"Teo!" Oromi exclaimed at the loudest voice Riko had ever heard from her. Oromi was, in general, was never too verbal with her thoughts and stayed mum for the maximum part of any conversation.
"Yea yes, yes. What?"
"Where were you lost?"
"Ah, I was just reading about the instructions in the schedule card."
"Oh, yeah. I haven't gone through the details either." commented Rin.
"I was interested to know about the pill formation test in particular." Zen joined into the conversation.
Riko turned over to the Pill Formation Test page on the schedule card read out aloud: " The Pill Formation Test requires the candidate to form any type of support pill. The candidates will be allotted 3 hours to brew the pills.
As you might have studies in your schools, the pills are widely divided into 9 tiers based on their quality and effectiveness. Tier 1 to Tier 9. The higher quality pill will yield better scores. The candidates will also be scored based on the purity of the pill. Naturally, higher purity percentage will gain higher scores.
If the candidate brews 'x' tier pill with 'y' percentage purity, the brewer's final score will be calculated as follows:
Final score= 308*x + 4.4*y
This formula is valid until and unless the pill is perfected, that is, 100 percent yield is achieved. In the case of 100 percent yield, the formula given below is to be followed:
Final score= 1100*x
The test ends here. "
"Whoa! Why a different formula for 100 percent yield?" asked Teo with a glare of curiosity.
"I guess that is because a pill with 99.99 percent yield has much inferior results than a pill with 100 percent purity. Eventually, the effort to form a 100 percent yield is much higher than its immediate precedent. That is why they might have wanted to reward 100 percent purity differently." answered an informed Zen.
"They must have devised the formulae keeping the difficulty of forming the pill in mind." added Rin.
"Exactly."
"What about the written test?" asked Rin.
"The written test is just a basic intermediate level test based on general knowledge about the working of magic, the famous incidents mentioned in the history books of Varka and some application based questions. I don't think that it will be difficult based on reactions from previous year examinations." replied Zen.
"And lastly comes the Battle Simulation Test. It is named a test but it is actually a tournament. One major difference is that the result of the battle is not the only thing that matters in that test. The evaluators present at the scene will grade the participants on the basis of their performance and not just the result. It may well happen that a student knocked out in the very first round scores more than a student who has passed through many rounds." said Riko, apprized about the topic beforehand.
"How will the tournament take place? Isn't it going to be too long if they conduct it in a tournament style?"asked Rin.
"That is why to reduce the time taken and the hassle, they keep the first two rounds as Battle Royales. From a pool of 99-100 participants, only 5 proceed to the next round, which is why the role of an evaluator is so much more important. Most of the candidates will be knocked out in the first two rounds, maybe even the best performers, and those who hid through the entire round would sneakily pass through. To monitor a single Battle Royale, around 10 professionals will be hired."
"And after the second round, one on one battles?"
"Yes. Till they come out with one winner on top."
After a span of uncharacteristic silence from Teo, he released his pent up excitement: "OOOH, I can't wait for the tests to start!"