Editing Failing Witch:Volume1 Episode3 (section)

===7===

It arrived sooner than expected.

Late at night, right at midnight, a great boom echoed across the entirety of the city. Everyone living there looked up into the night sky to see Maleficium’s old meal center towering over them.

Unlike when Demon Lord Aristotle appeared in Carraway Cs Prep School, this covered the entire city instead of just one building. Maleficium’s Jongleurs had activated a wide-area siren.

(Not long now.)

Summon Restricted Magic School Maleficium would be holding an official practice exam.

Myousou Yagoro only had time to quickly wash his face, brush his hair, toss parchment plans into his HEA house’s vending-machine-sized tank to have a quill-sized electric toothbrush made from the dirt within, and brush his teeth with that. He tossed on his usual long-sleeve sailor uniform and made his way to Carraway Cs Prep School, where he found a lot of students had already gathered. The prep school’s structure building was the best place they had to work on their Formula Brooms, so that wasn’t surprising.

Everyone was on edge.

No one took an optimistic view. The girls gathered here had all failed the exam once already. This was their first official practice exam in their year at the prep school. The results here would greatly change how the rest of that year played out for them. Life could be cruel. They all already knew that, if they didn’t dedicate themselves enough, they could find themselves mercilessly forced onto an unwanted path in life.

“Ugh. Good morning, teacher…”

“An exam student is supposed to dedicate every moment of her life to studying, so it deeply bothers me that you sound like you just woke up, but right now we need to focus on your final preparations. We’re going to open up your Formula Broom, okay?”

“Yes! ''Time to break the seal''!!”

Bandage zombie girl Dorothea and sky pirate girl Melehe were busy performing their own maintenance at another work desk. They opened the broom handle like a three blade propeller to check the descriptions within and made sure to tune up the personalized map of Earth.

The witches and Formula Brooms conversed while completing their final preparations.

“Heh heh. A more aggressive forward-leaning position would be better. I guess I would say it would enhance my mood by half a tempo. You can sense the feelings flowing from me, can’t you, Melehe?”

“I don’t understand anything you’re saying. You musicians and you’re ‘feelings’…”

Meanwhile…

“…”

<span style="font-size:75%">“Um, uh, eep, uh.”</span> Dorothea was clearly troubled.

She wasn’t Yagoro’s student, but he couldn’t stand to just watch so he intervened.

“If you need any help, Dorothea, don’t hesitate to ask. I’ll lend you a helping hand…or fist.”

“”Th-there is no trouble here! The work is going smoothly!! Request: stay far away from me!!”

The only broom that didn’t reply no matter how hard its witch tried was Viocia’s. She pouted her lips, but this was unavoidable.

They were at separate work desks, but the girls were chatting with each other.

“Um, do we take flight from the window instead of the chimney? Eep.”

“Yes!! Although for the Black Mass, the witch would reach the roof from the chimney so her family wouldn’t see her. Okay, now for the ointment. Ooh, I know! I’ll go with the safe choice! I’ll use Thunberg's geranium and heal-all for extra stability at high speeds!!”

“Uh. Eep.”

While Viocia excitedly cared for her broom, Dorothe hid behind the girl and tearfully rubbed ointment onto her own body. The ointment meant to reduce her apparent weight must have still wounded her pride, but had she noticed that she was using less and less of that ointment made from common agrimony, common ash, and her own fat? Her jogging didn’t seem like much, but it appeared to be gradually showing results.

“Melehe, your ointment is turmeric and wolfberry…so an instant speed boost?”

“Vertical takeoffs are convenient, but they’re unstable until you start to accelerate.”

“Your broom was having trouble thanks to that trio, right? Did you get it fixed in time?”

“Yes, I did.” The silver-haired girl didn’t look his way while she twirled a crow feather quill in her hand. “As its name would suggest, Formula Broom – Mount Parnassus is a witchcraft device focused on Orpheus, but its greatest feature it’s the flexibility provided by its many optional parts. I’ve given it handlebars, gauges, adjustable lights, a seat, and luggage holders. And I’ve given all of that a distributed parallel damage suspension system made from the pure gold needed to make the trip to the afterlife. Thanks to that, the damage didn’t reach the Three Aspects structure. Once I got the cushioning rebalanced, it was back to its original specs in no time.”

(Oh, no. She’s never going to stop talking about this once she gets started, don’tcha think?)

He should have realized from the moment he saw all the extra parts on her broom. Melehe was obsessed with customization and she liked to talk. Just like Earth’s dekotora drivers.

Up at the lectern, gyaru-style Schanze Dwelling clapped her hands to gather everyone’s attention. She spoke to them all with her tanned skin, blonde hair, dealer-style vest and tight skirt, leopard print show-off bra, and wrist scrunchie making her look like a Mont Blanc.

“Okay, listen up, everyone!! We totally just received an official announcement from Maleficium. The super cool official practice exam will begin at their second signal today. For the practice exam, you need to enter the old meal center on your own, avoiding all the dangers wandering around in there, and collect four numbers distributed randomly around the place. That’s totally all there is to it☆”

(Dangers, huh? So it’s like a test of courage in an abandoned building. I thought it would have something to do with monsters, but this sounds worse than I thought. They’re not going to ensure the monsters are at a level the students can defeat on their own. In quantity or quality.)

The prep schools were not compulsory education, so some girls diligently listened to the instructor while others continued their work. And Schanze wasn’t going to repeat herself either. The students could be seen as disrespectful, but unlike the boring classes of compulsory education, they could be greedy when it came to getting a leg up on the competition.

“The inside of that building is totally a labyrinth, so you can never know what objects inside will turn into a monster and attack you. There could also be false rumors and misinformation coming from the other students. You can try to take the easy way out and ask someone else for the numbers if you want, but keep in mind that you’ll only be throwing away your own future if you screw that up and end up with bogus numbers. You can diligently search them all out, you can gather a few and estimate what the rest must be, or you can rely on your network of friends. From here on, it’s totally up to you. Good luck!!”

Even in the same prep school, all of the students were rivals.

And this was the official practice exam. Girls from every prep school and from all over the land would be flying to that old meal center in ruthless competition. They would be spreading as much misinformation as they could, so you couldn’t expect to find the answers through cooperation.

The broom maintenance didn’t last forever.

Repeating the process over and over when it wasn’t necessary could actually wear out the parts or cause a malfunction.

“Ugh. I need something to keep me busy.”

“Viocia. While this is a practice exam, there are no safety measures inside that old meal center. The things wandering the building will truly be trying to take your life. You can’t defeat them all and you’ll end up having to escape most of them with low-altitude flight. Obviously you need to avoid running into walls, but just remember what you always do and be careful.”

“What I always do? You mean nap and scribble in my notes?”

Maybe expecting basic exam-taking knowledge from her had been a mistake.

With nothing left to do, the future witches gathered by the windows with Formula Brooms in hand. Silver-haired Melehe gripped her broom tight and bandage zombie girl Dorothea retied the white bandage around her forehead like a headband. Maybe it helped her focus.

They were all waiting for the next booming siren.

Yagoro wasn’t as restless as Viocia, but he did wonder if a long wait or a short one was easier here.

Then the time came.

The artificial boom of the siren shook the entire city of marble and obsidian.

Every window opened at once.

And not just at Carraway Cs. At every prep school across Temple School City.

The old meal center jutted out diagonally from the central lake to lean over the city in a kilometers-long fan shape, so it wasn’t a place one simply walked to.

The witches mounted their brooms and jumped from the windows. Confident Melehe and even timid Dorothea stared directly at their destination and flew up into the night sky.

There was nothing left for a tutor to do.

“Viocia!!”

“I know, teacher! I’m off!!”