Ch76 – Nightmarish Mock Examination

Sponsored Content

Upon seeing the blank smiles of those faceless people, everyone present felt a chill that crawled up from the heels of their feet.

They didn’t have faces, yet presented an impression so visceral everyone felt the twistedness of their eager smiles. 

—superficial, skin-deep smiles.

Simultaneously, the teachers announced to parents they would also be boarding with the students for the coming one hundred and twenty days, progressing with them step in step throughout their battle preparations for the impending exams.

 

 

“Parents are not allowed inside.
Please leave your children at the school gate.
You cannot accompany them on the journey ahead; they have to face this challenge on their own.”

After everyone signed the contract, the teachers handed out black and white cards, and the faceless parents sent their children past the school gates. 

One by one, they lowered their heads to straighten their children’s lapels, the flesh on their blank faces distorting hideously as they urged them to become useful members of society.

 

“Mom and dad sent you here because we want the best for you.
Do you know how hard it is to enrol at this school? How expensive the fees are? Study hard, don’t disappoint us.
Score well and become useful members, not dregs, of society.”

“You’re our blood and flesh.
This society doesn’t permit useless people.
Do well and let me hold my head high in front of our relatives!”

“What’s wrong with suffering now? We’re doing this for your own good!”

 

The parents were anxious for their children to improve.
They kept professing their love for them, yet never mentioned they had personally signed off what resembled their children’s death contracts just moments ago.

“Creakkk—”

The tall iron school gates shut, and chains as thick as arms locked over the bars, with concrete poured into the lock.

 

Students in blue and white uniforms looked up at their parents waving to them with fuzzy faces, and like marionettes, were led into the school. 

Then the scene around them changed from the iron school gates to a dark grey quadrangle.

Short and dilapidated school buildings hemmed its four sides.
A filthy flag-raising platform was at its head, with the entire school enclosed by tall wire meshes.
Atop these fences curled rolls of high-voltage barbed wire, as if shackling the sky within its perimeter.

Unlike the empty quadrangle in the plot introduction, this moderately-sized area was now cluttered with aged tables and chairs, like block after block of decaying wood.

Teachers in white shirts and work pants lined up a short distance away, their expressions chillingly monotonous, as though they were merely statues of plaster poured into human mould. 

The national flag fluttered slowly in the air, but none of the trainees could recognise it—a sign that they weren’t in reality but a warped world that existed only within the instance.

Sponsored Content

Finally, this scene froze in space.

[The plot introduction has ended.
The system has connected.]

[The third round of Thriller Trainee has commenced.
Present B-rank trainees are in a collective instance: First High School.] 

[The round is set on survival mode.
Completion of the main task is not required to pass.]

The expression of every trainee at the quadrangle turned grave upon hearing this.

 

If it was said that every trainee hated receiving protection-type tasks, then tasks that hinged on survival were undoubtedly the most perilous of the lot.
This task hinted that many people would be forever trapped here, not to mention it was even a collective instance.

After coming back to their senses, many people began to study their surroundings discreetly. 

First, the rows of tables and chairs that filled the quadrangle, then grass sprouting from cracks in the concrete, and finally the tear across the flag-raising platform.

Of course, as important as it was to examine their environment, most trainees were also paying attention to which S-ranks were in their venue.

We’re sorry for MTLers or people who like using reading mode, but our translations keep getting stolen by aggregators so we’re going to bring back the copy protection.
If you need to MTL please retype the gibberish parts.

Lbkfnfg, atfgf kfgf rlwqis abb wjcs qfbqif lc atf dejvgjcuif, ab atf qblca la mbcoerfv jcv bnfgktfiwfv atf fsfr.

Coafg jii, atfgf kfgf jiwbra j atberjcv D-gjcx agjlcffr.
Qlat fnfgsbcf lc eclobgw, la kjr vloolmeia ab lcrajcais qlmx bea jc V-gjcx kfjglcu j gfv yjvuf ogbw jwlvra atf atgbcu bo qfbqif. 

While trainees were checking around, the live broadcast room also opened.

[The omnidirectional 360-degree panoramic camera with no dead angles has been enabled.
Every class will be broadcasted live this round.]

[The thriller trainees have entered the live broadcast.]

There were noticeably fewer viewers watching the B-rank collective instance compared to the A-rank collective instance. 

However, it was unlike the one-man show with innumerable rooms, nor like the second venue, which was decided by rank and largely focused on where most viewers had gathered.

[The broadcast rooms have started.
C’mon brothers and sisters, let’s gooo!]

[I’m in I’m in.
The B-rank venue huh… is this a school?]

[Seems like it.
It’s even the super old kind, really miserable.
I can’t even tell if this is a supernatural instance, though quite plausible considering it’s a school.] 

[The A-rank trainees at the other venue have been flung to a cruise ship—the luxury kind.
D-ranks are on a deserted island, potentially a very dreadful deserted island.
On the other hand, the C-ranks have been left on Mount Olympus.
It’s really tragic, I’m guessing that they have it the toughest out of all of these.]

The bullet chat chittered on, then the discussion took a turn.

[How many S-ranks are there in this venue? Sisters, let’s hurry up and search together.]

Sponsored Content

[Ah! I found one, No.
8 Black Shaman.
Wtf, No.
2 Van Zhuo and No.
10 Tsuchimikado are here too.] 

[Wow, so many in this round! Only… the entire forum hasn’t sighted that guy in any of the instances.
No one even knows if he’s participating in the collective instances.]

Whilst the bullet chat flooded the screen, the last notifications from the system quietly arrived.

 

[First High School is officially underway.]

[The duration of this instance is a hundred and twenty days.
The instance will close at noon on the hundred and twentieth day, thereafter the rank evaluation will proceed.] 

The instant the system’s mechanical voice vanished, the frozen scene came to life.

The headmaster, standing before the flag-raising platform, took the microphone handed by a teacher.

“Dear teachers and students, I welcome all of you to the next hundred and twenty days at First High School.
Before school starts, we will be holding a mock examination in the quadrangle, so please take your seats in an orderly fashion according to the serial numbers of each class.”

Serial numbers? 

The trainees looked down.
Some of them felt around their pockets and found the cards that had appeared in the plot introduction, which clearly stated their class allocations.

Zong Jiu lowered his head and read.

He was assigned to Class 9.

An announcement in the background guided all students to take their seats in the quadrangle in an orderly fashion. 

The wide quadrangle was segregated into ten zones.
There were exactly a hundred students in each class, and every seat was filled.

Everyone sat in silence.
No veteran would be foolish enough to attempt defying the NPCs like reckless newcomers.

Once seated, the teachers and teaching assistants standing before the flag-raising platform moved, spreading out so that the back, front, and middle of each row and column each had one bearing down oppressively.

It was at this time that trainees all drew a chilly breath upon finally being able to see what dangled from the waists of these invigilators.
All of them carried long, barbed black leather whips at their waists, looking unimaginably ferocious, giving each trainee chills. 

[Holy, how painful would it be to have this thing land on someone’s body?!]

[Is this something that humans use? It’s too savage.]

Now, even more so, no one dared to make a sound.

The headmaster seemed extremely pleased by their obedience. 

Receiving his signal, the teaching director announced resonantly, “Now, invigilators may distribute the examination papers.”

“The examination is four hours long.
Anyone found cheating will be dealt with in accordance with school rules.”

Sponsored Content

 

“At the end of the examination, each class will be ranked in order of performance.
The worst performing student in every class will be punished, thus I ask for every student to take this examination seriously.”

Punished?! 

The trainees secretly exchanged looks as a nightmarish conjecture began surfacing in their minds.

Since it was a survival game, then this punishment might be the worst possible ending they could imagine.

No matter what, they mustn’t get last in the class!

The invigilators started to distribute the papers. 

An exam booklet white as snow landed on the table, while a black pen was set on the corner.

The entire paper was densely packed with questions, a full ten pages covering all nine subjects including Language, Mathematics, English, Biology, Physics, Chemistry, History, Geography, and Political Science.
The questions on the last page were even elevated to Olympiad difficulty.

Let alone the bullet chat, even the trainees exploded this time.

They thought there’d be some other mode of testing behind this exam, yet no one expected that it was indeed a true-to-life, completely ordinary examination.
Even the questions were set at high school difficulty level! 

A B-rank burst out into expletives.
“What the hell is this, we already graduated so many fucking years ago, who’d remember what came out in high school?”

There was nothing wrong with that statement.

The majority of them were integrated into society from an assortment of professions.
After the length of time that they’ve entered the infinite loop, they’d pretty much tossed their technical knowledge out of the window, let alone the high school curriculum.
Moreover, there were also trainees from other countries who hadn’t been through the rigour of China’s university entrance examinations.
Even if they passed the language section via divine blessing of the system, the exam paper in front of them was still as incomprehensible as a heavenly scripture.

It was almost ludicrous to have their life and death hinge on this one exam. 

Even for instances on the higher end of difficulty, there was never one that knocked them sideways like this.

Right when others were about to echo their agreement, a whip cracked through the air.

The next second, the B-rank trainee who cursed out in anger had a deep welt on his back, splitting his flesh.

“AHHHHHH—” a wretched sound screamed out, as he collapsed from his seat and rolled on the ground in pain. 

An invigilator coldly put away his whip.
“No talking is allowed after the start of the examination.
One minor infraction noted, to be enforced after the examination.”

The entire quadrangle was silenced.

 

Despite the indignation on their faces, with this unlucky chap set as an example, everyone muted themselves.

Although none of the invigilators had faces, every trainee could sense the hawk-like, goosebump-inducing gazes that swept across them. 

Sponsored Content

While the trainees couldn’t engage in discussion, the bullet chat instead was boiling over.

[Fuck, I take back what I just said about C-ranks being the most tragic.
It’s not them, it’s the B-ranks!!!]

[Congratulations on loading a hell-mode infinite flow instance: university entrance exams.]

[Fuck me, what is this?? If you let me choose between fighting monsters and this shit right here, I’d never ever pick this exam.
I still remember the fear of being completely overwhelmed by exam stress in my high school days, /traumatised.jpg] 

[These trainees seriously have it hard.
My god, what year is it now, who would still remember the stuff from high school? I might as well close my eyes and pick who the ten losers are gonna be.]

Conversely, the three S-ranks present were relatively calm.
Van Zhuo and Black Shaman had even picked up their pens calmly, starting to answer questions.

They had a higher level of authority than the B-rank trainees, who only knew that they were going to be entering a collective instance.
The S-ranks only knew this instance was going to be school-related—it would pertain to the most rigorous high school exam, and made preparations in advance.

For example, Van Zhuo, who had always maintained a calm attitude, appeared to have progressed far ahead.
He listed no less than ten different possibilities after seeing the clues.
One of his plans was to toss some popular practice books into a storage prop, even flipping through them once before this. 

Tsuchimikado, however, held his head in his hands, looking depressed.

He’d assumed that the next instance would be a supernatural mystery that occurred in a high school, yet little did he expect that he’d be smacked right in the face by an examination, stunning him to his very core.
When he saw the paper, his classic ‘my luck is too cursed’ expression resurfaced once again.

After getting over their shock, the other trainees uncapped their pens and began to read the questions.
They couldn’t make headway.

Many chose to skip the sciences and charge straight for the humanities battlefield. 

Science had too many technical terms.
Even a top scorer back in high school would have wiped these clean from their memory after a few years in this infinite loop.

The model essays that they used to bullshit their way through were also gone.
As such, even if the system removed their memory block, only a handful was able to put pen to paper.

Zong Jiu uncapped his pen, but he wasn’t in a hurry to start.

He pretended to flip through the empty exam paper, but secretly lifted the tabletop, keeping the card he was holding in the storage compartment under the board. 

The spine-prickling gazes of several invigilators immediately pierced his way.

However, the white-haired Magician’s back and posture was upright.
After placing the object inside, he closed the tabletop again, seemingly devoid of any intent to cheat.

 

Those piercing lines of sight lingered a while, before slowly shifting away.

Yet the eyes of Zong Jiu, whose head was bowed, had darkened. 

Without even shifting a single hair he stroked the thin tabletop, feeling the deep, uneven words etched into its surface.

Just now, when he lifted the board, he was granted clear sight of the words that were etched on it.

Carved with a penknife, these words were densely scattered across the worn and decaying wooden table.
They were the same two words, repeated over and over again.

—Save me.