The testing hall was fairly spacious. There were tables placed with around 6-feet of separation between them row- and column-wise.
The examinees started to take their seats starting from the front-most spots.
Eida walked up to the examiner's table right at the front of the hall and handed out the test papers face-down to all the occupied desks.
Following that, she waited for the clock at the front of the hall to perfectly reach the next hour and gestured for everyone to begin.
The test was an hour-long and there were 20 questions the examinees had to answer.
As Wei Zao inspected the questions, he quickly recollected where the pertaining information was located in the books inside the Omniscient Library. Cross-referencing was reasonably easy; the moment he thought of a particular search term, the library brought books related to it to the forefront.
Wei Zao found that nearly all the questions could be answered from the information in his Omniscient Library. So without wasting any more time, he started to write his responses.
Eida was observing the examinees from her desk. She saw a lot of confused expressions. Evidently, a lot of them weren't prepared. But as her eyes fell on Wei Zao, she was surprised.
The man was happily jotting down answers one after the other. As she saw his actions, she noticed that every time he finished a question he would read the next, stared blankly at the wall for a quick moment, and then answered it unwaveringly.
She didn't know what to think of his behaviour. She questioned whether he had already learned the basic knowledge and was purely reviewing the content back in the repository. That would make sense given how unperturbed he was in answering the questions.
Just as she was about to move her gaze back to the other examinees, Wei Zao stood up from his seat. Not even half an hour had passed and he already stood up? Eida thought he was giving up after realising that some of the questions were quite complicated. She wanted to return some words of consolation but to her surprise, he said, "I would like to hand in my answer sheet."
Observing his genuinely calm smile threw Eida for a loop. Without wasting a second she snatched the sheets from his hand and flipped through them.
'He answered all the questions! And that too in one shot? There aren't any scratches or error markings!' She exclaimed internally.
Without even reading the answers she knew that the man before her was quite knowledgeable. It was almost impossible to bullshit such verbose answers in a short time frame. He would have to prepare them before entering the hall, and who would do something so stupid?
Eida calmed herself and waved for Wei Zao to leave the hall. As he walked out, the other examinees sent a myriad of gazes his way. Some were envious, others were disdainful. But Wei Zao didn't care. He was confident in his responses, and he was already preparing for the next test.
As soon as he exited, Eida started to thoroughly read Wei Zao's answer sheets.
With every passing line of text, her expression grew more agitated.
The answers were precise to a T. It was almost as if he copied them from a book. That was definitely not the case since the hall was lined with ritual formations that recognised any transitioning mana fluctuations. Furthermore, he couldn't have smuggled in a book. This only meant that the man had properly memorised all this information.
Breaking protocol, she started to correct the answer sheets right there. As a 1-star alchemist, she was allowed to do so, but it was usually done after all the tests were collected.
Unsurprisingly, Wei Zao scored full marks. There weren't even any spelling mistakes. It was just too perfect.
Eida calmed herself and waited for all the examinees to hand in their sheets. The last one handed in his sheets right at the final minute, which irked Eida a little. Mainly because he had already closed his answer sheets and was simply staring at her during the last 15 minutes.
With the answer stack in hand, Eida rushed out in a brisk walk towards the branch manager's office.
Beyn Barr was the current manager of Radiant City's Alchemy Guild, and he was a 3-star alchemist. He was also Eida's father.
Eida impatiently knocked on the door and walked in as soon as she heard an affirming hum from within.
"Dad, check this out!" She said as she slid Wei Zao's paper across Beyn's desk.
Beyn glanced at the paper. As an advanced alchemist, the test was a trivial matter for Beyn. With a cursory look, he could determine the accuracy of the answers.
"Hmm. There doesn't seem to be anything wrong with it. What's the matter?" Beyn asked with a confused gaze.
"The examinee answered the paper in less than half an hour!" She exclaimed.
Beyn's raised his eyebrows. "The candidate is definitely impressive. He would be a good addition to our guild."
"I know. I was going to present him with the licence personally and possibly offer some personal tutoring. What do you think?" Eida asked in an expected tone.
"That's also a good idea! You are close to earning a 2-star licence, this could be a good opportunity to get yourself a promising apprentice. You know what? Let's go probe him out!" Beyn commented excitedly.
As the father-daughter duo made their way through the hallways they had a spring in their steps. The success of the different guilds depended primarily on the quality of the members in them. Alchemy was a difficult and expensive profession to get into. That, in and of itself, was a steep step to sway away potential entrants. Not even the prospect of raking in a boatload of cash, later on, was sufficient to draw in more people into the profession. This was why Beyn was excited at the prospect of unearthing an alchemical genius. Not only would it be beneficial for the branch, but it would also raise the competence of the guild as a whole.
Furthermore, there was also a custom amongst alchemists to take on an apprentice once they earned 2-stars. It was a tradition put in place to raise the skill floor of the guild members, and to improve the relationship between skill tiers within the guild. Ultimately, this custom favoured the apprentices as it gave them access to a high-level contact in the guild as well as a credible source of guidance in the profession.
Beyn's second purpose in personally visiting Wei Zao was to cultivate a decent student for his daughter. She was an extremely promising seed herself, and if her student wasn't up to the mark it would also hinder her progress.
Once the duo reached the front halls, they started to hear a commotion near one of the testing halls.
"Young man you cannot take the test! You don't have a practising licence yet!" A familiarly deep voice echoed from within, laced with a tinge of annoyance.
"But Sir, I just took the test. It said on the board that I'd receive the licence within half an hour from the test. But there seems to be a delay. I expressly signed up for the 1-star test consecutively after the practising licence test because of that," a younger masculine voice answered.
Beyn turned to his daughter and saw her furrowing her brows. He guessed that the voice probably belonged to Wei Zao. They hurried their steps and arrived outside the testing hall.
Outside the hall, one of the 2-star alchemists who usually handled the 1-star tests was irritatedly reprimanding Wei Zao.
"First off! You just attended the practising licence test. How can you be so certain that you even passed it?"
"I'm 100% confident that I passed it!" Wei Zao declared righteously.
Before the proctor could retaliate, Eida quickly interrupted and clarified, "Alchemist Rao, I procrastinated and delayed posting the marks. I actually came here to congratulate comrade Way, and present him with the practising licence."
"Alchemist Barr. It's all well and good that he passed, but does this make sense to you? This man just attempted the first test to qualify as a practising alchemist, how do you expect me to trust him with the equipment and materials from our storage?" alchemist Rao questioned.
Eida smiled wryly and turned towards her father. At this point, Beyn was a little disappointed with Wei Zao's behaviour. The man came across as extremely half-hearted. While Beyn was willing to believe that the man was a genius, to rush directly from the practising licence test to a 1-star test was asking for death. The jump in difficulty was not linear in any way. The former was fully theoretical and the latter involved practical work.
After contemplating, Beyn spoke up. "Alchemist Rao, let the man attempt the test. If he fails he will just have to reimburse us. The materials and tools accessible in the 1-star test are replaceable."
Beyn smirked faintly. If the man wanted to show off, Beyn was willing to entertain his antics. Like his daughter, he too believed that learning by falling was the best way. Right now, the man was probably riding high after passing an easy theoretical test. Experiencing the difficulty of brewing a potion would give him a rude awakening.
Again, while Beyn didn't wish ill of the young man. He hoped that the failure today would be a teaching moment for him about the difficulty of the occupation.
With that, alchemist Rao apprehensively led Wei Zao into the guild's storage.
While Wei Zao walked between the multitude of shelves, he was fascinated by the variety of interesting looking plants and ingredients. Most of them had such vibrant colours and shapes that he was completely daunted. One could never find anything like them in his old world. Some plants looked like animal parts and some animal parts looked like plants. Some fungi had a metallic appearance, and some metals sprouted like fungi.
For the 1-star test, the examinee had to brew a 1-star potion at a minimum. They could push for 2-star or above, but those were extremely tough since they involved mana infusion and other complicated techniques.
At first, Wei Zao was hoping to brew a basic revitalisation potion. After he earned the 1-star, he could gain access to the more obscure ingredients at a subsidised rate and brew the Bloodline Partial-Awakening potion for his student.
But he quickly changed his mind once he reached one of the farther shelves inside the storage room. In one of these shelves, Wei Zao found Abyssal Demon claw shavings.
Wei Zao's eyes widened in shock. But they quickly gained clarity as he changed his plan of action.