Embracing Magic - E.M Chapter 10 (Part 1)

Cory sighed again as he looked at the thickness of the dictionary. Just looking at it seemed suffocating.

“Cory. Be honest. Why have you only read this much? Did you work hard and only get this far, or did you not work hard at all?”

“I played around.”

“Ha, I knew it.”

Rodin knew that giving the children “autonomy” would lead to problems like this. It was easy to say they would study on their own, but few actually did it.

‘Even adults find it hard.’

He had seen this often at home.

His mother would plan to clean the house every ten days but rarely stuck to it.

His father, who always said he would clean the gutters before it rained, usually ended up rushing to do it after the rain had already come. His older and younger brothers were no different.

“Cory. If you study hard for the next month, how much more can you cover?”

Rodin pointed to the dictionary with his hand.

It was a signal to mark it.

Cory stared at the dictionary for a long time and then pointed to a part of the book with his finger.

It was roughly in the middle.

“Good. That much. Got it. Lant, how much have you covered?”

“About the same as Cory.”

“Point it out too. How much can you cover if you study hard for the next month?”

“This much.”

It was a bit less than Cory’s. They had covered about 10% of the dictionary so far, and estimated they could cover about 30% more in the next month, totaling 40%.

“Hedler, you’re fine.”

“Why me?”

“If I’m right, you’ll pass even without studying more.”

“Huh? I don’t even know half the words in this book.”

Despite being from a noble family and having had advanced studies, Hedler didn’t know even half of the words in the dictionary. The words Hedler didn’t know were ones that a child’s vocabulary couldn’t grasp.

“Let’s think about it. It’s impossible for you to memorize the entire dictionary in the remaining time. Agreed?”

“Agreed.”

“Same here.”

“Yeah. It’s impossible.”

The best would be to memorize everything, but given the time left and their intellectual capacities, it was impossible.

So the best method was to narrow the scope.

Even if it was a gamble, narrowing the scope was the only way.

“Since memorizing everything now is impossible, we’ll only memorize the words that are likely to be on the test.”

“Huh? How do you know what words will be on the test?”

“I don’t know. I’m not the one making the test. But I have an idea.”

Rodin paused and glanced around. They were all standing while talking.

“Let’s sit down first.”

“Okay.”

After confirming everyone was seated, Rodin began to speak.

“Let me be clear. If my idea is wrong, you’ll fail the test. You might not even get half right.”

“It’s fine. We don’t have any other plan anyway. Tell us your idea.”

“Alright, I’ll tell you. There are many words in that dictionary that you won’t use in everyday life. I bet the instructors don’t even know many of those words.”

“No way.”

“It’s true. There are many technical terms and words that are only used in writing, not speaking. I think we can exclude those words.”

Rodin’s idea was simple. They would only memorize the words used in everyday life and necessary for practical living.

“Are there a lot of those?”

“How many are there?”

“Can we memorize them all in a month?”

“Hold on. Let me think.”

Rodin closed his eyes and recalled the words he had seen in the dictionary.

Thousands of words flashed through his mind. He discarded many and selected a few, categorizing them separately.

“6,000 words. Can you memorize them?”

“How much is 6,000?”

“Cory and Lant said they covered about this much, right? If you add up the words they’ve seen, it’s roughly 3,000. So it’s about double.”

Cory and Lant had studied about 10% of the dictionary, which had 33,669 words. So 10% was over 3,000 words.

“Oh! We can do it. That much is doable.”

“You can’t slack off. Since we’re narrowing the test range, you must memorize the selected words perfectly. Can you do it?”

“Yes, we can.”

“What about me?”

Hedler interjected, but Rodin shook his head.

“Most of the words I select will be ones you already know. But just in case, you should review them too.”

“How will you select the words?”

“I’ll write them down. Everyone, get out your notebooks.”

Hedler, Lant, and Cory took out their notebooks. There were notebooks with phonetic symbols that Rodin had given them a month ago.

Rodin picked one notebook and began writing down words.

He wrote 30 words per page, including the words and their phonetic symbols, and added definitions for potentially confusing words.

After filling a page, he handed the notebook forward and started writing in a new one.

“What’s this?”

“Each of you studies with one notebook. We don’t have much time.”

“Ah!”

The first notebook with 30 words went to Lant. He immediately went to his desk and started studying.

Hedler looked at the words in his notebook and smiled, satisfied.

He already knew all the words.

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