Chapter 3
Victor, one month into his transmigration.
His greatest achievement so far.
Getting rejected at the Academy entrance.
"I guess Grandia Academy isn't what it used to be. Seeing someone so utterly unqualified try to enroll..."
The Teaching Assistant sighed loudly, making sure he was heard.
A boy stood awkwardly in front of him.
Applicant number 3720. Real name, Victor.
The Teaching Assistant clicked his tongue in clear disapproval.
'Tsk... He even looks ridiculous.'
Perhaps it was because of the Mask on his face.
A Clown Mask with a wide, exaggerated grin.
If it was a fashion statement, it showed a truly eccentric sense of aesthetics.
Thanks to that, the Teaching Assistant couldn't shake an unsettling feeling.
'What a mess. A complete mess.'
He flipped through the measurement results.
The glowing Crystal Ball displayed the data.
[Victor]
Theory: A+
Stamina: E
Strength: E
Agility: E
Holy Power: E
Curse Resistance: E
Mana Sensitivity: E
He had hit rock bottom, setting today's lowest scores in everything except theory.
How could someone like this even dream of taking the entrance exam?
With a Stat like his, he would struggle in a fight to the death against a mere Goblin.
Put bluntly, he was nothing more than a trash mob.
'What a joke of a kid.'
You saw them from time to time.
Fools blinded by their dreams, chasing impossible goals.
The Teaching Assistant absolutely despised that kind of trash.
Yet, even as he clicked his tongue, the Clown in front of him kept up his cheeky attitude.
"Oh? Are my test results really that bad?"
"Look for yourself if you have eyes. Your overall grade is an E."
"Wait, doesn't E stand for Excellent?"
"Then what does A stand for?"
"Asshole? An idiot?"
"Do you really think that makes any sense?"
The boy responded with ridiculous innocence, as if he genuinely had no idea.
Strangely enough, the reaction perfectly matched his Clown Mask.
The Teaching Assistant simply ignored him, moving on to explain the final part of the exam.
"This is the final phase. Your last test is a sparring match against the assigned Teaching Assistant."
"A sparring match, huh."
"You could get hurt. In fact, quite a few people get seriously injured every year. I suggest you withdraw while you still can. With your skills, you won't even come close to passing—you'll just leave here on a stretcher with broken bones."
"You're breaking my heart. I came all this way, so naturally, I have to see it through to the end, right? Besides, my test results aren't finalized yet."
The Clown replied in a thoroughly relaxed tone.
The Teaching Assistant could only snort in derision.
"Ha."
Not finalized, huh.
It wasn't exactly a lie.
At least in theory, he was right.
It would be a different story if he had failed everything, but he had scored perfectly on the theory portion.
If he managed a perfect score in this final practical exam, he could still barely scrape by.
'He could barely qualify as a Bottom Student.'
The Lower Class—most likely, the Bottom Student of Class E.
But that was only if he managed a perfect score on the practical exam.
'It doesn't make any sense logically.'
The lowest possible scores in everything except theory.
Stamina, Strength, Magic Power... he didn't excel in a single area.
No, he was exceptionally terrible at all of them.
And he expected to get a perfect score on the practical exam like that?
In a one-on-one sparring match against a Teaching Assistant, no less?
"I don't know if he's just being stubborn, or if he really has no idea of his own place..."
Even so, he couldn't just turn away someone who wanted to take the test.
The Teaching Assistant figured he would have to hold back as much as possible to avoid hurting him.
"The practical exam is simple. Land three hits within ten minutes of the start of the match."
"Three times, huh."
"Any method is fine. It doesn't even have to be a solid strike. A brief touch is good enough."
"So you're saying I just need to graze you. And three times in ten minutes. Isn't that a little too easy?"
"...."
As if.
He stared at the Clown, his eyes conveying that exact sentiment.
The boy scratched his head awkwardly.
"Um... let's just give it a try."
"Just be careful not to get hurt."
The passing condition the Teaching Assistant had set.
Normally, the top-tier students at the Academy would pass this test without any issues.
However, even the mid-tier students struggled with it, and those below them had a hard time landing even a single graze, let alone three hits.
After all, the Teaching Assistants didn't just stand there like scarecrows.
By the time the lower-ranked students barely managed to land one hit, the Teaching Assistant would have landed more than five strikes of their own.
"Tsk."
It was customary for Teaching Assistant positions to be held by Graduates who had finished with excellent grades.
To the examinees who were little more than greenhorns, this meant they were facing an insurmountable wall.
"Do we start right away?"
"Come at me whenever you're ready."
The Clown wasn't even holding a weapon.
Just an old-fashioned Robe and that bizarrely shaped Mask.
The Teaching Assistant let out a sigh, losing count of how many times he had done so.
'It seems he really has no intention of giving up.'
Eventually, the Teaching Assistant got into a stance.
With tightly clenched fists.
Meanwhile, the Clown pulled a Tree Branch out from inside his clothes.
The Teaching Assistant wondered if it was a Wand for Sorcery or a Magic Tool, but it was neither.
It was just an ordinary, unmodified Tree Branch you could easily find lying on the side of the road.
"Hehe."
The boy fiddled with the Tree Branch.
Who knows what he was trying to do, but he kept repeatedly passing it back and forth between his hands.
'Is he trying to stall for time?'
Just as he tilted his head in confusion, the Teaching Assistant noticed something strange.
It was faint, but the space around the Tree Branch was shimmering like a heat haze.
His vision began to warp and distort in a bizarre way.
"...?"
"Well then, I'll be starting right now."
Before he could even react, the Clown leaped forward.
The boy charged straight ahead in a linear path.
Crack, cr-crack-!
The leaves trembled along with a noise that sounded like glass shattering.
As if caught in the resulting backlash, pitch-black cracks formed in midair.
"What...?!"
The Teaching Assistant panicked.
Because it was a sight he hadn't expected in the slightest.
Consequently, his fist shot out on pure reflex.
Whoosh-!
A cleanly thrown straight punch.
'A hit.'
A strike that perfectly predicted the path of movement.
He was certain it was a perfect blow.
However.
"...?!"
As if betraying his certainty, his fist met only empty air.
There was no sensation of impact, leaving only the feeling of having missed completely.
Swoosh-!
The Teaching Assistant stumbled forward from the momentum.
The Clown had vanished from his field of vision.
The figure seemed to flicker like static before scattering away.
'He vanished...?'
In that brief moment of panic.
Tap-.
Someone tapped him on the shoulder from behind.
"That's one."
"...?!"
Startled, he spun around to find the Clown standing there with a wide grin.
The eyes and the corners of the Mask's mouth seemed stretched even wider than before.
The Teaching Assistant swatted the arm away and stepped back.
However, the boy had disappeared from right in front of him once again.
Tap-.
Once again, the Tree Branch touched his shoulder.
"That's two."
"What...!"
Swish-!
He swung his arm wildly, but the Clown was nowhere to be found.
He was standing directly in front of the Teaching Assistant, quite a distance away.
It was as if he had been standing there the entire time.
He just stood there blankly, tilting his head back and forth at a steady rhythm.
"...."
Was he seeing a Hallucination?
Could he be an Illusionist?
Impossible.
The boy's Mana Sensitivity was undoubtedly an E-rank.
It should be impossible for him to even feel Mana, let alone use Magic.
"Teaching Assistant?"
"...."
"Are you alright? There's still one hit left."
If so.
Then how was this situation supposed to be explained?
Movements he couldn't track, positions changing in the blink of an eye.
'What exactly is happening to me?'
He caught a glimpse of the eyes behind the Mask.
For a second, he thought he saw them flash a brilliant, bloody red.
No.
Was it really just his imagination?
The corners of the Clown Mask's mouth split wide open.
A massive, gaping maw appeared, dripping tears of blood.
In place of a tongue, dozens of sticky tentacles squirmed and writhed.
Shiver-.
"Gasp, gasp...!"
It was an illusion.
He blinked once, and everything returned to normal.
The Mask had no red light, no tears of blood, and no tentacles.
It was just smiling as ominously as before.
'A Hallucination? A curse? A dream? Or perhaps....'
It was none of those.
This was.
"I'll go again."
"...!"
He started moving from over there again.
The Teaching Assistant kept his eyes wide open so as not to miss a single movement.
Tap, tap-tap-.
Footsteps approaching in a somewhat frivolous manner.
He seemed to take a few steps forward, then stepped back, and even executed a graceful spin.
'What the... what the hell is that!'
It was a gait whose intentions were completely impossible to read.
In his entire life, he had never seen such clumsy movements.
The Teaching Assistant tightly clenched his fists.
"Hmph...!"
After predicting the boy's path of movement, he loaded Magic at his fingertips.
He abandoned the idea of subduing him without causing injury.
An unpredictable opponent.
Even if it hurt a little, he decided to suppress him with absolute certainty.
It was drawn tautly, as if a white Arrow had been nocked on a bowstring.
-Lightning Magic 3rd Form-
'Lightning Arrow'
Crackle-!
A Flash and Electric Current shooting out in all directions.
He was confident that he had definitely caught him this time, but.
Zip-.
He vanished.
His feet flickered like static, and the blur spread across his entire body.
When he opened his eyes again, the Clown was gone from his sight....
"That makes three."
Tap-.
Sure enough, he appeared from behind his back.
The Tree Branch was lightly placed against his shoulder.
A chilling sensation swept past the nape of his neck.
The Teaching Assistant didn't even look back, simply standing there in a daze.
'This is....'
No.
It wasn't that his eyes couldn't keep up.
It wasn't something on such a simple level.
He couldn't feel any power at all.
He couldn't detect the slightest hint of dark arts, Mana, or Holy Power.
"What in the world...."
The Teaching Assistant muttered, his mind completely blank.
"Just how...?"
An E-rank in every Stat.
It was a movement that was absolutely impossible to display with a grade like that.
Thud, thud-.
Footsteps echoing unusually loud.
The Clown smoothly approached and leaned his head out in front of the Teaching Assistant.
"Oh?"
The Mask.
Smiling.
"Is there some kind of problem?"
The Teaching Assistant held his breath.
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
You're all caught up! Follow the story on NovelDex!
https://noveldex.io/series/mistaken-for-a-masked-op-character
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━