Chapter 12: Teachers and Staff Recruitment test (2)

“Zero. Zero. This is also zero.”

In a private laboratory filled with stacks of old books.

Professor Kamala Bishop sat in the center, observing the qualities of her potential successors with a dissatisfied expression.

The papers piled on the desk were none other than the answer sheets submitted by the applicants for the professorship.

However, in most cases, she didn’t even glance at them before tossing them into the shredder.

The proctor who had come to submit the answer sheets frowned at how careless they were.

“Professor? Shouldn’t you at least read them and evaluate them? They all seem to have worked hard…”

“What’s the point of working hard if the content is useless? I can tell whether it’s worth reading just by looking at the beginning.”

Reprimanding him in an irritated voice, Professor Kamala slowly rubbed her throbbing temples.

Traces of her youthful beauty still remained, but the wrinkles around her eyes clearly showed the hardships of time she had faced.

She had served as a professor of black magic defense at the academy for that long.

And in Professor Bishop’s eyes, less than a tenth of the answer sheets had productive answers.

It was only natural that even that tenth was utterly disappointing.

With a deep sigh, Kamala leaned back in her chair.

“They’re all the same. Without even the slightest contemplation of black magic, they just spout nonsense they’ve memorized superficially. What do they take the subject of black magic defense for?”

“Well… isn’t black magic a subject that’s not worth studying?”

The staff member unconsciously clasped his hands behind his back and cautiously spoke.

“The social perception isn’t good, and there’s no particular merit in studying it for your career. You can get by with just a little common sense by reading a few ancient texts, and there’s a high risk of corruption in the research process, isn’t there?”

“That’s why students stop learning it after completing the required courses.”

He swallowed the words he was about to add at the end of his sentence at the professor’s suddenly sharp glare.

“Did you say danger?”

Her characteristically sharp, owl-like eyes.

Kamala frowned, her black pupils flashing.

She stared at the staff member for a moment and then asked in a calm tone.

“It’s been exactly four years since you graduated from the academy, right? Your major was mystical zoology, and your dormitory was in the Obsidian House that I was in charge of.”

“Ah, yes. That’s right.”

“Then you must have taken my class. It’s a compulsory subject for graduation.”

After being momentarily surprised by the professor’s extraordinary memory, she narrowed her eyes and asked in an interrogative tone.

“Tell me. What did I emphasize the most in the black magic defense class every semester?”

“Uh… that is…”

“Responsibility. The minimum responsibility that one must bear as a practitioner of magic.”

The staff member froze at the weight of the word ‘responsibility’.

The pressure of Professor Bishop, which he had forgotten for a while after leaving his student status.

The fear of Kamala Bishop, who was terrifying both as an educator and a dormitory supervisor, was revived.

“Of course, you’re partly right. Not all magicians need to study black magic. There are many cases where they live their entire lives without dealing with black magic.”

Kamala snorted, fiddling with the monocle on her left eye, decorated with malachite.

It was an accessory she received to commemorate her long service.

“But the position I’m in is completely different. And it should be.”

Then, she tapped the lacquered black nameplate with her other hand.

Dr./Professor Kamala Santrella Bishop, specializing in black magic research.

Kamala emphasized the word ‘professor’ and spoke coldly.

“A professor at the academy has the duty to educate and care for students. That doesn’t just mean making them memorize the curriculum. It means having the responsibility to impart the most accurate and systematic information for the safe future of the students. Regardless of theory or practice.”

Regardless of theory or practice.

At those words, the staff member felt a chill, recalling the nightmares of his student days.

Regardless of quantity or quality, Professor Bishop’s classes boasted a ferocity that was different from other lectures.

One line of learning objectives proudly written in the syllabus: To cultivate students’ own ability to counter black magic.

It was a class where the professor herself devoted herself wholeheartedly to achieve this goal.

Therefore, students’ evaluations of the lectures were always divided into two.

For students with a strong will to learn something, she was an excellent professor.

And for those whose goal was simply to get good grades, they were told to just accept that this semester was over.

“But for someone who wants such a meaningful position to say they don’t want to take risks and won’t impart proper knowledge to the students? To just show up for work without even knowing whether what’s in front of them is salt or sugar and just muddle through the class? If the professor herself is blind to black magic, what can she possibly teach the students?”

Flip. She unfolded one of the answer sheets she hadn’t shredded yet.

With a dumbfounded expression, Kamala snapped at the staff member, whose face was crumpled as if he was being scolded.

“Read it yourself. It’s filled with all sorts of rhetoric, but what’s the conclusion?”

“That… strong black magic can be countered with stronger white magic… is that it?”

“They must have written it as a bold answer. It could be a valid argument depending on the situation. But is this something that should come out of the mouth of someone who’s going to teach black magic defense?”

Kamala immediately put the answer sheet into the shredder.

Watching the answer sheet, armed with so-called ‘boldness’, being torn to shreds, the staff member suddenly recalled the reports he had submitted to Professor Bishop in the past.

His stomach churned at the thought that his student assignments might have met the same fate.

“If all the applicants are like this, I have nothing to do. Tell them all to go back. I’ll extend my tenure even if I don’t get paid.”

If it were other professors, he would have dismissed it as a bluff, but since it was Professor Bishop, it didn’t sound like a joke.

Wasn’t she a stubborn person who didn’t even hire a teaching assistant because she hated incompetence?

Since she had plenty of retirement savings, she would stubbornly maintain her position, considering it as volunteer work.

Still, there should be a generational change. It wouldn’t look good for the academy to have a single professor stuck in a particular subject.

“Huh?”

It was then.

A ray of light returned to the sullen professor’s face.

“This is…”

“Ah, that! You finally read it? It was an answer sheet I was also unsure about.”

“Unsure?”

At the professor’s question, the staff member nodded casually and joked.

“That answer sheet, it was written and brought in just 20 minutes after the test started. At first, I thought she was giving up and submitting a blank sheet. But she did write something.”

“…20 minutes?”

Professor Kamala stared at the answer sheet with a strange expression.

The question she had asked was difficult enough to trouble even her fellow professors.

Naturally, it would be difficult just to grasp the intention of the question.

Even if they managed to understand the intention, articulating the answer coherently was another matter.

“Was it a relatively old applicant? Like an old man with white hair?”

“No? It was a very young woman. She looked younger than me. Of course, her hair was white, but…”

A young mage?

She bit her lip slightly at the incomprehensible reality.

Magic is a field where achievement increases in proportion to the life invested. Therefore, physical age could never be ignored.

Unlike warriors who get weaker with age, magicians become wiser and stronger as they age.

Even if a warlock, specializing in black magic, came, they would have to be at least elderly to solve this problem within ’20 minutes’, not even an hour.

Actually, even three hours was a somewhat tight time limit, intentionally set as a filter.

But she wrote the answer she wanted, picking out only the core points, not in an hour, but in just 20 minutes?

Then it could only be one of two things.

Either she had cheated somehow.

Or she possessed an unimaginable genius that was beyond her common sense.

“The applicant who submitted this answer sheet.”

The name ‘Anastasia’ written on one side of the answer sheet.

Professor Kamala, who was looking at the name, raised her head.

Beep-!!

The sound of a crystal ball on the desk ringing.

It was a magic communication network used when there was something to convey to the entire faculty.

Moreover, the light of the discolored crystal ball was a reddish monochrome.

It was a system used only when there was an urgent matter to report.

Thanks to that, Kamala had to put aside the interesting answer sheet for a moment and focus on the crystal ball.

‘Is it about the escaped golem?’

A guess she made while skillfully manipulating the crystal ball.

Wasn’t the academy abuzz with the news of the combat golem that escaped from the Irminsul workshop a while ago?

A notice was even sent to each dormitory to be careful, as it might appear on campus.

She heard there was a lot of talk about forming a subjugation team, and it seemed like they were going to ramble on about it.

However, when she checked the image that appeared on the crystal ball, both she and the staff member next to her were speechless.

“The combat golem was destroyed in one blow? And by Shadow Slash, a basic black magic spell?”

Professor Bishop muttered in a daze.

What was transmitted through the crystal ball was the content of the recording device extracted by the workshop.

A video showing how and by whom the golem was destroyed.

A single mage.

Moreover, the scene of the golem being shattered by a surprisingly young woman was captured without omission.

“Huh? This person…”

Then, the staff member, who was staring at the video, raised his finger.

“She’s the applicant you just asked about.”

An hour had passed since the written test officially ended.

The results of the test were delivered through a list posted by the academy.

Only the names of those who passed were on the paper, and the applicants whose names weren’t listed had to go back, their failure confirmed.

And the fact that less than a tenth of the applicants for the professorship passed the first round was enough to shock people.

But there was something even more shocking.

“What is this? This… does this make sense?”

The man muttered, looking at the name ‘Anastasia’ written at the very top.

Although he himself had passed, he didn’t have the time to care about that.

The unknown kid he had looked down on as young and reckless.

The young warlock who had written her answers and left in just 20 minutes had proudly passed.

Moreover, she had achieved the highest score, surpassing all other competitors.

‘This can’t be… there’s no way this can be.’

“Huh.”

A youthful voice came from beside him.

The mage in question, with a grape-flavored lollipop in her mouth, muttered nonchalantly.

“Why are there so few successful candidates? I thought at least 90% would pass.”

It didn’t sound like she was saying it for others to hear, but it made him even more annoyed.

This was a test to select the successor to Professor Kamala Bishop.

It was no easy task to catch the eye of that picky old woman.

And yet, she dared to utter such nonsense after taking such a test?

‘Don’t be so smug!’

The man, unaware of the woman’s true intentions, burned with hostility.

And that hostility soon turned into an inferiority complex, leading to various assumptions.

‘No doubt! Cheating! She must have cheated!’

She must have bribed the proctor or colluded with an insider.

She leaked the test questions and studied them in advance.

Of course, considering Professor Bishop’s thorough security measures, this was nothing more than a hasty assumption.

But the man was no longer in a rational state to think that far.

‘But it doesn’t matter!’

Clenching his fists, the man gritted his teeth.

She may have cheated on the written test, but there’s no way she could do the same for the practical test.

She can’t cheat on a test where she has to show her actual skills.

The faculty and other applicants would be watching everything openly.

‘Just you wait, kid. No, you arrogant fool who doesn’t know your place. I’ll make you pay.’

With a firm resolution, the man quietly prepared himself.
Then, following the staff’s guidance, he headed to the grand auditorium where the practical test was scheduled.

But when he reached the entrance of the auditorium, his preparation turned into a mere futile gesture.

“Final successful candidate. Warlock Anastasia.”

The faculty members who had gathered in advance at the entrance of the auditorium.

One of them stepped forward as a representative and said pompously.

“The rest of you may leave. Thank you for your efforts in coming all the way to the academy.”