## Chapter 27 – (11)
The day of the exam.
After completing the personality test, which was strangely easy, I walked towards the counseling room.
I entered the room labeled “Counseling Room” in the corner of the 3rd floor, where Violet, dressed in a neat outfit, greeted me with a pen in her mouth instead of a cigarette.
As I entered, her demure expression gradually turned alluring.
“Welcome. How did the personality test go?”
“It was hard to fail, to be honest.”
I replied with a faint smile and sat down.
The hero exam consisted of three stages:
Personality test and counseling, physical fitness test, and practical skills test.
The personality test was practically impossible to fail if you had a normal way of thinking.
Most of the questions were like this:
If an elementary school student is jaywalking, what would you do?
1. Stop them. 2. Watch them. 3. Cheer them on to cross quickly.
…Something like that.
I wondered if there was any point to such a test, but apparently, a few people fail every year.
“Most of the dropouts from the hero exam come in the second and third tests.”
The first test, including counseling, is just a process of filtering out villains.
Speaking of villains, one person naturally came to mind.
“Do you know about Kang Seok?”
“Of course. He gave me a lot of money and asked me a favor. To turn a blind eye to him during this exam, I suppose?”
Violet crossed her legs and smiled.
Her thick thighs were the epitome of ideal legs.
“What should I do? Should I just reveal it?”
With a slow gesture, Violet stroked the back of my hand.
As if everything depended on my touch.
My decision was made.
“No, please just let it pass.”
“Alright, I will.”
Violet smiled and replied.
If I had asked her to prevent me from taking the exam, she really would have done it.
But I had to beat Kang Seok head-on.
“Oh, by the way, do you know that the physical fitness test is a run?”
“…I somehow heard about it.”
It was information Minji had given me.
Then Violet added one more piece of information.
“Then, wouldn’t it be likely that this exam will change to relative evaluation since many ability users applied?”
“…”
That was the first I’d heard of it.
Even Minji wouldn’t have known the number of ability users who applied for this exam.
Violet smiled as I made a bewildered expression.
“I guess you hadn’t heard about this.”
“No.”
“You have to be at least half a lap ahead of everyone else from the start.”
“…That’s…”
It was a little difficult to take her words easily.
Being more than half a lap ahead of everyone else was quite exhausting.
Since I got the stamina skill, I had no problem maintaining a run for a long time.
Thanks to my strength, my speed was also relatively fast.
But if you asked if I was fast among the ability users, that was another story.
Choi Gaeun, who I had to target, had a speed that was hard to even follow with my eyes.
Minji also said that she increased her speed by moving her body with telekinesis when she took the exam.
There was no guarantee that there wouldn’t be such ability users in this exam.
To be more than half a lap ahead of them, I might have to use all my strength from the start.
If I did that, I wouldn’t even be able to walk in the second half.
“Don’t worry. Since it’s a relative evaluation, everyone won’t be in a state to run properly in the second half.”
“…”
Her words seemed to imply that something would happen.
“Don’t you trust me?”
“…I do…”
As I reluctantly nodded, someone outside the door signaled that the counseling time was almost over.
“Do your best.”
I left the counseling room with Violet’s encouragement and moved to the physical fitness test site.
The physical fitness test site looked like an ordinary athletic field. The only difference was that the track and the audience seats were filled with heroes.
Although the ones on the track were hero aspirants.
“Look over there. Waterbird Entertainment is here too…”
“Isn’t that the hero who filmed the soju commercial?”
“There are heroes from the Guardian association too?”
“Wow… she’s really damn pretty.”
The examinees who participated in the exam started to get excited and talk as they looked at the audience seats.
Scouters were watching from the audience seats, looking for talent to bring to their agencies from the second exam onwards.
Heroes like Choi Gaeun and Minji were also sitting there occasionally.
I also waved lightly in the direction where the two were sitting.
Choi Gaeun nodded slightly, and Minji gave me a word of encouragement with her lips.
The word of encouragement she conveyed with her lips was ‘Focus, you idiot.’
I could feel affection amidst those harsh words.
All the participants seemed to be motivated by the scouters and heroes, and they were excited.
I could feel an atmosphere where competition would be fierce everywhere.
“Take your places. Get ready.”
The seats seemed to be assigned randomly.
Unfortunately, my seat was at the very back.
There seemed to be more examinees than I thought, but I wasn’t too worried.
The total distance to run was 8,000m.
I would be the only one running at full strength from the start.
“Start!”
Unlike the energetic voice, everyone maintained a slow pace as if they were jogging, busy watching each other.
Taking advantage of that gap, I put strength into my legs and started to overtake one by one.
Occasionally, some people were wary of me and subtly blocked my path with their bodies, but each time I twisted my body or increased my speed to overtake them.
The people who were overtaken were all flustered, wondering if they should chase me or maintain their pace.
But everyone chose to conserve their stamina.
It was almost like herd mentality.
Since everyone except me was doing that, it wasn’t easy to choose the option of following me.
Except for one person.
“Shit!”
As soon as I overtook him, Kang Seok followed closely behind me with a fierce look in his eyes.
I had a feeling he would.
I could feel him glaring at me and being wary of me even before the race started.
What was surprising was that he was keeping up with me quite well.
I had stamina and strength skills, and a body relatively suitable for running.
Kang Seok’s ability was clearly unrelated to running, and his muscular body would be disadvantageous for this kind of running, but he was showing decent running skills.
As I admired him purely and nodded, Kang Seok followed even more fiercely.
He seemed to have taken my recognition as a provocation.
At some point, only the two of us were far ahead.
And that time had come.
“Ah, please listen while continuing to run.”
It was a familiar yet awkward voice.
Looking towards the source of the sound, I saw Violet, who had already climbed onto the platform, looking at me and smiling with her eyes.
“In the case of this exam, there are many people with excellent physical fitness, including ability users, so we will proceed with relative evaluation to differentiate them. I will announce it againㅡ”
After Violet’s words, the group that had been running nicely in the back gradually increased their speed.
Originally, everyone could have gotten the highest score with absolute evaluation, but with the change to relative evaluation, only about the top 10 could get the highest score.
Since the two of us were ahead, the competition for the top spots became even fiercer.
Then, one by one, they started using their abilities.
It was no longer a simple run.
A man spewing fire from his whole body ran out, and small pebbles rose in front of that man.
Some man grew small wings on his back, and some man grew brown animal fur all over his body and started running on all fours.
Both were incredibly fast.
They were so fast that they would easily overtake us if we ran side by side, but they couldn’t break out of the group.
Whenever someone tried to get ahead of the group, they would definitely interfere.
And the judges didn’t particularly stop that behavior.
Rather, they just urged them to do more.
“Three more laps to go!”
In fact, Kang Seok and I had already used a lot of stamina and were quite slow.
Nevertheless, we had created a distance of almost one lap or more in the beginning, and they were running while using their abilities, so it didn’t seem like we would be caught up because of their slow speed.
“Haa… Ugh…”
I heard a metallic breath from Kang Seok’s throat.
He looked quite tired and exhausted.
And he was looking at me.
It wasn’t the look of anger and wariness he had when we started.
It was an expression as if he was looking at something he was afraid of.
“H-How…?”
Kang Seok’s words weren’t fully connected because he was out of breath, but I think I knew what he wanted to say.
How did I predict this situation?
In fact, it was all thanks to Violet.
But I couldn’t tell him that, so I just answered vaguely.
I wasn’t breathing easily either, so I kept it as short as possible.
“I’m just good.”
“…”
Kang Seok didn’t get angry.
He just looked at me with anxious eyes.
Anyone would think he was the heroine of a tragic love story.
Even though he’s a villain.
Although I was the same.
As a result, the 1st and 2nd place in the physical fitness test were taken by villains who hid their identities.
When the high-ranking hero officials praised us as the future of heroes, I almost burst out laughing.
In fact, Violet couldn’t hold back her laughter and was laughing softly from afar.
I glanced at Choi Gaeun and Minji. Choi Gaeun was staring at the two of us with a blank expression as if she was drooling, and Minji was staring at me with a blank expression.
Her expression, as if she expected it, made me feel good.
And the exam had only the last stage left.
