An ordinary-looking blonde boy with freckles stepped forward in her place. “I am Jeremy, and behind me is Kit and we both go to the much more local Starfire College,” he said gesturing to the large bearded man behind him. “I am a third year, while Kit is a first year”
‘That bearded middle-aged-looking guy is a first year!’ Everyone looked shocked.
Seemingly used to the looks, Kit cut in, “Yes, despite how I look, I am only one year older than you.”
Jeremy took over again. “Although we both go to the same college, Starfire’s exam differs each year, and even between the same group of incoming students, therefore you would benefit from both of our experiences.
“The Southern region is the most populace next to the central region containing the capital, therefore, the students of our college have a higher mandatory number of missions they must complete each year in the service of the southern region.
In preparation for this, the prospective students each year are randomly grouped together and assigned to complete one of the tier-1 tasks that first-year college students would usually be required to complete.
“During the course of the mission, we were followed and those performing to a suitable standard in the teams that successfully cleared their mission would be given an offer to enroll.
Therefore, if your team successfully clears a mission, you may receive an offer depending on your performance, while if your team fails, regardless of how stellar your individual performance is, you WILL NOT receive an offer. No exceptions. Therefore, cross your fingers and pray you do not get grouped with a bunch of useless individuals.
Because if the mission fails because of only one of you, then you all fail.”
“Additionally, due to Starfire’s unique recruitment method, the size of the incoming class tends to vary greatly from year to year. My year had the most failed missions in recent history, with only 46 students of the 50 that were part of successful missions admitted. Yes, out of thousands of applicants, grouped into teams of 5, only 10 teams successfully completed their missions.
However, a year with a much higher success rate may see as many as 200 students being admitted.
“Also note that the evaluators are there to assess your performance, not to protect you. Therefore, as you are going into an unregulated environment to complete REAL missions there is a very REAL possibility of death. 20 students passed in the year I was admitted alone.”
Gulp
This time it was all of the high school students that audibly gulped in shock and fear. Although 20 students out of thousands of applicants is not a lot, most of them have never faced the threat of death in their lives.
“Now I will go into further detail about my admissions exam, which may shed some light on why our year had such an abnormal pass rate and death toll. Think back to three years ago when there was a terrorist attack on the Morningstar Palace, the political center of our Southern Region.
As you could probably guess, most missions, regardless of the tier, were related to either identifying, scouting, arresting, or assassinating members of the said terrorist group.”
“As we were given tier-1 missions, the risk of death in each mission was extremely low, however, most of us were given missions in which we would have to interact to some extent with these criminals. The college had received information that prior to the terrorist attack, one of the suspects had been spotted at a home in Redstar City, about a 16-hour drive southeast from here.
Our goal was to obtain information on why he was there, and if there were any of his accomplices still there. As the details of our mission our strictly confidential, I cannot go into too much detail, but as evidenced by the fact that I was admitted you can see that we succeeded in our mission.”
‘Interesting, the contents of their exam differ greatly from Supernova College,’ thought Kain.
“Any questions?” Jeremy prompted after we all sat in contemplative silence for a while.
“I do,” said the principal, likely to prevent the silence from stretching on longer. “Do you have any general words of advice for our students? Advice that will benefit them regardless of what their mission is.”
Jeremy tilted his head in contemplation before opening his mouth, “Be prepared for anything. Also…” his breath caught as though he was trying to restrain his emotions, “put away any qualms you have about killing other humans. When it comes to enemies of the empire, if you don’t kill them, they will kill you.”