Galen - The Untold Tales of Frelanna Forest

Chap 22: An unfair entrance test

Liana and Galen followed Rosalyn to descend to the first floor by elevator way and headed to the academy’s library.

On their way, Galen was impressed by the crowd of the students passing by them. Almost all of them were still young, they could be even the same age as him and Liana. They were also wearing the uniform with an elegant white shirt and dark black colored bottom. For male students, they used cravat. While female students used ribbons.

However, Galen could also notice that some of the students standing highlighted among the crowd with their special costumes. They had the same uniform same like others, but they were wearing also a luxurious long cape with red color. At the back of the cape, there was the dragon symbol being silked with the golden threat. That dragon pattern looked similar to the symbol of Saganite religion.

“Anyone having that cape, they are S rank students. This academy has four grades so we have only 40 students who have that honorable cape.”

Rosalyn explained. Galen could understand as well. They are the type of students who easily caught the attention of the crowd by their excellent and untouchable level.

“Hey, Rosalyn.” Frank asked Rosalyn “I notice too. The cravat and the ribbon of the students have different colors. Why are there different colors like that?”

“It’s for distinguishing the rank of the students.

D Rank students have black cravatibbon;

C Rank students have red cravatibbon;

B Rank students have blue cravatibbon;

A Rank students have yellow cravatibbon;

S Rank students have green cravatibbon.”

There was something Galen and Liana got confused because it seemed this color system to not follow any order. Of course, Galen could understand that from D rank to A rank, the color is ordered from dark to light color. But why the S rank’s color is green?

“In Saganite religion, Our Highness pointed that green symbolized the purity of the dragon and is chosen as the iconic color of this kingdom.” Rosalyn answered “The green cravatibbon has a meaning that those S rank students have got the blessing of the dragons and they will become the future leader of this kingdom.”

What a fascinating culture, Galen thought, while keeping following Rosalyn walking through the academy’s corridor. The students with purple cravatibbon were literally everywhere. It took Galen a while to discover a girl having blue ribbon, sitting from afar.

An idea popped in Galen’s mind. This academy… has a super high gap between the ranks of the students to each other. According to what he understood as the prince of Tredia, this system would be looking like a bubble effect. One day, it would explode and the rebellion would be unavoidable.

However, he was amazed that this academy – social system had been kept stable for 200 years. No one was against this system and they just accepted it as if it was the oblivious reality. If that, a terrible question was posed in Galen: Are the civilians here get brainwashed as well?

Of course, Galen wasn’t sure about his opinion. He just stepped in this Mothien Kingdom today and just witnessed the part of an iceberg’s surface. He just could hope that the reality of this kingdom wouldn’t be as bad as he was afraid…

…if that stupid and rotten entrance test didn’t happen from the start.

***

At the academy’s library…

“Okie! It’s the magic book that you two needed to read before the Duel test!”

Rosalyn gave each Galen and Liana a book. They looked very new, yet very thin so the knowledge to enter the test wouldn’t be overloaded much. When Galen took a look inside, all of them were the basic magic spells being popularly used during the combat such as Barrier, Attack Up, Defense Up, etc.

“I understood, Alice and I will try our best to learn it all within a week.” Galen said while flipping each of the book’s pages and taking a look “So Rosalyn, is it okay if we could have private time to study at the library and read the book from now?”

“Oh, of course! As a professor, I even love hardworking students more, meow hehe!!” Rosalyn smiled, while waggling her cat tail. As a person who loved fluffy stuff, Liana had a quite hard time resisting when looking at Rosalyn’s tail “So Alice, Gerald, I’ll leave you two here for a moment. If you finish and want to see me again to look for an inn, feel free to visit my personal office room on the third floor. I’m really sorry that you two cannot enter the academy residence for now, since you aren’t the students yet.”

“Thank you, Rosalyn. We will call you in three hours.”

“You are welcome, meow hehe!!”

After that, Rosalyn’s image disappeared in front of Galen, Liana and Frank’s eyes. She was using teleport spell again in order to move to her office room. One day, Galen must learn how to use that spell too.

“Aye… Galen.” Liana whispered beside his ear “You said you wanna say something to me right? This is the right time now.”

“Yeah that’s why I chased Rosalyn away.”

Galen then looked around the library zone. Luckily, there weren’t many students standing around here. All of them had into their own teamworking small teamworking room, which was amazingly a floating magic sphere. When he looked at the ceiling of the library building, he could see so many spheres with golden colors floating above. The students at this academy were working inside it so the outsiders wouldn’t hear them discussing anything.  

Galen, Liana and Frank registered a teamwork room at the librarian as well. Got experience from that time earlier, the more careful, the better it would be.

***

“Wow! So beautiful!!”

Liana and Frank were amazed when everyone was dragging to the ceiling of the library, which opened for them a completely new space dimension: The sky where they could see the entire Mothien Kingdom from up above. It was a magical effect with the purpose of bringing the students more focusing on their work.

Even inside the teamwork room, there were many convenient things as well: A round table made of glass with two chairs, since Galen and Liana signed as a group with two members. There was also a small shelf, having a pack of snacks and tea. In the case, if they wanted to go outside for temporary business or wanna sign out the room, there was a magic device at the center of the desk, which allowed them to go back to their real world with a touch of their hand.

What kind of magic technology is that? Galen wondered.

Rapidly, he returned to the main topic. He gave a try, by knocking on the surface of the sphere. It caused a particular “koong, koong” sound of the glass material. There seemed to not be any device that could monitor or eavesdrop either. So, Galen was back to the seat, called Liana who kept watching the scenery outside the sphere.

“Liana, can you show me the scroll of your entrance test plan?”

“Aye, sure!”

Liana didn’t understand why Galen wanted to see her scroll. However, she knew something not right coming as Galen knit his eyebrows while comparing the contents of two paper scrolls together.

“Liana, you and I will pass the entrance test with completely different content.”

“Ehh, what?!”

“Look at this, Liana. This is how I have to pass the entrance test.”

Liana took Galen’s scroll and looked inside. The first reaction when she read it… she was like: Wait… is it… too hard?!

Like Liana, Galen would have to pass the IQ and Aura test at the same time with her. However, the third one was completely different: Since there were many non-weredragon contestants, but the available slots in the academy were limited. In order to pass the entrance test, Galen had to join the tournament in order to be in the top 150 highest scores students to enter the academy.

“Aye this kingdom is so racist!!!” Liana regretted that she couldn’t tear that paper scroll apart.

“I’m not surprised if our testing content is different actually.” Galen answered “But after all, this is the rule of this kingdom. If we wanted to achieve our objective as smoothly as possible, following them is the only choice.”

“But this is unfair!!” Even Frank agreed with Liana as well “Let’s say there are total 500 contestants and they just accepted 150 students to enter the academy. It means… you will be going to 1vs3!!”

“Earlier I just 1vs5 the troublemakers at the capital alley. So 1vs3 is totally no problem to me.” Galen smiled “Thank you for caring for me Liana, Frank. But please trust me.”

“…I understand.” Liana said. Still, there was something that still unpleased her.

“However! This isn’t the main point that I want to discuss with you.”

Galen closed the magic spell book and highlighted the word ‘however’.

During the conversation earlier, he had finished reading the entirety of it, basically, they were all the basic combat magic spells that he used to self-study since the days he was the prince of Tredia. He even used them for 1vs1 against Kris a year ago. Compared with the knowledge he got from Saeza’s hellish training, reading this book and remembering them was as easy as reading a first-grade student’s book.

“Liana, you are having an opportunity than me in this kingdom. With Rosalyn’s backing, just use it.”

“Eh? Galen, how about you?”

“Of course, I will still keep my objective which is claiming The Core of Iresthea and resurrecting her. But there is a thing in this kingdom that I want to investigate as well…

…about the secret of the dragons in this kingdom. Why are they unlike the wild dragons that we used to encounter? How can this kingdom train them so well that they can even collaborate with humans? I wanna understand why.”

“Hmm now you just make me notice too.” Frank sat on the glass round table. He crossed his arms, closed his eyes and thought “Liana, is it me or… your Aura Sensation Ability feel something not right with those dragons?”

“Aye! Yes!”

Something popped up inside Liana’s head. She remembered when she was in dragon form and flew to the border of Mothien Kingdom. She did see the dragons but already felt like they weren’t close with her. She even tried to communicate with them by using aura, but she didn’t understand why they didn’t respond to her and just ignored her.

“So my feeling isn’t wrong, I see.” Galen said “So to answer this question, my plan will be…”

***

Eventually, the entrance test began…

First, it was the IQ test. Galen and Liana were sitting in the same exam room. However, their seat was based on the judge’s decision so they couldn’t sit near each other. As a human, Galen had to sit at the wooden seat, among the other people. As the weredragon, Liana was placed at the high golden seat – the seat for weredragons or children from noble families for better observation.

Meanwhile, Frank was taking the peek from the room’s window, looked at Galen and Liana inside the room with nervousness: “Liana, Galen, I know you guys can do it!”

“Everyone has got the testing magic device yet?” The judge leader announced the rule of IQ test “The question will be shown on this board, you will have sixty seconds to answer the quiz by pressing A, B, C or D to choose the correct answer. After choosing, press the green button at the bottom of the device to confirm your answer! Each correct answer will be +1 point. If answering wrong, it will be -1. If you don’t choose any answer, you will gain no point.”

It was the first time a prince like Galen, an adventurer weredragon like Liana experienced this such test. They both could feel the pressure covering the entire room, which urged them to inhale and calm down themselves. According to this scoring system, Galen understood that if he cannot answer the question, choosing randomly an answer is impossible.

“A warning to you too, all support documents, all kinds of cheating are prohibited. You will be disqualified immediately if we found out you have any related behaviors with them.

Now, the first question of the IQ test… begin!!”

In front of Galen, showed the first question on the main board.

“Knowing, casting magic is the conversion process between the aura from the human body and the environment. Will we be able to produce food by casting magic? Hmm, interesting question indeed. To answer it, we need to know the nature of the aura energy which is mentioned very well in Saeza’s book… I think Liana could even answer it too.” Galen mumbled.

After a few seconds of reading, Galen pressed the button immediately. Each of the seats would have a barrier to prevent peeking and copying, so the other students near Galen were surprised by how fast he answered all of the questions. Helplessly, they couldn’t see which button he did press.

On the other side, Liana had a hard time figuring out how to answer the first question of the test. But thanks to the teaching of Galen, she slowly understood and pressed the answer of the question with extremely fast speed, that she almost got suspected by the judges that she was cheating.

After one hour of IQ test, everyone was exhausted and they kept discussing the question as they left the room. Most of them showed their disappointment because the question is extremely hard for them. Even Galen and Liana would find the same too, without Saeza helping them.

“Yay! Welcome back Galen, Liana. You two have done very well!!” Frank flew to them as he saw them leaving the test room.

“Aye! Thanks Goddess that we have Saeza taught us everything!!”

Liana rose her arms and yawned. As an adventurer, she didn’t have the habit of sitting in an hour straight so she felt like her body was cramped.

“Hahaha then I’m very glad that you have done the test very well too.” Galen laughed at Liana like a prideful father and rubbed her hair “Well done, Liana.”

“Heh! Thank… thank you!” Why was she blushing at this moment?! Liana blamed by slapping herself, leaving Galen and Frank being confused.

The second exam was Aura test, which was testing the maximum capacity of each contestant’s inner aura energy.

The contestants would make a line according to the number order of the judges. Each of them would step on the stage and touch their hands on the aura testing orb. This magic device not only could measure how strong the contestants were, also detect which is their main magic element.

“Contestant number 53; AP: 1200; Element: Water.”

“Contestant number 54; AP: 900; Element: Fire.”

Each of the records of the contestant was shown on the main board of the Aura testing room. There were in total two boards which kept updating the information at the same time. The first board at the left showed the newest records, the second at the right showed the best AP (aura power) record. Currently, the best record that Galen saw at the first rank was 2600, belonged to a contestant named Roman Killian and his element is Wind.

“Wait a minute, Killian?!”

Galen felt like he just hit a déjà-vu effect. If his memory wasn’t broken, he remembered that Rosalyn’s family name is also Killian?!

But his mind completely changed his attention, when it was Liana’s turn.

As she touched his hands on the orb, the crowd was like “WHAT” when seeing her score.

“Contestant number 81 (Alice Valentine); AP: 2600; Element: Fire.”

“As expected from the child of Sephylim!! An excellent being descended from heaven!!!”

“Unbelievable, we are now having two contestants in the same first rank!!”

Galen’s eyes opened widely when he saw the crowd keep giving compliments to Liana. To him, he was surprised as well when seeing her score.

After Liana, it was also his turn.

However, there was an accident that happened…

Galen’s hands gently touched on the magic orb and closed his eyes as the guideline of the judges. He didn’t notice, suddenly, Galadriel’s seed inlaid on his chest reacted the orb and sparkled a ray of green light, in front of the stunned eyes of the crowd of contestants and the judges.

Crack!!

Galen stopped, opened his eyes as he heard a cracking sound of the magic orb.

“Ah… I’m deeply sorry!” As his heartbeat raced faster and faster, his hand touched on Galadriel’s seed being hidden under his shirt. He was sure the magic orb was broken because of the goddess’s power.

But responded back to him was the silence of the judges. Being able to break the magic orb like this, there could be a possibility that he was wielding an amount of aura power that was unable to be calculated by the device.

In the end, Galen left the stage with the discussion of the crowd. Behind him was the record of his test earlier.

“Contestant number 82 (Gerald Barrister); AP: Unknown; Element: Earth.”