Two weeks later
The workload for both majors quickly started to get a lot more intense. Thankfully, Kain was able to just barely complete the rotation of sense enhancement, and the assessment was today.
With a feeling of nervousness, he headed to the exam room, not even bothering to have breakfast in case the lingering tastes and smells from the food impeded his performance.
He honestly hadn’t felt so uncertain about the outcome of a test in his life. Yes, he had succeeded at enhancing all five senses, but he still didn’t have a 100% success rate, and he wasn’t sure how nerves may impact his performance.
Kain ran into Bridge outside of the exam building. Due to the nature of many exams for various departments, isolation between test-takers is necessary. Therefore, the majority of exams were held in a building with small individual rooms for each student.
“How do you feel?” Kain asked.
“Not sure… most of them are okay, but smell is only 50/50. I wish we had more than 2 weeks to prepare.”
Kain nodded. Many students have had the chance to practice this for months already with their families. However, I guess he should be grateful that they are even giving them an opportunity to catch up and not just dive straight into the more complicated lessons.
After entering his assigned room, Kain sat at the sole desk in the room.
Moments later a volunteer senior student came in to the room placed a test paper and a box on the desk, and then hung a poster and placed an open jar of liquid on the wall opposite him.
“Proctors for this test will be coming to each room and placing your exam materials. Please note that at no time during this test, except explicitly stated otherwise, are you allowed to leave your seat. Nor are you allowed to utilise your spiritual power prior to the exam’s official start time.
All rooms are heavily monitored and the inability to abide by these guidelines will result in immediate failure. The assessment will begin in exactly 5 minutes, and the duration is 1 hour.” Professor Nightingale’s voice rang out from the speakers of each room.
Exactly 5 minutes later a notification to start the assessment began while a quiet humming appeared in the background.
Kain decided to start with what was easiest for him—sight. He looked at the test paper for directions.
“Please write down all of the words that appear on the opposite poster below.”
Originally, the poster just looked blank, but upon enhancing his sight, he could see extremely tiny text in a font so small that it was hard to read even after the enhancement, and to make it even more difficult the text colour was only slightly off-white. Even after enhancing his sight, reading it all was a headache.
However, Kain took his time writing down the short passage on the wall word for word. It appeared to be an excerpt from some historical text retelling the events of when Dark Moon College was first officially established.
Sigh
Kain’s head had already begun to pound and he’d only done one sense.
He decided to focus on smell next. According to the test paper, the jar opposite should be giving off a distinct odour that he must describe.
However, even after enhancing his sense of smell…nothing.
Therefore, he was forced to enhance the sense of smell even more until he felt as though he’d sneeze, but he finally smelled something. And it was horrible! How was she able to even suppress such a smell to where he had to work so hard to smell it?!
The jar had a terrible stench of rotting fish and mildew. The smell was a nauseating blend of decay and sourness, like a forgotten dumpster left to fester in the summer heat.
Looking at the test paper it appears as though he was required to write down the large number on the side of the jar, visible even without enhanced senses, and then circle a description for the smell from sweet, flowery, spicy, stinky, and musky.
‘Did we all not get the same scent?! Don’t tell me others are getting to smell rosses while my nose is being clawed at by this foul odour!’
After circling his answer, he continued the directions on the test paper and lifted the box on his table to reveal a smooth white tile, and what looked to be a cracker.
He smelled the cracker, but even with that sense enhanced got no clues. He then moved his spiritual power to his tongue and took only a tiny piece of the cracker off in case it tasted horrible.
Surprisingly, it tasted as though he bit directly into a lemon. The tartness hit the palate with electrifying intensity, causing him to pucker his lips.
Similarly, he got 5 options to choose from and a space to record the number on the box. He circled ‘sour and citrusy.’ Looking at some of the less pleasant options available he felt a little better about the previous attack on his nose.
He was now more than halfway done and had 30 minutes left—the sight test took longer than expected.
Unfortunately, the other 2 tests did not appear as though they’d be any quicker. According to the test paper, the seemingly smooth surface should have an image on it.
On the test paper was an empty box to draw the shape. Thankfully, although it did take a while to feel all of the details, it didn’t require the artistic talent of Picasso to draw the shape. It was simply a hexagon with 6 triangles projected from each side. At the tip of each triangular projection was a small circle. Now that Kain looked at it, it resembled a sheriff’s star badge.
Now he had 18 minutes left according to the timer on the wall.
According to the test paper the faint humming sound that began at the start of the test should actually be a voice repeating the same phrase over and over.
“…stars…sweet…you…” Focusing on his hearing, Kain could only faintly make out some of the words. However, he could now tell that it appeared to be a nursery rhyme only about a minute long. Therefore he focused even harder at the cost of a splitting headache and was able to gradually make out the words:
“Beasts and stars will sing you through,
Nighttime’s magic all for you,
Close your eyes and dream so sweet,
Magic dreams are yours to meet…”
After listening to it at least 12 times he was able to get the verses along with the chorus. It also had a slight trick at the end where the lyrics in the last chorus changed a bit. If a student decided to just lazily right down the previous chorus lyrics they heard before at the end, they would lose valuable points.
He had 3 minutes left, but was unable to leave unless authorized, therefor he spent the remaining time just going over his answers.
“Time’s up! Please drop your writing utensils and immediately exit your exam room.”