Failing Witch:Volume3 Episode1
Episode 1: The Boundary Between A and B[edit]
Part 1[edit]
One summer evening, a carrier pigeon arrived at Myousou Yagoro’s apartment to deliver a message in place of a mobile device.
It was a request for assistance from the used book seller (a gentle young woman with silver hair, brown skin, and enormous boobs) who was always helping him one way or another.
He readied himself for some kind of heavy lifting and made his way to the used bookstore.
“Your shoulders are stiff?”
“Yes, that’s right. Parchment is so heavy when bound together, so this was inevitable with all the books I have to carrying in and out.”
The young woman at the counter of the dimly-lit store was massaging her own shoulders. Now, she was also Melehe’s mother, so he had to handle her with the utmost care.
She wore an apron over a black dress resembling a fancy chocolate cake made with brandy and gold leaf. She claimed her shoulders were stiff, but…
(She expects me to believe moving her merchandise around is the only reason for that? Yeah, right.)
“Yagoro?”
“Nothing,” he hurriedly assured her. He did owe her a lot, so he couldn’t tell her his eyes had been drawn down toward her huge boobs.
He did know the perfect tool for this.
And his HEA house could create any electronic device as long as he had the manual.
More specifically, he could feed a hand-drawn manual to the wooden ants in his aquarium and they would dig out the colorful soil to give it the proper form and function. The fact that the electronics didn’t even need a power source was especially useful.
So he could create a health product designed for stiff shoulders, but it would be an item that did not exist in this world. Which meant he couldn’t let her see it.
And so…
“Oh? You want to blindfold me?”
“Eye strain can apparently play a role in stiff shoulders. And heating them with a damp wet towel should help too.”
“Hee hee. You’re so knowledgeable. I knew you were the right person to go to for help.”
The cheerful woman didn’t find anything suspicious about having her eyes covered by a towel and a thin string.
In other words, his pursuit of the best possible option had led to this.
He was alone in a dark room with a married woman. The mother was seated in a chair and blindfolded while he held a mystery electronic – a nice long massager.
(How did I end up in this situation!?)
He had set it up, but he still shuddered.
And he couldn’t delay any longer. He switched on he massager and pressed its rapidly-vibrating tip against her right shoulder.
Gently.
“Ahn, hh.”
He very nearly dropped the massager.
Her nasal breath was far too suggestive.
The blindfolded woman shrank down in her chair.
“Um, wait, what was that? I thought you were going to give me a massa- ahn!”
“That’s what I’m doing, so stop making inappropriate noises!”
“What is that buzzing sound? Do you have a giant bug back there?”
Seeing the usually perfect woman twitching and attempting a blindfold quiz was kind of amusing.
Not even that bookseller mama could have known what this object was. And no one could keep their cool when presented with the unknown in a situation like this. Yes, this was her first time. Which wasn’t making this sound any more appropriate, was it!?
And.
Someone stood at the used bookstore’s entrance. The book seller had put the “on break” sign out front, but someone had come in regardless.
It was her daughter, Melehe Superlative.
“Pant, pant. Yagoro? You can go at it rougher if you want. Or are you intentionally making me wait to see how I react?”
Blindfolded and unaware of her daughter’s approach, the woman kept on talking.
From the daughter’s perspective, this would look like a very different kind of “break”.
“What in the world do you think you’re doing?”
Part 2[edit]
“…”
Myousou Yagoro got out of bed in his stone apartment.
He ached.
All of his joints protested as he moved.
Yesterday had not been a good day. Frankly, he was amazed he was still alive.
(I’m honestly afraid to go to the cram school.)
But he couldn’t abandon his student for his own convenience. A single wasted day could do critical damage to an exam student’s chances.
He decided to count himself lucky he could even take the time to agonize over it in bed. When he was staying in the Force dormitory, he had been thrown in the detention barracks if he ever failed to get up at the set time each day.
He heard the squeaking of glass being rubbed.
Something like a fish egg was fluttering around inside a clear eye drop vial. That orb contained a naked girl. She was a Dracae familiar he had retrieved previously. He didn’t have any work for her to do, which left her in a position similar to a tropical fish, but she appeared to be rubbing her purple orb against the inside of the eye drop vial to communicate with him: Shape up.
Yagoro steeled himself and walked outside. It was still morning, but the summer sun was already blazing. The cicada cries sounded a little withered.
A giant dragon was soaring gently through the sky. Apparently Hanako had enough energy to bathe in the midsummer sun instead of resting in the shade.
“Extra, extra! We have the latest on King Michael’s bastard son!! You don’t want to miss out on this!”
“This is the same model of hat Lord Brian wore to the general council.”
“Is it true those old men on the Senate are taking vacations on the sly?”
Temple School City’s offerings were a mixed bag as usual…and some sketchy rumors were making the rounds. Seeing how misinformation ran rampant in this world of swords and sorcery made Yagoro realize the internet wasn’t to blame for that after all. The blame lay with human nature, not that tool used to spread it.
“You can only meet the right person once. Can you really dedicate your entire life to someone you met by chance? Come to us and we can make sure you are matched with your soulmate!”
Yagoro listened to all the hawking and shouting as he entered Carraway Cs Prep School.
“Good morning, teacher!”
“Yes, good morning. …But I’m not really supposed to be here, so don’t greet me quite so loudly.”
“?” Viocia tilted her head. Tacit understandings could be frightening things, but no one seemed to care about his presence anymore.
And…
“Our prep school will totally be doing the Lughnasadh practice exam soon.”
Gyaru-style instructor Schanze Dwelling was raring to go first thing in the morning.
The Mont-Blanc-looking gyaru leaned forward from her lectern to accentuate her point.
“Instead of a practical exam using your brooms, this is totally a written exam. That means you’ll totally be sitting in a desk struggling against the answer sheet in front of you.”
This exam was exclusive to this one prep school, but you couldn’t take it lightly.
After all, the midsummer was a crucial period. A big official practice exam run by Maleficium was coming up. The Lughnasadh run by Carraway Cs wasn’t just the lead-in to that; these officially-approved prep school exams could be applied to the results of your official practice exam.
That meant the results here could greatly influence the witch’s final rank of A, B, C, D, etc.
(It’s weird that this system is known outside of Maleficium. I doubt your average fortune teller could see through that barrier, so Maleficium must have intentionally left a tiny hole open to let them through.)
“How does this kind of information get out?” asked Viocia with a thoughtful look.
Yagoro’s eyebrows rose, but…
“They’re targeting all the subjects I’m worst at… Th-this must be the conspiracy of a secret society!!”
“Never mind. The idiot’s still an idiot. Maybe I’m the real idiot for thinking otherwise even for a moment.”
That aside, it was a written exam.
Whether that meant fill-in-the-blank or solving calculations, the students would have to accurately remember the terms and formulas.
That meant memorization would play a big role.
While memorization sounded simple enough, there were actually several ways to organize one’s memory.
There was the repetition method where you reviewed flash cards over and over.
There was the redundancy method where you write the material by hand and spoke it aloud to stimulate multiple senses.
But it went beyond just those two. Witches used witchy methods to cram all that information into their heads. Alchemic potions, witch’s brews, and self-hypnosis to name a few. Some students would even rely on destructive methods like summoning a demon from a magic circle to receive its wisdom, or cutting their arm with a razor whenever they made a mistake on a problem set or quiz. So as unexciting as a written exam might sound, you could never let your guard down.
“Ugh. I can’t do the thing where you swallow a scrap of paper with the material written on it. There’s so much to learn my stomach would burst. Oh! B-but if I write each term on a bite-sized pancake with chocolate sauce, then I can eat it all. And donuts! And cupcakes too! That way teacher will have to praise me for eating all that stuff!! It’s the perfect idea!! I must be a genius!!!”
“You’d end up overeating just before the exam and wind up in the clinic, so don’t even think about it, Viocia. +1 point: the initial idea that eating scraps of paper will help you learn is completely baseless.”
Yagoro sighed in exasperation, but Viocia’s idea summed up the situation well.
The idea that “I need to do this to help me study” was a dangerously tempting one for the girls preparing for their exams.
Yes.
There was no one single correct study method even for the witches who could fly loops through sky aboard a Formula Broom.
Part 3[edit]
“Bwuh. I-I’m so tired…”
Viocia collapsed onto her desk.
Having to study without flying on her broom seemed to take a lot out of her.
“Sigh… My right hand is shaking. If only it would move on its own and answer the exam questions for me.”
“You won’t learn anything yourself if you rely on the Kokkuri-san or a planchette. You might as well use a self-flying broom.”
“Ugh.”
“Also, all of this falls under the genre of (__________).”
“How am I supposed to know if you don’t tell me!?”
“(Automatic writing), you idiot! That will almost certainly be on the exam, so you need to know it!!”
The other nearby students reacted to this more than Viocia herself.
Yagoro feared he was being corrupted by the idiot because the mere fact that the girl with the omnidirectional curiosity antenna was still at her desk writing in her parchment notebook felt like considerable growth on her part.
“Anyway, I made it through today! Which means it’s lunch time! Let’s go, Dorothea!”
Flying witches had to look after their weight, so even Viocia’s friends Dorothea and Melehe wouldn’t join her in the cafeteria. But lately Viocia’s lunches were handmade by Moloch (the bronze bull), so they had been eating together more often. This showed a minor improvement on Viocia’s gluttonous cafeteria diet which had been hard to watch for anyone watching what they ate.
“Eep. Wh-where should we eat today, Viocia?”
“Since the weather’s so nice, I say we go outside! Like by the fountain!!”
“The fountain might help keep us cool in this sun.”
Viocia, Dorothea, and Melehe.
They had never officially agreed to it, but those three tended to stick together.
“Um, eep, study, study. ATU 0782 is the King Has Donkey Ears.”
“That’s Midas and the Donkey Ears. Learning it by the wrong name will hurt you later on.”
Melehe corrected Dorothea before Yagoro could do so.
The sky pirate girl continued lecturing the busty glasses girl who looked like a rare cheesecake thanks to her white bandages.
“It has a number of magical lessons, but the most common is that you need to watch what you say. Because when the barber shouts about the donkey ears, it will eventually reach the king’s ears somehow.”
“We’re here!”
They arrived at a circular stone-paved plaza. Lots of benches were set up on the perimeter, but the edge of the circular fountain in the center was more popular place to sit. There were a lot of girls their age here. Students were far from the only people in Temple School City, but lunchtime was the perfect time to target student customers, so no one else was going to be taking a break now. The adults working in their shops tended to take their lunch breaks at 2 or 3, so more the time for an afternoon tea.
“Oh, wow! Dorothea, you brought the same thing for lunch as me!!”
“Hee hee. But the ingredients are different. Eep. Yours is seafood, but mine is grilled chicken and boiled egg whites.”
The lunchboxes sitting on Viocia and Dorothea’s laps contained sandwiches. Melehe had a health bar made from walnuts, a few other nuts, and dried fruit held together by honey. She was munching on one end like a rodent. It didn’t appear to be an instant food. Apparently she had found the most efficient way to get her food so she could spend as much time as possible studying. Was that A Rank even human?
Yagoro, meanwhile, was poking a wooden fork into the lobster noodles he had bought at a nearby food stall. (It came in a boxy waterproof parchment container that made it look something like American Chinese takeout.)
“A study group?” said Viocia without warning.
She had apparently been listening in on the girls from another prep school chatting nearby. Come to think of it, she was the kind of idiot who would see what the person at the next table was eating in the cafeteria and go order some for herself.
“Apparently it’s a way for students to get together and study in their private time instead of just relying on prep school time! That sounds like fun! You can pass around your reference books and play word games to remember the names of different herbs.”
“What do I gain from studying with you two?”
“Gyahhh!?” screamed Viocia at the sudden rejection.
For a student, creating an environment where studying was fun instead of a chore could be an extremely powerful trump card. But Melehe had the self-control to stay focused for long periods of time as she studied, so it may not have meant much for her.
“U-um, Viocia? Eep. If you want, we can have our own study grou-”
“No, Dorothea. Showing mercy is a bad idea for an exam student. The time you have is how many tickets you have to act. If you waste your limited tickets helping that low-scoring idiot just because you feel sorry for her, you’ll be the one who ends up in tears.”
Viocia began trembling when even the tutor nixed the idea.
Yagoro was only Viocia’s tutor. He appreciated the offer to assist Viocia, but he couldn’t take responsibility if that derailed Dorothea or Melehe’s efforts.
Their current ranks in the official Maleficium practice exams were D for Viocia, C for Dorothea, and A for Melehe. If they could find a way to help all three of them improve, Yagoro would rejoice, but with their skill levels so varied, Viocia would end up being pulled up by the other two without giving them anything in return. That was hardly fair when it came to preparing for the anything-goes witch entrance exam.
Melehe sighed quietly and casually pointed to the side.
“Now, if you were on her level, I might be interested. Hi, Chloe.”
“Chloe? Who?”
“C-Chloe Sharprain!? Eep, she’s another monster with an A Rank on the official practice exam, Viocia!!”
Amazed, Dorothea held a hand to her mouth and shouted. It was just like her to show more admiration than fear.
Apparently the elite had an elite friend.
“Hm?” Chloe herself turned casually around in a puzzled way. She was a tall girl, but she had kept her body fat down enough to look more slender than anything. Despite the heat, she wore mourning clothes. But the inclusion of small skull and spider accessories suggested it was meant to be a necromancer outfit. With the occasional glimpses of pale skin, the outfit gave her a coffee jelly in milk look.
“Oh, Melehe? Are you here for lunch too?”
“I’m studying the influence that sunspots and the path of the sun have on astrology. Using actual observations.”
“Ah ha ha. What a Melehe thing to say.”
The carefree way Chloe laughed clashed with the vibe of her mourning clothes.
She embodied the confidence of those A Rank girls who seemed to live in another world.
The lunchbox on Chloe’s lap contained broiled salmon fillets wrapped in a hand-sized leafy vegetable similar to lettuce. It reminded Yagoro of the Korean lettuce offered at some yakiniku places back on Earth, but what was that actually called? He couldn’t remember the vegetable’s name, but it looked like Chloe was the type to eliminate all red meat and carbs from her diet.
Restricting your diet was easy enough, but the stress of coming up with enough variety to keep things interesting could lead to a rebound. As a tutor, he thought she was doing a good job in that sense.
Was Dorothea viewing her with such admiration because Chloe had overcome the idea that smaller was better for broom-riding witches and had achieved an A Rank through hard work and self-control? The occasional nodding suggested Dorothea was soaking up some kind of knowledge from observing Chloe’s lunch.
“U-um. Chloe, do you do study groups with Melehe? Eep.”
“Not a chance.”
Melehe answered for Chloe.
It wasn’t clear what kind of friendship those two had, but they seemed to know each other fairly well.
“Chloe’s even more of a lone wolf than I am. She looks all friendly and smiley, but she refuses to team up with or get along with anyone. I mean, she got her A Rank by studying at home instead of going to a prep school.”
“She’s not human,” muttered a trembling Viocia.
As long as they passed the exam in the end, it didn’t matter what path a student took, so why was the idiot letting that girl scare her before she’d proven she really had what it took?
Chloe smiled and poured something from her leather water bottle into a wooden cup. The drink was a reddish-orange, so it was probably a homemade health drink made by crushing up carrots and few other vegetables.
“Oh, right. I’ll be seeing you at Carraway’s Lughnasadh exam, Melehe.”
“?”
“I study at home without visiting a prep school, but the results of an officially-recognized prep school exam can be applied to your official practice exam. I don’t really care which one, but I will be taking an exam at a prep school.”
Part 4[edit]
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.”
Part 5[edit]
The Lughnasadh practice exam had arrived.
The exam was only run by Carraway Cs, but the results here could influence the students’ results on the next official practice exam.
The summer was a major crossroads.
The students naturally took it more seriously than normal.
“Ugh. I got so worked up playing herb-memorization word games with Freynir I didn’t get any sleep. Yawwwn…”
“You’re the only one that careless, idiot.”
Yagoro was amazed the freeloading elf had stuck with it all night long (presumably remaining expressionless the entire time). As the idiot’s tutor, he felt a need to get her a gift later on.
Lots of desks were evenly arranged across the exam site. Each one of those would be the battlefield for one of the girls. Their Formula Brooms could draw information from the other world of Earth, but they had to leave those with the instructors. The witches had to rely on their own knowledge for these fully written exams. After seeing Viocia off to her desk, there really was nothing Yagoro could do for her.
Dorothea, Melehe, and the rest of the Carraway Cs students were here, but there were also a fair number of girls he didn’t recognize. Those would be the ones who studied at home or with a tutor. Chloe, the mourning clothes girl who was chatting with a few other girls, noticed Yagoro’s eyes on her. For some reason, she cheerfully blew him a kiss.
“Okay, totally listen up, everyone!!”
Gyaru instructor Schanze raised her voice from the lectern.
That was enough to gather the attention of everyone there. This was intentional on her part, of course.
Unlike with strict compulsory education, part of being a prep school instructor was being an entertainer.
“The Lughnasadh exam is about to begin. You will have 90 minutes for each section. There will be 4 section: Admiration, Antiquity, Amorality, and lastly a General section that covers all three aspects. You will receive a 15-minute break after each section and 30 minutes for lunch. But if you leave the room during a section of the exam for totally any reason, you will not be allowed back in until the next section begins. …Have you used the restroom? You haven’t forgotten your pencil box? Don’t forget that your ability to focus, your preparations, and your health management are all totally part of the exam. Including the short breaks, this will be a 420-minute relay race. Time management will be key. If you’re courageous, you can finish your best subject quick and use the rest of that section’s allotted time to sleep at your desk to prepare you for a subject you’re worse at. Everyone, please totally pace yourselves and make sure you don’t regret this day. Now, take your seats! Place your exam ticket on the top right of your desk!!”
It was so frustrating.
But Yagoro really couldn’t find anything more for him to do.
Had the Force drill sergeants felt like this?
Since he wasn’t an official prep school instructor, he couldn’t work as an examiner. After a final wave to Viocia, he left the large exam room to wait in the hallway.
From here on, she had to fight on her own.
Part 6[edit]
The first section of the exam was Admiration.
That subject was all about extracting magical lessons from old folklore and children’s stories and then applying them to real witchcraft. The subject naturally required a lot of literary knowledge.
In other words, it was all about memorization and reading comprehension.
(What’s the magical lesson of Red Riding Hood? Don’t go out alone, don’t trust people even if they claim to be family, modern technology can conquer the age of beasts – there are a lot of them.)
Melehe Superlative thought quietly to herself while facing her answer sheet.
In literature, there wasn’t always a single answer. The trick was to identify the specific answer the problem was asking for.
In this case, it was asking for the magical lesson needed to create a talisman to ward off evil, so the part where the hunter slayed the wolf was the correct choice.
After easily passing that problem, the Rank A elite frowned a bit.
(Dammit, that pervy tutor’s quiz actually helped.)
“?”
Instructor Antoi was walking by as an examiner and gave Melehe a puzzled look.
Melehe moved on to the next problem.
Working through the long list of written problems was a lot like self-hypnosis. Each time she solved one of the difficult problems, her fully-activated mind actually seemed to empty out. She unintentionally ended up facing her own inner self. Which was why she became conscious of an oddity her subconscious had picked up on.
Something wasn’t right.
Not about the exam questions. This was a memory from shortly before the Lughnasadh exam began.
(That’s right.)
Chloe, the mourning clothes girl who was chatting with a few other girls, noticed Yagoro’s eyes on her. For some reason, she cheerfully blew him a kiss.
Melehe had seen that same scene from within the exam room.
The blown kiss wasn’t the problem. …Well, it actually did bother her a lot for some reason, but that wasn’t the main issue here.
(She was chatting with a few other girls?)
Chloe was supposed to be even more of a lone wolf than Melehe.
She might give you a friendly smile, but she didn’t actually befriend or get to know anyone. Out on the streets, Melehe would have written it off as Chloe being polite or providing lip service, but what exam student had the time to spare on that sort of excess just before a written exam?
(Don’t tell me…)
Chloe studied on her own rather than relying on a prep school or tutor.
Nevertheless, that mysterious elite had managed to outdo her rivals and earn an A Rank on the official practice exam.
But now she had friends? A secret connection with others?
(Don’t tell me.)
“Teacher.”
An odd voice filled the silent exam site.
It acted as the beginning of an accusation.
However, this accusation came from Chloe Sharprain herself.
She was pointing directly to her side.
At the next desk over.
Where Dorothea Rockpool sat.
“She is cheating.”
Part 7[edit]
“Eh? Eh?”
The confused voice came from Dorothea.
Her feelings had been one-sided, but the A Rank elite she so admired had just accused her out of the blue. It was so unreasonable she felt confused more than angry.
It was a baseless accusation.
Chloe feigned ignorance.
Why didn’t Dorothea react with anger or hatred?
And not immediately arguing back was a definite mistake on her part.
The prep school instructors acting as examiners took swift action.
“Miss Dorothea Rockpool. Please come here.”
Someone’s chair rattled as they stood up.
It was Viocia Modestlucky.
“Wait a second!! D-Dorothea would never do something as dishonest as cheat!”
(You idiot. Making a loud emotional argument with no evidence will only confuse things further!!)
Melehe bristled more than Viocia did.
That was such a dangerous move.
And Examiner Antoi Nosecone did indeed raise her voice.
“Everyone in your seats!! Take your seats immediately! If you stand up without permission, we will assume you are peeking at another student’s exam. If you speak without permission, we will assume you are providing another student with an answer. You have been warned, so take your seats!!”
No one left their seats and no one dared speak a word.
Still, the mood was chaotic. Except for the one girl who was smirking.
Chloe Sharprain.
After this, it was possible Viocia would be thrown out of the exam along with Dorothea. Any Carraway Cs witch knew those two were friends. Viocia was correct, but without any way of backing up her claim, she could be seen as covering for an accomplice.
They needed to remain calm.
Melehe was mildly disgusted with herself for finding it so easy to remain calm here, but still.
(She must have some magic that can instantly detect if someone suspects her.)
For the time being, Melehe could only speculate.
She didn’t know have any evidence and she didn’t know what Three Aspects Chloe’s witchcraft used.
Something only inside the exam room probably wouldn’t be enough.
(And she needs a response when she detects suspicion. It looks like she makes a random cheating accusation to sow confusion. If someone then claims to suspect her, it sounds like another baseless accusation thrown into the mess. That way any accusations against her will be drowned out!!)
If this was allowed to continue, Dorothea would likely be asked to leave the room. Having to abandon one of the exam’s four sections early would be devastating. And if she was not cleared of the cheating accusation, she would end up with a 0.
The summer was a major crossroads.
This kind of trouble could leave her in an unrecoverable position.
(…)
However. For some reason, Myousou Yagoro’s voice replayed in the back of Melehe’s mind.
“Showing mercy is a bad idea for an exam student. The time you have is how many tickets you have to act. If you waste your limited tickets helping that low-scoring idiot just because you feel sorry for her, you’ll be the one who ends up in tears.”
Yes.
Just as Dorothea had a reason to pass the exam, Melehe Superlative had a reason she needed to overcome the exam and reach Maleficium. Why should she stand up for her friend here?
What did that have to do with the entrance exam competition?
She couldn’t take the Lughnasadh exam lightly.
Her results here could be applied to the later official practice exam, so it would directly affect her results there.
She had to focus on her exam.
She had to.
“Teacher,” she said.
Everyone focused on Melehe Superlative.
(Argh!?)
“I warned you unauthorized talking would be seen as passing answers to another student.”
“I am done. I have completed all the problems, so may I use the rest of the exam time as I see fit?”
She doubted she would find any evidence of cheating in the exam room itself.
Chloe was an A Rank elite. Whatever system supported her strength, it wouldn’t be so easily discovered.
So…
(If I really want to protect Dorothea right away, I need to investigate outside this room!!)
Instructor Antoi glared down at Melehe.
She was usually such a kind prep school instructor, but now she had the icy eyes of an examiner.
“You are not allowed to leave the exam room during the exam period for any reason.”
“You said leaving only mean you weren’t allowed in until the next section, right? I will turn in this answer sheet as is. Then there’s no problem, is there?”
“Are you sure that is wise? Once you make the decision, it cannot be undone.”
“This noisy room is a terrible place to take an exam. Studying outside would be more useful than staying in here.”
“Miss Melehe Superlative’s answer sheet will be immediately collected at her request and she will leave the room.”
Melehe didn’t wait to be shown the way – she immediately walked out into the hallway.
And a moment after crossing the boundary between exam room and hallway, she dramatically held her head in her hands. Along with her big hat.
“What is wrong with me!?”
Of course this wasn’t wise. She really had fully filled in the Admiration answer sheet, but any exam student would want to use any leftover time to review her answers over and over again. Especially with the literary problems that could have multiple answers. The immediately obvious answer wasn’t always the correct one there. But she had just thrown out her chance to check over all that. So she could help someone else.
Her shoulders drooped in a deep sigh and then she slapped her cheeks.
Don’t underestimate a Rank A.
(Whatever the case, the die has been cast!! I decided to do this, so I’m not going to waste this chance!)
She snatched up her broom from all the Formula Brooms lined up in the hallway.
Formula Broom – Mount Parnassus bisMR.
Her partner was so heavily customized its original shape was hard to make out.
“I need your help, Orpheus! Right away!!”
“Your burning righteousness tells me I shouldn’t ask what happened to the exam. So what would you have me do, Melehe?”
Part 8[edit]
Chloe Sharprain, the self-taught Rank A ace was in fact a habitual cheater. And whenever suspicion fell on her, she would make a false accusation against someone else to sow confusion and sidestep the suspicion placed on her.
This time, she had chosen Dorothea Rockpool.
And Viocia Modestlucky had received some suspicion for standing up for her friend.
It didn’t matter if they were found innocent.
Everyone had studied themselves half to death for the entrance exam. Melehe couldn’t let those two’s efforts be trampled underfoot to keep some damn cheater safe!
“The more I hear about this, the more it pisses me off, but do you know where Chloe’s friends will be? If we do not track them down fast, Dorothea and Viocia will be in trouble.”
“We weren’t allowed to bring our Formula Brooms or even a single talisman into the exam room. I don’t know what she used to hide the magic she uses to communicate with her cheating team, but they can’t be far away. They must be inside this building!!”
The rest was simple.
What room in Carraway Cs Prep School’s structure building had a large supply of reference material and books?
“The library!!”
Melehe kicked open the door and stormed in.
The room full of exam-takers was being strictly managed, but that had drawn personnel away from other parts of the prep school. And with exam-takers from outside the prep school invited in and extra examiners brought in to bolster security, there were a lot of outsiders in Carraway Cs today.
Any witch prep school would want as many texts as possible. The library was a large space rising through three floors of the boxy building.
To protect the old books, thick light-blocking curtains kept the room dark.
Several pairs of eyes shined in that darkness.
That would be the cheating team remotely supporting the cheater from outside the exam room.
Melehe sharply raised Formula Broom – Mount Parnassus.
“Orpheu-”
“Wait, Melehe!! Dodge now!!!”
Her partner sounded exceptionally panicked.
Something exploded.
Melehe was tossed through the air. A devastating impact pierced through her slender body, like she had been hit by a large carriage drawn by four horses. Unable to prepare for the landing, she crashed through a few wooden bookcases.
“Gahh!?”
She had thought the eyes shining in the darkness belonged to the cheating team.
She hadn’t been wrong exactly.
But a great form moved slowly in the darkness. Something massive looked down at her. But instead of a group of wicked witches who had abandoned their pure and beautiful lifestyle, it was something under their control. The many eyes were all blinking across a single great body.
Part crocodile. Part whale. Part sea snake. Those and other marine creatures were mixed together to create a giant, unidentifiable silhouette. Nature would never produce a creature like this.
“Hee hee. Hee hee. Hee hee ha ha.”
Cloyingly sweet and alluring laughter floated upon the air.
It was just as sweet as the silver-haired girl’s mother’s laughter.
But this came from a girl around Melehe’s own age.
She wore a white dress with toxic red decorations, making her look like an unhealthy sandwich oozing with sweet jam.
“Did you fail to make the overwhelming preparations needed to exact justice? You should have known we would have an offensive means of escape just in case. Honestly, and we even had the Leviathan active and waiting from the start.”
“…Khah…”
Leviathan.
Active.
“But, really, I’m thankful. I went to a lot of trouble preparing this strongest of guard dogs – hee hee ah ha ha – so it would have been a waste to have to disassemble the Three Aspects without ever once using it.”
Rank A Melehe had been taken out in a single attack, albeit a surprise one.
She couldn’t think of many possibilities there.
“It…bh…can’t be…”
“Oh, but it is. I have already joined the ranks of the Limit Breakers. The name is Brewery Establish and I ordinarily draw out the Seven Deadly Sins lurking within people☆”
Melehe could tell because she knew one quite well and not just as a legend.
“Then you’re a true monster that’s surpassed the limits of humankind!!” said Orpheus. “What is a living legend like that doing running a cheating team matching service in a corner of Temple School City like a common thief!?”
“Because it’s the most beneficial option.”
“…?”
“We act as a group to help students cheat so we can send them to Maleficium. This creates Maleficium students with a compromising secret that we, and only we, know. Hee hee, ah ha ha ha ha!! Doesn’t that seem like the fastest way to get what I want? I don’t even have to enter Maleficium myself. I’ve kept this part from Chloe, but the spell I have cast on her does more than just let me control her right hand remotely. All I need to do is whisper from a remote location and they become puppets under my complete control!!!”
“How…dare you!” shouted Melehe.
“Even the scope of your villainy knows no bounds, you greedy wicked witch!?” added Orpheus.
She had to be stopped.
If Brewery Establish was allowed to continue, she would further corrupt the entire system of the witch entrance exams. That would end badly for the serious students like Viocia and Dorothea, but it would also end badly for students like Chloe who had sold their souls and chosen to reach for illicit activities like cheating. Brewery alone would swallow up all the happiness for herself.
Melehe understood that.
But she was still collapsed helpless on the floor, her feet only trembling unnaturally.
The initial attack had done far too much damage.
(No matter how sweetly rotten and drowning in greed she is, her strategy is horrifyingly correct. She won’t let me turn this into a close-quarters or ranged battle!!)
“Kh!!”
“I only need to win. That is the correct choice here☆”
The witch grinned.
And with that grin, a sweet sense radiated from her entire body.
“I don’t need to fight and I don’t need to worry about defeating you – I only need to win. I only humored you because it would have been a waste to activate the Leviathan and then never once use it. That’s all it was. …Now, then. Time to scratch that itch. Leviathan, show me the full power I designed you for.”
A dull roar burst forth.
Melehe’s breath caught.
Her head lost all sense of ordinary gravity.
Her limbs refused to move and she couldn’t even get up from the floor. All she could do was open her eyes wide as she watched that moment.
The roar sounded like Melehe Superlative’s slender body being thoroughly smashed to a pulp.
Except it wasn’t.
Quite the opposite, in fact.
“Eh?”
Did that confused voice come from Melehe’s mouth or Brewery’s?
Perhaps it was both.
Neither side of the conflict understood what had happened.
Because…
That roar was the sound of the enormous Leviathan being smashed to pieces by a single attack and then vanishing.
“What…the…?”
The first to recover was Brewery. She really was at a higher level than Melehe.
But even so…
“What could have done that!? That was the result of bringing the Leviathan, one of the Seven Deadly Sins, into the physical world at ultra-high purity. How could it be destroyed so…so easily!?”
“Are you stupid?” responded a voice.
Someone else had arrived in the library at some point.
Neither Melehe nor Brewery had noticed this newcomer’s arrival.
“A monster made by mixing and matching animals is a simple enough idea. Trick Question Warning: the end result is impossible from a biological perspective. You might as well be giving your monster a ton of different vulnerabilities. You don’t need some great power to defeat that Leviathan. Take advantage of the anatomical contradictions and it’ll collapse all on its own.”
Something spun in the shadows. It was a collapsible baton.
“I really don’t care if you’re a Limit Breaker or if you have some plan to take over Maleficium with your cheating spell. This isn’t about that. …Did you really think I’d just let you leave after you messed with my student?”
A boy stood there.
He was a tutor.
And…
“Hey, backstage witch. This is magic. If you’d done your homework, you’d know the answer.”
A great mass of air blew in from behind Myousou Yagoro. No, that wasn’t air. It was a visualized version of the more fundamental concept of willpower.
It was a hunk of metal. A rounded piece of armor. A turret with several cannons lined up side by side. It had a bridge, a deck, a blister, a propeller, and an anchor. But none of these accomplished their intended purposes. Like dough being kneaded and balled up, it had been crumpled up and forcibly given the shape of a giant marine creature.
In other words…
“The…”
Brewery’s voice trembled as she looked up at it.
Even though she was a Limit Breaker.
“The…Leviathan?”
“Correct.”
The earlier one was no comparison.
The library was three stories tall, but this overwhelming colossus threatened to break through its ceiling. The archenemy summoned by Brewery would have quite literally been overshadowed by it.
That may have been why Brewery Establish refused to accept it was real.
The despair on her face said she knew what awaited her if she did accept it.
“Th-this is impossible. The Leviathan is a symbol of envy and the greatest marine creature. Its role is to die and fill the people’s bellies when the time of judgment arrives. It can’t possibly be some inedible hunk of metal!!”
“Witchcraft is pretty lenient when it comes to swapping out symbols. Just like you can use tarot cards designed ages ago to divine when you should buy a new smartphone or tablet.”
“?”
Oops. He mentioned some electronics that didn’t yet exist in this world.
“Different people see different things in the exact same scenery. The same applies to the field of mental meditation, don’tcha think? So as long as the symbols aren’t wrong, they can be freely swapped out. If you don’t have the lime juice to make the cocktail you want, you can get pretty close by adding some lemon juice instead.”
“It can’t be…”
“Still, this one may not have been entirely fair. I did base my Leviathan on marine weapons from Earth.”
Yagoro slightly tightened his grip on the baton.
He spun it around and pointed its tip out ahead of him.
“I invented a superweapon that doesn’t exist even on Earth. It’s a combination of a crocodile, whale, and sea snake, right? Just so you know, this thing’s attack can easily end the age of gunpowder. Ah ha ha. But this world doesn’t even have gunpowder yet, so we’re skipping two steps here, don’tcha think? Anyway, you damn witch, don’t assume a plain, unmodified Leviathan of flesh and bone can withstand this.”
Part 9[edit]
An explosive boom was compressed.
A beam of light didn’t even begin to describe it.
Part 10[edit]
The incident was over.
As the real cheater, Chloe Sharprain had her practice exam confiscated. Yagoro agreed the summer was a major crossroads. But at the same time, this was only a practice exam. Passing this year’s real entrance exam would be a lot harder for her now and she might even have trouble recovering in time for next year. But if she turned over a new leaf now, she could take the first crucial step. The tutor believed she could do it.
Brewery Establish, the real mastermind, had been arrested by the Benandanti. There was no going easy on her. Only Maleficium could restrain a Limit Breaker.
And.
The Lughnasadh practice exam ended on time. The results here could be applied to the upcoming official practice exam. And that official one would also be a written exam.
Melehe Superlative held her result in her hand.
It was written plainly: B Rank.
All sound seemed to fade from her ears.
That genius girl had always managed to maintain an A Rank, but now she had stalled.
Turning in that one section early and pursuing the cheating case had hurt her after all. And it was all careless mistakes she would have caught had she not been satisfied with just filling in all the answers and actually reviewed her answers.
She had done the right thing.
She had fought to save her friends. She would never say that was wrong.
But…
She had been warned from the beginning. An exam student’s time was how many tickets they had to act. It was a limited resource. So what happened if she focused her precious time on something other than studying? Melehe had made her choice and this was the result.
She understood that, but even so…
“Oh, wow! Dorothea, you went up a rank from C. You actually got a B!!”
“Heh…eh heh heh.”
“Damn, and I worked so hard. But I did make it to C Rank, so I’ll just have to catch up to you on the next practice exam!!”
“Eep. Let’s work at it together, Viocia.”
Those two’s celebrations seemed to be coming from another world altogether.
Melehe was supposedly isolated from them, but their voices still reached her.
Both of them were smiling.
“I’m so relieved I’m feeling hungry all of a sudden. Like I just remembered I need to eat!”
“Are you going to the cafeteria, Viocia? Eep.”
“Yes, because Moloch was a sleepyhead this morning. Melehe, you join us! You taught us the most cost-effective order is the Vivid Health Salad plus a single boiled egg, so we need you with us!!”
“…up.”
“?”
“Shut the hell up, both of you!! You’re relieved? You need me? What’s so fun about bragging all day long!?”
It was like lightning had struck nearby.
Only silence remained.
Viocia and Dorothea weren’t the only ones shocked by it. All the hopeful witches in the room were staring at Melehe. Like a crack had run through the invisible air.
Melehe couldn’t bear the silence any longer.
She bit her lip and ran from the room.
Part 11[edit]
Melehe Superlative stood up on the practical building roof.
Everything was dyed by the setting sun.
When Myousou Yagoro joined her, she wasn’t able to compose herself.
“Melehe.”
She turned around at the sound of the door opening, her face crumpled up.
“You did the right thing by fighting Brewery. You were a perfectly beautiful witch.”
But that didn’t mean it would help her on the harsh exam.
Melehe had to understand that better than anyone.
He felt a gentle impact.
Maybe she didn’t want him to see her face, but she had leaped into his chest.
Her large hat had fallen to her feet.
Her shouts were distorted by her tears.
This was a girl who had lost everything.
“I’m the worst.”
Her trembling voice made it through the sobs as she buried her face in the tutor’s chest.
“It isn’t because I dropped a rank. I can always work harder and regain that rank!! B-but it scared me to find one of them had caught up to me… I’ve been calling them my friends, but deep down I was looking down on them! That’s why it shocked me so badly!! Ahhhhh!!”
Yagoro said nothing.
Maybe so. But that was what it meant to be an exam student. They might attend the same prep school and they might look like good friends, but they were all rivals. It would have been weird if she didn’t feel anything at all to see the grades around her rising. Of course she panicked when someone caught up to her.
Being yelled at wouldn’t change her lowered rank.
She knew that. And yet…
She couldn’t help it.
“You can turn it all around.”
Yagoro patted the sobbing girl’s head.
And he spoke to her.
She was not his student. He knew that, but he did it anyway.
“You’ve already said what it is you need to do, Melehe.”
Part 12[edit]
Back to square one.
Several figures raced through Temple School City as if tearing through the shadows of the night.
They were back to square one.
An explosion roared in the distance. From an aerial bombing. A hideout for wicked witches was directly blown away within the city. Several witches zoomed by overhead. Those were the Benandanti of Maleficium. They would immediately detect and pursue anyone who took flight now. But that was all they could do. As long as the figures in the city’s labyrinth of narrow alleys stayed there, they would remain unseen.
Chloe Sharprain, the test subject for their remote cheating plan, had failed. Brewery Establish, the Limit Breaker who had directly supported the girl from a distance, had also been defeated. The incident may have seemed resolved, but it was not.
This was a group crime in which several witches indirectly supported a single exam student.
And those witches had in fact been in Carraway Cs’s library.
Those several witches had slipped away while Brewery Establish was being dealt with.
They could find another student to act as their sacrificial pawn. And there were so many self-taught witches stewing in the city it wouldn’t be hard to find one willing to take the risk of providing direct support. So the wicked witches’ scheme was not ended. Not until they had cheated someone through the entrance exam and used their remote control magic to shred Maleficium from within.
Or so they thought.
“My, my.”
They heard something from the shadows.
Their shoes skidded along the ground as they came to a rapid stop. With the moon hidden behind the clouds, they couldn’t see this newcomer’s face.
“Neither the stars nor the moon are out. You really shouldn’t be out and about on a night as dark as tonight. Especially in a dangerous back alley far from the shine of the sunlight seals within the pumpkin streetlights.”
Whoever this was, she wasn’t with the Maleficium Benandanti. They wouldn’t act alone like this.
If this mystery enemy was alone, they only had to silence her by smashing her bones and shredding her blood vessels. The witches readied their Formula Brooms.
The lone figure kept her calm.
“This isn’t a fight you can win through brute force. Did you learn nothing from your failure?” she said with a smile. “Maenads.”
Silently, the shadowy figure grew more than 20 extra arms.
No, that wasn’t accurate.
Countless figures who had been waiting behind her spread out to the sides. They were all dark shadows with a solid form. The unidentified shadows had no eyes or mouths and only the claws on their fingers glowed a deep red. They raced through the dark night, using their bare hands to rip and tear through human and beast alike, paving a path of death and slaughter across the land. This witch’s magic gave that legend a concrete form.
The clouds cleared away.
The great moon swept away the shadows.
The gentle bookseller spoke with a smile on her face.
Only her eyes betrayed her identity as the commander of Private Striga, greatest coven in the north.
“I hear you had a run-in with my oh-so-adorable daughter.”
Today’s Quiz 1[edit]
Melehe: Sniff. Why are you teaching me instead of Viocia?
Yagoro: (That is honestly a really good question.)
Yagoro: Would you prefer I motivated you by coldly pushing you away? It’s what you deserve, you former genius. Welcome to the ranks of the ordinary. You can find all the hints in my lines. Not that they’ll be any help to you.
Melehe: Just you watch!! I will get back my A Rank!!
Question: Reveal the magical cheating method used by Wicked Witch Chloe (10 points per blank, 100 points total)
Today’s quiz is a bit different from usual. Because the way I defeated Brewery was so simple it wouldn’t really help with the exam.
The Aspect of Admiration was ATU (____), Midas and the Donkey Ears.
The Aspect of Amorality was (______________).
The Aspect of Antiquity was (_________________) from Norse mythology.
Hint: Where did Chloe receive the illicit information from? And what pathway did she use?
When the (_____) shouted about the donkey ears, his voice is guaranteed to travel through time and space until it eventually reaches the (____). That was the main foundation of the remote cheating.
Chloe had given up control of her (_________) to Brewery. They had to make sure it was in Chloe’s handwriting, but it was actually Brewery who was writing the answers on the answer sheet.
When the top god (_____) was in trouble, he descended to the underworld and asked for advice, but he was actually speaking with the spirit of a human (_________). That means it is possible for a human to provide information that surpasses even that of a (____).
☆Important note! While giving up control of her right hand, Chloe gained the nature of a king. When she accused Dorothea of cheating, people were weirdly willing to accept her baseless accusation because it is insolent to doubt the words of a (____).
That’s all. Any questions, Melehe?
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