Every Morning, My Mirror Saves the World - Chapter 44

Chapter 44

Juvina, male, twenty-six years old, prince of the Sunan Empire and genius mage of the continent. He carried a glittering string of titles over his head, including honorary president of the Magic Guild and honorary principal of a magic academy. He possessed epic-level beauty sung of throughout the world, and, thanks to the narcissism caused by that beauty, was very likely also a rare virgin…

For a flawless man like that to end up saddled with the title “homeroom teacher” was, one had to admit, a tragedy.

Ruiyin had not taken an exam in many years. But as a fake top student and real academic disaster, the word “exam” was forever inseparable from a homeroom teacher’s fake, performative smile, the horrifying rankings on the blackboard, and the carefully trained art of forging a parent’s signature. Now that she had transmigrated into a magical world, she still had to take a test she had never studied for. She felt as if the world was about to end.

Galahad, full and satisfied, lazily leaned against the round, plump, fleshy Vigia and looked at the rarely anxious Ruiyin with a little sympathy. “Ruiyin, it’s just a test. Do you really need to be this nervous?”

Ruiyin spun the dagger in her hand with neurotic speed and said with a numb expression, “I’m sorry, I can’t control this emotion… I have never read any books related to magic, and I don’t have any magic power. Although a score on this kind of exam means absolutely nothing, I cannot tolerate having an unstudied-for score like this appear on my record… Damn it, why do all of us have to take this stupid test?!”

“Don’t worry!” Galahad clapped Ruiyin on the shoulder with careless confidence. “Didn’t Juvina say so? We’re only taking the magic academy’s entrance test. It’s very simple! Before I became a knight, I took this kind of exam too!”

“Huh?” Vigia lifted her head with great interest. “Idiot knight, you actually took a magic test? What was it like?”

“Very simple. It was divided into two parts. First they used a Magic Crystal to test your magic attributes, then there was a written exam. Back then, I finished the paper in twenty minutes!”

“Ohhh, that’s amazing!” Vigia pressed on enthusiastically. “Then what did you do with the remaining time?”

The Silver Knight said calmly, “Used it to despair, of course.”

“…” Was the threshold for becoming a knight really so low that even someone like Galahad could advance to Silver?

The dagger in Ruiyin’s hand spun even faster. She flipped several pages of Introduction to Spells with a rustle while anxiously craning her neck toward the window. “Is Lars still not back? Thank goodness he’s the first one being tested. He can at least bring us some information… Huh? Lars! Was the exam hard? What questions came up? Was the examiner strict about watching for cheating?”

Lars, who had only just gotten one finger inside the room, was nearly driven back out by the hundred-question barrage of a Chinese exam candidate. Looking at Ruiyin’s blazing eyes, he helplessly raised a hand and smiled. “It was a very simple test. If it’s you, Ruiyin, you’ll definitely have no problem. Vigia is next. Galahad, you can go with her. That should be fine.”

After the idiot duo entered the room next door, trembling all over, announcer Lars finally turned around. He looked at Ruiyin, who was storming around the room while clutching a book and frantically memorizing it, and could not help laughing. “You really don’t have to read any of that. It’s just a simple magic power test, and… I don’t think it proves anything.”

Ruiyin keenly caught the subtle downward note at the end of his sentence. She stopped moving and looked up at him. “Test? Lars, what was your test result?”

Lars reflexively touched his pocket, then took off his coat and threw it far away in a blatantly guilty attempt at concealment. He answered with a bright smile, “Nothing much. I’m a knight. Aside from the light element, I don’t have any talent for magic at all.”

Whether it was his movements or his expression, he looked exactly like the useless version of her younger self trying to hide a failed exam paper!

Ruiyin narrowed her eyes. She snatched the coat Lars was trying to destroy as evidence, pulled a small piece of parchment from the pocket, opened it, and skimmed it at a glance. Her face grew darker and darker.

It was only a basic magic academy entrance test form, using numbers from one to five to indicate the strength of one’s magic power in a given element. On Lars’s form, water, fire, wind, earth, light, and dark were all five stars. At the end, there was even a professor’s self-recommendation letter that basically said, “I am begging you on my knees, please become my student.” It was practically the kind of model exam paper that would make parents weep while signing it.

“Ruiyin, are you angry?” Lars stood in place, uneasy, and asked timidly.

“Why would I be angry?” Ruiyin asked calmly. “This is a good thing, isn’t it? So, when are you planning to switch careers from knight to mage?”

“Juvina said I could do it anytime. And he would handle everything at the school for me.” Lars scratched his head and smiled honestly.

…This guy was actually planning to switch careers!

The image Ruiyin had once seen in the mirror almost instantly surfaced in her mind: Holy Archmage Lars, pale-faced and wild-haired, looking like a sickly wretch possessed by every horror movie protagonist in the world. Compared to the healthy, delicious, positive young man in front of her, the difference was practically Galahad versus a male god! As long as she drew breath, she would never allow the little poplar she had worked so hard to raise to grow into that, damn it!

Ruiyin gloomily sized Lars up and began seriously considering whether it would be better to chop off his hands first or his feet.

Completely unaware that he had already submitted his application to the disability federation, Lars still lifted his head and smiled innocently. “But I refused him right away.”
Ruiyin withdrew the dagger in an instant, her smile blooming like spring sunshine. “What a shame. Why would you refuse?”

“I still think being a knight is better,” Lars said with an innocent, radiant smile. “Mages are too physically fragile. On the battlefield, they’re the first targets to be attacked, and even as combatants, they’re the ones who need protecting. Besides, becoming a Golden Knight has always been my dream!”

Good job, kid!!!

Ruiyin nearly burst into tears on the spot. Overjoyed, she gazed tearfully at Lars, who had finally turned back from the dark side. He had already changed out of that villain uniform that practically reeked of Demon King and was once again dressed in the plain clothes of an Apprentice Knight. She lightly tossed away the dagger in her hand, walked over with a smile, and patted him on the shoulder. “I believe in you. As long as you work hard, forget Golden Knight, even becoming a Paladin won’t be a problem!”

The boy shyly turned his face away, then asked with shy anticipation, “If I become a Paladin, does that mean I can stay with Ruiyin forever?”

Ruiyin’s face went blank again in one second. She bent down to pick up the knife she had just thrown away and looked back with a dark expression. “Impossible.”

Lars’s ears drooped in utter disappointment.

Compared with Lars’s test, which had been over in an instant, Galahad’s and Vigia’s clearly took much longer. By the time the book in Ruiyin’s hands had changed from Introduction to Spells to Biographies of Holy Archmages, the door to the room was finally pushed open. She looked toward the sound, only to find that the person appearing in the doorway was neither the pink ball nor the green-haired one.

A middle-aged man in a butler’s uniform stood there. He pushed up his glasses. “Excuse me, which of you is Ms. Ruiyin?”

“That’s me.” Ruiyin walked over and asked in some confusion, “Is it my turn for the test? But our two companions still haven’t come back.”

“Ah, no need to worry. I am here precisely to deliver their test results.” As the middle-aged man spoke, he handed over the two forms in his hands. Ruiyin took them and gave them a quick scan. As expected, every attribute column for both of those two read “none.”

“Why didn’t they come back themselves?” Lars asked, puzzled.

“Ah, that is exactly what I came to explain to you both,” the middle-aged man said stiffly. “Could I ask you, sir and madam, to think of a way to bring them back? We can no longer proceed with the normal entrance ceremony. After learning the result, that dragon lady insisted the result was inaccurate and has been occupying the Magic Crystal to test herself over and over again. So far, she has already wasted six batches of precious crystals.”

“…Then what about the other one? Didn’t he stop Vigia?”

“At first, he did,” the middle-aged man said calmly. “However, after our copyist accidentally filled every field on the form with ‘none,’ that esteemed Silver Knight also dug in and refused to leave.”

Ruiyin instinctively looked down at the form. Galahad: water element, none; fire element, none; wind element, none; earth element, none; light element, none; dark element, none; gender, none. Wait, something weird seemed to have snuck in there…

…Galahad, didn’t your teacher tell you to fill in the sealed section before the exam started?

Ruiyin was the last one to take the test. Unlike what she had imagined, this magic test did not involve standing before an examiner and channeling magic into a crystal. Test-takers had to enter the room where the Magic Crystal units were placed alone. Judging by the kinds and number of crystals that changed color, their magical attributes and amount of magic power could be determined.

Everyone’s constitution was different. Generally speaking, the stronger a person’s ability to attract elements, the stronger their magic power would be. When someone like Lars entered the room, every crystal in the entire room would flash with dazzling light, showing off his cheat-level talent.

Ruiyin sat on the testing platform with a calm expression. It was a very strange room. The surrounding walls were built from blocks of crystal, and the hexagonal chamber was as clear and sparkling as the legendary palace of the Snow Queen. She sat there for a very long time, but not a single crystal around her that represented magic changed color.

…So this really was a transmigration that came with absolutely no special abilities?

Although the outcome was exactly as expected, she could not help feeling a little dejected. As Ruiyin stepped down from the platform, she thought: at least her form was a little better than Galahad’s. The importance of filling in the sealed section after receiving the exam paper went without saying at a time like this.

Just as she was about to leave the room, she suddenly saw something flash across the wall opposite her.

First, fine black lines appeared inside the crystals, like ink spreading through water. Immediately after, more dark spots appeared on the opposite wall. It was not an even change. That wall inlaid with crystals was like a giant LED display, the blotches of color rapidly shifting and combining into a pattern. Pure black, deep gray, and pale white flickered in alternating light and shadow, and beneath Ruiyin’s horrified gaze, they gradually formed a somewhat familiar shape.

It was a helmet.

A helmet without any decoration, not even air holes, only a blank mask embossed with natural metallic patterns.

An intense sense of suffocation seemed to press through metal and crystal alike. Ruiyin silently stared at the image opposite her. She had definitely seen it before. Not only had she seen it, she had even teamed up with those two problem children to dissect the smoke inside the helmet.

If the crystals displayed the kinds of elements a person could attract, then was the element she could attract supposed to be insanity…?

Author’s Note: Letting the madam out to unlock a CG~