Ignoring their curious gaze Archer carried on. "As you have seen this exam contained: cheaters, talented people, hard workers, lucky ones and those who were cunning. In your life, you will encounter people or beings of all these categories. The point of this test was to let you experience and open your eyes to the truth sooner. The mythical ideology that your parents have been instilling upon you for the past few years breaks today. This test was designed to show you that.
No one is equal and no one will ever be, but you will always have your friends and teammates to overcome those impossible moments.
You will encounter an impossible situation later in your life. Instead of losing in despair and hopelessness, join hands with your lucky, talented, hardworking, cunning and the cheating people next to you to defeat the impossible situation. Only by working together can you survive and overcome it.
Imagine what all of you could have achieved if you were all working together instead of fighting each other. All of you could have easily pa.s.sed the exam had the cheater and the rest of you worked together.
The cheaters could have given the answers they memorised for the normal paper to the non-cheaters, while the rest could have let the cheater receive their answers without any interference.
You were smart enough to devise a plan to fail the cheater permanently and clever enough to decode the plan from the map.
Unfortunately, none of you was smart enough or clever enough to look at the long-term benefits from a mutual partnership and instead bathed in the pleasure of vengeance and mutually a.s.sured destruction.
In return what did you get? You got 50 innocent students disqualified as sacrifices while making a potential enemy of a very powerful people all for what? To sate your hunger for vengeance.
Vengeance can only take you so far, while an alliance can carry you even further.
Those of you that have been bullying or suppressing other because of your ranks and influence learn from this experience. Learn from this test that you will not always be at the top.
There will come a day where those who you have been oppressing and caused suffering to will be sitting higher than where you are. On that day no matter how powerful and influential you are, you will feel helpless and despair like you did today. So, from now on, I advise you, idiots, to think and live wisely. And if you are wise, learn to make friends rather than enemies before it is too late.
This world doesn"t only need cheaters or lucky ones, it needs people of all kind in an alliance to move forward. You won"t be able to see it now, but in few years" time when life has thrown everything at you and you had survived it, you will see the importance of what I said today.
That is the lesson you have to learn from this test. That concludes the end of this test." As Archer finished his monologue there was a silence as everyone reflected on what Archer had said.
Many of them realised that this test, was a simulation of what will happen once they didn"t work together in a crucial moment. What they had sacrificed for their short-term goals was nothing in comparison to what they will lose in the long term.
Archer let the silent go on for a few minutes before suddenly erupting "Now onto my favourite part!" Archer took the golden ticket out his pocket.
Many of the students" looked up from their reflection towards the golden ticket.
While Natasha, Albert, Jack and Merlin admired at the brainwashing speech employed by Archer. They knew the person responsible for that speech was most likely John.
They were aware of how far a person can go for vengeance, especially Albert as he looked at a certain green-eyed woman sitting in the midst of the students.
The speech was brilliant in that it will calm many of both sides bloodthirst to each other for a while and hopefully get many of them to be loyal to the empire. However, they knew there will be certain people amongst them who won"t be affected by the charm of the speech especially, Ellis and many of the n.o.bles.
Ignoring all their thought Archer carried on, while all the screens in the hall displayed the golden ticket.
"1 wish of yours that is deemed reasonable by his highness will be granted to you for the duration of this exam. However, like I said there are a few conditions to using this. Before that, I have to explain to you the unique nature of this exam and the rankings.
As usual, the compet.i.tion of each test will award you with points. The more points you have equal the higher you rank.
So, for example, for the theory test you just did, the marks you earned will be your points. Those who had higher points are higher in the rankings. Someone who scores 100 points will be rank 1 in comparison to someone who scored, 40 points who will be last.
This exam unlike other previous exams in the past will have 2 rankings. The first ranking is the usual ranking for the magi a.s.sociation, to see who pa.s.sed and who is the most capable one etc. To move up this rank is sufficiently easy as long as one earns high enough points to be placed first, by pa.s.sing each phase of the exam with flying colours.
Being in this ranking by the end of the exam, even if you are last, means you will have graduated. As you all know, the higher your ranking is in this ranking board, the more likely major n.o.bles, companies etc will offer a job for you after your graduation." Everyone nodded their heads in understanding. This was the usual ranking board they had every year.
"The last ranking is a special ranking of his highness. Being in this ranking doesn"t necessarily qualify you to graduate. But believe me when I say this, from the type of person his highness Prince John is, you would want to focus on getting your ranks high on his ranking than the other ones." Law"s squinted his eyes while he heard this information, wondering why anyone would even bother to be on this ranking if they couldn"t even be guaranteed a graduation certificate.
"Everyone is here today to get their graduation certificate. Unless there was a compelling reason to aim for the special ranking there was no reason to aim for it." Many of the students there thought.
"To keep being in the special ranking is simple. All you have to do is follow 2 rules.
1. Partic.i.p.ate in at least 1 hard challenge in a test and pa.s.s, or complete at least 1 mini-games during the exam period.
2. Not having used or have anyone use the golden tickets on them." The student started getting a weird feeling about this new ranking.
One because they didn"t know the benefit of being in the special ranking, two not being able to use something as awesome the golden ticket seemed like a waste. Many of them already guessed the difficulty of the hard paper from the cheaters who desperately attempted to receive their answers. It would be mad for them to willingly try for an extremely difficult test when the first test was b.l.o.o.d.y enough.
"To kind of motivate you guys let me reveal to you the reward for the magi a.s.sociation ranking leader board. The first 100 in the leader board will each receive 10 low ranked Magi stones and a weapon forged out of level 4 beasts materials."
The student suddenly gasped at the news of weapons forged from beast materials. For the majority of them, they have never even seen a beast higher than level 1, let alone receiving a weapon made out of one. Beast materials got ridiculously expensive the higher they were in level. Along with receiving 10 magi stones, which was a fair deal considering they only got 1 low ranked magi stone per month in the academy.
Even for the rich and the n.o.bles, this was an extremely fabulous reward. Even for their families getting a weapon made out of beat materials higher than rank 3 was really rare.
"The top 10 people will receive all the above rewards in conjunction with 1 medium ranked magi stones and 2 pieces of equipment of their choice forged out of a level 4 beasts materials." Hearing the words medium ranked magi stones already got their attention let alone the extra 2 pieces of equipment made from level 4 beast materials.
They knew the amount of magi particles contained inside a medium ranked magi stone was at least 100 times more than that of a low ranked magi stone. These things were not easily acquirable from the market for those without the necessary connections.
"The 2nd ranked person will receive all of the rewards I just stated along with a full set of equipment made out of level 5 beast materials along with 5 medium ranked magi stones." The eyes of everyone shone in greed while Archer carried on.
"The 1st ranked person will receive 10 medium ranked magi stones in conjunction with a full set of equipment"s made out of level 6 beast materials." This was the breaking straw as students started fantasising themselves in such equipment"s. This was rewards they could have never even dreamed off being offered.
"This is the reward for the top 100 in the magi a.s.sociation ranking board his highness had prepared for you.
I will leave it your imagination on what kind of reward his highness has prepared for those in his special ranking?" Archer let the words sink into the students.
Natasha who was listening to all this became amazed at her step brother"s ingenious business plan. "Merely making use of the waste from his cooking that will soon become worthless to gain the appreciation of thousands. But still, it is an extremely generous reward compared to the past years, although this had been the bloodiest and albeit not being the hardest first phase of the test compared to the past as well."
Natasha has heard how the supply of high-level beast ingredients was slowly starting to surge. The times were level 5 beast ingredients being extremely valuable was slowly becoming non-existent to the point where they were only having value, slightly higher than value of a level 1 beast ingredient. This used to be a dream for many of the people in the empire yet it was now becoming a reality.
And all this shift in market values was caused by one person. Her half-brother, 3rd Prince John.
He currently controls the market value of all these ingredients, no it is better to say he is the market. Whatever price he sets for each ingredient becomes their true value.
If he wills he can stop cooking and therefore make the high-level ingredients become useless and thus crazily expensive and rare again.
He was slowly setting a history. Never has she or anyone else in her current generation seen someone set a monopoly like this.
This was one of the reasons why the emperor along with many other people wanted to know John"s secret to his cooking. As whoever knew it can control the market price of the beast ingredients easily with it.
Knowing the reward for magi a.s.sociation ranking Ellis along with Natasha easily made a guess for the reward of the special rank being either a level 7 equipment and above or a high ranking magi stones or even a high-level food cooked by John.
The food of dreams for all magis and those seeking eternal youth. Food, more valuable and precious than any magi stones. The food fit for Deities.