Chapter 41: Entrance Exam (3)
The heavy wooden door of the estate library creaked open as Lucien stumbled out into the dim hallway, joints creaking and soul half-detached from his mortal body.
Candlelight flickered faintly along the corridor, casting long shadows that danced against the stone walls.
He dragged his feet over the carpet runner, blinking blearily at the sudden lack of paper in his field of vision.
Still half-lost in thought, he muttered to himself with tired triumph, “…I’m gonna make you mine.”
It had been a whispered vow of vengeance, directed solely at the Twilight Crown Academy and its oppressive syllabus.
A defiant promise made by a man on the brink of scholarly collapse.
A declaration of war.
But to anyone standing nearby, say, a lavender-haired girl leaning against the hallway wall, arms crossed as she waited quietly for him, it sounded like something else entirely.
Lucien blinked as his eyes focused, and to his horror, Vaelira stood just a few feet away, her whole posture frozen.
Her arms had gone limp, her back stiff, and her eyes were wide in sheer disbelief.
But it was her face that said the most: crimson, flushed from cheek to ear, as if someone had set a firework off in her bloodstream.
Her expression was not one of a dignified noble heir, it was pure, unfiltered fluster.
“Vaelira?”
Lucien managed, eyes darting left and right, confused.
“Wha-”
Then the pieces fell into place.
“Oh no.”
He could practically see the mental replay projected above her head: the romantic candlelight of the hall, the dramatic shadowed exit from the library, his idiot mouth declaring that he was going to ‘make her his’ like some wandering skirt-chasing bard, and then, boom.
“Y–You-!”
She stammered, her voice pitched an octave higher than usual.
“Y-You shouldn’t go around saying things like that so randomly! At random places! What if someone heard you!?”
Lucien raised both hands in panic, fumbling over himself.
“Wait! No, I wasn’t talking about you, I mean I wasn’t not, no, I was, but not like that! I mean the Academy! I was talking about conquering the Academy! Not you! You’re not-!”
Vaelira didn’t let him finish.
“Just- go to bed!”
She blurted, clearly reaching the end of her mental rope.
Her voice cracked just a bit at the end.
“I don’t want to hear another word out of you tonight!”
Then, before Lucien could dig himself further into a grave made entirely of words, Vaelira spun on her heel with robotic stiffness and marched down the hall like a malfunctioning doll.
Her stride was purposeful and deadly serious, but her ears, her poor, treacherous ears, were still glowing red like enchanted embers.
Lucien stood there, mouth half-open, hands still suspended mid-air as if frozen in time.
“…What just happened,” he whispered to himself.
He turned slowly, looking back toward the library door behind him like it might provide an answer.
Of course, it didn’t.
It just stood there innocently, now a scene of accidental romantic war crimes.
After several seconds of standing there in silence, Lucien let his hands drop with a defeated sigh.
“Yeah, that… That’s tomorrow Lucien’s problem.”
And with that solemn declaration, he tiptoed in the opposite direction, careful not to say another word aloud.
The last thing he needed was the cook overhearing him swearing vengeance against a textbook and thinking he was proposing marriage to the pantry.
As far as Lucien was concerned, this was why internal monologues should stay internal.
***
The morning sun had only just begun to spread its golden warmth across the cobbled streets of town when Lucien made his way, yet again, to the old town library.
The satchel over his shoulder groaned with the weight of borrowed knowledge, a stack of books nearly tipping from the top every time he adjusted it.
His eyes were bleary, the dark circles beneath them now a permanent fixture on his face, and his gait had the stiff shuffle of a man who had slept in strange positions and dreamed exclusively of historical dates and dwarven metallurgy.
He pushed open the large front doors and stepped into the cool, shadowed interior of the library, expecting the usual stillness and scent of aged parchment.
Instead, he was greeted with the chaotic sound of something zooming past his head.
“GET BACK HERE, YOU PHOTOSYNTHETIC SCOUNDREL!”
Lucien blinked as a blur of blue and green darted through the air, closely pursued by none other than Ms. Celeste, wand in one hand and a net in the other.
The object of her wrath was, strangely enough, a floating sunflower, vibrant blue petals, a long leafy stem, and what Lucien could only describe as the plant equivalent of smugness.
It flapped and bobbed like a balloon, zipping away from every attempted capture with infuriating grace.
“Don’t just stand there gawping, help me catch this blasted Floral Menace!”
Celeste barked as she skid across the tiled floor, nearly knocking over a stack of scrolls.
“Before it figures out how to open doors!”
Lucien dropped his satchel with a thud and jumped into action, chasing the hovering plant as it zipped between shelves and ducked behind bookcases.
Every time he lunged, it swerved.
Every time he cornered it, it spun through the air and taunted him with a soft, airy boing noise as its petals fluttered mockingly.
“Why is it flying!?”
Lucien yelled as he narrowly avoided crashing into a globe of the Western Archipelago.
“Because it’s enchanted! And I gave it too much mana last watering!”
Celeste shouted back.
“It’s going through its rebellious phase!”
“For the love of, what kind of plant has a rebellious phase!?”
“One I shouldn’t have crossbred with a Tempest Poppy, apparently!”
After what felt like a small lifetime of undignified scrambling and panting, Lucien finally tackled the sunflower mid-flight, pinning it gently against a shelf with a discarded tax ledger.
Celeste swooped in and bound the stem with a flick of her wand, tying it to the bookcase with enchanted ribbon that shimmered faintly with containment runes.
Both of them collapsed onto a nearby bench, panting like exhausted dogs after a summer chase.
The flower bobbed innocently now, making little poof sounds as if nothing had happened.
“Well,” Celeste huffed, brushing a strand of hair behind her ear.
“Guess you do have some real-world application skills.”
Lucien chuckled between breaths.
“Glad to be of service… in the war against rebellious flora.”
She gave him a sideways glance, then held out her hand. “Books?”
“Right,” Lucien said, unslinging the satchel and placing the returned volumes onto a desk.
“I need the follow-up editions. Specifically for metallurgy, ley line climatology, and pre-war era economic theory. You know, just the light stuff.”
Celeste raised an eyebrow, clearly impressed.
“You actually read these?”
Lucien grinned, a little smug.
“Heat and mana affect the tensile strength of dwarven steel. Brinestone infusion increases purification beyond smelting capabilities. Oh, and ley line shifts can cause precipitation anomalies in mana-rich regions.”
Celeste let out a bark of laughter.
“Well, color me surprised. I thought you were just renting them out to use as coasters or to impress some noble girl.”
Lucien’s face twitched.
She leaned in, grinning impishly.
“Let me guess- this is all for her, isn’t it?”
Lucien blinked.
“Her?”
“Vaelira, obviously.”
She mockingly cleared her throat.
Lucien’s face turned crimson.
“Wha-?! That’s not-! I didn’t- That’s not wha-!”
Celeste only laughed harder, clearly enjoying the shade of panic that painted his expression.
“Young love is such a naïve thing. All this effort just so you can follow your lady knight into the Academy like some sort of lovestruck squire.”
“I’m doing this for me,” Lucien protested, eyes wide, hands raised defensively.
“And… the estate! And my future! I’m not following her, I mean, I am, but not like that!”
Celeste gave his cheek a playful pinch.
“Sure, sweetheart. Keep telling yourself that.”
He swatted her hand away with a groan, still red to the tips of his ears.
She turned and headed into the archives, only to return moments later with another tower of books.
Just as she was handing them over, she slipped an extra volume on top, thin, with a dark leather cover and embossed gold title: “Foundations of Trap Magic and Runic Ward Construction.”
Lucien squinted at it. “What’s this one for?”
***
Celeste tapped her wand against her lips for a moment, then, as if deciding he deserved to know, leaned slightly forward over the counter.
Her voice dropped to a more serious tone.
“Lucien, I know you’re working hard on the written portion of the entrance exam, and you should. It’s brutal. But you do know there’s a second part, right?”
Lucien blinked.
“…There’s a second part?”
She groaned, leaning back in her chair and pinching the bridge of her nose.
“Of course there is. The Twilight Crown Academy doesn’t just want smart students, they want capable ones. The written exam filters out the ignorant. The aptitude test filters out the useless.”
Lucien’s heart thumped with unease.
“The second test,” she continued, “is confidential. Nobody knows what it is until the day you take it, and only if you pass the written exam. The academy changes it every year. Keeps people from preparing for it too easily.”
Lucien gulped.
Celeste’s voice grew a touch darker.
“Out of all the students who give the entrance exam, only thirty percent clear the written part. That’s one in three. Sounds bad? It gets worse. Of the ones who clear the written test…”
Her wand tapped once more, ominously.
“Only two percent make it through the aptitude test.”
“Two… percent?”
Lucien repeated, his voice suddenly feeling like it belonged to someone much younger and much more afraid.
She nodded solemnly.
“That’s right. Two percent. The others fail, drop out, or are carried out on stretchers. Some just vanish entirely.”
She added that last part in a whisper for dramatic effect.
Lucien didn’t even blink.
He was too stunned.
Ms. Celeste exhaled and folded her arms.
“I think it’s a combat or physical capability test of some kind. Maybe magical aptitude. Maybe survival. The academy doesn’t want purely academic minds, they want people who can survive the pressures of the outside world. And trust me, they simulate that pressure real well.”
Lucien paled.
“So… I’ve been spending all this time preparing to answer questions like an overqualified librarian only to get thrown into a death match?”
She shrugged.
“Pretty much.”
“…Great.”
Celeste smirked.
“That’s why I gave you that trap magic book.”
Lucien glanced down at the volume as if it had suddenly started glowing.
The once modestly-bound tome now seemed to radiate the warmth of potential salvation.
She continued, voice more matter-of-fact now.
“Your mana’s… well, let’s say it doesn’t exactly take instructions like a trained puppy. It’s more like a sleepy bear, you poke it, it yawns, it stretches, maybe it roasts you alive before it listens.”
Lucien winced.
That was… accurate.
“So,” she said, tapping the book with one finger, “trap magic and warding techniques might be more your speed. They don’t rely on snap-casting. You prepare them ahead of time, lay them out with care, and let the spell itself trigger when the time’s right. All brains, minimal need for lightning reflexes. Perfect for someone whose mana takes a coffee break before obeying commands.”
Lucien looked down at the book again, this time with something approaching reverence.
‘Foundations of Trap Magic and Runic Ward Construction.’
The name alone had sounded dry before.
Now it sounded like a life preserver hurled at a drowning man.
He tightened his grip on the tome, the way a knight might clutch a sword before battle.
“Alright,” he muttered to himself.
“Guess we’re booby-trapping our way into higher education now.”
Ms. Celeste grinned.
“That’s the spirit, sweetheart. If you can’t fireball your way through the front door, make sure there’s a pitfall trap waiting behind it for whoever can.”
Lucien sighed, already imagining the sleepless nights ahead.
But as he turned toward the exit with his newest haul of books, he couldn’t help but glance back at the trap magic volume again.
It wasn’t flashy.
It wasn’t heroic.
But maybe, just maybe, it would keep him from getting metaphorically and literally incinerated.
And that, as far as Lucien was concerned, was good enough.
***
