Mage of the Entrance Exam (3)

The dean of the Department of Magic, Raymond Cloud, pushed open the interview room door and stepped inside.

Three interviewers were already seated inside.

All of them represented a department, just like Dean Raymond.

“You’re late, Dean Raymond.”

Lucian Ashford, the dean of the Department of Politics, greeted her with his signature languid smile.

Raymond frowned and sat down in the empty chair.

“Aren’t you all busy? I don’t know why you’re bothering to waste time like this.”

“Waste time? I don’t know what you mean. An interview is part of our duties as department heads.”

“Oh my. It seems Dean Lucian has mistaken the place. The applicant coming here today is already earmarked for the Department of Magic.”

“Well? We’ll see about that.”

“How pointless, to be greedy like this...”

At Dean Raymond’s venomous tone, Dean Lucian let out a faint laugh.

“Honestly, I hadn’t thought much of it, but Senior Professor Howard praised her so highly.”

“...”

“He kept insisting that we had to bring her to our department by any means necessary.”

A tic twitched in Raymond’s face.

That bastard Howard. I definitely warned him. How on earth did he phrase it?

The problem was that politics wasn’t the only competing department.

“I’m interested too.”

Felix Greenwood, the dean of the Department of Economics, nodded and chimed in.

“From what I hear, that student is an orphan with no family behind her. Our Department of Economics should put the face of the Academy out there for once.”

“Hah! What pointless greed...”

Dean Raymond let out a dry laugh and turned away.

Her gaze settled on the female professor cowering in the corner of the interview room.

“By the way, Dean Liliana.”

“Hiiik—!”

Liliana Gearhart, the dean of the Department of Magitechnics, flinched and trembled under Raymond’s icy glare.

“And what exactly are you doing here? Do you really think the Department of Magitechnics can contain that brilliant talent?”

If it was the Department of Magitechnics, then it should act like the Department of Magitechnics.

Taking in the substitute riffraff who weren’t even qualified for the Department of Magic would be enough, wouldn’t it?

Raymond snapped, looking incredulous.

“W-well... that girl’s magic formula was just so beautiful...”

Dean Liliana hurriedly offered excuses, wiping the cold sweat from her forehead.

“I just wanted to see what kind of girl she was, that’s all... hehe.”

“...At least you know your place.”

Seeing her smile awkwardly in embarrassment, Dean Raymond clicked her tongue.

“Still, for talent like that, it only makes sense for all four of us department heads to come out and greet her.”

Interviews at Elterion Academy were conducted by having professors from the department that wanted to recruit the student serve as interviewers, based on the written exam results.

It had never happened before for all the department heads to step into the interview room like this.

Even if a foreign royal—or even imperial royalty—were admitted to the Academy, the chairman would stand in for them; the department heads themselves rarely came out.

People who were that reluctant to budge had all gathered here for just one person.

And so, as the silent sparring among the department heads was in full swing.

The interview room door handle quietly turned.

The one who opened the door and came in was a somewhat, no, actually quite special applicant.

Her ash-gray hair hung down to her waist, messy and uncombed.

A languid blue glimmer drifted between her half-closed eyes.

The slowly walking girl gave a light bow and sat in the chair before the department heads.

“Uuugh... Kraaah... Kyahh..!!”

The way she stretched her limbs and yawned showed she was completely doing things at her own pace.

The girl blinked blankly a few times, then introduced herself in a sleepy voice.

“Hello. I’m Lunaris Evermoon.”

The department heads’ gazes all turned to Lunaris at once.

Her expression looked oddly dazed.

But the atmosphere coming off her was anything but ordinary.

After a brief silence, Dean Lucian was the first to speak.

He shuffled through the papers and asked Lunaris a variety of questions.

Felix, the department head beside him, chimed in here and there, checking whether she had the qualities suited to the Department of Economics.

In keeping with her languid air, she answered in a languid voice.

Lunaris answered naturally.

Whenever she answered, the department heads held their breath and listened closely.

Lunaris’s explanations were concise, with not a word wasted.

At the same time, they pinpointed the heart of the matter perfectly.

“So Senior Professor Howard wasn’t exaggerating...”

After nodding several times, Dean Lucian kept letting out exclamations of admiration.

Her calm answers instead made it feel like they were the ones being overwhelmed.

Before they knew it, it felt as though she’d even stolen the lead in the conversation.

But Lunaris’s real talent showed itself next.

“U-um... Miss Lunaris?”

Since entering the interview room, Dean Liliana had barely managed to get out a few words, but she finally gathered her courage and spoke.

“A-about this answer sheet for extending the duration of a low-tier spell... the way you wrote the solution was so, so unique... eep!”

Dean Liliana’s words gradually began to speed up.

“It looks like you’d adapted a magitechnics mana-output formula... a-am I right?!”

In response, Lunaris launched into magic theory infused with the scientific knowledge from her previous life.

She rattled it off as if it were nothing, with complete nonchalance.

Yet every single word struck precisely at the heart of the issue.

“...Wow.”

Once the explanation ended, silence fell over the interviewers.

Every one of them wore a stunned expression.

By this point, she’d long since surpassed the level of a mere student.

“No way!!”

Especially Dean Liliana, who looked so moved she seemed on the verge of tears.

“No way... no way you’d apply that theory like that...!”

As if she couldn’t stay seated any longer, she suddenly stood up.

“Right! If you do that, you can keep the same amount of mana sustaining a spell much longer! Just like a machine!”

Dean Liliana’s body trembled with excitement.

Her hand started scribbling something in the air.

“If I just tweak this formula a little... no, even this alone is already a complete theory...! How could you think of something like this... you’re amazing! A genius, a genius! Ehehe! Uhehehe...!”

After chattering away in her own world for quite a while, Dean Liliana noticed how quiet everyone around her had become and snapped her mouth shut.

Then she hurriedly sat back down, her face burning red.

“I’m sorry for getting carried away when I’m just trash...”

Watching Dean Liliana shrink back into herself, Dean Raymond let out a sigh.

That nerdy, machine-obsessed gearhead was chewing through the Academy’s dignity and the faculty’s reputation all by herself.

“Hm.”

Despite her sigh, a subtle smile played at her lips.

That confirmed Lunaris’s talent was even greater than she’d expected.

“Miss Lunaris, I’m not going to ask many questions. Right here and now, show me the spell you’re most confident in.”

Satisfied, Dean Raymond unfolded her arms and said in a relaxed voice.

“Really, anything is fine?”

“Of course. Large-scale attack magic is fine too. I’ll block it all.”

It was an exquisite proposal.

It would let her test Lunaris’s magic while also showing that she herself was capable of blocking it.

“That probably wouldn’t be okay...”

“Hm? What was that?”

“Nothing. But just in case, I’ll go with something gentle.”

Lunaris lightly waved her left hand.

A quill pen.

Paper.

A chair.

A desk.

They began to rise into the air one by one.

Without a single clatter.

As if the gravity in this space had vanished.

The sight of the floating objects was, in a word, unreal.

“...Hah!”

Everyone looked shocked, but the one who reacted most intensely was Raymond, the dean of the Department of Magic.

‘I thought she’d only be able to manage at best a single high-level spell...’

As the saying goes, the more you know, the more you see, and she immediately recognized how incredible the magic Lunaris had unleashed was.

‘She was the real thing, right on the verge of Archmage rank?!’

An existence that defied common sense.

Even the word genius wasn’t enough for Lunaris.

This was a freak beyond human standards.

The sliver of talent she had only glimpsed in the written exam now fully revealed itself.

The moment Lunaris returned the telekinetically lifted objects to their places, Dean Raymond opened her mouth.

“No need to see any more. Miss Lunaris, come to the Department of Magic right now.”

She looked desperately urgent, as if someone might snatch her away at any second.

*

I had definitely come here for an interview.

“If you come to the Department of Magic, the Academy will spare no support to make sure you can earn the title of Archmage by the end of the year!”

“Come to the Department of Politics. There have been many Archmages in history, but never a chancellor who reached Archmage rank. I’ll make you that one-of-a-kind existence.”

“How about the Department of Economics? With your talent and my guidance, you’d surely rake in unimaginable wealth from a young age.”

Before I knew it, all the department heads were tossing me offer after offer.

Honestly, none of them interested me.

“Archmage?”

I’d just be studying magic all day. What a hassle.

“Chancellor?”

Isn’t that basically the person who has it the roughest in the Empire?

“Unimaginable wealth?”

Just thinking about the hardship I’d have to go through to earn that much already makes my head hurt.

I don’t know why every proposal is so unappealing.

Looks like, true to the original story, I have no choice but to choose the Department of Magic...

“U-um... could you maybe consider the Department of Magitechnics too?”

By the way, among those imposing department heads, there was one moldy mushroom wedged in there.

“If it’s Miss Lunaris’s ideas, we could definitely make an incredible magical device...”

“Get a grip, Dean Liliana.”

“Hiiik! S-sorry...!”

Setting aside the fact that she was shrinking into herself, I was kind of curious what kind of incredible magical device it was.

“What kind of magical device are you talking about?”

“Oh, there’s something we developed recently! Just a second!”

She suddenly placed a sphere engraved with a complicated magic circle on top of the desk.

“What’s this?”

“It’s called an Illusion Projection Device! It’s kind of a boring magical tool funded by the Empire for military training, but...”

The dean of the Department of Magitechnics, who had been curled up and timid just moments ago, began waving her hands with an excited, flushed face.

“If you use this, you can project scenes you imagine in your head into space and watch them!”

On the screen that appeared before my eyes, the dean and I were standing side by side, conducting a magic experiment.

“It’s still a prototype, so its performance is limited, but once it’s finished, it could be used all over the place!”

As I quietly stared at the screen in front of me, something came to mind.

This was basically a beam projector.

“...Wow.”

In this boring medieval fantasy world, where I thought I’d spend my whole life lying in bed and reading books.

A ray of hope had appeared.

‘What? I can watch movies, dramas, anime, porn, and Shorts too?’

Maybe coming to the Academy wasn’t so bad after all.

Rolling around in bed and watching videos.

How was I supposed to resist that?

*

On the day of the entrance practical exam and freshman welcome party.

“M-Miss Lunaris?!”

“Hello, Dean.”

The magitechnics dean I met in the hallway looked like she’d seen a ghost.

“Th-the Department of Magic practical exam hall is in the main building next door...”

“I know.”

“Th-this is the Department of Magitechnics practical exam hall, though...”

“I know. Yaaawn...”

I let out a long yawn and went on.

“I’m planning to enter the Department of Magitechnics.”

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