There was a heavy sense of frustration hanging over all the warriors. Why couldn’t they just use their Qi? Why couldn’t they rely on the techniques they had trained so hard to master? So far, they had only demonstrated a single move each, and even then, it was tough to come up with techniques fueled by Qi that could convincingly pass as magic.
It was becoming painfully clear, they weren’t going to be able to just wing it once they entered the academy. Raze’s goal wasn’t just for them to pass. He wanted every one of them to be selected for the prestigious Magic Exchange.
And if they wanted that, they couldn’t afford to get caught slipping. They needed to use their minds more in battle. Sadly, that didn’t seem to be one of their strongest skills.
“You… you haven’t really fought yet, have you?” Luka said, turning to Raze. Once again, Raze had effortlessly dispersed the flaming rocks coming his way by using wind magic, turning them into harmless embers before they could even get close.
“Do you think this assessment isn’t important? That you’ve already passed without lifting a finger?” Luka pressed, clearly annoyed.
“It’s not that,” Raze replied calmly as he stepped forward. “I just thought that if I got involved in this assessment, it would’ve ended before anyone else had a chance to show what they could do. I figured it was better if you saw their skills first.”
Luka’s lips curled into a wide, challenging grin. Without warning, he lifted his hands and summoned two massive fists made of stone from the ground beneath Raze’s feet.
“I see… sounds to me like someone’s got a confidence problem,” Luka said. “And maybe, just maybe, someone needs to be knocked down a few pegs. You might be strong and skilled when it comes to lightning magic, but its biggest weakness has always been Earth!”
The two fists slammed down where Raze stood, shattering the floor beneath them. Immediately after, several whirlwinds spun to life, filled with broken rocks, and came flying straight at Raze.
Sparks of lightning flickered around his feet. Each step left behind a flash of crackling energy as he zipped across the floor, not using any Qi at all, just pure, raw magic. Still, his movement wasn’t as free as it usually was when fueled by Qi. Without it, he could only propel himself straight ahead. If he wanted to change directions, he had to manually pivot his body and recalculate the perfect charge of lightning to send him darting somewhere new.
Even so, it was just enough to avoid getting hit.
Then, like before, Raze focused the lightning into his arm, compressing it until it formed a glowing, concentrated bolt. He hurled it toward Luka. The professor managed to dodge, raising a thick wall of earth to block it. The bolt struck, pierced the wall, and then veered off course, slamming harmlessly into the ground.
Raze continued to move, circling the area. Again and again, he formed lightning bolts and hurled them toward the professor. Five in total. Each time, Luka either dodged or deflected the attacks.
“These aren’t like those weak golems you destroyed earlier,” Luka said. “These walls are reinforced. That’s why your lightning isn’t doing a thing.”
“Right,” Raze replied with a nod. “But in a fight between mages… it’s usually the one who sets the best trap that wins.”
The moment he said that, he suddenly dropped to the ground, planting both hands flat on the floor. Luka’s eyes widened as he realized what had just happened.
The lightning bolts, each one Raze had thrown, were now embedded into the ground in a wide hexagonal formation. The rods were still pulsing with energy.
And now, Raze’s hands were down for a reason.
Lightning flowed from his fingertips, snaking across the floor. As soon as the current touched the rods, they absorbed the power and linked up, each one connecting to the next in the six-point trap. An electric circuit came to life in an instant, a field of energy forming in the middle, right where Luka stood.
A flash of light exploded around him, and suddenly the professor’s entire body was shaking, caught in the center of the trap.
The others, having mostly dealt with their own tests, stood there stunned, watching as the lightning danced violently over Luka’s body.
“Uh… is he going to be okay?” Liam asked, cautiously stepping forward. “I mean, if you kill a professor, that’s gotta be… really bad, right? I get that you wanted to make an impression, but this might be overkill.”
Raze didn’t respond right away. He stared at the lightning, still crackling around Luka. He had assumed the professor would be wearing a decent robe, something with proper protection, but maybe he hadn’t expected to actually fight a student of Raze’s level.
“He’ll be okay… I think,” Raze finally muttered.
They waited. A full two minutes passed before the lightning finally died down. Luka collapsed to the floor, smoke rising off his singed clothes.
“That’s it. You killed him,” Dame groaned, smacking his forehead with his palm. “Why does this feel like Pagna all over again?”
“How do you know about that?” Raze asked, raising an eyebrow.
“Maybe we can hide the body,” Liam joked. “You know, stage a heart attack or something? Oh wait, never mind. The system says he’s still alive.”
As the group bickered, Safa sprinted forward, ignoring them all. She didn’t hesitate to use her Light magic, activating a healing spell immediately.
“It’s a good thing these barrier walls are still up around us,” Beatrix remarked. “If the rest of the academy saw this… I’m pretty sure they’d all be losing their minds right now.”
“Yeah… but after what just happened, are they even going to let us into the academy?” Liam asked. That question was on everyone’s mind.
Those who were more sensitive to mana, like the teachers back at the academy, could definitely feel that the fight had ended. But they were probably wondering the same thing: Why hadn’t the walls come down yet? If only they knew what had really happened inside.
Not long after, Luka’s eyes fluttered open. He looked up and saw all the students staring at him like he had just come back from the dead.
“You all passed,” Luka said weakly. “I’ll… see you around the academy.”
***
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Thanks to Safa’s healing abilities, nearly all of the injuries Professor Luka had suffered were gone, he was practically as good as new. Still, every so often, he’d get random goosebumps or experience a faint jolt of static running through his body. Anything he touched would spark slightly, leaving a small shock behind.
Right now, though, Professor Luka was leading the group on a full tour of the academy grounds.
The hallways were mostly empty, as the current students were still in class. It was the perfect time for Luka to show them around without distractions.
“Our facilities are still among the best you’ll find in any academy,” Luka explained proudly as they walked. “People always talk about the Central Academy being the best place for magic progress, but I truly believe that talented students can thrive in other environments too.”
Raze silently agreed with that sentiment. Talent was talent, wherever it came from. Still, there was a reason the Central Academy had its unmatched reputation: the teachers. While the facilities at this school weren’t lacking compared to Central, the instructors made all the difference.
How could any regular teacher help a Six Star Mage progress? They could try their best, of course, but if they really cared about the student’s growth, the smartest move would be to send them to the Central Academy.
Even though Raze personally didn’t like Ibarin, the man was a Nine Star Mage. Someone with experience, knowledge, and the ability to push others to grow.
Keeping such gifted students at smaller academies was selfish. But at the same time, it was a catch-22. How could these other academies receive better funding without talented students? How could they prove their worth without strong graduates? The problem only got worse over time, leaving some academies with no support at all.
Luka continued the tour, showing them the library, the massive dueling arena designed for spell combat, and fields at the back and sides of the school. They walked through several magical halls and even passed dining rooms where magic visibly circulated through floating trays and glowing utensils.
The others couldn’t hide the excitement in their eyes. Everything around them felt magical in every sense. The sparkle of fascination was obvious.
Raze almost wanted to warn them to tone down their reactions, he didn’t want them blowing their cover, but then he caught a smug little smirk on Luka’s face. The professor seemed to be enjoying their awe.
When the tour ended, Luka led them into one of the academy’s classrooms. It was large, with an arcane display set up on the right wall and ascending seating like a lecture hall on the left. The room was completely empty of students.
“Alright, everyone,” Luka said with a clap of his hands, “although I’ve allowed you to enter this academy, there’s still one more thing you all must participate in… the written exam.”
The others swallowed hard. A written exam?
These kinds of things were for scholars, not martial artists.
Sure, some fighters might dabble in reading or writing as a hobby, but how were they supposed to pass an exam in a world they didn’t even belong to?
“Based on your test results, you’ll be placed into classes ranging from F all the way up to A,” Luka explained. “At this academy, your class isn’t determined by your magical power but by your magical knowledge. Those with less understanding will be placed in classes where they receive more guidance, more fundamental lessons to help them grow.”
“And those who demonstrate higher comprehension,” Luka continued, “won’t feel held back. They’ll be placed in environments that push them to explore deeper aspects of magic. Sometimes, even a weaker mage might discover something during study that allows them to close the gap with the stronger ones. That’s why we do this test.”
The students were seated far apart, several meters between each desk, to prevent even the chance of peeking. Raze was seated right at the front, closest to Luka, where the professor could keep a close eye on him.
Soon, papers were handed out. Each person received a glowing quill-like writing tool. When they pressed it to the page, magical ink appeared. The other end of the quill erased the writing with ease.
It worked like a mix between a pencil and a pen, but with far more elegance.
Safa did her best not to panic. She remembered Raze trying to teach her to read the Alterian language. She focused on using the context of the questions to guess their meaning, doing her best to find patterns. Slowly but surely, she began to write something down.
At the front, Raze was already effortlessly gliding through the questions. His hand moved with practiced ease, barely pausing between answers.
‘I’m a Nine Star Mage… a former professor. I even helped write some of these tests back in the day,’ Raze thought proudly. ‘When was the last time I got a perfect score? This almost feels too easy.’
From the back of the room, Liam stared intensely at Raze’s hand movements.
‘Wait a second… System, can you analyze his hand and copy everything he writes? Just do the same thing on my paper?’Liam asked silently.
The system responded with a clear yes, and immediately, Liam’s hand started moving.
‘Haha! I’m going to get a perfect score just like Raze!’ he cheered in his mind. ‘Genius move, Liam. Pure genius.’
But not everyone had a system.
Toward the back of the room, two students were frozen in place, Dame and Beatrix. They stared at their blank papers, completely lost.
‘What are we supposed to do?’ Dame thought, staring hopelessly at the symbols on the page. ‘We can’t even read this… let alone answer anything.’
He glanced sideways and felt slightly better. Beatrix hadn’t written a single word either.
‘I’ve always been good at tests!’ Beatrix thought, ‘But this… this is a nightmare. I might get a zero. Can anyone even read this stuff?!’
She tried reaching out to the entity inside her, the being she had fused with, but there was no response. No voice. Just silence. No matter how hard she focused, the letters on the page made no sense.
A horrifying thought crept into both their minds.
‘What if we get placed in a different class than Raze? What if we’re stuck in F class? If they find out… not even Raze might be able to save us.’
Then, something strange happened.
Their hands were still near their heads, but the special writing tools on the desk started to twitch. Then they lifted off the table, moving on their own.
The quills floated down to the paper and began to write. One word. Then a sentence. Then full answers.
Both Dame and Beatrix sat frozen, stunned at the sight. Then, the quill gently tapped the corner of the paper.
‘Does it want me to turn the page?’ Dame wondered.
He flipped it, and heard the sound of Beatrix doing the same at the same time.
The quills continued writing, filling in answer after answer.
Quickly, they reached out and held the tools, pretending like they were the ones writing, just in case the professor looked their way.
‘This has to be Raze,’ they both thought at the same time. ‘No one else could pull this off.’
And they were right.
Raze had already finished his test long ago, but finishing too quickly would draw suspicion. So he pretended to still be working while secretly controlling the wind around the room, mixed with several other magical spells, fine-tuned to guide the quills on the others’ desks.
He was helping Safa, Dame, and Beatrix, all without a word.
He hadn’t helped Liam… but only because he could already hear him writing confidently and assumed he was doing fine. Especially judging by the sound of laughter that was coming from him from time to time. It also caused an extra distraction because Liam was so pleased with himself Luka kept going over to him.
Due to his system as well, Liam was able to figure out that Raze had already finished because they had finished at the same time, so now he was just pretending to scribble about in the air. When the teacher started to move toward him Raze would shuffle his seat as a distraction to make him come back.
Professor Luka had no idea what was happening, in the grand scheme of things. He was completely unaware, confident that no one in the room was capable of manipulating such complex, stealthy magic.
‘Don’t worry,’ Raze thought with a smirk. ‘You all helped me back in Pagna. So now it’s my turn. We’re all getting into A class, no matter what!’
****
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The written portion of the assessment was merely for placement, a bureaucratic hurdle. Their true test, the one that mattered, had already been completed. So, the students were ushered into the dorms, told to simply rest and await their fate.
Thankfully, the dorm rooms were surprisingly spacious, more than capable of accommodating their entire group. Luka had initially offered to separate them by gender, a standard courtesy, but Raze had simply shrugged it off, declaring it unnecessary. It wasn’t a huge deal for mages; many could conjure a privacy veil with a flick of their wrist for dressing or other personal matters. Still, it was an option the academy provided, a nod to old customs.
Since they were all transfers and already seemed to know each other, the academy had made an exception, allowing them to bunk together while their results were being tallied. And those results? They were definitely the hottest topic of discussion in the principal’s office.
Inside, three teachers were currently gathered. There was Professor Luka, the man who had conducted their assessment, and easily one of the most powerful mages in the entire academy. Then there was Panla, the lightning specialist, her gaze sharp and intelligent. Finally, Redrick, a middle-aged man with his hair neatly tied back in a ponytail, completed the trio.
They sat on one side of a plush couch, facing Wilton Junior, the principal. He was a man in his sixties now, his face etched with years of responsibility.
Wilton had inherited the academy from his father, a veritable family business. For generations, their academy had stood proudly, practically neck-and-neck with the renowned Central Academy. But things had shifted. They’d slipped a bit during his father’s era, and by the time Wilton Junior took the reins, the Central Mage Academy had soared, becoming its own prestigious entity, almost untouchable.
Luka handed over the assessment papers from the recent transfer students, and Wilton just shook his head, a weary sigh escaping his lips.
“So, out of all these, which one is the original?” Wilton asked, his voice a low rumble.
“I believe it’s the one named Raze,” Luka replied, his expression unreadable.
“Raze… quite an ominous name, though it was popular once,” Wilton mused, a flicker of something unreadable in his eyes. “But since the arrival of the Dark Magus, many would never dare to use that name again.”
“I did hear some started using it again,” Redrick chimed in, leaning forward slightly. “Honestly, there are just as many people named Jack as there are Raze. It’d be hard to damn them all for a name.”
“This Raze, was he the lightning mage?” Panla interjected, a spark of excitement in her eyes. As a lightning core teacher herself, she was already imagining the thrill of teaching someone so promising. “I presume you’re asking about him because he did particularly well on the test?”
“Do you not know why the principal asked which was the original?” Redrick countered, a knowing smirk playing on his lips. “It’s because it’s obvious. They cheated on the test.”
The principal nodded, spreading the test sheets out across his desk.
“This particular assessment was harder than the one given to students at the entrance exam,” Wilton explained, his gaze sweeping over the papers. “I really didn’t want to accept any students, but I feared since they were recommended by Allen, they might actually be quite skilled. If they did get in, at least I could have an excuse to put them in the bottom of the class and be done with them. Allen and the military have supplied us with quite the supplies and demonstrations over the years, so I thought it was best to at least do him this favor. But the results were perfect. The way the questions were answered, they were better answered than some of the professors and teachers at this school. And it wasn’t just one; it was several of them!”
“Is it highly likely they cheated, or have we just had a batch of special students come all in at once?” Redrick wondered aloud, a hint of genuine curiosity in his tone.
“I’m certain they cheated,” the principal stated firmly.
Luka nodded, a subtle knowing curve to his lips. He knew exactly why.
“First, all of the answers are almost identical, only changed ever so slightly,” Wilton continued, pointing to various sections on the papers. “However, that’s not the reason I’m certain. It’s because of how varied the answers are. They are varied in such a way that a person clearly knows what they are doing. They have so much knowledge that they can still answer the question in a different way. To top it off, the handwriting on both of these two papers is the same. Almost as if he tried to vary it from his own, but changed it from the others. Then there’s this one. Some of the questions appear to have been attempted by her. I’m quite surprised by some of the answers that had been given. All of the students are aware that the feathered end of their tool can erase. What they aren’t aware of is that we can still see what has been erased. If we compare the two answers, they are night and day.”
Though the principal didn’t explicitly say it, based on the way the answers were given, they seemed to be broken down, as if someone was fluent in the language of magic. He could understand the context, but magical questions were notoriously difficult. He imagined the person had to be incredibly smart to grasp a few words and still guess so much of the question correctly.
“Then there’s this test,” the principal held up another paper, his voice tinged with amusement. “To be honest, it’s the one with the worst results. This student, in particular, has identical answers to the student named Raze.”
“I see, and that’s how you were also able to pinpoint that Raze was the original?” Panla asked, her interest piqued. “But how would you be able to tell the difference between who copied off whom?”
“Because their answers are off by one placement,” the principal replied, a faint smile touching his lips. “Every answer is correct if they had just shifted them one up. The person had even written the answer to the final question in the very last place.”
Redrick couldn’t help but chuckle as soon as he heard that. “The kid couldn’t even cheat right! Now that is impressive.”
“You’re right about one thing; they all are really impressive,” Luka interrupted, his eyes gleaming. “Although we have a pretty good idea they cheated, if we were truthful, all of this is circumstantial. And that’s because they were able to cheat, however they did it, in various ways, while I was in the room with them at the same time. They had managed to get near enough perfect scores, apart from one, while I was still there.”
Magic, in a way, was about how well one could utilize their spells without their opponent knowing. It was the whole basis of battling and besting the other. In this sense, these students had already bested the academy and the school, a realization that caused everyone in the room to smile.
“Can I ask, what happened when you rose those walls? Things seemed to get quiet for a while,” Panla asked, her curiosity evident.
Luka began to smirk. “If I told you everything, there would be no fun. In the end, they are all in the academy now, so you will be able to see for yourselves how they perform and the heights that they will reach.”
Panla clicked her tongue, a playful gesture, but she could feel the excitement clicking in her chest. She had one more question. “So, based on the written results, which class are you going to put them in, or are you going to split them up?”
“You can’t put them in A class,” Redrick immediately objected, shaking his head. “If you do, there will be an uproar among students. They’ll be targeted, as will the transfers. They’ll bundle together to just make sure they won’t progress.”
Luka laughed once again, a rich, full sound. “Even if they teamed up together, I doubt the students could best them.”
Redrick wondered whether Luka was giving them too much credit, perhaps just because of his own “loss,” or if they truly were that special. It just didn’t make any sense. If they were, what were they doing at Wilton Academy instead of the prestigious Central Academy?
“I have come to a decision,” the principal announced, turning around to gaze out of the large glass pane window. “The students here are in a strange place. When they come here, they feel like they have entered their second choice. Everyone wishes to go to the Central Academy, and in a way, those that are not good enough feel like they have been shunted here. I believe that our students have been complacent with that. The fact that these talented individuals have all come at once is a good thing. It’s the fire that is needed among all of these students. Every single one of them will be placed in A class.”
*****
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