Chapter 74: Crazy

The vice president facepalmed himself and stood there in silence. The arrogance of this vampire was reaching unimaginable heights. He didn't show a face that felt like he was acting. The things he said came straight from his heart.

Keith and Annica tried to control their laughter after seeing this. It was definitely a good show.

"Is he always like this?" Keith asked while trying his best not to wheeze.

"Mhmm... I was looking forward to such a performance and he didn't disappoint me." Annica replied with a satisfied smile.

"He is… quite the interesting character I must say," Keith replied with a twisted face.

"Indeed. Back in my country, he is known for these kinds of incidents. Be it with other nobles or lower-level vampires. You can say the lower-level vampires rarely got out of it unscathed." A snort escaped Annica's delicate face.

Keith didn't say anything and simply observed the scene in front of him. The vice president was losing his patience explaining why he was not qualified to occupy the first position. But Deryn refused him every time.

Failing to change his mind, the vice president was ready to apply force but Valencia entered the scene soon after. 

"The results are determined by the judgment pillar, so I suggest you get back to your seat and wait till the end. We can't change the results as we wished and all of the evaluation is done by the pillar. The professors have the final say in which department you can join, but that's that." Valencia explained with a harsh voice.

"Hmmm… as I thought, it's a useless academy with little to no respect for the strong. I will report this incident to the dean." Deryn replied with an annoyed voice.

He knew the lady standing before him and he heard a lot of things about her. So he took a step back this time, not to further complicate things. As he left the test area, the new batch of students came in to take the test.

The hall descended into silence again and the test continued as before. The last row had the most students present, so it took a couple of hours to wrap things up. In the end, the seats went back to their original arrangement and the stage reverted back to its place alongside the high stage.

Valencia came back to the center of the stage and held a pamphlet in her hands. When the lights focused on her, she folded the pamphlet and swept her gaze around the hall, scanning all the students by her senses.

"We have 433 students entering this admission season. All of them are from the main descendant family or a branch family. In this season, 421 students come from the branch families of the main descendant family and the other 11 are from the main descendant families. In a way, they are considered part of the main family and will be treated as such.

Now coming on to the next statistic, we have 175 students from Argania, which is by far the largest single-time entry for this country. 124 from Clecia, 96 from Kelgard which are consistent with their past entries. The northern country of Efrain sent 36 new students this season. 

And as you all know, Fleidian is in a tight spot right now, so the nobles are not allowing their heirs to get out of their palaces. Even still, we have two more students coming from this country this time around." Valencia slowly explained.

Keith's ears perked up as he heard the condition of the war-torn country Fleidian. He was also curious to see which students came to the academy in such a harsh environment. 

Annica seemed to notice his puzzlement, so she explained some details about the country.

"Thes state of the country is more dire than we think. I think the absence of the director might be related to this. I also think the two students who came in were already living outside the country before the war started." Annica said with a low voice.

"Why do you think so?" 

"Because the borders are closed in all four directions and both sides are guarding the roads and not letting anyone pass. If they belong to the other side, they take them as hostages or worse, send them to the mines. So you can understand the position of the nobles, who don't want their heirs to venture outside their territory."

"Makes sense. Now what? Is the council going to interfere in the war or they will watch from the sidelines." Keith asked.

"For now, I think the council will hold its position and won't interfere inside Fleidian. It is their internal issue and participation in the war will make things even worse. The council is waiting for one side to win quickly and avoid any unnecessary conflict with the neighboring countries, in which case the council has to step up and stop Fleidian." 

"So unless the war spreads to other countries, the council will turn a blind eye to Fleidian," Keith said.

"Correct. The council is busy maintaining all five countries, so it's important for them to take a neutral stance. Besides, it is their internal civil war anyway, so interfering doesn't send a good message to the other countries."

As they chatted along about the situation, the speech of the student council president came to an end. Then she invited a middle-aged man with pure white hair and a well-built physique onto the stage.

The middle-aged man slowly walked up to the center of the stage and activated his rune card to reverberate his voice throughout the hall.

"Good afternoon, dear students. As you all have heard Valencia gave all the details about this year's entries and the overall statistics, a majority of you did well in the test. I sincerely congratulate all of you for your efforts. I'm the vice dean of the blood warrior department, you can call me professor Chandra.

"Now, the final results and analysis of all your strengths and weaknesses have been thoroughly documented and I will show you the list of students who qualified for the four departments. "

Professor Chandra swiped his hands on the rune card and the metal plate hovering above the stage tilted sideways and positioned itself perpendicular to the ground. It now faces the students who looked at it with enthusiasm.

"Out of 433 students, 403 are invited to join the blood warrior department. For the blood summoning department the invitations are 30, the blood ritualist department gave out 15 invitations, and last but not the least, the blood esper department invited 3 students for enrollment into their department." Professor Chandra gestured his hands to show the list of students which appeared on the metal plate one after another.

In that list, the most commonly invited students for all departments were highlighted in bright red and the others with two or more invitations had orange highlighting. The rest of the names were normal carvings with slight red outlines.

Keith was surprised to see his name glowing red on the top. That meant, he received four invitations from all of the departments. He expected his performance to get him a good place, but receiving four invitations was beyond his predictions. 

"You are on the hit list of all the departments. I see a lot of jealous eyes around you." Annica said from the side.

Keith turned around and saw that many students were giving him envious looks. It was a great achievement to get all four invitations from the departments as it meant, they are equally wanted by four departments. Typically, the departments chose which students were best suited for their discipline and invited them accordingly.

That's why there were single invitations for some students in the blood summoning and the blood ritualist department. Looking at the blood esper department, the three students who were invited were also invited by the other 3 departments.

Annica was also invited to the blood esper department, together with Keith and the young boy with a strange name. Looking closely it resembled some kind of ancient name that couldn't be pronounced easily.

"Can you read the guy's name?" Keith asked Annica while pointing to the weird-looking name below him.

"What guy? Oh, that… that looks like an ancient dialect of the Arganian language. I've studied some of it courtesy of my father. It appears to be spelled… Buqfgsloslaermeryan." Annica fumbled as she tried to pronounce the name.

"Looks like he's from my country. What a surprise, I have another one within my class. Three of us will be joining the blood esper department together, so I wonder how old the students are?" Annica's thoughts drifted as she immersed herself into her imagination.

"I haven't decided which department to join," Keith said out as he looked at his name.

This brought back  Annica from her daydreaming as she glared at Keith with disbelief. 

"Are you saying you are going to pass up on the most sought-after discipline in the entire continent? Countless students try their best,  never to be invited to the blood esper department. You are seriously having a problem choosing which department to enter." Annica was out of breath.

"It's not that I don't want to join the blood esper department, but I want to see if there are better ways for me to receive more lessons," Keith said.

"What do you mean?" Annica was confused by his words.

"I was thinking if I can get into all of the four departments at once. What would it take? Can I convince the deans to get me a spot at four departments?" Keith said with a smile.

Annica stared at him with wide-open eyes. Only one sentence left her lips.

"You are crazy."