Taking the Midterms in Advance

Xander, as usual, headed to the university, where he went to the department in charge of the advanced program track. He presented his identification card, his documents, as well as the letter that allowed him to skip class for 7 days, both in digital and physical format, signed and stamped by the Dean.

Afterward, he was heading to the testing venue when he received an encrypted file from Faykes. Xander was curious and opened it, and saw that the file contained the information of families present in the Eta country, roughly the same information the government had in their database.

Xander was surprised that Faykes actually did it. He was just giving him a mission for fun, and well, to test his usefulness. Now he remembered that he did promise him a surprise reward.

What should he give him... Hmm, a rare metal that only exists in isolated areas of the wide universe? Maybe a fruit that can aid his cultivation? Oh, wait, I already ate the fruits and sold them... Well, technically he can replicate them perfectly now. Yeah, that should do it. The fruits it is then.

He decided to give him 4 fruits, 1 fruit for every primary element he had. Wood, Fire, Water, Air elements. Oh, I'll give him the fruits from the air-type plants tomorrow then, as well as the ones from the aquatic plants, Xander thought to himself before reaching the testing room.

It was quite comfortable; it was a well-designed, spacious conference room. There were 3 people in the room, one of them was Ms. Amelia. Besides Ms. Amelia was a man who looked like he was in his 30s. The last person was an elderly woman was had a genial smile plastered on her face.

Ms. Amelia looked at Xander gently, gesturing to him to take a seat. Xander did, and Ms. Amelia spoke up.

"Good morning, Xander. I'm sure you know why you are here: You are to take the midterm test for the semester. Beside me is a fellow colleague of mine, Mr. Brian Feyzacs. The other lady present is the current vice dean of the university, Mrs. Vera Carliste. She will be supervising the exam today."

"Good morning, Mr. Feyzacs, Mrs. Carliste," Xander spoke politely, briefly lingering his look at Brian before turning his gaze to Mrs. Carliste in greeting. Brian didn't notice anything out of the ordinary. After greeting them, Xander looked at Ms. Amelia, his look indicating the test.

Ms. Amelia said gently in reply to Xander's silent statement.

"Alright, Mr. Xander Cloverfield, as you have requested before a leave of absence for 1 week without any reasonable excuse, the school decided to grant this on the condition that you would be taking the midterm exam for both Basic Magic Control and Elemental Control classes in advance.

This midterm exam consists of two parts: 1 theoretical, 1 practical test. The examination would be done through the VR machine that we have in the building. If you pass the exam, no deduction of SCPs would be made, and you may have the option of not participating in the lessons discussed in the classes for the next 2 months. If you fail the exam, however, not only will your SCPs be decreased by how far the raw score was from the passing grade, you will not be allowed to request an inexcusable leave of absence for the next 2 years. Do you understand?" Amelia asked, looking at Xander, who nodded in response.

"Very well, the first part of the test will now begin. You have 1 hour to answer the 200-point exam." She handed Xander the open code which was to be inputted into the desk terminal, allowing Xander to use the computer to answer the exam items. He then placed the Neuron node on the left temple, allowing him to answer the questions as fast as possible.

As the system booted up, Ms. Amelia then gave the test code to be inputted in the test program of the university, immediately presenting Xander the words "MIDTERM EXAM, TYPE 2. TWO HUNDRED POINT EXAM."

"Your timer starts once you flip the screen. You may begin." The moment she said that, Xander flicked his hand over the screen hologram, and immediately Xander began to answer the questions.

This time, his speed of answering the questions was faster than he did during the entrance exam, reaching the speed of 8 items per minute. He continued blazing through the exam as if nothing posed a difficult problem.

"Show the calculation for Daeri's Reversal algorithm..."

"Identify the problematic part of Barneby's theory on elemental..."

"If X is 10.54, and C is in terminal velocity, what is the size of the planet in..."

"Which statement best describes the entropic movement..."

"Class of magic circle that produces this..."

"Type of element that can..."

"If I have 500 apples, how much life, wood, and earth elements were used to..."

"Given that 56^3~% is around the current rate of C < 3.54/pi, what is the production value of..."

...

It was the essays that Xander had a long time discussing. His speed slowed down to 6 items per minute at this point, answering the essay questions that comprised half of the theoretical exam.

"What do you propose as an alternative to Verdabilt's Consumption theory of..."

"Cultivation skills are graded by their quality. What can explain the rapid increase in the percentage benefit they give..."

"Is the universe continuously expanding? Can it be likened to a magic circle?"

"Fundamentally speaking, why is the ordered system structured such a way, producing elements?"

.....

After finishing these questions, there were more weird questions in the last part of the essay section, since the questions being asked were topics never discussed in the semester at all, and were not even in the coverage of the subjects' syllabi for the first year. In fact, some of these questions were at the level of post-graduates and PhD dissertations. With these factors at hand, Xander feels that someone was targeting him with these questions, wanting to understand him and his own understanding.

"Concerning relative random displacement that elemental particles undergo in the span of 1 second, how are its minute changes relevant to the field of physics?"

"Spatial movement of matter: Is it continuous, or merely a perception?"

"Seen above is the image of the E-33 Omega space shuttle. What modifications can be considered to improve space travel and decrease spatial resistance?"

"Can electromagnetic pulsation idealize the function of space jumps, traveling to a certain distance without actually traversing the entire path? Why or why not?"

"If space element exists, can multi-dimensional travel be done by humans? Why or why not?"

...

When he reached this point, he was using his [Divine Eyes] to observe everyone in the room, to check if someone was acting weirdly, fidgety or excited, matching or conflicting their current profile data. After all, nothing can be hidden from his sight. In fact, at this process of answering the questions, he had already begun setting up traps towards whoever did this.

He purposely slowed down in some of the items, acting like he was in deep thought, before writing down his essays that were 15 sentences long. He even added some drawings and diagrams to show his answer. These were the items that were obviously hinting at space element, and even traveling through space, jeez.

He continued to answer the questions, acting like he was in deep thought and then scribbling his answers away. The moment he finished the test, there were still 15 minutes to go until the time limit. However, he didn't want to waste his time since he already had the necessary information about who was targeting him. It was the male teacher, Mr. Feyzacs, and the elderly woman, Mrs. Carliste.

He immediately clicked "submit" at the end of the test, allowing him to submit his test results. The good news of this test so far is that he has hacked through the servers of the university. It seems this terminal was connected to the main database of the university, which allowed the System to get the information it needed, categorized them, and put them on the smartwatch. With the information the university has, he didn't really need to go to school anymore since he already had clear cut steps on how to achieve Legendary class by the creation of one's vessel.

"I'm done, professors," Xander said politely to the people in front of him, acting like he never discovered their intentions in the first place. Oh well, he planned to interrogate this Mr. Feyzacs one of these days. After all, a measly Mythic-2 trying to entrap him, as well as a Mythic-8 magician? Pathetic. How should he deal with the vice dean though, it should be clean and untraceable. No, most likely Mr. Feyzacs has no idea of this situation, just a scapegoat if things go south. Someone might be behind him, another 3rd party. It can wait. As he was thinking of this, Amelia nodded and said to Xander,

"Xander, please follow us to the VR testing room." Amelia and Mrs. Carliste stood up and headed to the door on the right. The VR testing room was placed adjacent to the meeting room. Mr. Feyzacs, on the other hand, decided to stay in the meeting room to ensure no one will attempt to modify Xander's submitted test results. Mrs. Carliste even praised him for his hard work. According to the three of them when Xander questioned it, it is the protocol to do so.

Xander internally rolled his eyes at the acting of the two. Although Amelia seemed to have an inkling of the situation, she wasn't really involved this time. The other two... geez, was this a slapstick comedy that you gotta follow what the other is saying?

Anyhow, if they attempted to access Xander's paper, they would be in for a surprise, hehe. They would need to utilize the strongest quantum supercomputer the planet has to even begin cracking the encryption code the System implemented which Xander modified a teeny, tiny bit. After all, if he didn't modify it, it could only be cracked by a fellow digital lifeform. The paper itself will be graded by the main server, but the people managing the server are not privy to the specific answers, especially in the essay part. If they really wanted to view his paper, they would need to decrypt the encryption code~

Even with the strongest quantum computer, it would take 30 years to do so if it completely utilized all its computing power there, turning off all VR programs available in the world. The university doesn't have that much power on a global scale; although it can call on favors from their graduates who may hold government positions, they are after all, only in the top 20 universities worldwide. If compared to AIA University, which is in the top 2, or Carver-Dahms University, which is the top 1 university globally, both located in Nema, the achievement and prestige of Grand Hyatt University would not be able to hold a candle to these universities with a history of more than 4000 years.