Chapter 1 Lanqi's Troubles

Lanqi stood in the Sage Academy's waiting area in the central courtyard, his mind still occupied with the Saint Kingdom-style desserts.

"They say that the food you can taste in the Shadow World is just as real as in the real world, but the ones in the artificial Shadow World are just illusions. I spent half the day baking a dessert earlier, and it didn't even have any flavor..."

Lost in thought, he inadvertently overheard other examinees exchanging their completion times.

Apparently, most qualified examinees needed forty to fifty minutes to barely meet the completion requirements.

It seemed like everyone's legal awareness was still not strong enough.

Lanqi's mind was drifting into space for a moment.

"How much time did you take?"

A light voice rang out not far from Lanqi.

Lanqi turned his head and saw a tall woman of similar age looking at him.

Her pupils were amber-colored, cold and proud, as if she could look down on the entire world with a single glance.

Judging from her obviously expensive attire and jewelry, she must be a noble from a prominent family in this kingdom.

She seemed to have noticed that there was another examinee nearby who was particularly relaxed and at ease.

A guy who didn't seem to care about the exam results at all was a rare sight in the entire examination hall.

"..."

Lanqi was silent, roughly estimating the time in his mind.

In reality, the whole process had only taken him about ten minutes.

"Less than fifty minutes," Lanqi replied amiably.

He felt that this young lady, who looked very important, was likely a troublesome character with high pride.

So, if his completion speed was really faster than hers, saying it in front of her would definitely upset her.

Therefore, it was better to be conservative and just say less than fifty minutes.

This was called being worldly-wise.

"I see."

Subsequently, the young lady nodded expressionlessly and stopped paying attention to Lanqi.

So, he was just a guy who didn't care too much about his grades.

Huberian thought to herself.

She had been misled by his overly calm demeanor earlier.

In that case, he probably wouldn't become her teammate for the third round of assessment.

As the daughter of Duke Alanzal's family, Huberian had long been aware of the examination mechanism for this year's Sage Academy's third round—

Teaming up students with different functions to fight teachers.

Usually, under this kind of exam question, a support mage or healing mage would be assigned to a team.

Sometimes, depending on the proportion of examinees, it might be all output mages.

A good support could reduce the difficulty of the entire team's third round of assessment, while a mediocre one would greatly increase the pressure on the other team members.

The grouping rules were said to be based on the ranking of the second round of assessment this year.

In other words, examinees with higher rankings in the Sage Academy would likely become teammates and face stronger teachers.

Huberian, who was bound to be among the best in the second round, naturally didn't want to be assigned a lousy support when facing the high-difficulty challenge in the third round as an output mage.

What's more, some people in the kingdom didn't want her to be admitted smoothly.

Being with her, the difficulty of the practical combat assessment would undoubtedly become very exaggerated.

Only by getting a good support could she improve her chances of passing.

Of course, those powerful people who didn't want her to be admitted would also try their best to manipulate their lackeys within the academy, arranging the worst possible teammates for her among the available choices, or even actors.

Just thinking about this filled Huberian's heart with an uncontrollable murderous intent that spread like ripples.

"Give me a few more years... I will settle accounts with all of you... cutting you to pieces..."

She thought fiercely in her heart, but her expression remained as calm as ever.

...

As the waiting time in the examination hall gradually became more noisy, at the edge of the central courtyard, a cool, greyish-white short-haired young man leaned against the wall with his arms crossed. He was now wearing a pair of small round sunglasses, looking lazy and somewhat arrogant.

He could clearly hear the conversations of the other examinees.

Most of them were discussing the completion details of the second round of assessment and the time they had taken.

Finally, he closed his eyes with considerable disdain and disapproval.

He didn't understand why these people's completion times...

...had to be calculated in "minutes"?

Frey frowned slightly, thinking about this question.

Obviously, this exam was testing the examinees' borrowing mindset.

Pawning the equipment on their bodies to exchange for money would solve everything directly. Why would it take so long?

...

Loren, the chief examiner of this exam and the dean of the Sage Academy, was waiting for the terminal to calculate the final score of the second round of assessment.

Hearing the students' discussions, he knew that some examinees who were still complacent about their thirty-minute completion speed would doubt their lives later.

Originally, this kind of result could be considered very excellent.

As Loren, who had been observing the examinees' exam status on the screen, roughly knew the completion speed that each student would be judged to have.

Among all the examinees from the Knight Academy and the Sage Academy, even the fastest one other than those two guys took 25 minutes and 3 seconds.

And Lanqi had completed the task requirements at around the 9-minute and 53-second mark.

While normal examinees were still investigating, he had already arrested the entire target family.

Frey, on the other hand, took 7 seconds.

He solved all the problems from the start.

In this kind of decryption-type Shadow World that wasn't too complicated, completion speed was the scoring item with the greatest weight.

Frey had definitely obtained an extremely absurd base score in terms of speed.

But because he didn't have any decryption process in this kind of decryption-type Shadow World, he would hardly have any other scoring bonuses.

As for Lanqi's score, even Loren didn't know how the terminal would calculate it.

If they could successfully pass the second and third rounds of assessment, then the scores in these two rounds would be weighted separately and recorded as the total score.

The ranking of the entrance examination's total score would affect the subsequent class assignments in the corresponding academy, the priority of formal challenger exemption recommendations, and the representative seats for first-year students in academy exchange activities, etc.

The artificial Shadow World startup terminal was about to operate as usual, about to calculate the examinees' scores.

Just as the calculation reached a certain point, the mithril and magic crystals of the artificial Shadow World startup terminal suddenly flashed with electric arcs, and then electric cocoons continuously exploded all around!

As the picture on the magic screen connected to the terminal suddenly froze, all images and indicators stopped moving.

In the next instant, constantly appearing chaotic pixels made the picture repetitive and blurry.

This kind of anomaly obviously attracted the attention of all the examinees, and a chaotic noise surged in the seventh floor examination hall.

Loren frowned tightly, without much hesitation, and solemnly forcibly shut down the terminal.

Although doing so might damage the valuable magical equipment, he had to ensure the safety of all the students and faculty members present as the top priority.

At the same time, the chaotic electric light on the terminal also dissipated.

This made many examinees breathe a sigh of relief with lingering fear.

However, when Loren wanted to restart the terminal with the secret key again, he found that the terminal was motionless.

It seemed that it had been broken by that just now.

"...No."

Loren shook his head in pain, and then pinched his brow.

He only felt very tired today because of this exam, and even more unwilling to be scolded by Professor Bolaao of the Magic Engineering Academy.

Even without calling Professor Bolaao, an expert from the Magic Engineering Academy, to repair it, Loren already roughly understood what was wrong.

The artificial Shadow World was not a divinely created product like the real Shadow World after all.

The settlement of the replicated artificial Shadow World could only be evaluated using pre-set and pre-input algorithm models.

Like Frey's completion method, although alternative, it was simple and crude.

Even if a few parameters were missing, the score could still be calculated.

However, the replicator had not considered that there would be a completion method like Lanqi's that completely subverted the algorithm model.

This guy had instead added a bunch of abnormal parameter inputs!

Therefore, the terminal malfunctioned and crashed.

According to the completion speed, Frey of the Knight Academy should be first in this round of assessment, with Lanqi of the Sage Academy second only to him.

But due to Lanqi's overly bizarre operation, the specific scores of all the examinees could not be evaluated in the end!

Loren felt a headache when he thought that he would have to explain the subsequent urgent maintenance matters to the Magic Engineering Academy later.

Finally, Loren sighed deeply. As if ignoring Lanqi, he looked at the many examinees and said:

"We will manually evaluate the second round of scores based on the exam records, and the third round of practical combat assessment will be held the day after tomorrow. All examinees will receive a notification of the specific exam arrangements before the end of today."

Out of sight, out of mind.

Everything was a test given to him by the goddess. As a priest, he must not be easily angered...

After announcing the important matters, Dean Loren sent away all the examinees in the central courtyard as if he was seeing off guests.