The Exam-Setting Archmage (5)

No one among Elterion Academy’s enrolled students would ever question the fact that the most outstanding mage is Lunaris Evermoon.

By Lunaris’s standards, she was on an entirely different level—her ranking should include every academy affiliate, from all its past graduates to its faculty, rather than just the current students.

From second place onward, however, opinions diverged somewhat.

Naturally, one might say it should be the top student of the fourth-year Magic Department, the most senior class.

Unfortunately, there was no particularly outstanding student among this year’s fourth-year Magic Department lineup.

The top spot itself changed with every exam.

One fairly prominent candidate was Edwin Belka, the top student of the first-year Magic Department.

As one would expect from a direct descendant of one of the Empire’s renowned mage families, he was a genius among geniuses who had already begun glimpsing the realm of advanced mages despite being only a first-year.

Kaizel Arveria, the top student of the second-year Magic Department, was another rising new powerhouse.

He had once been mocked with jokes about being finished in one second, but after surviving the witch-possession incident and finally returning to his daily life, he had earned the new nickname of “the mage witches covet.”...