Aethernea : Soulbound [Book 1]

Episode 54 - Spell Control Exam Start!

Previously:

Kiel and Elaru arrive to Muni to take second day's exams. Kiel's examiners are still Rau Eryey and Kady Ailert.

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When everyone settled down inside the classroom, Rau Eryey motioned his white, slim hand towards a large glass apparatus in the middle of the room. "Today's first exam will test your spell control."

The testing apparatus consisted of a large vertical tube the size of a grown adult man. As if the tube was the night sky, the glass was littered with countless small silver stars, welded into the glass itself.

The tube stood raised on a short metal stand. One could see a square shaped opening on the bottom of the cylinder.

"I will now explain how the test will be conducted." Rau pointed towards the glass cylinder and cast a trigger spell to activate the artifact. As soon as his trigger spell landed on it, the countless silver stars came to life. Each one of them started glowing a bright neon light.

The vivid rainbow-colored stars extended their tentacles until they stretched into countless thin threads creating a spider web - The previously empty insides of the glass cylinder suddenly became a labyrinth of threads. The stars continued to wiggle periodically moving their tentacles and shifting the layout of the web.

"The goal of the test is to exercise your control over a cube-shaped magical artifact, bringing it from the bottom of the cylinder up to the top, inserting it in the cube-shaped indentation on the top of the cylinder."

Everyone's eyes followed Rau's pointed finger to see a cube-shaped indentation on the very top of the glass tube.

"The artifact will need to pass through the web as fast as your ability allows, touching as few threads as possible. You can think of it as an obstacle race. Avoid obstacles in the shape of threads, reach the goal as fast as you can."

Rau pointed towards the metal stand of the glass tube, on which, one could see a strange hourglass filled with a blue liquid.

"You will be able to read the score from the markings on the hourglass."

What was strange about the hourglass was its bottleneck. A small metal spike was inserted into the bottleneck of the hourglass blocking the flow of the blue liquid. It looked like someone impaled the hourglass on a needle protruding from the metal stand.

While the examinees were inspecting the glass tube and the hourglass, Kady Ailert, who was sitting at the teacher's desk, stood up and approached Rau. In her hands, she held two fist-sized cubes - one white, one black.

She passed the black cube to Rau, keeping the white one to herself. Kady turned towards the examinees, smiling softly. The wrinkles at the corners of her eyes giving her a gentle appearance.

With a flick of her hand, a flock of black and white cubes came flying from the teacher's desk towards the examinees.

Each examinee received one cube, including Kiel, who gracefully caught a white cube. The shiny stone surface of the cube was smooth and cold to the touch.

Glancing around himself, Kiel realized that all elibu received a black cube, while all argel got a white cube.

Kady patiently explained: "As you might already know, the only way to test someone's spell control is to have them perform a spell and monitor their control over the spell's effects. That implies that the spell is required to create direct reality altering effects - it can't be a trigger spell.

The fairest method to test your spell control would be to have everyone cast the exact same spell. However, this is impossible because argel can only cast augmentation magic while elibu can only cast transmutation magic.