chapter 22: Second Test.

"Ladies and gentlemen, for the second part of this competition, I request a warm welcome for our city's merchants!"

As the announcer's words resounded in the area I saw four adult men climbing the same stairs I used accompanied by the cheers of the audience.

"These four gentlemen accepted to participate in our second test to our young mages, and it's exactly thanks to their presence that we can do something very different from usual.

The second stage's rules are as follow, our merchants will cast a spell and explain it briefly, the participants will have to replicate it, those who can in less so five minutes will receive a point, easy, right?

But that's not all, if a participant is able to improve the spell itself they will receive three points."

It didn't seem complicated at all, this test probably wasn't going to be much of a problem for me given the average level of the other competitors.

The rules were pretty easy, but they had a greater aim than simply gauge the participants ability to learn a spell.

The true aim of this test was actually to teach the merchants spells to the young participants so that, one day, some of them will be able to use them in their own travels between the cities against any beast that stops them.

And even if the day that there were no more beasts actually came as those from the Soulborne Kingdom promised, they would be able to defend themselves from any other kind of threat.

The second part, in which they encourage us to try and improve the spell is to teach us that our predecessors spells aren't perfect at all and can still be improved, a perfectly reasonable thing if you ask me.

After all, I had already improved and even completely changed the function of many of my spells numerous times, an example of this were my water attacks I used to cut off the beasts libs, but I had now changed them in ice spears to impale the target and immobilize them freezing them from the inside.

The first merchant came up, he was slightly plump, which I didn't think could actually happen for someone who does this kind of job, "Hey kids, nice meeting so many new talents, but let's start, the first spell I'll show you is one of my trump cards, I call it a cutter array.

First of all you need to cast multiple wind cutter spells and overlap them in a grid-like structure to cut the target into many different pieces, which as you probably know, is a very good thing to do to find a beasts weak spot."

He then exhibited his spell, it was made up of four cutter spells combined into a spell that was more than the sum of its parts, every spell contributed to the overall momentum and cutting power of the spell, making each part much stronger than a single normal spell.

This was something that I had never thought about, I found this kind of synergy between spells to be a novel idea that I could develop much further, but for now it was time to pass this test.

I easily casted the spell in a few seconds gaining my first point, now came the actually hard part of the test, I had the rest of the five minutes to improve it, but thankfully, I already had some ideas.

First of all, I could add a few extra cutters, which I did in no time, reaching nine cutters and a much greater power at a much higher mana expenditure, but apparently this wasn't enough to grant me the extra three points.

I then used my second idea, instead of overlapping them in a grid I would cast them in a way that every cutter overlapped in a single point, transforming it into more of a spear head.

This time it was a bit more difficult, but I did it in half a minute, the result was a much faster spell in a smaller area, meaning that it had a higher cutting power.

It wouldn't be that useful against beasts as they all had the same defensive power, meaning that they were pretty soft, but against armored and smaller opponents it would be much better.

This time I did receive the extra points.

The total spells that we had to replicate in this stage were eight, two from each merchant, I earned the extra points from five, leaving all the other participants and even the merchants in awe.

Surprisingly, the girl whose name I still didn't know managed to not only replicate every single spell just like me, but she also managed to improve two of them, one of which was one of those that I couldn't upgrade, a water based spell.

And since the other spell she managed to improve was a lightning spell I came to the conclusion that those were the elements she was most proficient in, which was a good arsenal as both elements could be used in tandem to create better effects, but she was still far from being able to do that.

There was also a single dark spell, it was called a dark dart, a single blob made up from the corrosive dark mana that moved at relatively slow speed, I improved it by encasing it in a water spear to make it travel much faster, I called it corrosive spear.

Spells of this low level were very easy for me to replicate and improve, for example, the dark dart and a few others were already spells in my arsenal so I was very familiar with them, I just never bothered with improving them.

Finally a short break time of ten minutes was given to us before the third and last test, as I had already won two I was already the uncrowned winner, but we still had to go through all of them.

I didn't see this as a problem though, this entire competition let me improve not only by expanding my arsenal of spells, but also by giving me more ideas to improve some of my own spells late.

But the greatest discovery was certainly the one I made when I sat on my chair.

And inhaled deeply.

I felt my mana replenishing slightly once again, just like the first time.

'Again?' I thought, I analyzed what was in common both times this happened, I sat down and inhaled deeply.

I excluded the sitting down part because it didn't make sense, which left behind the inhaling part.

I did it again, taking a deep breath before letting the air leave, a glint of excitement evident in my eyes and a deep smile forming on my mouth, the mana in my body had replenished slightly once again.

I kept going and completely replenished the mana in a minute instead of the hour I would have needed to replenish it normally, this was a massive discovery from any point of view.

But the question remained, how come I only realized it now, it wasn't the first time I breathed in deeply while lacking mana, it was a usual thing actually.

I spent the next nine minutes experimenting by letting my mana bleed out by making pointless spells and then releasing them, effectively wasting mana.

And as I expected, I kept replenishing my mana to full capacity with each breath, this was a mystery I had to study.

The girl, Alice or Alicia or something else I heard from the audience's cheers, didn't come to talk to me this time, but she was intently looking at me from time to time, actually, most of the time.

But finally, amidst discoveries and mysteries, the third and last part of the young magical competition started with, once again, the announcer calling us participants back on the stage.

The merchants were gone from the stage and had joined the judges for this last part.

"This last part, and arguably the most important one, will test your ability to create spells, we will give you a subject and each of you will have to create a spell with those specifications.

Now, some of you may think that this test is pointless as we already have a participant with two wins, but worry not, for as I said, this is the most important part.

The final winner will be decided with a point system, the little Avys here will start with ten points from each of her previous wins, meaning that she'll start with twenty points, the rest will start from zero.

We will give the participants four prompts, of for each, every single participant can receive up to ten points depending on the quality, on the efficacy and on the complexity of the spell itself."

'Oh, this make it more exciting, I could still lose, I hope that this girl can give me a good challenge.' I turned to look at the only person I considered near my level in this competition.

She then also turned to look at me and I was greeted by her brilliant smile, showing a similar excitement to mine.

"I will not lose!" she said to me out loud for everyone to hear, something that was clearly heard by the announcer.

"This has been a very exciting competition, we're even witnessing the birth of a new rivalry between our local prodigy, Alice, and the prodigy from Icerock, Avys!"

His words caused some cheers to emerge from the audience, most of them were reserved for Alice as she was a native of Honeyfall, but there was also a good part cheering for me.

There was no real rivalry between the cities of the Wild Lands, we were like one big family.

We couldn't permit ourselves to be otherwise or we would have long since died off for any of the possible reasons.

"But let's stop with the chatter," said the announcer to quiet down the audience, "The first prompt is, a barrier spell capable of also hurting your enemies, you have fifteen minutes, go!"

This was a very interesting prompt, the test was still probably centered around stimulating the young ones to become merchants, so they were pushing us to create our own tools to survive the job.

I didn't have a protective spell, I never let beasts reach that close to me in the first place and now that I discovered that breathing thing I was even less concerned in wasting mana, what's the problem if I could regenerate everything in a minute after all?

My first idea was erecting a spiked wall of earth around me, but it seemed way too easy to be worth using it in the competition, but I'd still surely develop it later, one more spell can always be useful.

I was a fan of the ideology of 'the best defense is attack.' so my next idea naturally involved that.