The Mundane Audit of the Ordinary
The scratch of quill pens against parchment was the only sound echoing through the grand hall of the Dirrium Royal Academy. For the elite students of the southern continent, this was the "Apex Trial"—the mid-term examination that determined their standing for the coming year.
The air was thick with the scent of ink and the cold sweat of young nobles who realized, far too late, that their titles couldn't solve a triple-variable mana-coefficient equation.
Leornars leaned back in his chair, his silver pen spinning idly between his fingers. He wasn't sweating. He wasn't even thinking. To him, the exam paper was like reading a children's book written in a language he had mastered before he could walk.
Question 42: Calculate the decay rate of a Pollium-infused stone when exposed to high-density mana fields.
Leornars sighed, the sound barely a breath. I literally invented the drug. I am calculating the decay of a world, and they want me to find the rate of a rock. He filled in the answer in seconds, his handwriting a perfect, cold script that looked more like a printed ledger than human writing.
Three rows behind him, Stacian stared out the window. Her chin was resting in her palm as she scribbled answers with her left hand, her eyes focused on a bird perched on a distant spire. To the other students, she looked distracted. In reality, she was bored. She had already processed the entire exam in the first five minutes; the remaining time was just a tedious exercise in manual data entry.
A week later, the results were posted on the massive stone monolith in the central courtyard. A crowd of students swarmed the board, their voices rising in a frantic cacophony of joy and despair.
At the very top, etched in shimmering gold light, were two names:
* Leornars Servs Avrem: 100/100
* Stacian Von Gremohiah: 100/100
Leornars stood at the back of the crowd, his arms crossed over his silver-trimmed blazer. Stacian stood beside him, her expression as flat as a frozen lake.
"It's almost offensive," Leornars murmured, his voice cutting through the noise.
"Which part, My Lord?" Stacian asked.
"The predictability," he replied, clicking his pen. "The questions followed a linear narrative. There were no traps, no hidden variables, no attempt to account for the irrationality of the environment. It was… beneath us."
"I found Question 12 particularly insulting," Stacian added with a weary sigh. "Asking for the limit of mana restoration without considering the use of mana is like asking a bird how to crawl."
A student nearby—a young marquis named Kaelen, who had been heralded as a genius—turned to them, his face a mask of confusion and bruised ego. He held his paper, a 92, like a sacred relic.
"You both got hundreds?"Franklin stammered. "How? I spent three weeks in the library. I memorized the ancient tomes. I practiced the formulas until my hands bled. How can you call it boring?"
Leornars shifted his gaze to the boy. It wasn't a look of malice; it was a look of profound, clinical detachment. "What fool would fail a test where the answers are already written just for a two year old?"
Leornars' eyes drifted down the list, scanning past the 80s, the 50s, and the 20s until they reached the very bottom line.
* Marquis Porthos: 01/100
Leornars let out a long, heavy sigh. "A one. He didn't even get the date right, and yet he managed to stumble into a single correct answer by sheer statistical accident. I'm sure that one was just for the effort or writing his name properly"
Porthos, a stout boy with a face currently the color of a ripe beet, stepped forward. He was trembling, holding his 01 like a death warrant.
"How?" Porthos choked out, his voice cracking. "I studied! I had tutors! I stayed up for forty-eight hours straight! I gave it everything I had! Why do you look at it like it's a joke?"
Leornars stepped closer, the ambient temperature of the courtyard seemingly dropping a few degrees. He looked at Porthos, then back at the board, then at his silver pen.
"Tell me, Porthos," Leornars said smoothly. "When you look at a wall, do you wonder why you cannot walk through it?"
"W-what? No, of course not," Porthos stammered.
"Exactly. Because the wall is a fact. To me, these questions are facts. I don't 'study' them. I simply recognize them." Leornars paused, his gaze softening into a terrifyingly polite pity. "Don't worry, Porthos. You aren't stupid."
Porthos looked up, a tiny spark of hope flickering in his eyes. "I'm... I'm not?"
"No," Leornars replied, turning his back to the board as he began to walk away, his cloak fluttering behind him. "You are just bad at thinking."
"Lord," Stacian said, following a step behind him. "That was almost merciful."
"The audit is closed, Stacian," Leornars replied. "Let's go. We have three kingdoms to manage before dinner. I've had enough of children's games."