Editing Failing Witch:Volume3 Episode1 (section)

===Part 4===

School was out for the day. Yagoro was wasting time staring at ''the locked container'' he kept in the squatter’s district behind his apartment. He simply couldn’t convince himself to give up the crashed craft.

Then he had a sudden idea and walked back to Carraway Cs.

It was evening by the time he arrived.

Preparations for the Lughnasadh exam had already begun.

“Uhhh.”

Mont Blanc gyaru instructor Schanze Dwelling raised her arms and stretched as if forcing the exhaustion out of her weary body.

“Tired?” asked Yagoro with a sigh.

“Of course I am. I mean, there’s clairvoyance, telepathy, mind-reading…argh, and prophetic dreams too. With a written test for cool witches, you totally have to have a countermeasure for anything and everything.”

Prophecies – in dreams or otherwise – seemed like such a vague concept, but they were no laughing matter in a world of witches. For example, the Norse god Odin died along with the nine worlds because he couldn’t overturn the prophecy of a human priestess’s spirit.

“In addition to cheating by peeking at someone else’s answers, they can totally also try to trip each other up.”

“You mean like a Black Mass death curse where they stick a needle in a wax doll?”

“That’s totally not funny.”

In truth, these exams were not ''just'' a challenge for the students. It was also a trial for the instructors who had to manage the exam site. The students wanted to do well so badly they would do anything for even one more point. Cheating ran rampant with ordinary exams, so just imagine how much worse it was with an exam for witches who could use magic.

In other words…

“Cheating methods totally go in and out of style. So, Yagoro, have you been paying attention to the rumors around town?”

“I’m not a Carraway instructor. Don’t count on me to come up with a defense plan.”

Yagoro was exasperated, but he still drew on the knowledge he had.

She had a point.

“The current trend would be remote magic, don’tcha think? They set up an environment letting them use communication magic and then a group with plenty of documents and textbooks provides support to the exam-taker from outside the exam site.”

“…”

Another method was using their cauldron to mix up a camouflaged ink that was invisible except when viewed through a glass ruler and then use that to write the terms and formulas on their writing implements or their own skin…but even then there was a limit to how much information could be smuggled into the exam site. A few pages’ worth would be the absolute limit.

But with remote magic, they only needed a small tool providing communication magic to receive an endless supply of data. If the assistance group hid in a public library, they could provide support with the knowledge in more than 100 thousand books. The exam taker wouldn’t even need to take suspicious actions like peeking inside her cloth pen case or pulling back her sleeve to check her wrist, so the examiners keeping an eye on the site would have a hard time noticing.

The entire idea was fundamentally flawed.

No matter how careful the method, cheating would not lead to a bright future.

Nevertheless, baseless guarantees of success abounded.

The cheaters would be convinced they would get a perfect score this time and that they wouldn’t be caught.

“There are some pretty sketchy fliers mixed in with the ordinary ones being passed out on the streets. Things like ‘join a study group that will guarantee you get into Maleficium’ or ‘if we work together, we can pass the exam for sure’.”

With the entrance exam, there was no such thing as a “guarantee” or “for sure”. It was best to be suspicious of any advertisement using phrases like that.

Only someone like Navigate Exam Myousou Yagoro was allowed those promises.

Yagoro realized Schanze was staring at him for some reason.

“I totally hate to even consider it, Yagoro, but is cheating the secret to your 100% success rate getting students into-”

“If you’re going to doubt my honesty and my ability, I’m going to go home and stop giving you any assistance at all, you damn instructor.”

When the overworked witch wept, shouted, and clung to him, Yagoro annoyedly pushed her away (squishing her face in an unsightly way).

“You said they were totally advertising a study group that connects exam students and guarantees they can pass the exam?”

“Yeah.”

The idea gave him a headache too.

Maleficium’s entrance exam wasn’t easy enough for that to work. And even if they did pass that way, their lack of knowledge could easily get them killed in the dangerous magic experiments and flight that would follow.

Schanze Dwelling continued the serious talk with the shape of her face still distorted.

“To me, ''that totally sounds like a matching service for a cheating team.''”