Chapter 22- Entrance Exam

Seeing the faces full of excitement and nervousness the middle ages man smiled.

"My name is Gutan Kimma, you can call me Elder Gutan. As most of you might have already guessed, I am an Elder Mage at the institute. And for today I have been assigned to conduct you youngling's entrance exam."

The elder paused and gave a look around the whole ground.

"Now before I explain how the exams will be conducted I will give you a stern warning. The exam will be conducted orderly, there will be no misbehaviour. It doesn't matter whether you were a peasant, Nobel, or king's son himself, this is the Rifwore- Institute of Arcane. All of you here are aspiring mages and that is all. If you try to interfere or disrupt with any kind of bullshit... then don't blame me for punishing you."

Suddenly all the excitement vanished from everyone's face and the only thing that remained was pure nervousness.

"Hmm, now I will explain the structure of our institute. At the top in our Patrich, the only tier 10 mage in our kingdom. Then followed by supreme elders who are tier 8 and 9, and elders who are at tier 5 and above. Then come the core disciples, only the most talented students become core disciples. Only if you have reached tier 3 before the age of 30 will you be able to become one of them. Then comes inner disciples, those who have reached at least tier 1 and accumulated enough contribution towards the institute will be promoted from outer disciples to inner disciples. And at the bottom, the outer disciples. It doesn't matter how much talent you have if you are able to clear the entrance exam you will have to join the institute as an outer disciple till you reach the requirements to be promoted to inner disciples. There will be no shortcuts or preference giver to any student."

"Now that you understood how the institute works let me remind you again, for the last time. Doesn't matter who you were before joining, if you are able to enter the institute, then you are on equal footing. Don't become ignorant just because your family is better off than others. If your family is rich then the institute is richer, if your family has power then the institute is more powerful. So you in front of the institute are all equal so there will be no favoured treatment given to anybody. If you are better than others then prove it with your talent and work through to get promoted."

Seeing the determined look on the youngster's faces Elder smiled again.

"That is all I have to say. Now all of you form 10 rows and divide yourselves equally."

Suddenly all the examinees who had spaced out imagining themselves triumphing over other while using spells and incantations that were only allowed to superheroes snapped back to reality. They instantly started moving back and forth while trying to form 10 lines.

Only after 10 minutes of running around, there were 10 properly formed queues in front of the stage.

While trying to get in the lines, both Oliver and Polo got pushed further and further away until they were at the end of the last line. Obviously at the front were the sons and daughters of the proud nobles.

Even after Elder Gutan's speech/warning, the thick-skinned arrogant nobles couldn't let go of their pride, after all this was something that their upbringing had taught them. How could they, children of nobles let some peasant stand in front of them? After all, they had 'superior blood', whatever that meant.

Seeing this Elder's smile went away. After all, he already predicted this, so although he wasn't disappointed he did feel a bit sad.

The truth was contrary to expectations Elder himself was a Nobel. And that too from a quite prominent family. He was just like these younglings in front of him. But only after years passed after he became a mage did an incident happen that changed his point of view.

In the earlier days of joining the institute, he was found out to have better talent than even average nobels. When he started his mage training, he was showered with compliments due to his faster speed of progress. Eventually, all these prases started to reach his head and he developed a superiority complex. As a result, he had made 'friends of nobility'. He even started bullying these 'commoners' with his 'friends'.

Until one of the institute's missions, where he faced his consequences. They had a miss-encounter with a monster with the strength of a tier 5 mage. As they tried to escape another monster cut their escape route. Seeing this they panicked and betrayed Gutan. They made him their scapegoat and ran away. It was then that he realized that these betrayers were his 'friends' who swore to follow him life-long and called themselves his brothers. But now it was too late, death was at his front door and he had a front-row seat watching from the window.

But just in time mc of the story arrived to save the damsel in distress. He was one of the commoners he used to bully. But he was not alone, with him was his other 'commoner' friends. In the end, they barely saved their asses as even the mc and his group weren't strong enough to defeat 2 monsters of such high power levels.

But this was the life lesson he learned on that day and till now his true friends were those commoners.

Surprisingly this was not a unique story and happened more often than expected.

..........(Flashback over)...........

As Elder Gutan reminisced of his past, his eyes filled up and a smile crept on his face. He wiped his eyes from his sleeves and looked back to the examinees. Seeing them looking at him in a weird way, he cleared his throat.

"Ahem, anyways there will be 3 parts of the examination. The first part will be age checking. One by one each examinee will go to the stall on the east. There will be a person who will check your age. Then you will come back to the stage where your talent for mana manipulation and element will be recorded by me. After you have passed both of these stages then you will go to the west where there will be another Elder waiting for you. There you will decide which element you wanna become a mage of. Fire, water, air, earth, and special, out of these you will be able to only select one based on your elemental talent after all most humans only have one kind of elemental talent. After you have selected, Elder will place you according to groups based on the choices."

"Anyone who is of age more than 18 years or does not have a talent for mana manipulation will be disqualified immediately. Now that I have explained everything no one will question again. And if you get disqualified at any time, you WILL quietly leave the institution grounds without making a fuss. Is that clear?"

Seeing the horrified faces Gutan nodded, "Good now the first student, go and get your age checked, be fast and quiet."

Listening to him the boy in the first place got startled for a second but then trotted his way to the stall on the east. When he reached there, there was a big board in front of the stall.

The board said, First leave 5 crystals in the tray to the left. It's the examination fee, it won't be refunded if you fail the examination.'

The boy quickly took out 5 crystals and kept them in the empty tray that was indicated. Then he went inside the stall and found out only an old man sitting on a chair behind a wooden table.

As soon as the old man saw him enter, he said, "Place your foot on the table. I will check your bone age, if you are of more than 18 years then exit the stall and leave the institute ground, you would have been disqualified."

Although everybody knew the requirements for the entrance exam, there were always those smartasses every year who would think that they could beat the system.

The boy placed his leg on the table. The old man stood up from the chair and touched the boy's leg. He gave it a good feel from his feet all the way up to his thigh. After a second, he let his leg go and said, "Go to the stage. There your talent will be measured."

As soon as the boy exited the tent Gutan had already said, "NEXT"

The boy nervously reached the stage knowing full well that the next couple of moments will decide the rest of his life. His heartbeat started picking up the pace, his breath got faster and he started shaking.

When he climbed up the stage he saw Gutan had already set up 10 crystal spheres connected to a mount on the ground.

Gutan gestured the boy to stand in front of the crystal spheres and said, "Touch the first mana sphere, you will slowly start to feel mana passing through your body from the sphere and then enter back into the sphere. It will start to lighten up. The more spheres you lighten up, the better your talent. And depending upon the colour of light that shines from the sphere, it will represent your elemental talent."

The boy nodded and stood in front of the first mana sphere and placed his hand on it. He instantly closed his eyes to feel the mana inside his body.

After a couple of seconds, he opened his eyes and looked at Gutan, and said with a frown on his face, "Elder are you sure mana spheres are working? I don't feel any mana passing through my body."

Gutan simply replied, "Failed, please leave the institution grounds."

...

...

..

.

'FAIL....FAIL....FAIL'

The boy passed out right on the stage.

When Gutan looked down on the unconscious boy he just shook his head in disappointment. This was the reality, after all, 99% of the human didn't have the talent to become a mage and that's why the passing rate was only 1%.

"Take him away."

"Next"

Steadily the momentum picked up. "Fail"..."Fail"..."Fail"

Except for a couple of ballsy people who got eliminated at stage 1 due to lying about their age... most of the others got eliminated on the second stage, it was brutal. It was more like auditions of the fear factor.

Only a couple of people who were worth remembering were a pair of twin brothers who lit up 3 spheres with an element of air and water respectively and a girl who lit up 5 spheres with a special element.

This year's selection rate was the worst in the past 10 years.

Slowly and slowly the queues moved and finally came Oliver and Polo's turn. Since Polo was ahead of Oliver he went first.

He went inside the stall and came out in a couple of minutes. Then he moved towards the stage when Oliver heard "NEXT"

It was his turn and since he was last (because of obvious MC edgelord reasons) he too quickly went to the stall. He read the board and quickly took 5 crystals out of his pocket and placed them in the tray. Even though he hadn't worked as a blacksmith, Olson wouldn't have let his successor be empty-handed, even though Oliver was able to collect 5 crystals in the past 2 years.

He entered the stall and had the same 'procedure' done on him to check out his age. As soon as he was done, he exited the stall only to look at Polo going to the west of the stage with a big grin on his face. Oliver understood that his friend had passed the second stage with a good result, as passing the talent for a mage was certain for both of them.

Even though he knew all that, his heartbeat didn't follow the logic in his brain. He could hear his heart in his ears, beating faster and faster. He silently stood in front of the mana spheres. After seeing so many people do it, he knew what to do.

He took a deep breath and decisively placed his hand on the first sphere. The mana from the sphere slowly flowed into his body. It flowed through all of his meridians and blood vessels.

Although it looked like a long process, it just took a couple of seconds in real life. Then the mana turned to flow back out of his body into the spheres, but suddenly....................

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