Chapter 42: Entrance Exam (4)
Balt's boots clicked steadily across the cobbled streets of the capital, but with each new inn he entered, the rhythm grew more hesitant, more resigned.
He was supposed to be preparing mentally for the written exam, but instead, he was making what he half-jokingly called a pilgrimage: an inn-to-inn odyssey to find a place to stay that wouldn’t murder his dwindling pouch of copper coins.
The first inn had shining windows, crystal chandeliers, and a lobby that smelled of lavender oil and polished ambition.
“Good evening, sir! Our rooms start at six silver a night, with breakfast included.”
Balt blinked.
Six silver?
“Oh, uh… I’m actually allergic to lavender. It sets off my asthma,” he lied with the confidence of a man raised on excuses and poverty.
“Sorry! I’ll try elsewhere!”
The receptionist blinked at him as he fled.
The second inn was more modest, with painted wooden walls and the scent of meat pies wafting from a nearby kitchen.
Cozy, welcoming.
“Three silver per night, sir, and that comes with fresh linens every morning.”
Balt smiled, nodded, then grimaced.
“Actually, I just remembered, my aunt. She lives nearby. Would kill me if I stayed anywhere else. Family, you know?” He patted his chest solemnly and made a swift retreat.
Third inn.
Fourth.
Fifth.
The numbers dropped, three silver, two-and-a-half, two, but not enough.
Balt had enough for maybe a week at two silver a night, if he stopped eating.
But the exam was in two weeks.
And starvation didn’t help with cognitive function.
By the time the sun began dipping behind the towering spires of the inner city, Balt’s shoulders had slumped low with fatigue, and his coin pouch felt like a cruel joke swinging mockingly at his side.
He turned down a narrow mossy cobblestone lane, where the inns were no longer posh and sparkly.
He stepped into the next one without much thought.
It was squat, slanted, with a creaky door that jingled as it opened.
Inside, the floor creaked with his steps.
There was no front desk, only a square wooden table in the middle of what was obviously a living room, a mismatched armchair by the hearth, and an upright ledger laying on its side beside a cracked ceramic bell.
Balt rang the bell once.
No response.
He looked around.
A staircase led up the side wall, and children’s drawings hung from twine near the windows.
Definitely a house.
He rang it again.
Still nothing.
Just as he was reaching for the handle to leave, a flurry of footsteps pounded down the stairs.
A woman in her thirties, cheeks flushed from exertion and arms full of cleaning cloths and a mop, nearly tripped over herself as she reached the bottom.
“Oh, stars, I’m so sorry! Just a moment!”
She dropped her bundle by the stairs and rushed to the table, attempting to straighten her vest and finger-comb her hair at the same time.
Her smile was warm but thinly stretched, like a piece of bread scraped too far.
“Welcome to the Hearthlight,” she said breathlessly.
“We’re… not exactly a big inn, but we keep everything clean and the beds are sturdy. My name’s Mera. How long are you looking to stay?”
Balt hesitated, then asked, “What’s the price per night?”
She blinked, then turned to shuffle through drawers and piles of half-sorted receipts until she found the ledger.
She opened it with reverence, as if consulting a sacred tome, then finally declared, “Sixty coppers a night.”
Balt did the mental math.
That was less than a silver.
The lowest he’d heard all day.
He could probably find somewhere in the outer slums that offered rooms at forty or even thirty, places with leaky roofs, or where your neighbor might quietly vanish in the night, but something about this place…
He glanced around.
The walls were uneven, the furniture worn.
A children’s toy lay forgotten under the side table.
The air smelled faintly of soap and something baking upstairs.
It was warm.
Not in temperature, but in spirit.
Mera saw his hesitation.
Her hands clenched in her vest.
“We… only just started renting rooms,” she admitted, her voice softer.
“My husband isn’t with us, My eldest helps watch the little ones while I clean. It’s a quiet place. We don’t have many guests. It’s just… our home.”
Her smile tried to mask it, but her voice caught slightly on the last word.
Balt could see the weight beneath her eyes, the sleepless nights, the worry carved into her expression like stone under rain.
He could walk away.
There were cheaper places, grimmer places.
But something in his chest twisted.
He looked at the room again.
A hearth that had seen many winters.
A table that had served both meals and business.
A house barely holding together.
He reached into his coin pouch and placed enough for seven nights, plus a little extra, on the table.
Mera’s eyes widened.
“A week? Paid up front?”
He nodded.
“I’ll be staying here.”
There was a pause, long, quiet, reverent.
Then her face cracked into a teary smile.
“Thank you,” she whispered.
“Truly, thank you.”
She pocketed the coins with trembling fingers, then gestured for him to follow.
“Come, I’ll show you to your room. Fresh blankets. The mattress is a bit firm, but there’s extra pillows if you need them. I can bring you tea at night if you like, and there’s bread in the morning, nothing fancy.”
Balt followed her up the narrow stairs.
The wood groaned underfoot, and the hallway ceiling was so low he had to duck.
But when she opened the door to the room, the last of daylight poured through a small window onto a neatly made bed, a desk by the side, and a water basin set in a ceramic bowl that smelled faintly of lavender soap.
“Let me know if you need anything,” Mera said, standing in the doorway with her hands clasped.
“We don’t have much, but what we do have-”
Balt gave a small smile.
“This is perfect. Thank you.”
She nodded, then left him to settle in.
As the door shut softly behind her, Balt sat on the edge of the bed and looked around at the small, quiet room.
It wasn’t grand.
It wasn’t cheap.
But it was real.
Honest.
Full of warmth in a cold city.
And for someone about to take the most important test of his life, that was more valuable than gold.
***
Back at the estate, Lucien sat cross-legged on the floor of his room, the book from Ms. Celeste open before him.
His desk had already been claimed by an overflowing mountain of scrolls, parchments, and reference tomes, so the floor had become his new sanctuary, complete with ink stains and pillow support.
The air was still, thick with the scent of old paper, mana residue, and the faint aroma of apples wafting through his window from the nearby orchard.
The title across the cover gleamed in neat, golden embossment:
“Foundations of Trap Magic and Runic Ward Construction.”
Lucien flipped the page with a mix of curiosity and resignation.
After all, it wasn’t like he had a choice.
If what Ms. Celeste said was true, and judging by her ominous delivery, it probably was, then he would need more than just answers to theoretical questions.
He would need something to survive with.
Preferably something that exploded in his enemies' faces.
The opening chapters were surprisingly dry, reading more like a legal document than a magical manual.
Lucien muttered aloud as he read, his voice dull with tired sarcasm.
[‘The primary distinction between active casting and latent-structure casting lies in the temporal displacement of activation and the conscious separation of mana from the user’s core…’]
He groaned, dragging a hand down his face.
“God, even in another world, they still write like lawyers.”
Still, as he trudged deeper into the text, the ideas began to take root.
Trap magic, it explained, and its sibling, ward construction, offered a distinct advantage over traditional casting: distance.
By embedding conditions, parameters, and activation triggers into spells ahead of time, the user could remain far away from the battlefield or entirely incapacitated, and still pose a threat.
Some wards were even designed to activate posthumously, the magical equivalent of a vengeful spite grenade.
Lucien raised his eyebrows at that.
“Creepy. Useful. But creepy.”
The book elaborated on the split between traps and wards, noting that while both were similar in their delayed-cast nature, traps were primarily reactionary, meant to surprise, wound, or hinder.
Wards, on the other hand, were more proactive, like laying down an insurance policy in spell form.
Defensive barriers, area buffs, elemental shielding, and even minor auto-heals could be constructed through complex ward arrays.
“Okay, so wards are like buffs and debuffs…”
Lucien muttered, squinting at a diagram.
“Traditional RPG mechanics, check. Except instead of right-clicking a spell icon, I have to carve a geometric rune into the floor, feed it with my own life force, chant a four-line incantation, and pray it doesn’t backfire.”
He flipped the page.
[While no ward can match the divine potency of a true cleric’s blessing, their reproducibility, low upkeep, and range of effects make them viable tools in any modern caster’s repertoire.]
Lucien scratched his head.
“So not as good as divine magic, but still not trash-tier.”
He could live with that.
Traps, in contrast, were more situational.
Smoke bursts, mana snares, concussive glyphs, spells designed to delay, disorient, or hurt.
Traps leaned heavily on the element of surprise and required preparation, things Lucien had learned to appreciate after getting nearly flattened by a training dummy that one time Vaelira made him spar blindfolded.
He leaned back, frowning at the ceiling.
“If the aptitude test is as brutal as everyone keeps whispering, I doubt I’ll have time to set up elaborate traps. Not unless they give me an hour head start and a bag of C4…”
Still, he marked a few chapters for later reading, sections like “Emergency Displacement Wards” and “Quick-Weave Trap Glyphs for Beginners.” Might come in handy.
You never know when you’ll need a magical tripwire or a flashbang ward.
As the pages turned, the book transitioned into more nuanced theory, where the boundaries between traps and wards began to blur.
Some spells, it explained, could be either, depending on intent and placement.
A mana pulse field that healed allies when stepped into?
A ward.
The same field, tweaked to drain life instead of restore it?
Now it was a trap.
The core principle was the externalization of mana, detaching it from the caster and embedding it into a spatial construct.
Lucien paused at that line.
Then read it again.
Externalizing mana…
That was the exact opposite of what most spellbooks recommended.
Most magic, from what he’d read so far, revolved around flowing mana through one’s body, shaping it in the moment, and releasing it like exhaling a breath.
But his mana didn’t flow.
It resisted.
It hung there, like a stubborn mule, sluggish and suspicious of any sudden commands.
His few attempts at traditional fireball or water whip spells had either fizzled out or detonated half a second after he gave up, dangerously late and wildly inaccurate.
But when he had tried embedding his mana, like the way Ms. Celeste had him draw that basic glowing rune into the floor, or the ward Vaelira had made him replicate, it had worked.
Not quickly, but correctly.
His eyes dropped back to the page:
[While difficult to learn due to the abstract separation of one’s mana, trap and ward-based casting is ideal for individuals whose mana exhibits high latency or requires persistent instruction sets. While unsuitable for fast-paced elemental duels, these methods offer superior utility and tactical versatility.]
Lucien blinked.
“Well. That’s not exactly a compliment, but I’ll take it.”
With a weary sigh, he looked at the rune etched on the current page, a simple circular array for a Kinetic Disruption Ward.
It looked straightforward.
Three layers, four nodes, and a trigger glyph tied to an approaching mana signature.
Not deadly, but useful for knocking someone off their feet or breaking their rhythm in a fight.
He grabbed his chalk and leaned toward the wooden board he’d dragged onto the floor earlier.
With his tongue poking from the corner of his mouth and the lamplight flickering behind him, he started to trace the rune carefully, slowly shaping his mana along the grooves.
One line.
Then another.
For the first time since beginning this godsforsaken entrance exam journey, Lucien felt something click, like a puzzle piece sliding into place.
He wasn’t going to win with flash or firepower.
But maybe, just maybe, he could win with forethought.
He looked down at the book again.
“Foundations of Trap Magic and Runic Ward Construction.”
More like: Foundations of How Not to Die in a Fantasy Magic College Entrance Exam Because Your Mana is a Little Bastard.
Lucien smiled tiredly.
“Alright, you little gremlin,” he muttered to his mana.
“Let’s get to work.”
***
