When she had lowered her hood a moment ago, a faint golden glimmer had flickered over the back of her right hand.

To others, it might have looked like the residue of Holy Power from just before, but I had seen the Sword Radiance use her Sacred Mark dozens of times before my Return to the Past.

I could say with certainty that what I had seen was a Sacred Mark.

I had worried that perhaps her original Sacred Mark had vanished after she passed it on to me before my Return to the Past, but thankfully, that fear seemed unfounded.

Casting a glance at her back as she completed her registration, I headed toward the examination hall.

Part of the reason I wanted to enroll in Saengterminum Academy was to learn Holy Power, but there was another reason as well.

The trigger that set off the war between the Holy Empire and the Dark Empire had been pulled inside Saengterminum itself.

‘Because a demon ended up being summoned inside Saengterminum.’

Originally, demons were said to be able to exercise their power only through the people who had contracted with them, but the demon summoning incident at Saengterminum overturned that very premise.

It was not that a demon had manifested by borrowing the body of a contractor.

The demon itself had been summoned directly into the academy.

Because of that, the nations of the continent, including the Holy Empire, gradually began to suspect that the Dark Empire had summoned a demon in an attempt to destroy Saengterminum.

After all, it was the Dark Empire that specialized in Black Magic, and among its branches existed Black Magic capable of controlling demons.

‘Though it was not the Dark Empire’s fault. It was the fault of the idiots who used Black Magic like garbage.’

Black Magic depended on how it was used.

Black Magic itself was not evil. 

The problem lay with those who wielded it.

But there was no way other nations, which recoiled from demons in the first place, would properly understand that.

Taking this incident as the catalyst, the misunderstanding between the Dark Empire and the other nations deepened more and more… and in the end, war broke out between the two empires.

‘Back then, both the Sword Radiance and I had been out of our minds trying to kill each other.’

Recalling the past, I let out a bitter smile and looked down at the back of my right hand.

‘So it was a Sacred Mark whose power was passed down… is that it?’

Since I could not properly handle the Sacred Mark myself, it looked pitiful in my hands, but that mark had undoubtedly grown stronger as it was passed down from generation to generation.

In the end, in the previous timeline, the Sword Radiance had used this very Sacred Mark to slay the final demon that sought to swallow up the Luknica Continent, so there was no doubt about its effectiveness.

‘…Though I do not know whether the Hellfire Demon was truly the last one.’

In the worst case, it was possible that there had been another demon besides the Hellfire Demon that had wished for the continent’s destruction.

It was simply that, even after defeating the Hellfire Demon, both the Sword Radiance and I had been on the verge of death, and the continent itself had stood at the brink of ruin, so we had chosen Return to the Past.

…Well, nothing would change even if I thought too deeply about that now.

That was still a distant matter.

At this point in time, most of the events I knew about had taken place while I was attending Saengterminum.

If I failed to enroll in Saengterminum, the advantage of knowing the future would fade.

For now, I needed to think about entering Saengterminum Academy first.

If I had been taking the entrance exam as ‘Aron Bayonel’ even in this timeline, I would not have been particularly worried.

But right now, I was not taking the entrance exam as ‘Aron Bayonel.’

***

Ordinary academy entrance exams consisted of written and practical tests, but Saengterminum Academy, which had been founded to improve combat ability against demons and monsters, did not have a written exam.

That was because it focused on how useful an applicant’s abilities would be in actual combat against monsters.

Because of that, I had thought there would not be any major problems with the entrance exam.

In the end, it meant they were judging nothing but pure combat ability.

And I was forced to admit that my judgment had been wrong.

“Scarecrow destroyed. Points deducted.”

“That was close. But the scarecrow was not damaged, so you pass.”

‘…What is this?’

At the center of the testing grounds stood a scarecrow around five meters tall, seemingly made of rubber.

And directly in front of it stood a single steel golem, its body fashioned from solid steel bound together with mana.

“The scarecrow in front of you restores its body by amplifying Recovery Magic.”

A female teacher from Saengterminum, who taught Holy Magic, brought over a scarecrow covered in scratches and dents. 

The moment she touched it and released Holy Power, the damaged scarecrow returned to its original shape.

“As for the steel golem, unless it is attacked first, it will target only the scarecrow. So all you applicants need to do is restore the scarecrow with Holy Magic before the steel golem destroys it, correct?”

Since Holy Magic included blessings that restored the body, I could at least understand why a test like this existed.

The problem was that I did not know the first thing about Holy Magic.

‘What the hell......’

This really was a thoroughly screwed situation.

“Please write your desired department here.”

The source of all this trouble was the fact that, because I intended to learn Holy Power at Saengterminum Academy, I had written “Holy Magic Department” as my department of choice on the application form.

No, seriously, was it not supposed to be enough just to prove my combat ability?

Before my Return to the Past, I had applied to the Black Magic Department, and back then, the test had measured how powerful an attack I could unleash against the scarecrow. 

Because of that, I had assumed every department took the same exam.

I had no idea that only applicants to the Holy Magic Department had to take a test like this.

“Damon David.”

At the female teacher’s call, I stepped onto the testing grounds.

“Was there someone like that in the Holy Empire?”

“I do not know. It is my first time seeing him too.”

“I suppose his Holy Power must have manifested only recently.”

The applicants looked at me, but thanks to the disguise created by the Mask Curse, my face did not belong outwardly to anyone from a famous house or anyone with a reputation, so their interest quickly faded.

“Then we will begin.”

CLANK! 

CLANK!

A blue light flickered in the steel golem’s eyes, and the sound of metal grinding against metal rang out.

I could not use Black Magic.

I had applied to the Holy Magic Department. 

If I used Black Magic, it would be hard to avoid suspicion that I was someone from the Dark Empire.

Then again, if my entrance score turned out badly and I failed to enroll in Saengterminum, that would practically be a direct ticket to the world’s destruction.

This was driving me insane.

‘It cannot be helped.’

Of the spells I could use, the only one that was not Black Magic was this.

Mana Forging.

Mana Spear, Single Forging.

Before I knew it, a blue spear had taken shape in my hand.

Mana Forging was a lower-tier spell derived from Shadow Forging, and its effects were not especially different from Shadow Forging itself.

The major difference was that it could not imbue a weapon with Black Magic.

This method of mana manipulation was quite practical, so ordinary mages used it often as well.

The female teacher looked flustered at the sight of me abruptly gripping mana weapons in both hands without using Holy Power, but I paid her no mind and leveled my spear at the steel golem.

“C-Candidate Damon?”

“In other words… that is the condition for passing, right? So long as I somehow keep the scarecrow from being harmed, that is enough.”

“…Pardon?”

I hurled the Mana Spear straight at the golem’s chest.

THUD!

Since I had not clad myself in Demonic Armament, the spearhead did little more than stick shallowly into its body, but the impact was enough to draw the steel golem’s attention.

KRRRK!

The steel golem’s head turned.

From the scarecrow to me.

Good. 

Now the scarecrow would not be attacked.

Even so, this was still an entrance exam.

Levia had already given me special consideration, so the least I could do was show the courtesy of taking the test seriously.

Putting some distance between myself and the scarecrow, I gripped two mana daggers in my hands.

And then I pivoted toward the steel golem.