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“We have finished the strength test, next we will gauge your mana control,” announced the adjudicator, “in this test you will be required to expend a certain amount of mana consistently into this hollow glass orb. If you use too little mana, the orb will not fill up, if you use too much, then the orb will explode. Good luck,” the adjudicator finished.

Due to Corlissa’s completely warped standards, this was considered a simple and slightly fun method of approaching a possibly boring method of examination, however, in the eyes of everyone else who had common sense, this was going to put to test everything they’ve studied within their relatively short lifespan.

While many people struggled with their control since they never used magic before, Evie who was in the same boat as them surprisingly completed the task with ease. Corlissa was quite amazed by her performance, though she didn’t know that the only reason Evie had ease was that succinctly put, she was weak.

It was pure coincidence that the glass orb happened to have the same magic capacity as the maximum amount she could use. As her light magic was quite weak, she needed to expend more mana to actually get the light magic into the orb itself, thus by pure coincidence, Evie Luxiere was able to pass with ease.

Although, of course, Corlissa also passed with flying colours, she is certainly taking the term ‘genius’ to unmatched extremes perhaps even taking it too far. Yet that did not satisfy her, mere titles with no value give her no sense of accomplishment or strength, she is not the kind of person who is swayed by meagre words. Being granted titles would not help her unravel the truth of the word she lives in or of her suffering, she needed hard evidence to satisfy her.

“Finally, we have reached the last stage of the examination, the combat test. We will be testing your ability to apply magic into real combat, have no fear of getting injured, we have the best healers in the kingdom here. Do not forget, being a mage is not some easy happy job, at the end of the day, mages are more like elite soldiers than anything else, being capable of manipulating magic makes mages one of the greatest weapons of a civilisation.”

Those few words were enough to make those ignorant sheltered children of noble families truly understand the weight of what they held, some were frightened out of fear of losing their lives and others were still being ignorant, making false claims about their power.

“Isn’t that the Grand Mage Eliot Demetrius?”

“Really?! Where?”

“Why would the Grand Mage be here at some acceptance test?”

“I don’t know but look, he’s sitting over there to the side of the arena.”

A series of muttering occurred after the Grand Mage had decided to pay a visit to see Corlissa’s magic in action, thus why he only came to the combat test since the other tests didn’t give her magic enough ‘screen time’ or whatnot.

“Silence! We will be grouping you all into pairs, your partner would have gotten similar results as you in the previous tests and will have a magic that combats yours. Only one match will occur at any given time to ensure that there are enough supervisors watching in case of any accidents, that is all. First, we will begin with Tion Eshwin and Jax Millevon.”

Most of the matches ended within a few interchanges of attacks but since there were so many applicants, Corlissa was given more than enough time to mull over anything that would happen.

‘In my past lives, I would have been matched with Evie and despite having high attack power alongside strong water attacks, Evie simply made a barrier using her light magic to protect her. If any stray attacks did hit her, the barrier would have also healed her, completely useless in warfare unless she was able to make a large scale version, however, it riled my previous self up. Thus making me look like a complete fool. Now I can just wing it. Whether I win or lose, all I need to do is use this as a way to try out my new magic.’

“Evie Luxiere and Corlissa Veronique, please come up to the arena,” the adjudicator’s announcement drew Corlissa out of her reverie and stopped the Grand Mage from dozing off. It was time for Corlissa to test the limits to the chains of fate restricting her.

The two stood face to face a couple of paces away from each other, this was the battle that everyone was interested in, between the blessed child of God and the unrivalled prodigy.

“You may...Begin!”

Evie hopped back before either of them sent out any attacks, ‘this is bad, I can’t use light magic for anything aside from defence or healing, it can’t be used for combat. I don’t know how that so-called ‘genius’ fares in combat, though none of them would be able to withstand the glare of light if I make it bright enough’, truly worthless ideas were going through Evie’s head.

Evie raised her hand towards the sky, creating an orb of light magic that kept on getting brighter, Corlissa, who was prepared for the worst, protected the audience with a layer of dark magic, sheer enough to see inside but opaque enough so that the light would not hurt their eyes. As Miss Luxiere sent out the ball of concentrated light towards the blue-haired girl, Corlissa created a wall of dark magic, black enough to absorb the majority of the light.

The small remnants that passed through her barrier were small enough for Corlissa to dodge with ease, then she went on the offensive. She did not raise her hand or arm nor move any part of her body yet her opponent fell abruptly onto the ground, a crater on the hard stone ground was formed as a result of the amount of force in Corlissa’s attack.

Everyone in the audience was purely stunned nothing happened yet one of them was crushed to the ground.

From the cracks a small levitating rock could be seen, the material of the floor was not touching it, as if there was an invisible barrier surrounding the odd rock.

“Wha-What...di..d...you...d-do…” Evie managed to utter with difficulty while still being under the influence of Corlissa’s attack.

“I used my magic, the entire prospect of my ‘world magic’ is the function of gravity, I created the smallest star possible and used its gravitational force to pull you down. I made room for it since the start of the match, while you were building up your attack I made a pocket of air in the floor under you to make you get pulled down. Unless you are definite that you can get out of the gravitational field, I believe I have won this match, Miss Evie Luxiere.”