Cthulhu Gonfalon Chapter 401

Chapter 401: Chapter 111

Translator: Nyoi-Bo Studio Editor: Nyoi-Bo Studio
The first Civil Service Recruitment in the Republic of Northwest had attracted many people’s attention.
Although they did not understand what the so-called “civil servant” was, there were still many participants.
There were no fools. By careful thinking, they could infer that the “civil servant” should be the official who managed the daily affairs of the territory. According to the past tradition, officials were promoted by the Hill Lord. They were generally selected from the Hill Lord’s subordinates or relatives. It had been a rare case as the Republic of Northwest to directly select officials among the normal people.
It was just rare, but it did happen.
After all, the foundation of the Republic was weak; the number of its high-ranking officials was small, and so was the number of their relatives and subordinates. Thus, it was hard to promote enough officials after all.
That offered chances to everyone.
So in just three days, not to mention people with expertise in the four towns area had almost all signed up, many people even had managed to the Void City through the transportation portal to sign up.
Three days later, according to the final statistics, the number of registered people was over 10,000. Such a huge number made the statisticians stunned.
“Do we have so many positions to offer?” After receiving the statistics, Felix stopped for a moment and asked.
Mrs. Teague, the governor of the Void City, pondered for a while and shook her head.
“How many positions will be there?” Felix asked again.
“It has been counted. At present, our vacant positions…There are about three to four hundred in urgent need.”
“Make it more, five hundred. That means to choose one from at least twenty people…” Fred sighed, “I’m afraid there will be a mess.”
Although she had never experienced such a thing, she could understand it by simple imagination: 19 would be eliminated out of 20 talented people — If that was the case, things would be easier. But as the number expanded to over 10,000, it meant that more than 10,000 people would have been eliminated.
It definitely would cause a lot trouble, or she would swallow the statistic list!
It had proved that she was still too young and simple. There was still a lot for her to learn.
When Yan Xun got the report, he glanced at it carelessly, smiled and said, “The enrollment rate is five percent. It’s quite high.”
What? Quite high?! At what point?
Hearing that comment, Felix felt surprised and confused.
She couldn’t help asking why, and Yan Xun smiled and said, “It’s not too hard for twenty people to compete for a job. This is just a sign up, not even a written test.”
“Will the written test fail a lot of them?” Felix frowned and said, “There are too many people!”
“It might be. After all, it will be an examination.” Yan Xun said kind of irresponsibly, “If it’s still hard to choose, we can make the exam paper more difficult, or we can just choose the top few of them. There are always more solutions than problems.”
“An examination?” This was something different from a “written test” in her mind.
“Isn’t that something done at school?” She asked, “Doesn’t a written test mean to let the participants write something to prove that they are able to write and count?”
“How could it be!” Yan Xun opened his eyes wide. “If in that way, how can we judge the good and bad?”
Felix stopped again. She really hadn’t thought about that. In her opinion, the so-called written test was only a way to eliminate those who couldn’t read from the competition. Unexpectedly, Yan Xun wanted to set a high standard by imitating the school curriculum.
“If we want to recruit civil servants, we must take the exam first.” Yan Xun said, “Through the exam, screen out those who do not even have the basic level of education as well as those who have strange ideas and are not in tune with normal people; then eliminate those who are not competent and completely do not know how to do things well…After eliminating these worthless people, the rest is taken as effective registration.”
After thinking for quite a while, Felix realized what he meant, hesitated to ask, “But… Leave those illiterate people alone. How about those can read or count a little?”
“If they are not such qualified, how could they be civil servants?” Yan Xun laughed, “Being a civil servant, he has to write a report when something happens; write a note or sign when it’s his responsibility; at least he has to be able to understand the document by the superiors…I’m not asking them to write poems and operas or something like that, but they still need at least the ability to read, write and calculate.”
Felix frowned for a moment and then asked, “So, what is Your Majesty going to do with those who have been eliminated for their lack of education?”
“If they are interested in learning to read, they can apply for settlement and then go to literacy classes. The tuition fee is low and the course arrangement is loose. As long as they work hard, after half or a year, they will learn a lot of words. For those who have money or are willing to pay back money in the future can sign up for school. But now the school enrollment quota is very tight, they may not be able to get enrollment. As for those unwilling to learn, there is nothing I can do.” He laughed and said, “Can I force a man who doesn’t want to make a progress to learn?”
“…I was interested in doing that, but not for now. I have to manage more and more things now. I really don’t have enough energy.”
Felix quite understood Yan Xun. She kept silence for a moment and asked, “What should we do if those who are eliminated make trouble?”
Yan Xun sneered. “I’ll let Wor hold the written test then. I’d like to see who dare to be wild in front of the God of Knowledge!”
In fact, none.
In fact, some of the people who came to register this time had had doubtful origins and bad motives. However, no matter what their thoughts were, seeing the God of Knowledge descending into the world and holding the written exam by himself, they gave up their original intention.
Under the eyes of a real god? What a joke!
Of course, there were also people who were not afraid of death. But facing with a real god, it had been difficult for even those strong-willed people to bring up courage to do something. One or two of them had gone through repeated ideological struggles and had a slight impulse to go out. However, before they had made up their minds, they had been spotted by Wor. He waved his hand and took them directly to the sanctuary of the Kingdom of God.
As for these people, they had bitten their teeth tightly, promising to explode themselves in the examination hall at the beginning. Then they were taken to the Kingdom of God to face a giant jellyfish laughing in a scary way. Would they have a nervous breakdown or be crazy? No matter what, it was not within the scope of the civil service examination.
The written examination went very well since Wor had been the one holding it. As Yan Xun estimated, most of the applicants failed to get the lowest pass marks in the written examination and were eliminated.
That was definitely not caused by the written examination paper being too difficult, but because of the low level of education in this world.
The paper, written by Felix, had been divided into four parts. The first part was to judge whether thirty common words had been written correctly. The second part was ten easy addition and subtraction. The third part was to read a notice and write a brief summary of it. The fourth part was to listen to a civil dispute and write the way to deal with it.
In these four parts, if they finished the first two parts correctly, they could get the pass marks. In the view of Felix, it was almost the easiest exams. Not to mention the students from the magic school, even many of the miners at the negative energy mine could do that.
But it turned out that she had been too optimistic.
When she corrected the papers, she was almost collapsed by the messy mistakes. She rushed out of the office more than once and roared for a long time without any reason before she calmed down and started correcting the papers again.
Seeing her like that again and again, Yan Xun finally couldn’t take it. He took over the work of correcting the papers.
Those low-level mistakes were really maddening, but Yan Xun used his magic power and did not need to correct them by himself at all. He was able to do it all at once.
When the less than 20 percent passing rate came out, Felix was calm. She even asked curiously, “Your Majesty, did you lower the standard? How could the passing rate be so high?”
If it was before the exam, she would never have such an idea. But after being tortured by test papers full of various mistakes, she had completely lost confidence in the cultural level of the candidates, resulting in a serious illusion.
In her opinion, if 1/10 of these candidates could pass, she would be thankful.
It had proved that that was just prejudice.
Results of the written test were soon published, and the candidates did not make any trouble. After all, they knew the level of their knowledge very well. There was no one that thought he should have passed but didn’t. On the contrary, there were some people who stared at the blue “pass” behind their names on the list, didn’t move for a while and then giggled.
At that moment, if someone acted like Fan Jin, saying “Oh! I’m in!” It must be very suitable to the situation.
Of course, they were not in yet. There was still an interview.
The number of candidates had been cut from over 10,000 to less than 2,000, and among them 500 would be hired eventually. Such a proportion had made Yan Xun mutter several times, but nothing more than “Why did I never meet such a high admission rate at that time!”
As a regular college graduate, Yan Xun had also taken part in the civil servant examination before. However, students majored in arts were really not suitable for such an examination. His written test results were so bad that he had no qualification for an interview.
He was not the one to blame. There were cases that students majored in arts had passed the examination, but it was too rare!
It was only possible for those who were really good at basic knowledge.
However, if the exam paper could be as easy as this time, anyone could make it. Well, on the premise that the paper had been translated into Chinese…
The situation of the interview was slightly better than the written examination, at least it was not to eliminate more than 80% of the people — after screening, 500 relatively excellent people were finally selected. For the rest, if they were willing to settle down in the Republic of Northwest, they could jump the written examination into interview directly for the next recruitment. Otherwise they had to go through the written examination again.
Finally, more than 1,000 people chose to settle down. With those 500 recruited civil servants, the population of the Republic of Northwest increased by more than 1,500 at a dramatic rate. All of these people were highly qualified — compared to the average level of this world.
It made them all very happy, especially Felix, who was finally able to say goodbye to the mountains of papers and could hardly stopped laughing.
But Yan Xun was not that happy.
During the examination, he didn’t even find a truly talent.
He had thought that holding such a big event would attract a group of talents. However, he had not expected that he wouldn’t find even one brilliant people among those candidates!
That made him sigh and gloomy for a while.
A few days later, Morani came to visit him occasionally to discuss making equipment for oracles. Seeing his bitter face, Morani could not help asking.
When he heard that Yan Xun wanted to find some outstanding talents, he was silent for a moment and said, “If you don’t mind, I have someone to recommend to you.”
“Who?” Yan Xun was stunned, then asked happily.
“He was the famous vagrant hero, known by people as Paul the Ranger. He was once almost succeeded to be a real god, but he gave it up. Now he is kind of an evil god, a rebuilt brave lion, Leonard.” Morani thought about it and added, “He once was my voter, now my enemy.”