Chapter 22 "You Are Not Joyce"
Edith casually threw the bulging Clark grass into the boiling crucible, and the thing screamed as soon as it came into contact with the hot water. The sound was secondary, but the medicinal materials inside, which had been digested into a paste, were bubbling out, and directly putting it into the water would easily affect the medicinal properties.
Edith picked up a piece of charcoal from the burning wood on the ground and stuffed it straight into Clark's open mouth.
A hissing sound spread out immediately, and the hot edge of the charcoal stuck to its mouth, blocking the digested food firmly in the center. Nina turned her head reluctantly and silently threw two more pieces of wood under the crucible.
The flames rose with a bang, and the Clark grass completely stopped making any sound. Edith raised her eyebrows and tilted her head. Nina, who was caught in her sight, jumped up as if she had done something wrong. She blushed and said hesitantly, "I'm sorry... I want the fire to be stronger so it can die faster and suffer less."
Edith gave a silent thumbs-up.
Very good, the most frightening thing for a pharmacist is being soft-hearted. There are all kinds of monsters, many of which have human faces or animal appearances, but most of them have no intelligence. If you can't kill them out of pity, it may delay the best treatment time for the patient.
Nina is indeed a good candidate for studying pharmacy.
"It's a good idea, but the temperature of the medicine is also very important. Too much or too little won't work." She retracted her hand, waved her wand, and chanted a few spells. The flames immediately returned to their original height. "Okay, that's it. I'll put a protective shield to prevent the wind. Let it boil on its own tonight. It will be ready tomorrow morning."
"Is it ready? Dinner is ready too." Heda spoke at the right time, calling the two's attention back to the campfire. The whole fat hare was split in half by Lynch, skewered on a branch protected by a spell, and rolled up and down in the campfire. The flames licked, and a crackling sound different from that of refining medicine reached their ears. Edith realized belatedly that she was hungry.
She walked over and sat down. Lynch was holding the knife like a sword, not very skillfully scratching the rabbit's skin. The crisp snapping sound and the amber oil oozing out of the cracks in the skin showed that it was just at its best edible state.
The rough barbecue technique that Edith taught them was new to these young ladies and gentlemen who were used to fine meals - and also to the nobles outside the projection.
The Beaujolais College Observation Deck.
Five days was too long, and most of the nobles did not have the patience to watch the entire exam, so they only left some servants behind to avoid any emergencies.
But Marquis Charles was an exception. He only had Lynch as his child, and fearing that something might go wrong, he would not leave the viewing stand unless his son fell asleep or stopped to rest.
After four days, Lynch's performance was pretty good, which somewhat eased the pain brought by his partner's betrayal.
But the one who changed his mind the most was Edith. Even though he was dissatisfied with her in every way, he had to admit that her strength was indeed amazing.
Is this the vision of the Great Mage...
If, if he had kept Edith...
Especially after the only son of the merchant family he had chosen left, Marquis Charles couldn't help feeling a little jealous of Edith's care for Hedda.
It was too late to regret, so he could only find fault with other things to try to make himself feel better.
"How can you eat this kind of thing!"
He muttered in a weak voice: "There is no aristocratic manner at all, really, really——"
He looked at other corners of the dense forest in the projection, and saw countless people who were forced to sleep with hunger because they could not find enough supplies and were helpless against wild animals. They stopped talking as if their throats were strangled.
After a long pause, he said angrily: "Eat, eat! All you know is eating! Why don't you rest early and get to the Central Falls early tomorrow!"
......
No words were spoken that night.
Edith was not sleeping soundly—she herself was not used to sleeping soundly in unfamiliar places—and the faint smell of medicine after the potion was refined woke her up. She got up with a yawn, walked to the crucible, stirred it a few times, took a sip, and was very satisfied: "Full score!"
After taking this bite, the Demon Bird will be cured.
Without disturbing the others, she quietly scooped a bird's worth of medicine with a wooden spoon and walked to the cage protector from last night, intending to feed the medicine quietly. Unexpectedly, as she approached, she heard a slight chirping sound.
Edith's face suddenly changed.
"Barney! The birds have already hatched, how come you don't feel anything at all!"
......
"I was wondering why I didn't sleep well last night..." Barney's eyes were lifeless, his face was blue, his body was swollen, and he sat on the ground in a daze. "This egg actually hatched on the last day."
Although everyone initially judged that it would hatch in another day, after all, everyone was in a hurry and failed to provide a sufficient magical environment for the cages, so this group of birds only slowly broke out of their shells today.
"Thank you for your hard work." Heda looked at Barney's miserable mental state and silently took a step back. "Fourteen baby birds, plus the mother bird, it's like you fed fifteen children in one night - and your magic power hasn't been drained yet."
"Great!" She suddenly became serious, opened her hands, raised her head, and squinted at the sunlight shining above her head. "Fourteen innocent creatures were born into the world, and we are the witnesses of all this. There must be a guiding hand of fate!"
Edith said nothing, but just stuffed medicine into each bird's mouth.
Fortunately, she was used to spending lavishly, and the medicine she made was enough to feed fifty demon-eating birds. Although these cubs were not sick, they were weak and needed to drink more medicine to return to health standards.
"Not bad. It looks like the medicine is working well." Edith gave each bird a spoonful of medicine and observed them for an hour without stopping. Except for the sick bird that Joyce gave them at the beginning, which was still not very active, the other young birds became very lively.
However, after a quick check, Edith found that the primitive bird had recovered from its illness, but it was still a little unresponsive. So she felt relieved and in a good mood asked everyone to pack up.
She poured the extra medicine into a bottle, strung it into a string and tied it around her waist, covering it with clothes; the nest of magic-eating birds with their babies were cast under a silencing spell, placed in a covered cauldron, and hidden in a large bag of luggage so that they would not be conspicuous.
After finishing everything, everyone walked towards the central waterfall with great momentum.
From the morning of the second day to the evening of the third day, they searched for herbs and supplies while figuring out the route from the edge of the dense forest to the central waterfall. Barney, who has a strong sense of direction, drew a map to help them complete the task smoothly today.
According to Joyce's additional instructions, she would start receiving demon-eating birds from noon until sunset. Edith looked down at her watch. Everyone had been delayed for a while this morning. It was now ten o'clock. It would take about two hours to walk to the central waterfall, so she should be able to catch up with the first group to complete the task.
If everything went well, she would be able to leave here in two hours, take a hot bath, and have a comfortable sleep in bed.
"——Why did it take only an hour and a half to arrive?"
Edith looked at the map, a trace of confusion in her mind.
"I'm not sure. Did we walk too fast today?" Heda was optimistic. "It's okay. Let's find a place to wait. At this time, everyone is thinking about completing the mission. I guess no one will trip up others."
"Unless they haven't cured their own birds yet, and they plan to rely on us to get through. But the five of us are better than them anyway. Even if they are robbed, we still have 15 backup options. We won't fail."
Edith's expression remained serious: "...I still feel it's not right."
According to their last measurement, the reasonable walking time for this distance should be two hours and fifteen minutes, but that was the speed without luggage. Moreover, this time they stopped from time to time to check the health of the demon-eating bird, and it would definitely take longer to walk all the time.
There is no reason to finish the route 45 minutes early in this case.
"But we have been following the map, so we should be right." After listening to Edith's concerns, Nina whispered to comfort her, "The central waterfall is right in front of us, and the magic fluctuations are the same as last time - what's more, you can see that all the candidates are hiding here."
Edith raised her eyelids. As Nina said, there were countless people of her age hiding in the trees not far away, in the grass under the trees, in the haystacks in the distance, and behind the large tree stumps.
Everyone kept to themselves, nodded to each other, and then quietly hugged their own cages. The group huddled together and waited quietly for Joyce to appear and announce the end of the exam.
Edith's frown deepened.
"Don't you find it strange?" she paused for a moment and said softly.
"Now is the time when the group is the most complete. Everyone has a demon-eating bird in their hands. It is also the best time for candidates who have not yet cured their group's target to snatch things."
“If we don’t act now, when Joyce shows up in half an hour and everyone turns in the cages to complete the mission, we won’t have another chance.”
"Maybe everyone has finished it? No one needs to grab it?" Barney said uncertainly.
Edith glanced at him and said, "Do you really think that this assessment is so simple that everyone can complete it?"
Barney shut up.
Indeed...spells and potions don't work, and they have to use ordinary herbs to make potions; catching the devil bird is even more difficult, as it is naturally paralyzed, has no fixed nest, is cautious, and can break most spells - if Edith wasn't powerful enough, unless they were lucky, the other four people in their group combined would not be able to complete a single condition.
"You suspect that these people are hallucinations?" Heda lowered his voice. "This can be ruled out. It's unlikely."
She looked at Edith's eyes and explained, "The girl behind me on the left is a friend I met at the tea party. She uses a specific gesture to greet me. I just waved to her, and she responded with the correct gesture. Outsiders can't know it so clearly."
"At least they're real."
Edith pursed her lips. She believed what Hedda said, but this "clue" made her mind even more confused.
"...Wait a minute, let's not be the first to rush up and hand it in." She could only ask everyone to be quiet first, "and see what the others are doing."
Half an hour passed in a flash.
Edith looked at her watch and not a second late, Joyce's figure appeared in mid-air, turning from nothingness into reality.
"Congratulations on completing the assessment." She looked at the people on the ground and smiled with satisfaction. "You are all the talents that Beunis College really needs. The future of the kingdom is in your hands."
Edith could feel Hedda unable to help straightening her back and holding her head high.
"Surviving alone in the jungle for five days is a big challenge for you. Thank you for your hard work. We will not waste any more time. We will start the cage handover now. After the handover, the teleportation array behind me will take you back to Bo Yunis College. You can leave the scene directly and wait for the results to be checked in three days." She turned to the side, revealing the golden teleportation array behind her. "Now, line up in front of me and we will hand over in turn - please note that the handover order will also affect the test results."
As soon as she finished speaking, the crowd hiding around her all rushed forward - the handover order affects the results! They have come this far, there is no reason to lose at the last minute.
Barney and Nina were also a little anxious. "The teleportation array is real. A magic array of this level can never be faked. The magic fluctuations around Joyce are also very strong. It's him." Nina's voice was relatively low, while Barney shouted directly: "Hurry up, hurry up, if you want to observe, you can also observe while waiting in line. There's no need to wait here stupidly."
Edith, hugging the cage, remained motionless.
She ignored him and waited quietly for the queue to shorten inch by inch. More and more people stood in front of the teleportation array, waiting for Joyce's order to jump in. The only group left in the dense forest without queuing was Edith's group and the group of girls on the left rear that was stopped by Hedda. The three groups each guarded a corner until the line was completely formed and the group that was stopped by Hedda finally couldn't hold it anymore.
"Damn it, don't let your paranoia take us with you!" The team leader took away Heda's friends who tried to stay, and became the last group to submit the cage. Joyce used a spell to wrap the chirping healthy birds in a protective shield, and looked kindly in the direction of the last two groups: "What about you? Why don't you hand it in?"
She glanced at the other students who were eager to move and deliberately said, "This batch of teleportation arrays can still accommodate two more groups. If you don't hand it in, they will have to wait until the rest of the people arrive before they can leave."
The students who couldn't wait to go home were immediately angry. "Why are you hesitating? You can't use such a boring method to improve your impression points in front of the teacher!" "Damn it, you act like you are very thoughtful and frown." "Don't waste our time, okay?"
It is difficult for ordinary people to withstand this kind of pressure, but Edith is not an ordinary person.
She smiled, walked out ahead of the other group, and handed over the cage.
Joyce smiled amiably and reached out to take it: "There's only one set left—"
Her words suddenly froze in her throat.
——What was handed to her was not a cage, but Edith's hand.
"You're not Joyce."
Edith whispered amid the horrified gazes of the students.
"How did you know?" "Joyce" raised his eyebrows, but pretended to be casually trying to shake off the other person with his hands.
Edith smiled as if she had thought of something: "Joyce wouldn't say 'It's been hard staying for five days.'"
"She would just say: 'You are a bunch of useless people. You should be thrown here to train for a year. You are worse than shit.'"
After saying that, Edith exerted force with her hand, and "Joyce's" "skin" began to shatter from the arm, like a towel with loose fibers that had been wrung and washed countless times, and then dissipated in the wind.
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