When the sun rose, Nikolai didn't need the answer key anymore. He closed the book, went to his exam, and aced it. He left the GDZ link unclicked, knowing that some shortcuts come with a price—and that German grammar is best conquered with a pen, not a copy-paste.

The search query "uprazhneniia po grammatike nemetskogo iazyka narustrang gdz" translates to "German grammar exercises by Narustrang GDZ" (GDZ refers to "Gotovye Domashnie Zadaniya" or "Ready-made Homework Answers").

The first link didn't lead to a PDF of answers. Instead, it led to an old, archived forum from 2004. The top post was titled: It claimed that if you stared at the answer key long enough without actually learning the logic, the grammar would begin to change your reality. Nikolai laughed, found a different site, and quickly copied the answers for Exercise 5b.