A brave man may not live, but he cannot die

Chapter 24: My Youth Interview Story Was Sure Enough (Part )
The magnificent light of stardust poured through the floor-to-ceiling windows onto the grounds of Grindelwald.

Jacob walked ahead with his hands behind his back, giving everyone a brief introduction: "The college has a seven-month semester, starting in mid-April and ending in late December. During this period, there are two long holidays for visiting relatives, and two days off per week."

Quinn trailed at the end of the line, looking around like a redneck.

This college is just too...
Too academic.

In sharp contrast to the magical castle hanging high in the sky, the decoration inside the college is not magical at all, which is in line with Quinn's stereotype of the old school.

All the bookcases, floors, wall panels, tables and chairs in the room are made of wood. These wooden decorations have remained immortal after countless years, and every grain exudes a sense of history.

The main body of the building is made of stone, with tall arch beams and beautiful Roman columns everywhere, but strangely, Quinn did not find any seams on the wall, as if the castle was carved out of a whole piece of stone.

There are also many framed paintings hanging on the wall, ranging from landscapes to portraits, and these paintings can even move!

If the person in the painting is reading, they will turn the pages from time to time; if the forest in the painting is rainy, you can hear the sound of rain hitting the branches when you get close; if the painting is an animal, if you look at it, it will look back at you in a friendly manner.
Besides that, Quinn always felt like someone was watching him.

But if he looked back, behind him were either quiet green plants or lifeless gargoyle sculptures, with no one there at all.

"I think everyone is very curious about the academy and wants to look around. Haha, I was also like that on my first day at the academy."

Jacob was a teacher with a kindly disposition, gentle to both students and others. "If one of you becomes my colleague in the future, I'll introduce you to the school. But today, you're all here for interviews, so..."

He stopped and spoke in a more serious tone, "Don't wander around or do anything rash. While there aren't any fatal dangers in the academy, that's just 'not fatal'. I can't guarantee anything else."

Everyone nodded.

A building or space transformed by an arcanist is called a "workshop".

Every mature arcanist will build his own workshop, in which he will have his savings, research, creations, familiars, mana,
It can almost be said that each workshop is priceless and is the crystallization of the arcanist's thinking and talent.

But the value of the workshop is countered by its extreme danger. No one knows what crazy mysteries the arcanist has crammed into his workshop, and no one would dare to challenge its owner in the workshop.

One of the two largest workshops recognized by the arcane world is Grindelwald.

It’s not that people are not curious, but they know that curiosity kills the cat.

The Second Demon War a thousand years ago ended in Grindelwald. It was the only decisive battle whose records were missing. People only knew that the Demon King fell in Grindelwald and was killed by the brave.

The arcane world is divided on this, and countless urban legends have evolved, including one that Grindelwald is connected to the Abyss, one that Grindelwald is actually a war fortress, and one that Grindelwald is hiding the remains of the Demon King.
A thousand years have passed since then. After being transformed by generations of geniuses and lunatics, Grindelwald has become a truly forbidden workshop in the arcane world. Anyone who is curious and wants to break in to take a look will become part of an urban legend, and there will be no further news.

Everyone came to a staircase room with many doors connected to it.

Four staircases extend upward, extending into different branching steps.

Some of them are spacious, some are narrow, some are upside down, and some are flipped left to right. Looking up, it seems as if countless staircase branches have been compressed into irregular geometric shapes. They are constantly moving, connecting with each other and then separating and merging. The sense of space is completely disrupted, and at the end of the stairs are tightly closed doors, and it is unknown where they lead to.

Except for Quinn, who had been taught various academy common sense by Ankuya in advance, the interviewees all looked shocked.

"Please follow me closely. Don't take the wrong path, and don't open any doors."

Jacob went up the stairs first, and everyone followed closely behind him.

"Is this... space magic?" Murata Tatsuya couldn't help but ask.

Jacob smiled and said, "Be careful with your steps and walk with confidence."

He was the first to cross the corner of the stairs, and in a flash, Jacob and everyone else were upside down.

The gravity in this space seemed to be divided into different directions by the stairs. Quinn followed at the end and tried to step on it. Immediately, the stairs he had just walked on turned into an upside-down wall behind him. The process was very smooth and he didn't feel the change in gravity at all.

After two such changes, my sense of direction was completely lost.

After turning two corners, Jacob opened the door and everyone followed him into a normal corridor.

On the left side of the corridor is a window, through which you can see the scenery of Mirror Lake and the lush forest below.

Everyone realized that they had not walked far, but had already arrived at the back of Grindelwald Academy Castle.

".Space jump?" someone muttered.

There was a classroom with an open door on the right side of the corridor. Jacob stood in front of the classroom:

"Next is the written test. Since you are interviewing for teaching assistant positions, the questions are not difficult and consist of common sense arcane theories. You have thirty minutes to answer. After you finish, please return to the corridor and wait. I will announce the results based on your scores. Those who advance will enter the final interview. There is only one thing to note—"

"You can only use the pens provided by the academy." Jacob smiled slightly, "Hehe, I wish you all good luck."

After saying that, he knocked on the door.

There were more than a dozen stacks of test papers on the podium in the classroom. After "hearing" the knock on the door, the test papers flew up one after another and began to be distributed automatically.

"You can sit at any table you choose. The test papers are all the same."

Quinn chose the table on the far right.

In addition to the test paper, there was also a pencil, an eraser and a piece of draft paper on the desk.

The first thing everyone did after sitting down was to look through the test papers. After a while, the interviewees all showed confident smiles.

There are sixty questions in total, all of which are multiple-choice questions. If you allocate time accordingly, you have to complete two questions in one minute on average, which is a bit tight.

But these questions are indeed simple. They are arcane theories that are so basic that any graduate from any arcane college would be able to answer 70 to 80 percent of them correctly, not to mention those who came to the college for interviews with letters of introduction.

Only Quinn kept his eyes fixed on the ordinary-looking pencil.

The pencil had been sharpened in advance. I don’t know what material it was made of, but the pen body was pitch black, like a thin piece of graphite.

"The ones I circled are all questions that might appear in the written test."

The exercise book that Ankua threw to Quinn was a centimeter thick, like a brick.

"Those guys in the academy are so lazy. They don't even bother to write the written exams for the teaching assistants. For years, they've just used the same questions from the student exams. Anyway, the focus of the written exams isn't on the questions."

Quinn looked at the book and felt overwhelmed.

"What's the point?"

Ankuya smiled sinisterly.

“To work at Grindelwald, faculty and staff must possess a strong willpower and not be susceptible to mental illness during their research and teaching.”

Quinn felt a chill. Is it common for people like you, Grindelwald, to suffer from mental illness?

"So, the interviewee's willpower needs to be tested. In other words, the written test tests one of the three fundamental qualities of an arcanist—"

Ankuya hooked his finger at the thick exercise book.

He didn't hold a wand, nor did he recite any spells, but the exercise book seemed to be surrounded by some invisible and intangible force, vibrating and floating up!
"Mental strength."

The exam begins.

The sound of pencils swishing continued to ring out, but Quinn did not rush to write. Instead, he browsed through the test questions, answered them one by one in his mind, and wrote down the answers.

At the same time, he glanced slightly to the right, observing the interviewees who were writing the questions fluently.

Jacob was sitting at the podium and he noticed Quinn's strange behavior.

He noticed Quinn's sneak glances, but he said nothing. Instead, he looked away and dozed off.

There is no "cheating prohibited" item in the exam rules.

Because just knowing the correct answer is not enough, you have to be able to write it down.

It was exactly three o'clock in the afternoon, seven minutes after the exam started.

Compared to the relaxed atmosphere at the beginning where everyone was writing furiously, the friction sound between the pen tip and the test paper had obviously slowed down at this time. It took a long time before anyone had a difficult time answering a question, as if every multiple-choice question made people afraid to put pen to paper.

Except for Quinn, who had not yet started writing, everyone looked very pale. They were breathing heavily and sweating uncontrollably, as if they were not writing a test but doing some heavy physical labor.

3:07, fourteen minutes after the exam started.

The atmosphere became increasingly oppressive.

Bang! !
The sound of the chair falling sideways echoed throughout the classroom. The interviewee who came out of the sewer was the first to give up. He fell to the ground with his chair and then fainted.

He seemed to have fallen asleep out of exhaustion, snoring and sleeping soundly on the ground.

Everyone was attracted by the sound, but they just glanced at him and put their attention back on the test paper, unwilling to waste any energy other than answering the questions.

Jacob, the invigilator, seemed to have anticipated this situation. He calmly picked up his wand and waved it toward the door, and the unconscious guy was carried out through the air.

The test paper he had only written on a dozen questions was also brought to the stage. A feather pen stood up and automatically began to correct the test paper.

"Everyone, please note that if you pass out, your paper will be deemed as surrendered."

Jacob smiled and said, "Don't be so stubborn. It's better to allocate your rest time reasonably."

After hearing what Jacob said, everyone except one interviewee who kept writing closed their eyes and began to meditate, seizing the time to recover their energy.

Quinn saw everything that happened.

The guy who fell into coma chose the route with the lowest score in the path-finding test. His strength should be the lowest among this group of interviewees, so it is normal that he fell into coma first.

How long can I last? Three minutes? One minute?

You have to know that even the worst interviewee is still one of the best young arcanists in the world. As an ordinary person, I can't compare with them in terms of the quality and recovery speed of my mental power.

"You will be asked to use the pens provided by the school during the exam."

Ankuya handed the pen to Quinn and said:
"That pen, like the pistol 'Mista' I gave you, is a supernatural item. The pen's characteristic is that it can draw mental power for writing. If your mental power is strong, you only need a little to write a lot of words, but if your mental power is weak, then it will disappear after just a few words..."

He flicked the pen lightly, sending it flying onto the table.

"Bang, he fell into a coma due to mental exhaustion."

"Is it just a fainting?" Quinn breathed a sigh of relief. "I thought it was as fatal as a pistol." The pistol that Ankua gave him, Mista, had the same side effects.

The gun had to be fed at regular intervals, six eyeballs at a time - both animal and human.

If the gun is forgotten to be fed, the bullet will deviate and head towards the gunman's eyes when the gun is fired until the gun is "full" again.

And if Mista is not fed for too long, he will "starve to death" and turn into a useless piece of rusty iron.

"That pen is just an arcane creation endowed with a little spirituality. It's not as mysterious as Mista, so it's naturally not that dangerous."

Ankuya picked up the pen and put it back into Quinn's hand. "But it's precisely because of its spirituality that we can use the same methods we use against animals to deal with it."

"Send the pen to Pan Hong Park?" Quinn thought that this was a bit of a protection.

"No, you can intimidate it—just make sure the pen doesn't dare absorb your mental energy."

Ankua took Quinn's hand and began to slowly draw a symbol, saying as he did so, "Don't use your eyes to remember this outline, but use your body's intuition to remember it."

Quinn's eyes moved slightly. He had seen similar symbols twice before, but they were more complicated and larger than the one Ankua taught him to draw.

"Is this the demon clan's teleportation array?"

"Do not."

Ankuya snapped his fingers, and the curtains of the house closed instantly, blocking the sunlight out.

He made the final stroke.

"This is the primordial rune of the demon race, Quinn."

Jacob stood up and walked out with a bottle of potion.

Although the coma caused by mental exhaustion does not cause much harm to the body, it often lasts for two or three days. The results have to be announced later, so it is naturally impossible for him to sleep until he wakes up naturally.

And what Quinn has been waiting for is this moment when Jacob can't pay attention to him.

He quickly picked up the pencil with his left hand, spread out his right palm, and drew a triangle on the palm of his hand.

The moment the pencil leaves a line on the palm of my hand, the stinging touch is pierced into my brain, and the feeling of fatigue quickly surges up, making me sleepy, absent-minded, and distracted.
Even though he was just writing, his mental strength was constantly draining away.

Quinn understood why they had such a hard time doing the questions. Even the simplest and most basic questions would become difficult in this state of lack of mental strength.

Recollection, analysis, and thinking all become dull, and with every stroke of the pen, this dullness increases exponentially.

While writing the questions, you also have to consider the accuracy. Every revision will increase the burden of the next one. The more tired you are, the less you can concentrate, and solving the questions will take more energy than usual.
The written test does not test basic knowledge at all, but how many questions the interviewee can write under such circumstances!

Quinn moved quickly, knowing Jacob would be back soon. Luckily, the rune wasn't difficult to draw. Once the triangles were complete, all he had to do was draw an interlaced circle on each border.
"Although the pen absorbs spiritual energy, the words written therein also possess spirituality, satisfying the three elements of the ritual: spirituality, direction, and price. The runes you drew with that pen can have a mystical effect, but they are far from enough to connect with the demons, as the amount is too small to be noticed. Fortunately, it is enough to scare the pen."

Quinn breathed hard, his eyes unblinking.

Three intersecting circles, framed by a triangle, create a sense of order, mystery, and convergence.
When Jacob returned to the classroom, he saw Quinn's hand raised.

"what happened?"

"Mr. Jacob, my pen is broken. Can you get a replacement?"

Quinn hid his left hand under the table, leaned forward naturally, and handed the pencil to Jacob with his right hand.

"broken?"

Jacob looked at the eye pencil and found that the lead was indeed broken, with black debris on the ground. He shook his head helplessly and said, "Whose handicraft homework did this brat? He should be deducted ten credits."

He casually threw the broken pencil into the trash can. This kind of pen cannot be used again once it is broken, so he picked up a new pen and handed it to Quinn. But at this moment, there was a clang sound next to him, and another interviewee fainted.

He had to put down his pen and pick up his wand, and start moving and correcting again.

Quinn breathed a sigh of relief.

The time card is just right.

I felt dizzy and worried that if I drew half a line more, I would faint.

My concentration and thinking abilities have declined to an unprecedented level, but the untouched test paper is right in front of me.

It's really ridiculous. I still have to do questions in another world.
But it’s not difficult.

Quinn held the pencil with his right hand, which was marked with runes.

Pencil Boy stood at attention.

He could feel the pen in his hand trembling slightly, as weak and helpless as a chick caught by an eagle. He just applied a little force to allow the Primordial Rune to have more contact with the pen body, and the trembling disappeared, as if it was completely frightened.

Quinn began to answer the questions.

It feels like holding an ordinary pencil in your hand, and writing with it is effortless and there is no discomfort at all.

He filled in each option fluently according to the answers he had spent ten minutes memorizing.

"Once you've solved the pen problem, all that's left is answering the questions."

Ankuya finished the bottle of red wine and opened the curtains. The sky outside the window had become dark.

"Although they are all simple arcane basics questions, and the answers are written in the question book, there are a full five thousand questions. The exam paper is random, and there is no way to figure out the answers in advance, so you will have to rely on memorizing the questions."

"But there are only three days left until the recruitment deadline."

Quinn sat on the sofa and flipped through the book. An entire afternoon was only enough for him to glance through the brick-thick exercise book twice.

"Arcanists who have practiced meditation since childhood have approximately four to five times the mental strength of an average person, and the same applies to their memory. If we were to ask the geniuses in the academy to memorize these questions, they might be able to finish them in three days." Ankua looked at Quinn hesitantly. "If you can memorize just a quarter of them, you should be able to get the score for the promotion interview. After all, not many people can finish half the exam."

Quinn closed the test book and pinched his brows tiredly.

“How should I conduct an interview?”

"Interview?" Ankua shook his head. "You should memorize the questions first. Why bother asking for an interview if you can't memorize them?"

"I memorized it," Quinn said calmly.

".What did you memorize?"

"The section you circled has 5,120 questions."

"."

Ankuaton was silent for a moment, then asked, "If we use a constant amount of fire mana to illuminate the surface of mercury, and neutral mana overflows over time, what happens if we increase the output intensity of the fire mana?"

"The total mana of the mercury remains unchanged, but the overflowing neutral mana increases."

Ankua's eyes narrowed slightly.

In his stunned mood, he remembered His Majesty's oracle -

[This hero's talent is mediocre. Perhaps the summoning ritual left to me by the late king has some unknown flaws.]

【But I still believe that he can kill the hero. 】

[After all, when selecting the target for the summoning ritual, I only made one request—]

【powerful.】

The exam ended at 3:23.

In the end, besides Quinn, there were only two people who were able to walk up and hand in their papers while still conscious.

The best performer wrote 49 questions and was almost finished.

Jacob gathered the papers together and set them aside for his quill to mark.

"You can take a break. It will take a while to calculate the score. Oh, by the way, you——"

He looked at Quinn and said, "You don't have to wait. Walk straight down the corridor and turn left at the end to find the office. Go in for the interview."

Quinn nodded silently, then put down his stationery and walked out the door.

His palms were clean, and the eraser on the table had only a small corner used.

One candidate waited until Quinn was far away before asking dissatisfiedly:
"Why doesn't he have to wait? Is he related?"

Jacob laughed.

"You can see the pen he used."

Everyone looked over and saw that the pencil on Quinn's desk was different from all the other pens. The black body of the pencil had a slight white tint, as if the color had been diluted.

"When spiritual power reaches a certain level, this kind of pen is no longer effective. After all, a wooden draft can't dig into a city wall, so the words you write will consume the spiritual power of the pen itself. You see."

Jacob picked up Quinn's freshly corrected test paper. It was clean, with no annotations made by the quill.

"Full marks."

The end of the corridor.

Quinn adjusted his collar and then knocked softly on the door.

There are two lines of small characters engraved on the doorplate:

【Divination teacher】

【Amemiya Nene de Cavendish】

"Please come in."

(End of this chapter)