The young girl started to cry upon hearing Rowland’s assessment of her — his judgement didn’t just mean that she had failed to advance onto the Official Knight academy, but it also meant that she was kicked out of the preparatory academy! Expelled!

  For these Knight students, facing such a fate was akin to their entire future being ripped away from them. If they came back empty handed to their families, they would be ostracised, called failures and perhaps even disowned from their families entirely, depending on how strict they were!

  This young girl clearly had a rough path ahead of her…

  Lucian, and the majority of the other students in wait, couldn’t care less what this girl thought though. In fact, most of the students there sneered and ridiculed the girl when her results were announced for them all to hear. That was just the way this world worked. If you had no strength, then you had no qualifications, and if you had no qualifications… well, good luck getting anywhere in life.

  “Next!” Rowland shouted at the line of students, not bothered one bit that he had just ruined the young girl’s entire future and ripped her dreams away from her.

  The next student in line walked over to Rowland, much more nervous now after seeing what had happened to the first girl who was called up. He was worried that he might not make the cut as well, as he was in a similar situation as her — one of the weaker ones of the class, who somehow managed to keep themselves out of trouble.

  Though, the reason these meagre children managed to keep themselves out of the limelight for the stronger students like Sofia and Roderick to bully them was because of Lucian.

  Lucian was well known as the weakest kid in the entire academy, not even an Apprentice Knight! It was only natural that he would take all of the pain and suffering away from those who, while weak, were still at least classified as Knights.

  In fact, Lucian himself felt a knock to his confidence thanks to this unforeseen situation.

  ‘My strength is even lower than that girls… I can only hope that my vitality and agility will make up for it, or else my upcoming future will become very challenging for me.’ He ruminated internally.

  Although his thoughts were running through what to do, Lucian was also quite interested and fascinated by the assessment method. It seemed quite crude, with the students literally being asked to attack their teacher in a form of testing them, but it was clearly deeper than it seemed on the surface.

  The fact that Teacher Rowland was able to discern such detailed stats, down to the hundredth even, showed that there must have been some sort of method he was using to judge them.

  Or perhaps his experience was so wide that he could judge their stats off sheer instinct alone? He could have such control over his body that he could judge the incoming strength and pressure of children’s fists, having an extremely high sensitivity to such things.

  Whatever the case, Lucian only found it somewhat interesting — but not enough for him to dive deeper into it. If his judgement was correct, then this was probably just the case of someone who’d honed their craft enough that it exhibits near supernatural tendencies, in which case it would be a fruitless endeavour for Lucian to research, unless he wanted to spend decades following the same craft.

  Time passed quickly, and soon the 20 students on stage were all assessed and had received their results.

  In total, 14 of them passed, while the remaining 6 failed. Neither Teacher Rowland nor Professor Kaldor seemed surprised by these figures, which meant that it must be a common occurrence for this many students to fail each time they performed this surprise assessment.

  However, one very annoying thing though—especially to Lucian—was that after the first girl, Rowland had stopped announcing the results out loud, instead taking a few moments to think to himself before announcing whether it was a simple pass or fail.

  Naturally, this came to the dissatisfaction of Lucian and other students who wanted to compare themselves to the stats of the students who passed and failed, to guess at whether they themselves would receive either result.

  ‘Such tricky methods. It’s clear Rowland and Kaldor did this on purpose, perhaps to instil a sense of fear and trepidation in the students, to stop them from cheating. Or perhaps its all just thanks to Rowland’s own twisted sense of humor.’

  The next 20 students were called up, and Lucian heard his name among the bunch who were called. He wasn’t too surprised at this, as it was clearly a random method of selection. Lucian was satisfied with this arrangement though, the sooner he could find out his result, the sooner he could determine whether he had to severely alter his future plans or not.

  Very soon, he joined the line of students heading up onto the stage, and made his way to the front of the group. It was clear that Rowland just started from whichever student was closest to him, so none of the students were willing to be the first. Lucian used this opportunity to save himself more time, making his way all over to the front end, standing closest to Lucian.

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  “Looks like Lucian wants a quick exit, haha. At least he has the common sense to leave early.”

  “I’m surprised, Lucian actually took the initiative for once!”

  “To see that Lucian showed less cowardice than the other 19 on stage. Tsk, just how far have this batch of students fallen.”

  A few murmurs could be heard around the hall when everyone witnessed Lucian’s act, with both the students and teachers muttering among themselves. Lucian paid no heed to this though, as he felt there might be a decent chance that everyone would be in for quite a shock when his result was announced.

  He was still unsure whether his stats qualified him as a pass or not, thanks to his strength being so low, but the only thing he could do no was wait for Teacher Rowland to call him over.

  “You there, you didn’t cower like the others. This I can admire. Come over.” Rowland had been watching the scene the whole time as well and Lucian’s act of voluntarily coming to the front hadn’t escaped his gaze. It even created a favorable image of Lucian in his mind, which clearly showed he knew nothing about the students and the hierarchy in the preparatory academy.

  If he did, he definitely would have felt that Lucian even stepping onto the stage was a waste of time. Not even an Apprentice Knight? He may as well just hand in his wish to withdraw from study himself.

  This was the first time Lucian stood so close to someone so strong. Not even Sofia’s servant could match up to Teacher Rowland. Lucian knew this just from the simple fact that his AI couldn’t even scan Rowland’s stats. He originally wanted to try the same scan on Professor Kaldor as well, but after experiencing that weird and mysterious sensation in his head after his encounter with him in the hallway, he didn’t want to risk anything.

  This world was one full of mysteries, and Kaldor seemed like a man who held many secrets. Lucian didn’t want to poke the hornets nest by attempting a scan on him.

  “You should know what you need to do already.” Rowland said, keeping a keen and focused gaze on Lucian the whole time. Of course, after watching 20 students take the same test previously, even the most mentally deficient students could understand what they had to do.

  Following his instructions, Lucian assumed his stance and sent a punch towards Rowland with all that he could muster. It sounded quite flowery and magical, but all it was, was a simple punch. Lucian was no where near the realm of a superhuman like Rowland, only having strength slightly above the average human on earth, so it appeared quite lackluster.

  Rowland received Lucian’s punch without batting an eye, however there was a slight change in his expression, a flicker of disappointment. Lucian witnessed this change, and could guess what would happen next.

  “You should check my Vitality now, Teacher.” Lucian spoke, with reverence and obedience filtering out of his tone.

  Rowland had completely dismissed the first young girl who’d stepped up for the test without even assessing her vitality, and so Lucian could tell that Rowland was about to do the exact same thing to him. In fact, he wouldn’t even be the second person it had happened to.

  Three out of the six students who’d failed didn’t even have their vitality tested by Teacher Rowland before he delivered their verdict, clearly showing that strength and agility were the two main factors in considering whether they should pass or fail.

  But Lucian’s highest stat was Vitality! If he was given a fail after all three of his stats were judged, then that was it. It was fair and he could do nothing about it. But if he was failed without even being given a fair test, then he wouldn’t be able to accept it.

  Teacher Rowland frowned when Lucian spoke to him out of tone, clearly challenging his judgement as a teacher of the Official Academy, but he stopped himself from chastising him and giving him an automatic fail when he saw the resolute look in his eyes.

  The two of them locked gazes, and even facing Rowland’s pressure, Lucian didn’t falter one bit. His eyes remained steady, and his expression remained locked. It was clear that despite knowing he was about to be handed a fail, Lucian looked unperturbed.

  ‘Interesting…’ Rowland stroked his non-existent beard and reassessed this young lad, Lucian.

  Unknown to the students present, and even most of the teachers, while there were three main physical requirements to be met to be allowed to continue studying at the preparatory academy, and eventually go on to the Official Academy when they advanced, there was also a hidden fourth requirement.

  Courage.

  Having strength and power could take one far in this world, but they meant very little if one didn’t have the mentality to accompany such power. If they faltered and cowered in the heat of an intense battle, it could mean death. Naturally, this was something no organisation or force wanted.

  Rowland could tell that out of all the students present, Lucian perhaps had the strongest mentality; the most courage, out of the lot. Knowing this, Rowland decided to heed Lucian’s request, and decided to check his Vitality stat as well.

  The process of assessing Vitality was simple, just as simple as the other two, in fact. It was simply the reverse of the previous test. Instead of the student punching the teacher, it would be the teacher punching the student — restraining his strength of course.

  Meanwhile, while Rowland went through all of this in his mind, Lucian had many considerations of his own.

  ‘So that’s how high his vitality is…’ Lucian thought to himself. Unknown to Teacher Rowland, and probably everybody else in the entire assembly hall, Lucian was assessing Rowland while he assessed him.

  Before he sent his punch toward Rowland’s incredibly strong body, he asked his AI to establish a new task — this time focusing on analysing the toughness of the object his fist was about to meet! The object in this case being Rowland’s chest.

  Of course, such a crude method of judging wouldn’t be anywhere near as accurate as his AI’s normal scan, or even Rowland’s unique method of judging, but it was the best result he could get for the time being.

  [15.26]

  This was the result it displayed to him internally, and it gave Lucian quite a shock. He didn’t know the standard of Grand Knights in this world, but this was still something that the science of his previous world could not explain no matter how hard their top scholars wracked their brains.

  It was simply impossible, both medically and biologically, for a human’s body to reach such a level of toughness.

  However, before he could consider this any further, Lucian was brought out of his thoughts by the incoming fist of the walking scientific miracle, aka Rowland!

  ‘This is going to hurt…’ Lucian braced himself.

  All of the previous students who had their vitality tested were left with tightened faces, and some even with broken ribs thanks to having a lower vitality. Lucian only hoped that this wouldn’t affect his training…