26 Cosmic Horror (1/2)
At ten minutes before three, a monotonous woman's voice echoed throughout the reception area. It came from an azure crystal embedded in the ceiling which Li recognized as a recording crystal. In-game, if you sent a recorded voice message to another player, then the icon they clicked to open was a crystal to keep in tune with the fantasy setting.
It was interesting to see how even little bits of gameplay lore like that managed to find use in a world that lived around the lore as their reality.
Here, the crystal acted like an announcement system, echoing out when various proceedings were starting or calling employees up to offices and whatnot.
”Herbalist's exam is starting in ten minutes. Repeat: herbalist's exam is starting in ten minutes. All prospective test takers, please proceed to room 4A.”
Li got up and scrounged his memory for directions. He generally had a good sense of direction, and as he recalled, 4A was past the reception desk, through a long hallway and up four flights of stairs and immediately to the right, where a plaque marked with a golden A signaled the right room.
The fourth floor was where most exams were taken, so it wasn't a surprise. Li had visited the city hall before and looked at the test rooms when he came by to get a copy of past exams to study from. They were wide and spacious, lined with desks in orderly patterns that gave just enough space between them that cheating through eyesight was rather difficult.
Anti-magic wards were lined at the door, enclosing the room with protections against magical cheating, and there would also be a proctor with a magic sensitive wand that would detect any spell casts.
As Li walked up the stairs, he noticed progressively fewer people. What few people he did see were coming down, having taken exams for fields other than herbalism. There were a few people crowding around the fourth floor itself, men sitting around on benches or standing with no seeming purpose, but when Li entered, they all stared at him.
Cocking his head, he made his way to door A and went inside.
The room was completely empty. There must have been over twenty seats, but not a single one of them had been filled. Maybe he was early, who knew.
”Greetings, test taker,” came a bored voice. ”Please take a seat anywhere you please.”
It came from the proctor, a woman seated behind a desk at the front of the room who oozed tiredness from her every being. She was ghostly pale, making her long, wild locks of chestnut red hair and the dark circles under her eyes extremely apparent.
She had a slightly hunched posture, which, combined with her long, brown robes stitched with patterns of leaves, gave her the aura of an old scholar, and yet she couldn't have been past her early twenties.
When Li took a seat at the front, she stood up and reached under her desk for a single test packet. With shuffling steps, she placed the test on Li's desk along with an inkwell and quill and yawned.
”Y'know, I figure you're gonna be the only one here, so when I say time's starting, just go ahead and have at it,” she said before she shuffled back to her desk and withdrew a timepiece from her robes.
She stared at the timepiece in her hand, watching as the hands crawled agonizingly slowly towards three.
”Actually, just start now,” she said, waving impatiently at Li to start. ”You have one hour. If questions arise, inform me. There's one water break in the middle. Um, I think that's it. Good luck.”
With that she put the timepiece on the desk and turned it around so Li could check it when he needed to. She then leaned back in her chair and put her hood over her head.
Li took a look at the proctor and calculated that there was a significant chance she was asleep already. He shrugged and took his quill, dipped it in the ink, and began the test.
As expected, the test was a joke. Li thumbed through the pages with incredible speed. His hand never stopped writing and he wrote with inhuman speeds, his superhuman agility letting him blitz through the entire ten-page packet within fifteen minutes.
Honestly, when the questions basically amounted to multiple choice where two out of four options were completely and ridiculously wrong, how could he ever fail? He would feel ashamed to even get one wrong. And the format? Rote memorization? Showing a diagram of a plant and asking what it was or showing the color of an elixir and asking what it did?
Absolutely elementary stuff. He wondered why he had even studied so long, but he understood that Aine's books weren't about passing this exam, they were much, much more. They explained brewing processes, when to best pick herbs, how to tend to them, what to do when they got out of control – basically the entire profession. In contrast, anyone that passed this test would have a paper license, but zero practical knowledge in practicing the trade.
When Li finished, he wiped his ink smeared hand on the last page of the test and took it up to the proctor's desk. He was supposed to wait an entire hour, but the proctor had been right: nobody else had shown up for the test, so he figured he had some leeway to do what he wanted.
He loudly slapped the test down on the desk and the proctor yelped in surprise as she clawed her hood down and blinked her eyes. She looked at the test, then at the timepiece, then at Li.
”You're done already?” she asked as she rubbed her eyes.
Li tapped at his test with his finger. ”Yes, and seeing as you're treating the exam's rules a little loosely, am I free to leave early?”
The proctor shrugged. ”Certainly.”
Li made his way to the door, but as he was opening it, he heard the proctor say, ”Wait up.”
He turned and saw her thumbing through his test, some semblance of energy restored to her as her eyes scanned the pages up and down.
”This is excellent. Not a single thing wrong.”
”Great,” said Li. ”Then when can I get my physical license?”
”Oh, that I can have delivered to you tomorrow on the address you put on your test, but that's not the problem.” She glanced up at Li and at the open door in his hands. ”Um, could you close the door? I'd like to speak with a little privacy.”
Li closed the door behind him and came up to the desk. He raised a brow. More bureaucratic slog to struggle through? ”What is it?”
The proctor stood and looked up at Li, her brows furrowed in worry. ”To be honest, I thought you just a foolhardy two-bit apprentice willing to risk his hide for a license, but this level of preparation exceeds industry standards. You are most certainly young talent, and I don't want to see it wasted.”
”You don't look a day older than me, and you're talking about young talent?” said Li.
The proctor shrugged. ”Bad habit. Long hours of study make me feel old, I suppose, yes. But that's beside the point. I meant to ask you, have you not heard of the contract?”
”I have. What about it?”
”Then you should know that even with this license, you cannot practice in Riviera. I can recommend you to several villages and towns outside the contract's range.”
”No. I am not moving. This is where my farm is, and I intend to stay on it.”
”For your safety, too.”
Li let out a laugh. ”Are you suggesting the crown will intervene? Sic knights on a random farmer? If that happens, I assure you I should not be the one whose safety you worry about.”
The proctor looked back at the door to make sure it was closed. ”Not the crown. The crown is reasonable. They would probably try and pay you off the land or give you work elsewhere. But Black Vine isn't so kind, no.”
”Black Vine? What was that again…the pharmacy?”
The proctor nodded in small, quick bursts. ”Yes, yes, that's the one. Biggest pharmacy in Riviera, has branches in all four cardinal cities, too. They're the frontrunners for getting that contract, and they'll stop at nothing to get it. Those men outside? Thugs they hired. Made sure nobody would ever want to take the exam. I'm sure they might even be able to bribe out your address too.”
”And the crown can afford to try and pay me off my land but not deal with criminals?”
The proctor made an expression like she tasted something bitter, something nasty, and said, ”Black Vine is far too powerful. Own all the drugs from the cold north down to the blazing south, and they've invested everywhere like a disease, in banks, in businesses, even orphanages. If the crown takes down Black Vine, the entire market here, not just the herbs, might just go belly up.
They've turned the sacred art of tending to nature into a pure business. Heresy and sacrilege to the forest goddess, I say, but what's my opinion against mountains of coin and hordes of armed muscle?”
Li sighed. ”Look, I understand your concern, but you do not have to worry about my safety.” He turned to the door. ”I'll be looking forward to getting that license.”
When Li left, he could see the group of men waiting in the fourth-floor hallway staring at him. He waved them a casual greeting before he made his way down the stairs and exited the city hall. He had a feeling he was going to see them soon, so might as well get the greetings out of the way beforehand.