Talent

3 weeks passed by while Ray diligently continued training his soul. In those three weeks he could feel himself getting closer and closer to becoming a level 2 mage. Finally, near the end of the three weeks after training day and night without stopping, he felt his aura break through the second level.

It wasn't a big difference but he could clearly deal his strength by a notch. He could probably unleash 4 zaps before running out of energy now. After reviewing his gains he looked around the camp. Now the number of kids has doubled in size, around 500 in total. Everyone has their eyes closed while meditating in some way. Some sat down with their legs crossed, some lay down, either way almost everyone was training their soul. After realizing how strong the energy density was here compared to outside the forest, how could they not?

An intense aura quickly spread across the entire camp causing everyone to jerk out of their concentrated state. "Oh? 10 level 2 apprentice mages this time? We've got quite the batch." A loud noise rang in everyone's ear.

Many people weren't happy with being disturbed during their training, but no one let out a peep. After all, what could they say in the face of absolute power.

An old man with long white hair teleported into the sky where everyone could see him. His face may be wrinkly, and his back may be hunched, but anyone with any common sense could tell from first glance he wasn't someone to provoke. Just the piercing faze his eyes let out made people want to look away. "Alright I'll make this quick and easy for you all. We will test your soul's aptitude towards becoming an official mage. If you pass, you get to join the school. If you fail, figure it out." The old man said with an indifferent tone. "Now don't feel too bad about yourself if you have bad aptitude. We, at Mythri school, believe in fairness. So we will give you a chance to duel someone who passed and take their spot."

Many previously tense faces relaxed a little. So it wasn't completely luck based after all!

"Now quickly form a line so we can get the testing done with. I don't have all day. Start where the guards are located."

All the apprentices quickly went into an orderly line. There were no conflicts, since if you came this far you had to know what you were doing. But there were always exceptions. A burly apprentice who looked to be around the age of 18 shouted at someone right Infront of him. "Did you just go Infront of me, you rat?"

Before he could continue his rant he turned into dust, and fell to the floor. Nobody even saw a spell hit him, he simply turned into dust. Everyone became silent after watching the scene and shuffled into line even faster.

The old man chuckled, "That got them going."

Everyone who heard this made a mental note to never offend this old mage. After everyone got in order the old man yelled, " took you long enough! Well, to be fair you did it faster than the group ten years ago. Then again, they were mostly disappointments…" The old man froze for a moment before continuing, "Enough about that, come up one at a time and we will inspect to see how good your aptitude is."

The first person walked up to the old man with a confident expression on his face.

"No talent." the old man shouted so everyone could hear. The confident expression was quickly wiped off his face, now replaced with an embarrassed one.

"No talent! No talent! No talent!"

One after another apprentice mages with confident expressions walked away with their heads down. They were all nobles who owned a lot of land, most of them had whatever they wanted their entire upbringing. Being embarrassed in front of many people was not something they were used to. After 6 people in a row were rejected, an apprentice finally got something other than 'no talent'.

"Good talent, start a line over there." The old man said while pointing to a spot opposite to where the group of apprentices without talent were.

By the time it was Ray's time to shine there was a clear pattern. Around 1 in 8 apprentices had good enough talent. What was the difference between good talent and bad talent? Ray didn't know. But he wasn't worried at all, as he learned that he was one of the few people who had reached level 2 while waiting for the old man to come.

"Good talent!" The old man said when Ray stepped up.

Ray walked to the line of people who had good talent. Some had smug expressions, some were simply happy to be there, but there was a stark difference between the group with talent and the group without.

"Ray!" Someone called his name.

Ray turned to see Carl waving at him . 'So he will be accepted too. I suppose it only makes sense since his father is an official magus'. He smiled and nodded in Carl's direction. This showed he wasn't being rude and he was acknowledging him, but not being overly friendly and waving back.

Ray was near the end of the line, so not too long after everyone was finished getting judged. Around 60 people were in the group with talent, and the rest of the 500 people were in the group without talent.

"Now that we're done with that, we will move on to the duel section. Everyone who has been rejected has one chance to make up for your loss of talent by proving your skill." After saying that he 'summoned' a small arena with one entrance towards each group. It wasn't big or small, about the size of your average highschool classroom.

"Whoever can make it to the entrance first from the untalented group will fight, as for the talented group, you will go in order of line. When you finish, go to the back of the line."

After he said that nobody moved in, the untalented group moved. They all needed to fight someone to at least try to get into Mythri, but nobody wanted to go first. Very few of them had real world fighting experience against other mages, since they all recently had their souls awakened. This was since Mythri only accepted new mages who had been woken up within the past quarter year. If anyone was caught cheating that, they would never have been teleported inside the walls.

The old man's face started to look annoyed. "Well since none of you are stepping up I guess I'll have to choose for you."

Someone random was teleported into the arena, while the person from the talented group was already in the arena. It would be a fairly fair fight since all of the apprentices here were nobles who probably had a skill in the family that could keep their status as a noble up. There might even be a few lucky fellows who had powerful families who received more than one skill, but most of them didn't have enough time to fully learn the extra skills they received.

"Oh, there's one thing I forgot to mention. There's no such thing as surrendering in my arena." The old man said with a wide grin on his face.