Maybe not for long. Because apparently, there was torture, and then there was Luca. And they should’ve all known the difference.
But they didn’t.
So when the ti for the division exams arrived, the greatest miracle wasn’t that Ollie didn’t faint out of sheer panic.
No.
It was the fact that he was still standing with all limbs intact.
Barely.
Because the last 27 space hours had been a fever dream of academic suffering no soul should ever endure.
It started when Luca, in his most serious of serious faces, declared that they would now inscribe the core concepts of the Empire’s legal, political, and social histories into their spiritual pathways for optimal recall.
He said it so plainly, you almost wouldn’t think it’d be difficult.
But Ollie knew better.
And before anyone could run, D-29 had laid out projections that practically covered the entire room, with the expectation that everyone would always find sothing to morize.
"It’ll help you rember better," Luca had said with the smile of soone who’d clearly never experienced fear.
It helped, alright. Helped summon the pain of a thousand buzzing bees under your skin.
Ada almost bit her tongue.
Princess Kira wanted to eat her glove in distress.
Ollie, anwhile, had to be bodily restrained to avoid launching himself out the window.
And then ca the morization drills. Because they were all expected to morize the sa items before moving forward, and the Orcs who barely learned inscription didn’t think they’d make it out alive.
"List the founding dynasties of Solaris, in order, with dates!" Luca called.
"I...I only know the nas!"
"Unacceptable."
Luca’s head tilted to the side, and Ollie thought he was watching a horror movie.
It got to the point where the mont Luca opened his mouth, Ollie would answer questions with tears in his eyes.
"The Concord Era ended in the year 4229 because of the food shortage riots!" he sobbed.
"Very good!" Luca chirped. "Next!"
He wasn’t even sure those were real answers anymore. At so point, he may have started hallucinating food.
Princess Kira had to be revived three tis manually, for she had opted to stop breathing to maybe get sent to the dical bay.
Ada offered to stab them all just to end the pain.
D-29, on the other hand, wondered if it was supposed to log their escape attempts to see the correlation between that and their eventual score.
Then there was the spiritual water—the precious resource they usually conserved—was now being chugged like it was cheap tea at a roadside inn.
Ollie cried while drinking. He’d take a sip, then answer, then cry, then sip again.
And Luca? He smiled the whole ti like a proud cult leader with excellent holographic flashcards.
So yes, Ollie was standing. Just.
He may have been twitching.
He may have developed a spiritual tick.
But by the ti he reached his seat for the exam, he whispered under his breath with the clarity of a monk:
"If I survive this, I deserve a kingdom."
And honestly?
No one would disagree.
Because Oliver Mylor was a changed man.
He had stared into the abyss of Luca’s flashcards and lived to tell the tale.
So now, standing in the middle of the Testing Grounds, he did not flinch. Not when Lyka strutted forward with her curated arsenal of shiny, rare materials. Not when students jockeyed for the easier chas. Not even when one proctor raised a brow at his increasingly twitchy eye.
He was calm. Serene, even.
Or at least, that’s what he told himself.
When given a chance to pick a cha, Ollie simply stepped back and gestured for another student to go first.
"Are you sure?" they asked, surprised.
Ollie smiled the smile of soone who had already ascended. "I insist."
Lyka scoffed audibly. Probably thought it was a weakness or a ploy to improve his image.
But it was neither, and Ollie just dusted off his gloves.
Because unlike them, he didn’t need any more advantage.
And maybe the fact that the person who barely slept looked like he could work as a temporary lighthouse should’ve given it all away.
After all, he’d suffered through the Empire’s bureaucratic history while drinking spiritual water like they were juice bottles.
So no, the others could pick the easier chas. And as for Lyka? She could keep her shiny materials.
Because Ollie had his own.
That was why, instead of focusing on other things, the blonde chanic decided to ask Instructor Moore about the paraters of their exam.
Ollie raised his hand and asked in the most polite tone:
"Are we permitted to improve upon the design, sir?"
There was a silence.
Then, a collective gulp.
Moore, clearly intrigued, nodded. "You are. But take note: your work will be graded on synergy, balance, and overall stability. Creative enhancents raise not only the bar but also the requirents."
Ollie nodded back. Because why stop now?
He reached into his space button. His. Not the ones that Kyle gave him, no. Those were ant to be preserved. And if he wanted to do this, he must use his own stash.
The clunk that echoed as materials dropped onto his table made Lyka freeze. Her wrench hit the floor.
It was a pile. Not just of alloys and beast-etched plating, but energy cores, inscribed limbs, rare-grade binding fiber—things most chanics, even masters, only saw on auction catalogs.
Proctors started whispering.
Students craned their necks.
Soone might have cried.
Because this wasn’t just an exam anymore.
This was a man, backed by hoarded wealth, industrial trauma, and a month’s worth of quiet devotion from a certain adjutant who had killed hundreds of beasts and mined a rare vein while following a certain blonde’s order like a command.
And that was how Ollie showed them what the shadow of the best looked like, for they hadn’t even seen his good brother. Now that would have been sothing else.
anwhile, back in the cha Piloting Division, Kyle was not entirely sure why people were staring at him like he had grown wings and a tail.
But there wasn’t ti to ask.
They had barely made it. Practically storming into the exam center in the nick of ti, the trio had nearly given Luca a heart attack. He’d already prepared three possible explanations to smooth things over with the examiners if they missed the test.
Thankfully, no smoothing was required.
Because in less than an hour, the madness began.
Xavier, Kyle, and Jax—calm, focused, and terrifying—entered the field. There was no drawn-out warm-up, no strategic delay to scan their opponents.
They launched.
And then launched again.
And again.
Luca, who was waiting for their batch’s turn, could only blink in stunned awe as the three tore through the simulated enemies like they were made of foam.
Students around him were gasping.
The proctors? Frantically adjusting scores to even attempt to scale the curve.
They didn’t stop to rest. They didn’t even pause to check for damage. Maintenance scans were ignored. Weapon recharges? Tid mid-spin. Because they were on borrowed ti, as they tried to end their exam as soon as possible so they could go back to the military headquarters for the deploynt.
Luca, eyes wide, slowly began thinking: Maybe...maybe I should try Xavier’s thod.
After all, if he could save ti doing it, then wouldn’t he be able to start preparing for their cramming session as soon as possible?
"Efficient..." he murmured.
But the rest of the examinees had a very different reaction.
"How is this legal?!" one wailed.
Another whispered, "Are they even human?!"
A third muttered, "Please tell they’re not part of our grading bracket."
But it was too late.
The monsters had passed, fucking up the entire curve for their year.
User Comments
0 comments from readers