Chương 47: Exam Stages

It was already evening outside. Rain hadn't let up outside — if anything, it was growing heavier by the minute, its monotonous tapping on the windowsill turning into an almost unbroken hiss, blending with the occasional rumble of thunder somewhere on the horizon. Gusts of wind kept sweeping past, making the glass rattle faintly in its frame and the curtain sway as if alive.

Somewhere deep in the yard, an old gate creaked in the wind, letting out a long, rusty groan that repeated at even intervals, almost like a metronome. Further off, beyond the yard, wet treetops rustled, shedding their last leaves onto the pavement, where they darkened and stuck to the wet asphalt.

Lloyd's room was steeped in half-light — the desk lamp cast a dim yellow circle over only one corner of the desk, leaving the rest of the room swallowed in bluish twilight, where the outlines of the wardrobe, a stack of books on the shelf, and the vague silhouette of a jacket tossed over a chair back were barely visible.

The air in the room was cool and slightly damp — the little window had stayed cracked open since evening, letting in the smell of wet leaves and cooling asphalt, while a faint trace of dinner still lingered from the kitchen, mixed with the scent of the rain-dampened wooden window frame. Lloyd was scrolling through his phone, digging up everything he could find about the Exam.

The screen glowed in the dark, lighting his face from below with a cold white light, making the shadows under his eyes look deeper than usual and his features sharper, almost chiseled. His thumb, worn out from endless scrolling, had gone slightly numb, and his eyes had started to ache from reading in the dark for so long — he squinted, rubbing the bridge of his nose with his free hand, but kept stubbornly flipping through page after page. And still, he'd managed to dig up quite a bit of information.

He set the phone aside on the rumpled blanket, tucked his good arm behind his head, and stared silently at the ceiling, where that already-familiar crack darkened — the one he'd traced with his eyes back and forth over the past few days, lying there helpless, counting the hours until he'd recover.

Now the crack looked almost alive, winding in a strange pattern under the dim lamplight, like a little river on the map of some unknown country, while blurred reflections from the streetlamp outside danced along the edges of the ceiling, fractured by raindrops on the glass.

"Alright, let's put together everything I've found." Another peal of thunder rolled past outside, and the windowpanes trembled faintly in their old wooden frame, while somewhere in a neighboring house a dog barked once, anxiously, then fell silent, as if startled by its own voice.

"The Exam is held every year, on the first of December. It has three stages. Each stage is different from the ones in previous years, so there's no way to prepare in advance." Lloyd scratched his nose, squinting thoughtfully, as if trying to make out something hidden in the tangle of cracks on the ceiling, while outside another gust of wind flung a handful of wet leaves against the glass, and they clung there for a moment as dark silhouettes before sliding down, leaving thin damp streaks behind.

The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.

"Well, the upside is that everyone gets a card confirming they've become a Player. Even if you fail the first stage." Lloyd's train of thought was interrupted by Rozi's loud phone conversation with her friends, drifting in from the next room through the thin wall — snatches of laughter, quick, excited chatter, punctuated every so often by a sharp "no way!" and the muffled thump of a pillow that Rozi, judging by the sound, kept flinging onto her bed in fits of emotion.

He winced, tried to focus harder, closing his eyes for a second, and picked his internal monologue back up, trying to ignore the voice through the wall, though it kept seeping through anyway as a persistent, muffled background noise.

"The stages themselves exist so you can prove yourself to the guilds. Once a year, the best guilds from across the continent gather there. There's no better chance to show what you're capable of." Lloyd's face twisted as he remembered the class X had given him — the memory brought with it a faint, unpleasant chill somewhere under his ribs, as if someone had traced an icy finger down his spine. He shivered involuntarily, even though the room wasn't particularly cold, and clenched his jaw a little tighter.

"How am I supposed to prove myself in an Exam where it's every man for himself — that's the real question. But I think I can figure something out... Right?" Lloyd sat up straight on the bed and scratched his chin, staring into the darkness outside the window, where the streetlamp swayed in the wind, casting long, trembling shadows across the wet asphalt, pooled with puddles that shimmered with reflected yellow light, rippling apart with each new raindrop before gathering back into a single wavering patch.

"What really sucks is that there's only a month left until the Exam. I'm clearly at a disadvantage compared to people who got their first level half a year ago, if not longer. Well, I'll just have to hope everyone there is only first-level, like me." Suddenly Lloyd's eyebrows shot up, as if a new thought had struck him, and he froze for a moment, staring at a single spot on the wall where the curtain's shadow swayed slowly in time with the draft.

"Speaking of disadvantages — I still haven't figured out what mine even is. And it looks like Mippo can't manifest in this world. And going into a dungeon before the Exam would basically be suicide."

He let out a heavy breath, and right on cue another crack of thunder rolled through, closer this time, making the ceiling light flicker for a moment as if about to go out, while a brief flash of lightning streaked across the wall, lighting up the whole room for a split second in harsh white light, laying bare every crack in the ceiling and every fold in the rumpled blanket.

"Couldn't get much worse than this..." Lloyd lowered his feet from the bed onto the cold floor, feeling a chill run up his spine from his heels, and stayed there, slouched on the edge of the bed, elbows propped on his knees.

Outside, the rain grew even heavier, turning into a solid gray curtain through which the outlines of the houses across the street were barely visible, while the drops running down the glass cast strange, trembling shadows on the walls of the room, crawling slowly like living things, twisting and weaving together under the dim lamplight.

"Well, I need to actually survive until the Exam first — right now it's more important to sort out something else." He cleared his throat and, in a hoarse, sleep-roughened voice, said: — Stats.