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"Maybe he was lucky?" he said, trying to console himself and believe it, but the timing didn\'t match.

If he was lucky, he would\'ve gotten out within the first few minutes as he tried to escape the undead and stumbled upon the core.

But 1 hour?

"Something doesn\'t add up," Rui blurted out in confusion, utterly perplexed by what happened.

"What doesn\'t add up?"

A cold voice entered his ears, freezing him on the spot as the colors on his face drained.

"P-professor Aileen," Rui blurted out in surprise, recognizing her chilly voice and turning to look at her.

Thankfully, Rui wasn\'t actively commenting as most of the audience had returned and it was night, or else his image would\'ve fallen.

Currently, Rui was just wearing a set of pajamas to be in comfort and enjoy messing around with the examinees to an acceptable standard.

Unfortunately, something like that didn\'t bother Aileen.

She was still donned in the professor\'s uniform and had entered the private premises of Rui yet he himself didn\'t dare to complain.

Rather, his throat was parched at her sudden appearance and her inquisitive tone that he forgot to breathe for a second.

"I asked you, what doesn\'t add up?" She asked, her voice dropped to a chilling whisper, laced with an edge that promised consequences if unanswered.

"T-that," Rui stammered, unable to tell her the truth and cursed his luck inwardly, \'Damn! Just why is it she who heard it!?\'

"That?" she asked again, "Don\'t waste my time."

Her second sentence seemed to press Rui into almost blurting out the reason but Zander appeared right at that moment.

"Professor Aileen, I don\'t think it\'s quite right for you to press a student like that," Zander said, without asking about the situation.

It seemed he was observing, but he wasn\'t. He had just sensed a pulse of mana when he was leaving the stadium and came here.

The trembling Rui and presence of a professor was more than enough for him to figure it out.

"Vice-Principal!" Rui greeted in delight while Aileen greeted in mild dissatisfaction, "Vice-Principal."

However, she maintained her respectful tone and demeanor in front of him despite the light in her eyes dimming.

"May I inquire what was it that you wished to ask from Rui at this hour?" Zander said after nodding in acknowledgement.

"I was observing a student and he suddenly fell unconscious where no trap or anything was placed," she began.

"I doubted my eyes but when I began checking all the participants, a very few of them were struggling at places without any traps or monsters,"

Her eyes then turned to Rui as she continued, "And who would I come to ask except him? That\'s when I heard his mutters."

As if she finished what she had to say and Rui\'s significance had ended, she turned to face Zander, awaiting an answer.

"Is that so?" he muttered before casting a side glance at Rui who trembled all of a sudden, feeling his miniscule presence.

"Professor Aileen, I will check what you\'ve said and take care of this matter," Zander said, leaving no room of discussion.

"...Alright," Aileen agreed after some hesitation but she had no choice and flew away.

"S-sir, it\'s not wha–" Rui began explaining the moment Aileen left but Zander raised his hand to stop him.

"The academy allowed you to interfere within an acceptable range. No need to say anything unless you broke that agreement."

Hearing Zander\'s cold words, Rui shut up and just nodded, knowing he stayed within the agreed-upon limits.

It was just that the limits were set at different levels for different participants.

Someone at the level of Jash, who secured first place in both earlier tests would have to suffer quite a bit more than others.

It was not a personal vendetta or some politics to prevent him from reaching rank 1. The academy had no place for such things.

To this day, the Solarnelle Academy was the one place with the least amount of corruption throughout the Empire.

Of course, excluding elven and dwarven domains as information about them was hard to get even for the Imperial Family.

They were powerhouses and were in an open alliance with each other as well as humans, so provoking either would be a bad idea.

Not like there were many negatives about cooperating as all three races progressed a lot when working in tandem and even sharing their technology.

Heck, even some elven and dwarven professors existed within the Solarnelle Academy to reduce race discrimination.

The academy\'s integrity got bolstered by the cooperation of elven and dwarven professors, though this diversity sometimes led to factional differences due to the difference in opinions.

The difference in opinions was also the reason Rui found himself unable to speak the truth about Jash.

If he actually told Zander about the extreme test he gave Jash with a pseudo-balancing luck-based exit...

Just the thought was enough for Rui to wipe it off from his mind and act like nothing happened.

His shock, surprise and disbelief didn\'t matter as it wasn\'t worth it and got replaced by amusement.

\'It\'ll be fun to watch their disappointed faces,\' he thought, bemused by the interesting situation.

After all, he himself couldn\'t know what exactly happened inside the illusion, not to mention the Academy Staff or the audience.

All they got was just another footage of Jash sleeping.

This time, underneath a tree\'s roots with some gap for breathing though he wasn\'t aware of it himself.

Since Jash was mentally fatigued, he couldn\'t wake up anytime soon and literally continued to rest until noon of the next day.

Even Rui himself didn\'t expect Jash to take so long to just wake up.

Yet when Jash woke up, he felt slightly tense, his head was aching and it even elicited a groan, "Ugh."

Jash squinted against the darkness, his eyes scrunching in reflex before slowly fluttering open, only to see darkness all around him.

\'Where... am I?\' he wondered, his mind racing despite the throbbing pain as he tried to move.

The first thing he felt on his hands was the rough texture of soil and he instantly recognized it, \'Soil? Did I get buried or something?\'

Unaware of the pit he had fallen into after entering the illusion which threw him underneath a tree, he could only speculate.

Thankfully, the hard sensation of the root as well as wet soil and the few thin rays of sunlight helped him calculate his position.

"I am under the wat—tree!?" he exclaimed, almost saying water due to the memories of a funny video.

However, he was the most astounded one by his own bizarreness to joke despite his potentially precarious situation.

It truly eluded him how he could do so when he was the least like that.

Unfortunately, he didn\'t get the time to think about it as his hand came across a metallic box.

"Hm? What\'s this?" he asked himself before bringing it closer to his eyes, "A \'Reward Chest\'?"

The top lid of it was written in beautiful cursive writing that Jash barely read due to the sparse light.

"There\'s an actual reward for this!?" Jash exclaimed in doubt, opening it at once.