Episode 468

Episode 468

The picnic ended with the talent show.

The one who received the most attention was the imperial princess. Even though the spirits had become ferocious due to the flood, the imperial princess skillfully soothed them and then performed a magic connection, which made Lee Han sulky.

‘Why do spirits who normally listen so well go wild like crazed undead only when they see me?’

Everyone, since you’ve enjoyed the picnic, work even harder on your studies when you return.

“……”

“……”

Why is there no answer? Should we have more of the picnic?

“Thank you for your grace!”

“We will study hard!!”

Lee Han was slightly impressed as he saw the determination burning in the students’ eyes.

No matter how much Lee Han said, ‘Please just study, don’t you want to at least avoid failing?’ it was far more effective when the skull principal said even a single word.

‘Could it be that this was your plan when you prepared the picnic today?’

Kehahahahahat!

Perhaps the principal felt better from the students’ wrath, because he laughed joyfully.

Upon seeing this, Lee Han withdrew his previous thought.

‘He was probably just bored.’

• * *

The exam took place in a dry classroom.

The students were moved just by being able to sit at a desk and write with a quill and ink.

“This is how an exam should be…!”

“If all exams were like this, I could take several more!”

Of course, their gratitude lasted only until they received the questions. The students’ faces crumpled as soon as they saw the questions.

Imperial mage Tadingo decided to fund his research by calculating the accurate area of the tower…

“Damn Tadingo. He should earn it himself.”

“Damn Empire. Showing off over research funds. Why do we need to calculate the area?”

“Everyone, be quiet.”

Professor Alpen warned the muttering students.

The students moaned and focused on their problems.

What are the areas of the following figures?

What is the area of the circles shown in the diagram below?

While his friends were suffering, Lee Han quickly worked through…

…but instead, he felt bewildered.

‘Isn’t this way harder than I expected?’

Unlike other subjects, arithmetic was one of Lee Han’s strong suits.

Naturally, even while his friends were cramming, Lee Han was thinking, ‘Tsk. They should have studied consistently,’ but…

Imperial mage Tadingo is observing a fireball flying 1m away from the target. Given the derivative stated in the diagram is 20m/s, what is the ratio of the mage’s eye movement angle…

“????”

No matter how he thought about it, the difficulty was way too high.

He had to wonder if his friends could even solve this.

‘Did the skull principal perhaps instigate this?’

If the furious skull principal had threatened Professor Alpen from behind with a sword, even Alpen might not have had a choice.

Lee Han decided to stop worrying and just solve the problems first. The time was fixed, and since it had been a while since he’d tackled such hard problems, he might make a mistake.

‘I haven’t touched problems this difficult in a while…’

Still, all his accumulated skills hadn’t vanished, and as soon as he started scribbling with his quill, he managed to find a clue.

“Kkuheung.”

“Crazy Tadingo bastard… Should have just lived quietly…”

“How are we supposed to solve this…”

Even when Professor Alpen warned them, periodic wailing broke out among the students.

Lee Han understood.

If it was this hard for him, how hard must it be for his friends?

‘These questions are excessively difficult. The results of this exam will be averaged downward.’

Even seasoned professors found it hard to adjust exam difficulty.

Lee Han expected that once this test ended, Professor Alpen would reflect and lower the difficulty for the finals.

“I’m submitting.”

“Hm… Excellent. I was worried, but you did well.”

Professor Alpen skimmed Lee Han’s answer sheet, the first one turned in, and nodded in satisfaction with a pleased smile.

Under normal circumstances, Lee Han might have noticed the sense of incongruity in “I was worried,” but since he was already drained from the picnic and the difficult test problems, he didn’t catch on.

“That’s it. Everyone, submit now.”

While Lee Han waited by sitting down, the test ended and the students submitted their answer sheets with gloomy expressions.

As soon as they submitted their answer sheets, all the students swarmed over to Lee Han.

“Wardanaz. What was your answer for number 1???”

“Hey. Number 1 was easy. How could you ask about that? Wasn’t it three? Wardanaz?”

“It was three!? Damn. I was deciding between two or three… Why is that Tadingo guy so gluttonous? Couldn’t he just eat what he’s given?”

“???”

Hearing the noisy questions from his friends, Lee Han felt something was off.

Huh?

“Two, three… What are you talking about? What was the question?”

“How many loaves of the finest white bread could poor mage Tadingo eat if he saved as much research funding as possible?”

“If the distance between the Pegasus and the ground stable shown in the diagram is changing at a rate of 400km/h by the derivative, and the altitude of the Pegasus… Wait. Bread count?”

Lee Han felt something was definitely wrong.

The test his friends took and the one he took were completely different.

He thought perhaps the problem order was different, but that wasn’t it. And it seemed none of his friends had received the same test as he did.

“What kind of magic is this?”

“What is that?”

“…Professor. Professor??”

Lee Han quickly caught up with Professor Alpen, who was about to leave, and asked.

“I think there was a problem with the test.”

“That’s strange. Wardanaz. You must have gotten a perfect score, right? In what way was there a problem?”

Professor Alpen looked puzzled and took out the answer sheet.

Lee Han spoke calmly.

“It’s not that the test questions were strange, but that I seem to have taken a different test from the other students.”

“Ah. You meant that. Yes. Wardanaz, you did receive different problems.”

Professor Alpen said it as naturally as if he were saying, ‘It rained this morning.’

Of course, Lee Han couldn’t accept it naturally. He was confused by the professor’s words, which shattered common sense, and asked again.

“You mean it wasn’t a mistake?”

“Why would you think it was a mistake? Let me be clear, it was absolutely not a mistake.”

“…Um, professor. Don’t students who take the same class usually get the same test?”

Lee Han suppressed the feeling of being a fool saying something so obvious and asked.

“That’s normally the case. But there can be exceptions. Getting questions so easy you could solve them with your eyes closed offers no challenge, does it?”

“……”

‘Is he insane?’

Lee Han, who thought Professor Alpen Knighten would be more sane since he was from the Imperial bureaucracy, was very flustered facing the professor’s calm madness.

‘I underestimated Einrogard again!’

Even though he had vowed never to underestimate them, he had done so again absentmindedly.

Lee Han blamed his own carelessness.

“I… I see. So because I solved problems well in class, the test got harder for me…”

“More than that, I decided after seeing you teach the other students so well. At that level, I thought regular problems were meaningless.”

Lee Han casually glanced at his friends leaving the classroom.

For some reason, they looked like enemies instead of friends.

“But professor. Learning and challenge and all is great, but a grade is still a grade.”

Professor Alpen nodded.

“I’ll have to compare with other students, so couldn’t there be an issue of fairness?”

“You don’t have to worry about that.”

“Ah. So you had a solution after all.”

Lee Han felt somewhat relieved.

After all, Professor Alpen wasn’t the skull principal and wouldn’t give him hard questions just mindlessly…

“As it happens, Wardanaz, you got a perfect score, so you’re ranked top.”

“……”

‘Is he really insane?’

Lee Han had to work hard to swallow the retort crawling up his throat.

No, he only got a perfect score because he worked hard and got lucky—if he made a single mistake, he’d lose points. What if that had happened…

“At finals…”

“You’ll get a perfect score then too. So, there’s no need to worry now. Understand?”

Professor Alpen cut off Lee Han’s words and continued his own. He was relentless.

“That doesn’t make logical sense…”

“I thought you wouldn’t care about grades, Wardanaz…”

“Sorry?”

This was the most insulting misunderstanding he’d received since entering school.

“Well, it makes sense you’d ask, given how much you care for your friends. You’re asking in case anyone thinks you got special treatment, right?”

The stubborn old professor looked at Lee Han with an affectionate gaze as if seeing a future archmage.

Usually, if a mage had even a little talent, it was easy for them to fall into arrogance and self-importance, but this boy from the Wardanaz family had the vast talent of a great sea and still hadn’t lost his altruism.

If only all mages were like this, how easy would the lives of Imperial bureaucrats be?

“There was no special treatment, so you don’t need to worry. Solving harder problems than others isn’t a special favor. Of course, an earnest and fair-minded boy like you might think of it as special treatment.”

“…Yes. Well, if it’s special treatment, it does make me uncomfortable…”

“But I don’t think anyone except you will feel it’s special treatment. More importantly, as a second-year, you’ll have to take many more lectures, so wasting your time would be a bigger loss—for you, and for all the people of the Empire.”

Lee Han was at a loss for words.

Not because it was logical or reasonable, but because he was shocked that the professor had invoked the people of the Empire just for Lee Han to solve harder problems.

‘Is he truly, truly insane?!’

Professor Alpen ended the conversation with a grandfatherly smile.

“To think there’s such a reward as teaching students at Einrogard after retiring the paperweights and stacks of documents… Oh my, I spoke too much. I’ll be going, then. Oh, Wardanaz?”

“Yes?”

Mentally exhausted, Lee Han answered absentmindedly.

“I’ll make sure the rest of this semester’s lectures become a solid research foundation for you.”

“……”

In Lee Han’s eyes, the kindly old professor’s face looked like the skull principal’s.

• * *

Richmond of the Shyles family lounged in his room.

At first, he was glad to be able to rest on a soft, dry bed while his friends suffered, but after some time, he started to worry about them.

“Professor. Haven’t my friends returned yet?”

“It’ll take a while.”

“I see.”

10 minutes later.

Richmond closed the book he was reading and asked again outside the door.

“Professor. About when will my friends arrive?”

“Ah. Can’t you just shut your mouth for a bit!”

Unfortunately, another personality of Professor Paselete jumped out and shouted loudly.

Richmond was startled and bowed his head.

“I-I’m sorry.”

“No, sorry. Bad-tempered…”

“…Bad-tempered, what! If you left your friends and came in, just enjoy it!”

Before his words even finished, a completely different voice with another resonance flowed from the professor’s mouth.

And so Richmond’s guilt multiplied several times over.

‘Damn. Should I not have accepted the professor’s offer?’

At first, when Professor Paselete offered ‘comfort, warmth, a soft bed’, he thought he was lucky and accepted right away…

But as time passed, he started missing his friends.

And above all, having Professor Paselete shift back and forth as if talking with several people at once was really scary.

‘If only I could throw a clue out the window… Huh?’

Richmond was startled to see a familiar friend’s face beneath the tall window.

Amazingly, Wardanaz had found the bottom of the tower exactly and was hovering about.

‘Here! Wardanaz! I’m here!’

Richmond wanted to shout but had no way of transmitting sound.

If Wardanaz left now…

‘Alright. Use the blanket and comforter to make a rope. With transformation magic…’

Bang!

With a fierce sound, the window burst apart. Richmond, who had been making the rope, just blinked in shock.

Wardanaz was flying through the sky on a griffon.