A notice

"Although it certainly doesnot exceed the rank of an apprentice, I'll need some time to get all of the rune advancement formulae." Emelia said, frowning. She didn't get why Aren needed these formulae but decided not to ask. It was important not to ask these types of questions when doing business.

Aren heaved a sigh inwardly, At the same time he was very suprised. He was ready for a negative answer from her but didn't expect that collecting all of them only meant slightly troublesome for her.

Yes, all of the formulae. If in the list he gave, only the divination rune advancement formula was missing, then that might lead Emelia to associate him with divination magic. So, mentioning all of them would not garner that much suspicion. The best deduction she could make would be that he might be doing research on advancement of runes.

After that, Aren and Emelia decided on the exchange rate and finally settled on 20 enchantments for one formula. After deciding to make that shop a meeting place for them, Aren bid them farewell and discreetly choose a safe route to return to the academy.

It seemed that Lucifier's underlings had totally lost him after he met Emelia as he didn't encounter any of them on his way back to the academy.

When he reached the academy, he first went to his dorm and changed into a new uniform. The one he wore previously had a few scratches and mud on it due earlier game of cats and mouse. He looked at the hourglass which indicated that it was nearly the fourteenth hour and went to master's lab for afternoon class.

Walking through the corridors, he saw that a notice was posted on the usually blank noticeboard. There were some apprentices who were looking at it. Aren discovered that all of them were juniors, seniors mostly seemed uninterested.

'What's this about?' as he got curious, he also went to see what it was. The notice was written in bold characters and it looked extremely eye-catching at a glance

...

Attention! This notice is only for second semester juniors!

In four months time, all second semester juniors who have been learning in the academy academy for two years and more can take part in the senior evaluation test. Of course if you are confident and have mastered all of the spells given to you then any second semester junior can participate.

This test will determine the combat abilities of an apprentice. The juniors who took part in this test and passed it will be elevated to the position of a senior. But beware that this test is not like any other tests. You may even lose your life if you are not prepared for it!

As always, the test will take place in the Moonlight forest. More information about the test will be given to you at the observance at the first day of the test, Alvia calender's 21st day of 9th month of the year, 11569 of the DawnLight Ages.

...

'So its a test to promote a junior to a senior. Hmm... I enrolled in this academy a year and four months ago but that won't matter if I decide to take this test. Lets see, if I finish learning all spells and make it before the deadlines, I'll consider it.' He turned around and pondered. For now, however, he needed to get the formulae.

A month later, Emelia finally collected all the formulae. After meeting with her, Aren exchanged 200 of his scrolls for all of the formulae. During the exchange, both had a same question in their mind which they tactfully didn't say.

'What is this boy/this girl gonna do with these many formule/scrolls?'

Other than enchanting scrolls, Aren had also managed to learn his fourth main spell, probability change. He didn't tell about it to his master though.

The spell was a very unique one. As long as it didn't include a living being it could change the probability of something happening to some extent. For example, it couldn't change the probability of a person dying directly but could change the probability of a carriage getting in an accident in which the said person was riding. But as an apprentice spell its effects were rather limited.

Now that he had got his hands on the formulae, he could finally start to derive a unique one for his rune. As he looked at the formula for other magical studies, Aren noticed that their complexity was much lower that the divination rune advancement formula. That was especially so for the elemental one. Aren was sure that he could analyse it within 5 days.

He took nearly a month to analyze all six of them and another month to derive the suitable one for him. As Aren's rune could help him see the future he named it as Soothsaying rune advancement formula.

During that time, Claude had asked him two times if he started advancing his rune. Aren had to answer him that he would first learn all the spells before trying to advance his rune.

Claude couldn't find any lie in what he said as he was essentially telling the truth. But he had only said the truth while omitting the parts that needed to be falsified. Claude would never ask if he was deriving a totally new formula so there was no need to tell a lie.

In the night, he decided to test it. According to the soothsaying rune advancement formula, Aren would have to engrave some complicated patterns in a circular manner extending out from the vertices. Those geometrical patterns had automatically been made when he had derived the formula halfway.

He first took a deep breath to calm himself, to get rid of unnecessary thoughts in his mind and entered his spiritual space. Using the spiritual power which had slightly increased from when he first engraved his rune, he began working on the patterns.

The increase in spritual power was due to his natural growth over last two years. If he counted the day he transmigrated as his birthday, he had already reached 12 a month ago. He was now as tall as those senior apprentices. The only way others recognized him as a junior was because of his uniform.

As Aren started engraving, he thought about the bitter truth all mages knew. After engraving a rune for the first time, it would become a lot harder to advance it. To even make a dot appear, low aptitude apprentices had to concentrate for 10 days. If the apprentice didn't learn to be patient, then he or she wouldn't be able to advance to a mage.

The next morning, the first thing Aren did after waking up was to check out his rune. He could see in his spiritual space that he had already engraved half of a pattern near one of the vertices.

"Its all thanks to my top grade aptitude." Aren murmured and went to bathroom.

When he went to master's dwelling for the morning lesson, Claude, who was looking at something in his crystal ball, turned his head as soon as Aren entered.

"You... started advancing your rune?" Claude asked. He could sense that there was some change in Aren's spiritual power.

"Yes." he nodded in affirmation this time. Claude didn't have to divine to assert that Aren was telling the truth.