The Pre-Exam Submission

When I opened my eyes, a breezy, grassy terrain greeted me, covered in a variety of flowers as far as I could see. I looked around and stared up at the fluffy clouds, but before I could make sense of it all, a hand suddenly phased through my chest.

I jolted and turned around, meeting the gaze of a stunningly beautiful woman with long, green hair, blue eyes, and large wings and in a white gown.

My fight or flight instincts kicked in. I jumped back on my feet and scurried away like a stray cat, fully alert and cautious. “No freaking way!” I shrieked. “Florathea?!”

The goddess softly giggled. “Interesting, this is the first time I can’t embrace a soul.”

“H-h-how are you back?! Where am I?!”

“Relax, I was just simply weaving a dream for you since you were drifting in the void.”

“What? A dream? What, you’re in my head? How?! What do you want from me?!”

“Well, since you keep phasing through all my attempts to embrace you, all my plans for you are now in tatters.” The figure stood up and turned around. “In that case, I have no reason to stick around. What a bizarre case you truly are, Haruma Kurimoto.”

“What?” I looked around my body. “What did you do to me?”

“Nothing for you to worry about.” Florathea walked away, her body disintegrating into butterflies. “You… share the same curse as me, and yet, yours is so much different from mine… I wonder why?”

“What curse?”

She scattered into the wind, refusing to answer any more of my questions. The rest of the flowery meadow followed with her, sending me back into the void.

⮽⮽⮽

Muffled, familiar voices gradually pulled me back to consciousness, followed by some aggressive shaking from my shoulders. I groaned and fluttered my eyes open, slowly registering Sloane’s and Dahlian’s faces in a blurry vision.

Also, why were they upside down?

“Oooii! Wake up!” Dahlian shouted, fervently slapping me. “You’re stuck in the walls again!”

I blinked at him, each slap clearing my groggy mind.

"Uh… u-uuagh?!” Abruptly snapped awake, I flailed around, the upper half of my body sticking out of the walls and facing upward. I tried moving my legs around, but that did nothing besides kicking some soft shrubs behind the wall.

Sloane and Dahlian grabbed my arms and started pulling me. With some effort, they managed to yank me back on the ground with a soft grunt.

“Urgh, maybe we should do something with this crazy curse soon,” said Dahlian.

I let out another groan and pushed myself back up. “Tell me about it,” I said, massaging my shoulders. “You’re here too, Sloane?”

Sloane nodded. “I found you two unconscious while I was out investigating on my own. What happened? Also, where’s Lora?”

My latest memories quickly returned to me, and I cursed under my breath. “They arrested Lora again!”

“Wh-what?”

Dahlian and I briefly summarized everything we’d been through since this morning, and Sloane did the same.

Apparently, he’d been investigating for clues on Florathea’s whereabouts, especially about the goddess’s main host. He’d recently finished asking the church and scouted some sketchy streets, but he didn’t make much progress besides arresting a few dozen lunatics.

“‘Just a few dozen,’ he says.” Dahlian whistled. “That’s a lot of arrests in one day.”

Sloane shrugged. “They’re all pretty simple-minded and share the same objective to leave some injuries on unsuspecting beggars, so it was easy to guess where they’d be lurking around.”

“Wait, what? They’re targeting poor people?”

He nodded, his expression grim. “I don’t know why either, but they’ve been attacking the poorer districts recently due to Florathea’s instructions.”

“The hell? Does the goddess have something against them?”

“Like I said, I don’t know. I don’t understand what a goddess like her would want from them. Nothing about this makes any sense.”

The brief moments with the two strangers from earlier today crossed my mind. I furrowed my brows and paced around.

“The poor… usually have very little to nothing to lose,” I murmured. “What if they’re trying to recruit them because of that reason? Because they know they have very few options, they’d lure them with a promise of a better life? That’s how most cults usually get new members, right?”

“Then why are they stabbing them?” asked Dahlian.

“Uh, right, good point. I have no idea then,” I said.

“C’mon, future Erudite Examinee! Keep thinking!”

“Cut me some slack! I’ve never done detective work before!”

“Might as well make this your first,” said Sloane. “You’ll be doing plenty of mystery solving in the real exams.”

“Oh, really? How’d you know that?” asked Dahlian.

He shrugged. “I sometimes watch over some exams whenever they take place in my home forest.”

“Ooh, that’s neat.”

I scratched my head, still deeply pondering. “I feel like I’m missing something here. Just why are they stabbing people? Are you sure they’re specifically after the poor?”

“I’m positive,” said Sloane. “I saw them ignoring the high and middle-class people and going for those without money.”

“Seriously, why’d they do that? That’s just cruel,” said Dahlian. “They wouldn’t be able to afford getting medicine or treatment, and even the church is charging a fee for healing magic, so they’re just left there to suffer.”

“Is that how they recruit them or something?” I asked. “The stabbers would conceal their identities, and someone else in their ranks comes along and pretends to help?”

“I mean, I guess that works? I don’t know, man. If I were them, I’d still refuse to join such a crazy group. Everyone in their right minds knows how terrible Florathea is.”

“That’s… not… true…”

A hoarse growl interrupted our conversation and made us jolt. We all whipped around and confronted a familiar, ragged stranger, eerily staring with glossy eyes.

“Florathea… is… the kindness goddess… to exist,” he croaked.

“The hell are you…” Dahlian widened his eyes. “Wait a second, aren’t you that homeless guy we saved a moment ago?”

“What?” asked Sloane. “You’ve found one of the cultists’ victims?”

“Uh, I think so,” I said. “He was bleeding his guts out when we found him in the alleyway and said someone in a robe stabbed him.”

The elf furrowed his brows and squinted at the man. “Did he… always behave like this?”

“No way, he sounded pretty normal when we found him.” Dahlian stepped forward. “Hey, man, what are you talking about?”

“Florathea, our beautiful, benevolent goddess… isn’t evil at all!” he shrieked, charging at us, arms wildly thrashing around almost like a zombie.

Though no matter how intimidating and terrifying he acted, Dahlian casually grabbed the stranger’s arm and swiftly pinned him down. “What the hell’s wrong with you?! Snap out of it!”

“He’s… acting like one of them,” I muttered, dread brewing in my stomach. “But, why? How? He was completely normal when we saved him!”

“Florathea… had embraced my soul in my slumber,” the stranger groaned. “And it was so, so warm, so gentle, so soothing… She, too, will embrace yours as well…”

I recalled that vivid dream and Florathea’s words a moment ago, rendering me speechless.

The stranger’s sudden conversion, my dream, the poverty-stricken victims, everything that happened earlier today…

I clutched my head, my eyes trembling.

The rift instance at the church, Entrophys’s warning, Father Anver’s suspicions…

I slowly turned to my friends. “Guys,” I sputtered. “I think… I figured it out.”

⮽⮽⮽

That night, I stepped into a quiet, lifeless alleyway basked in moonlight, confronting the familiar stranger who’d given me a pre-exam I’d never asked for.

“I’m ready to submit my answers,” I muttered.

The stranger beamed. “Excellent, I knew you could figure it out!” he said, applauding. “So, question one: What is my real identity?”

I pulled out a bloodstained card and tossed it on the ground in front of him. “You’re none other than Entrophys, The Laughing Pestilence, in human disguise.”

The stranger stretched his grin to an abnormal degree. “Correct.”

His body proceeded to twist, stretch, and squelch grotesquely until he transformed back into his normal, demonic form. “Question two,” he said. “How did Florathea manage to spread her influence in this city?”

“By attacking those who can’t afford treatment so that they’ll have no choice but to accept her followers’ help, corrupting people through healing magic.”

“Correct! Now, question three: Who is Florathea’s main host responsible for increasing their numbers?”

My face scrunched up, and I lowered my head.

“Now, I know the truth hurts, but it hurts more to deny it. I’m sure you know that.”

I inhaled. “The host responsible for spreading Florathea’s influence, the one who’s willing to heal anyone in her path, is… Lora.”

Silence briefly hung over the scene, frequently interrupted by howling wind and owls distantly hooting.

I blinked only once, and in that split-second moment, Entrophys’s mask switched into a wide, eerie smile.

“Correct. Full points for you.”