A single win or loss may keep a person awake all night, but once morning comes there is still the broader — or rather, bleaker — tomorrow to face.
May slipped past twenty-odd days in the blink of an eye, and the first-years of St. Marian's Academy finally reached their first exam week.
After final revision from Monday through Wednesday, Thursday and Friday each carried one practical assessment per morning or afternoon — four in all.
For the first-years, this was the closing summary of a hard year of study, and the verdict that would decide whether the long vacation could be enjoyed at all.
Some rolled up their sleeves. Some crammed at the last minute. Some only wanted to scrape a pass; some were aiming for full marks.
Watch closely enough, and you could read every one of them off the way they carried it.
It was already ten at night when Dark came out of the Library, only a scattered few left behind in the reading room.
Books cradled in his arms, he walked the quiet corridor and found, of all things, that he was looking forward to the practical assessments starting tomorrow.
It was a feeling he had never once had in his previous life. He would never have imagined that one day he would come to enjoy studying, that he would look forward to an exam.
Perhaps it was simply that he needed a test to put a formal seal on a year of hard work.
"Anyway — the goal is first in the year!"
…
This year's first-year cohort was crowded with talent, and taking the top spot on the written papers would be no easy thing.
Sarah Swati and Emma Metis were both formidable rivals.
But Dark's advantage lay in the practical side.
Those four practical assessments were the key to his high score.
Back at the dormitory, he spread out the exam schedule he had copied down across his desk, a confident tilt at the corner of his mouth.
"Eight o'clock tomorrow morning — first up, the Summoning Class practical assessment."
"And the Summoning Class practical is dead simple. It only tests two kinds of summoning."
"One is the Normal Summon, the other is Tribute Summon."
"For the Normal Summon, you have to summon three Magic Guide Cards in a row inside one minute — in other words, compress each Normal Summon down under twelve seconds."
"The Tribute Summon requirement is easier still: land one successful Tribute Summon and you pass."
"Hmm. Surely nobody's going to fail that?"
After one last spell of cuddling with his Magic Guide Spirits, Dark washed up and went to sleep.
…
May twenty-fourth. Thursday.
A fine drizzle came down from a grey sky, and the air hung damp.
Dark did not step out of the dormitory until seven in the morning. His uniform sat immaculate on him, his hair combed without a strand astray, not a scratch on his pale face — perfect, like someone who had walked out of a painting.
Most first-years left at roughly the same hour, and he had barely gone a few paces before he ran into Diana and Rose, after which the three of them walked on together.
Diana was as breezy as ever, not the slightest bit tense about the exam.
Not that she had any reason to be.
The Summoning Class practical held no difficulty at all for her.
Rose, on the other hand, was visibly nervous.
Her magic talent was on the good side, but she had little hands-on experience, and the Normal Summon test was genuinely hard for her.
Besides, three consecutive Normal Summons all under twelve seconds and one single Normal Summon squeezed under twelve seconds were two entirely different propositions.
She had put herself through intensive training this past month just to pass, and she still had no confidence.
Examples of people falling apart on the day were everywhere, after all.
And if even Rose felt that way, the rest of the students naturally had it no easier.
When the three of them reached the classroom, they found the mood inside unexpectedly heavy.
Dark took his usual seat, glanced round the room, and saw that a great many of his classmates had their lips moving — cramming right down to the wire.
That left him briefly with nothing to say.
…
Although the exam did not begin until eight, the classroom was already full by half past seven.
Professor Silf, who was running the summoning assessment, came in not long after that.
She greeted the students and wrote the day's assessment items up on the blackboard.
Then she turned to face the room and pressed both hands down gently, signalling for quiet.
Within a few seconds the classroom had gone dead silent.
Professor Silf nodded, satisfied. "Fifteen minutes until the summoning test. The tasks themselves aren't difficult — as long as none of you panic during the test, you should all pass."
"Of course, clearing the line only earns you a pass. If you want a higher score, you'll need to show greater skill and fluency. I'll be grading you on the spot, based on your performance."
"Graded on the spot?" The students who were weak at summoning went ashen.
Scored in front of that many classmates — failing would be a public execution.
Far from "reassuring" anyone, Professor Silf's words wound them tighter than before.
Even those confident of passing suddenly cared a great deal more.
There were a few it spurred on, though.
Virt Gold, for one, was rather confident in his summoning.
A sharp contrast to Robert Broheim beside him.
…
"Brrring!"
At eight sharp, as the bell rang, Professor Silf rose. "The examination begins now. When your name is called, come up to the platform and take a set of Summon Cards. Each of you has five minutes to perform. First — Teddy Doron of Noble House, Susan Bield of Knight House, and from Magic House…"
"I'm first?" Doron shot to his feet at the sound of his name, brimming with confidence.
Susan, at the desk beside Emma, went straight to panic.
Four Houses, four students, up first.
Professor Silf then read out four more names and told them to get ready.
The first four collected their Summon Cards in turn, and at Professor Silf's urging began to cast.
Doron sized up the three who had come up with him, smirked, picked three one-star Summon Cards out of his set and summoned on the spot.
His Normal Summon was thoroughly drilled, and after all his real duel experience there was no chance of him tightening up in a setting like this.
This time too, three great orbs of light came smoothly, one after another.
Without a pause he pulled two two-star cards from the remaining Summon Cards, brought them out with Normal Summons, then used Tribute Summon to call the last, four-star card.
As the enormous four-star orb of light took shape, he had cleared the entire test in under two minutes.
The moment the final summon ended, Doron turned to Professor Silf, expectant.
Professor Silf nodded, pleased, and gave her verdict there and then. "Very good. Your Tribute Summon is a touch rusty, but your Normal Summon is well practised, and you kept your magic output steady across consecutive summons. Excellent, by first-year standards."
"So how many points did I get, Professor?" Doron asked at once.
Professor Silf said, "Normal Summon, forty-two. Tribute Summon, thirty-eight. Eighty in total."
Doron: "Huh?"
He had assumed he was worth ninety at the very least, and his mouth fell open wide enough to fit an egg.
Professor Silf had already stopped looking at him. "Susan Bield. Your Normal Summon needs work — thirty-two. Your Tribute Summon barely clears the line — thirty. Sixty-two in total."
Susan pressed a hand to her chest, let out a huge breath, then turned and shot a grateful look at Emma down in the seats.
Emma shook her head automatically, then caught herself and managed a thin smile back.
She had worked at it for a long time to shore up her two friends' summoning, and Susan had still gone to pieces from nerves up on that platform.
Otherwise she'd have scraped seventy or so, surely?
The thought sent her glance sliding to her other friend beside her — Lucy.
That one look piled a mountain of pressure on the already jittery Lucy, who angled her eyes away.
…
The summoning assessment rattled along at four or five minutes per group.
About half an hour in, Sarah Swati of Magic House strode up to the platform full of confidence and took the first score above ninety of the morning.
Not long after her, Emma Metis walked up under the eyes of the entire class and claimed the second score above ninety.
Professor Silf's marking was not generous. Even Sara and Emma failed to reach ninety-five.
And the only ones whose summoning could beat theirs were, in all likelihood, those two at the back.
The first-years turned to steal a glance at the last row, where Dark Demon and Virt Gold sat.
Given the summoning speed Dark had shown in the dueling tournament, ninety-five was the least of it — full marks would hardly be too much!
They honestly couldn't picture it: if Dark couldn't take full marks, who among the first-years could?
As for Virt, summoning speed had been the one area where he matched Emma and Sara in the earlier dueling tournament, so ninety-five was within his reach too.
"Rose Flotly of Noble House, and from Knight House… prepare in advance."
Professor Silf's voice cut across the students' musings.
Buoyed by Diana's encouragement, Rose went up with worry written across her whole face.
A few minutes later every trace of tension had drained away, and she came down all but bouncing.
Professor Silf had just given her seventy-two!
Dark watched her come down with his chin propped on one hand, thoroughly at a loose end. He'd been faintly worried for her, and then Rose had given her real level away the instant she started — and that seventy-two had come out of a run that hadn't even gone especially well.
All that worry for nothing!
Not long after, Diana went up brimming with confidence and put on quite the per-formance, walking away with a high score of ninety-three that turned every head in the room.
Then, close to ten o'clock, Dark finally heard his own name.
"Dark Demon of Noble House, Robert Broheim of Knight House, and from Magic House…"
As Dark stood, he smiled at Robert, who was looking over from the other side of the room, and walked to the platform.
He waited out a round by the wall, then took a set of Summon Cards from the box beside Professor Silf and stepped to the middle of the platform.
Once all four students were in position, Professor Silf gave the word, and all four began to summon at once.
Three seconds in, Dark had his first one-star orb of light.
At the ninth second, the second one-star orb.
At the fifteenth, the third one-star orb.
At the twenty-first, his first two-star orb.
At the twenty-seventh, the second two-star orb.
At the thirty-sixth, the last four-star orb.
As the huge four-star orb rose out of the Tribute Summon circle, the three classmates beside him were still labouring over their one-star orbs!
"Chomp!"
Startled by the giant sphere of light that had appeared out of nowhere, Robert bit his own tongue, and a Normal Summon that had already been struggling to touch the pass line collapsed outright.
…
"Nothing to add. Dark Demon. Full marks."
Professor Silf's voice was perfectly flat.
Nor were the students in the classroom particularly surprised.
As though all of it went without saying.
Anything short of full marks would have been the strange part.
Dark handed the set of Summon Cards back to Professor Silf and returned to his seat, unhurried.
Soon after he sat down, the three students assessed with him came off the platform one by one.
Robert, last down, was white as chalk, which moved Virt to comfort him: "It's fine, Robert. Plenty of others didn't pass either, right? Misery loves company."
Robert: "??"
Virt went up next — and came away with a mere ninety-two.
…
The Summoning Class practical assessment wrapped up smoothly before eleven.
Pass or fail, everyone headed straight for the Canteen, ate, then hurried back to the dormitory to prepare for the Potions practical that came next.
Compared with Summoning Class and its fixed targets, the Potions practical was plainly harder.
Professor Thompson, who ran Potions, hadn't even revealed what the assessment would cover, which kept the students who were poor at brewing on edge the whole time.
Diana was a case in point: all confidence that morning, and by the afternoon she had wilted like an eggplant caught by frost, limp and glum.
"Don't be nervous. The two things that matter most in brewing are steady hands and a steady head, and you've got both. There's no way you'll fail." Dark said it against his own better judgment, purely to take the edge off Diana's nerves.
And then the freshly reinvigorated Diana met an agonising Waterloo in that afternoon's Potions practical.
Watching black foam churn wildly out of her cauldron, Diana pressed her lips into a tight line.
She had plenty of company in that, though.
The whole laboratory classroom had filled with a stench of rot as a result.
Professor Thompson stood with his arms folded, watching the flustered students with a cold smile.
He had always held firmly that "the attention you let wander in class is the tears you shed in the exam," and for this practical he had deliberately picked a high-difficulty brewing experiment, meaning to teach the students a proper lesson.
Of course, the room was not entirely without students who satisfied him.
Setting aside the handful of top performers, several Magic House girls had a real gift for Potions.
…
The Potions practical ran from two in the afternoon until four — two hours in total.
When Professor Thompson called time, over half the class was still wrestling with the liquid in their cauldrons.
Even the students who scraped their way to a finished brew mostly produced potions of poor quality.
Professor Thompson picked out only five relatively flawless potions and awarded their owners practical scores above ninety.
He didn't announce the grades on the spot, naturally. He ordered the students to clear away the wreckage of their experiments, then strode out of the classroom, leaving a chorus of wailing behind him.
Dark, who had finished cleanly a full hour earlier, glanced at the black water in Virt's and Robert's cauldrons and felt a flicker of pity.
Diana had at least turned out a half-finished batch on her third attempt. Those two were the genuinely tragic ones.
"I really didn't expect today's two assessments to fail this many people…"
Dark shook his head, helped Diana and Rose tidy up their workbench, and left the classroom.
He honestly couldn't fathom why these two subjects had sunk so many.
But reality has a way of leaving one helpless.
Take the Magic Guide Theory practical the next morning, Friday — plenty of people once again failed to refine a complete Magic Guide Card to the required standard.
The refining difficulty of the card Professor Kazel had chosen could only be described as average.
But it seemed some students' skill was even worse than he had estimated.
Or perhaps growing used to Dark's level had skewed his sense of what a first-year could actually do, if only a little.
…
Amid the wailing of nearly half the year group, the Dueling Class practical assessment finally began.
The students had no choice but to pull themselves together again and meet the duel assessment head-on.
____
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