The Night Rose

Chapter 20

After Arwin finished her inspection, she then looked at the tools and all of the things stacked next to the ship with a deep frown.

Seeing this, someone from the audience shouted out, "Do you just plan to stare at it."

"Stop pretending and give up already." Another one from the crowd yelled.

The elder snickered at the rest of the crowd was booing and laughing at her.

Arwin didn't care about the constant noise of ridicule around her. At that moment, she was in a world of her own. She was listing all the problems on the ship, noting them all inside her head.

After looking it through, she took a pencil and wrote the answers to those questions that needed it.

Some of the problems had to demonstrate and fix on the ship, and they were marked with a star, which could be dealt with later on.

As soon as Arwin was done with the paper, the shouting began again.

"What nonsense did you write there for you to finish that quickly?" they continued with the insults, “Go home!”

"Oh, lady, if you don't know the answers, don't just waste our time here!"

"Did you even read the questions at all?"

Despite all the ridicule, a small number of people actually started to root at Arwin and genuinely wanting to witness her skills. Especially from those females who want to see the males mouths shutting up and receive a very nice punch to their masculinity when they said that some of the jobs males could only do.

The women started to cheer for her- some of them understood what Arwin was doing.

The booing and shouting got even louder. More so, when Arwin started to discard some of the parts of the airship and tools.

She knew that they weren't needed on the ship and were placed there to confuse the test taker. However, those who didn't know this was thinking she was just playing around or plainly insane.

"Hey lady, are you really playing around here?"

"Do you even know how a tool looks like?"

The audience was sarcastically asking, and even some of who rooted at her previously started to doubt her.

Even Timothy had to mutter to himself. 'She knows what she's doing. She has to know what she is doing, right?'

Timothy doesn’t know her either. What if his wife was right or Silas was? What if she was just a scam? But he couldn’t deny such a powerful aura and atmosphere surrounding Arwin. It felt like a genius’.

Most were skeptical, while some of the elders and the guild mechanics who saw what she did and who also knew about the test were thinking deeply.

'Was this just a lucky accident, or she really know what she was doing?'

The question was even changed every time a new challenger came to prevent cheating just in case that the answers would leak into the city.

Tom, who saw what Arwin did, also started to think seriously. 'This must be just a lucky accident, right? If she really knows what she's doing, they will realize that I didn't even check her answers and just threw her out. They might check the records and see my little side job.'

Unknown to many, Tom was a corrupted guild worker who enjoys the benefits of under the table transactions. It was his profitable side job to let people pass through the tests if they paid enough.

For the longest time, he had been lucky to manipulate the records. He also managed to invent believable excuses on how or why some of the records disappeared. Tom could do it due to his background as Silas, son, even if he were only a bastard child.

Silas had lots of influence in the city, despite being rowdy and playboy most of the time. The higher-ups from the guild trusted Tom, while they also didn't want to make Silas angry.

It was well known that despite Tom being a bastard, he was still treated well by his father. Because of this, Tom's actions were never investigated.

But one of the elders suddenly got interested in Arwin earlier and had taken the latest records from the room, giving Tom no chance to clean or manipulate them earlier.

Since the elder was not yet calling him, that means the test was not yet checked. At that moment, Tom was racking his brains out to be able to come up with an excuse to get the elder out of the examination room and not continue to watch Arwin. After that, Tom can hire a thief to steal the test.

However, it was impossible with the situation. There were too many people, and his plan will inevitably fail.

Suddenly someone was tapping his shoulder, and Tom saw it was the same elder who had taken the records away.

"Tom, if I remember correctly, she didn't get any of the answers right. Was that correct?" The elder asked from Tom.

Tom let out a nervous chuckle before answering, "Yes, that is right. She failed horribly and got all of the answers wrong."

"I really need to watch the records at one point. I guess we have to thank the natives for creating the memory crystals as well as our alchemist and scientist for making the camera that uses the memory crystal to record things. It really is a wonderful device and really rare. We were lucky that the mainland branch actually gave us one to screen out the talented people so that our guild can flourish here. But Tom, look at her. She has almost finished the test." The elder said.

At the time when Tom was daydreaming, Arwin seemed to have already fixed and placed the motor at the airship. She was mostly done with the tasks on the list.

The noise level also had dropped quite a lot, but some people were still shouting out as it had been less than two hours after the test was started. They were all confused, ‘Was she finished already?’

When they were trying to remind them about the time that was still left, an older man walked into the test area and shouted out loudly.

"Everyone shut up for now! The test has ended. Let's leave the rest for my guilds mechanics to judge." He was the guild master of this branch. Everyone turned as quiet as they could.

Everyone was amazed; they were in awe. Arwin actually managed to do the impossible. It was an extraordinary sight, even for Timothy. He smiled and muttered to himself, ‘To think that I doubted Arwin for a second, my instincts were right- she is extraordinary.’

Timothy was smiling even more, but he worries that Arwin might desert them and find a much better offer in the guild. He tried to walk his way towards Arwin, but he was blocked by the people rummaging and curious about her work.

However, some were asking why some parts were still on the ground and why the test had ended so quickly as the ship didn't seem to be repaired at all.

But, the guild master was just looking at his mechanics as they marvel at the profound work that Arwin had left behind. All they were thinking was how clueless and naïve the people were not to notice how a prodigy- a genius stands before them.

It was a splendid job considering they created such a hard task. It was impossible in their head to fix something as complex as this airship- it would at least take them three days, but for Arwin, all it took was hours.

Arwin was obviously experienced. No, she seems to be a captain, but she’s a woman… was she not? The people’s thoughts got even messier.

"Who was your inspector at the test?" He asked Arwin.

Arwin looks at the crowd then back at him.

"It was a man named Tom, sir. Blond hair green and blue mixed eye color, he is little lanky sized and a shaved face around twenty years old." Arwin answered, and when Tom heard this, he gulped out and started to invent a story inside his head, considering an escape from this situation by an excuse.