Time slipped by quietly, and in the blink of an eye, it was time for the dreaded midterm exam week at Oserenka Academy—a period that left every student on edge.
The academy’s assessment system was notoriously strict: each course’s midterm exam was set independently by the respective instructor and counted for 30% of the final grade; the end-of-term exam was a unified, academy-wide test for each subject, accounting for a hefty 60%; the remaining 10% came from usual performance.
When Sefina had just started teaching, several mischievous students found their regular grades ruthlessly slashed by her—down to eighty, even sixty percent of the original scores.
Under such circumstances, the midterm exam results became especially crucial.
If Sefina made her test too difficult and the scores turned out disastrous, then passing the final assessment would become almost impossible.
You had to understand, the end-of-term exams at Oselenka were tough to begin with, and there was never any “instructor’s mercy” like at some modern universities.
If you failed, you failed—next year, you’d retake the course, no exceptions, no favors.
Therefore, all students who had chosen Sefina’s Elemental Magic class felt enormous pressure.
Whether they could pass the course smoothly depended largely on what sort of difficulty threshold this famously strict teacher would set for the midterm.
If Sefina happened to be in a whimsical mood and made the exam impossibly hard,
then what awaited them would be nothing short of a disaster.
Sefina’s Elemental branch exam was divided into a written test and a practical assessment.
That morning was the written test. Sunlight streamed through the windows into the quiet classroom, and the air was thick with tension.
Sefina carried a thick stack of test papers to the podium, her tone as cold as ever—no extra encouragement or comfort, just a straightforward announcement:
“The written test begins now. You have two hours. Once you receive the test paper, start answering immediately.”
She began distributing the papers. The students held their breath as they took the heavy sheets—each one felt as if it weighed a thousand pounds.
At that moment, a red-haired figure nervously accepted the test paper passed from the front row.
That was Kyle, the “lucky one” who, on Sefina’s very first day, had been neatly tossed out the window with [Advanced Levitation].
Ever since that unforgettable experience—and having his usual grade cruelly cut to sixty percent—Kyle had not dared slack off even a little in Sefina’s class.
From then on, Kyle attended every class diligently, took meticulous notes, reviewed material after class, and even spent weekends revising—he was a changed man, nothing like the once arrogant scion of nobility.
Even so, he still hadn’t passed the last unexpectedly difficult pop quiz. This left him with a deep “respect”—or rather, a fear—of Sefina’s exam style.
Because of this, Kyle had started cramming all the Elemental knowledge points two weeks ahead of time, preparing with military precision for this fateful midterm.
When the exam paper finally landed on his desk, Kyle took a deep breath, forced himself to calm down, and began reading the questions nervously.
The first part of the test was some basic multiple-choice questions, like: “What tier of magic is [Fire Arrow]?”
“Which of the following materials conducts fire elemental mana best?” “What are the current categories of elements?” and so on.
Kyle had already memorized these by heart, and he answered them effortlessly—no problem at all.
The last few multiple-choice questions were a bit trickier and required some analysis and understanding, but they were still manageable.
Kyle relaxed slightly—things seemed to be off to a good start.
However, when he flipped the test paper and saw the title of the next section, his mind went completely blank—
Multiple Response Questions
“Multiple response questions?” Kyle exclaimed inwardly, utterly baffled. In all the Oselenka test papers he’d ever done, he had never seen this type before.
He quickly read the instructions carefully: “Note: Each of the following questions has at least two correct answers.”
“Full marks (5 points) for all correct selections, partial credit (2 points) for some correct answers, but if you choose incorrectly or select too many, you get zero.”
Kyle:
What kind of devilish question type is this?!
There was no time to complain—he braced himself and looked at the questions. The first two tested fundamental concepts, and the options were fairly clear.
Thanks to his solid revision, Kyle was confident he could get them all right.
But the next questions were not so friendly. For example:
“Among the following spell array patterns, which are correct and complete?”
Option A showed the array pattern for the second-tier magic [Spear of Light]. Kyle was familiar with this one and instantly knew it was correct.
Option B, however, was the array for the third-tier magic [Earth Bastion]. Now Kyle hesitated.
The patterns for third-tier spells were much more complicated than second-tier ones, and earth magic was never his forte—his grasp of it was shaky at best.
Looking at Option B, the structure on the right side… It seemed a bit off, like it wasn’t drawn correctly, but on closer inspection, it also looked a little like a variant he remembered?
Should he pick it or not?
Anyone who’s gone through modern high school education knows this pain: in a multiple response question, picking just one option and getting partial points is a “handout” for the timid and the unprepared.
But pick wrong or select too many, and you get zero—that’s the “punishment” for the reckless and the half-informed.
Only by picking all the right answers, no more and no less, could you get full marks—the reward that only the truly knowledgeable “strong” could claim.
Back when Sefina was studying math in high school on Earth, she’d been tortured plenty by these questions.
But she believed this type of question was a better measure of a student’s overall grasp of knowledge, preventing them from relying on test-taking tricks like elimination, and really pushed them to understand and memorize every key point.
After all, what you learned in a magic academy was meant for real-life application—there was no room for guesswork.
Her insistence on including such questions was never about some twisted enjoyment of watching students scratch their heads in despair—really.
Well, perhaps there was just a little bit of that, but certainly no more than ten percent! So Sefina thought to herself.
At that moment, faint sounds of students sucking in cold breaths and muttering to themselves could already be heard in the classroom.
Many, by the time they reached the multiple response section, couldn’t help but scratch their heads and frown in distress.
Still, Sefina didn’t go out of her way to make things too hard.
Only the last two multiple response questions were genuinely tough; the rest were basic enough that, with a conservative approach, students wouldn’t lose too many points.
Someone as “brave” as Kyle decisively chose one answer and moved right on, just as Sefina herself had done back in high school.
Yet little did they know—for many students, this exam had only just begun to reveal its true face…
The truly headache-inducing questions were still lying in wait for them up ahead.