Chapter 49: Aptitude Test (1)
Lucien and Balt were led back into the monolithic academy building, their boots echoing against polished stone as they passed through broad corridors lined with glowing crystal sconces.
Soon enough, they were separated, ushers in sharp uniforms silently peeling them off in different directions like livestock headed for auction.
Lucien offered Balt a final, anxious nod before he was guided away down another hallway.
A woman in uniform gestured him forward with a clipboard in hand.
She didn’t smile or offer any warmth, but there was no hostility either, just a kind of bureaucratic coldness that comforted and unsettled him at the same time.
“Candidate Lucien Crowley,” she said, confirming his name from the parchment.
“This way, please.”
They passed through a short hallway with a tiled floor that gleamed unnaturally, like it had just been cleaned by magic.
The room she led him into was oddly sterile, not unlike a doctor’s office.
A cushioned stool sat before a high wooden table with a brass tray resting atop it.
Several tools and parchment documents were neatly laid out.
“Sit down,” she said.
Lucien complied.
She reached into a velvet-lined case and pulled out a golden bracelet, thin, elegant, and inscribed with faint glyphs.
It shimmered with an internal pulse, as if it had its own heartbeat.
Before Lucien could ask any questions, she clipped the bracelet around his wrist.
It clicked with a light chime, then the glyphs lit up and a glowing number appeared across the band: 047.
“There,” she said, checking it.
“You are now candidate number forty-seven. This bracelet will monitor your vitals, mana levels, and test progression. Do not remove it. Attempting to do so will result in immediate disqualification.”
Lucien raised his wrist, inspecting it.
“What does the number represent?”
“Only your ID for this phase. You’ll be referred to by number during aptitude scoring.”
“Right,” he muttered.
“Now follow me.”
Lucien was taken down another hallway, this one quieter, more sterile.
There, he underwent a thorough physical examination, height, weight, blood pressure, magical aura reading, and even a quick pulse of healing magic to test for injuries or hidden conditions.
A silent healer poked and prodded him with gloved hands before giving a curt nod of approval.
He was handed a stack of consent documents, most of which were little more than formal legal protections for the Academy.
Terms like “acceptable risk,” “non-lethal injuries,” and “spell-induced trauma” appeared more often than was comfortable.
Still, Lucien signed, hand cramping slightly under the lingering strain of the written exam, and was finally escorted to a plain, windowless room with a single chair and a lone staff member inside.
This one, a woman with tired eyes and a face that gave off the faint impression that she’d once been kind but had long since learned not to get attached to hopeful faces.
“Candidate Forty-Seven,” she greeted him, motioning for him to sit on a stool across from her.
“I will now explain your evaluation parameters.”
Lucien nodded, hands folded tensely in his lap.
“The Aptitude Evaluation will place you in an isolated environment, a forest region protected and stabilized by the Academy’s boundary field. Your objective is to travel from your starting point, Point A, to your destination, Point B.”
Lucien frowned slightly.
“That sounds… straightforward.”
The woman’s mouth quivered slightly.
She continued.
“You will be teleported into a random location within the evaluation zone. Your Point B will be exactly six hundred meters due north of your entry location. Your bracelet will vibrate once when you are facing true north, to help you orient. Once you reach Point B, the test is considered complete and you have successfully passed the Aptitude test. In addition, you will be scored based on how you got there, how long you took, how efficiently you navigated, and how you responded to any… unpredictable circumstances.”
“Unpredictable,” Lucien repeated slowly.
“As in?”
She shook her head.
“I don’t have the authority to say more. You will not be told what to expect. You may be tested on survival, combat, puzzle-solving, mana control, or none of those. It varies by candidate.”
“…Right.”
“You may withdraw now,” she added calmly.
“If you choose to begin the exam, however, you cannot leave until you reach Point B… or are disqualified.”
Lucien tilted his head.
“What constitutes disqualification?”
“Failing to make progress within a certain timeframe. Dropping unconscious for too long. Grave injury. Damaging your bracelet. Attempting to climb the forest walls or to escape the boundaries.”
He sat in silence for a moment.
Every word weighed down on him like invisible stones.
It wasn’t terrifying, it was worse.
It was methodical.
A system that had eaten up students like him for centuries without flinching.
But he didn’t hesitate.
“I’m ready,” he said, voice low but certain.
The staff member nodded.
“Verbal consent logged. Initiating transfer.”
The bracelet on his wrist blinked twice, glowing faintly.
Lucien braced himself.
There was no blinding light, no dramatic crack of teleportation.
One moment he was in the room then the next.
Splash.
His boots sank into water.
Rain drummed down around him with a fury, soaked leaves overhead barely filtering the downpour.
The sky was grey and growling.
The wind howled between the branches of twisted, moss-covered trees.
He was in a marshy stretch of forest, the ground slick and uncertain beneath his feet.
“Ah, hell,” Lucien muttered, already feeling his socks soak through.
The air smelled of wet bark and something faintly metallic.
He looked around, ears straining, eyes adjusting.
Then, the bracelet gave a short buzz against his wrist.
He turned his body slowly until the buzzing stopped.
“North,” he whispered, his breath fogging in the cold.
Clutching his satchel to his chest and adjusting the waterproof tarp he’d folded into his coat earlier, Lucien took his first step forward, toward Point B, toward whatever awaited him in this forest of tests, and toward the gates of Twilight Crown Academy.
If he made it out.
***
Splash.
A student stumbles into a rocky creek, his eyes wide as he stares down a low-slung black wolf with glowing green eyes.
It snarls, crouching low, and the boy barely manages to raise a glowing talisman before it lunges.
Crash.
A massive boar, easily the size of a carriage, barrels through the undergrowth, scattering mud and leaves.
A girl wielding a short spear screams and dives out of its path, casting a crude earthen wall that barely slows the creature down.
She scrambles up a tree, panting.
Whoosh.
Up in the canopy, a boy flattens himself against a wide branch, clutching a dagger in silence.
Above him, the coils of a wyvermling slither soundlessly between the trees, scaled, serpentine, and almost translucent in the morning light.
Its wings flutter faintly, keeping it suspended between branches like a gliding ghost.
The boy doesn’t breathe.
Snap.
Two students stand back-to-back in a clearing, one holding a wand, the other gripping a steel baton.
Surrounding them, small fanged gremlins chatter and hiss, dozens of beady eyes reflecting light like mirrors.
One lunges and is met with a gout of flame.
***
The forest is vast, stretching out like a patchwork quilt of green, gold, and black.
Encasing it are five massive white walls, creating five distinct sectors, each one cordoned off from the others.
From the center of the forest rises a tall, monolithic watchtower, its architecture spired and imperial.
It stands level with the height of the walls, a silent sentinel with windows facing all five sectors.
Radiating outward from the base of the tower like spokes of a wheel are five shimmering yellow-brick roads, magically reinforced.
Each road slices cleanly through its sector, offering a single, straight path to the heart.
***
Inside the tower, walls of polished crystal shimmer with reflected feeds, like scrying mirrors, each tuned to a different sector.
Staff in deep blue uniforms move briskly between control runes and parchment-laden desks. Magical glyphs hover mid-air, updating with candidate numbers and status.
A long table in the center of the room holds an intricate map of the forest.
Above it floats an ethereal hologram, slowly rotating, showing blips where each remaining candidate moves.
A man in dark robes paces along the viewing deck, his presence magnetic, his expression unreadable.
His every step he takes echoes like a clock tick.
His graying hair is slicked back, his face sharp like chiseled stone.
Around him, tension hums like static.
“Update,” he says, voice cutting clean through the murmurs.
A younger invigilator rushes forward with a clipboard and a grim face.
“Topaz Sector, Sir Administrator Vaencel. All one hundred candidates have been disqualified.”
Vaencel stops pacing.
He doesn’t react.
He just stares.
“What was the primary cause?”
He asks calmly, with a patience that feels dangerous.
The younger man swallows.
“The fauna, sir. Not a single one made it past the twenty-meter perimeter. They were overrun.”
Vaencel clicks his tongue.
“No one reached the road?”
“None, sir.”
For a moment, there is silence, just the quiet hum of enchanted glass and distant magical frequency pulses.
Vaencel walks to the nearest scrying mirror and leans forward.
“Pull up Ruby Sector,” he says.
The glass ripples, revealing a portion of forest drenched in heavy mist and wet vines.
A small red indicator blinks and moves, Candidate 047, weaving between trees, cautious but progressing.
He lifts a pair of brass binoculars, polished to perfection, and peers through a narrow slit in the tower wall.
Through the magnified view, he watches as Lucien pushes through a curtain of leaves, his soaked coat clinging to his shoulders, his golden bracelet gleaming faintly even in the gloom.
Vaencel lowers the binoculars.
“…At least Ruby’s still breathing.”
Behind him, another invigilator mutters under her breath, “For now.”
Vaencel doesn’t comment.
His eyes move to the clock on the wall.
The first hour is almost up.
“Mark Sector Topaz as failed. Shift two sentries from Emerald to Ruby. Increase scrying frequency. The next wave of eliminations will begin soon.”
“Aye, sir,” they echo in unison.
***
Lucien’s foot slips on a moss-covered root.
He catches himself just in time, panting.
His eyes glance down at the bracelet, still glowing, still steady.
He can’t see the tower.
But he knows someone is watching.
And he knows one thing for sure, this isn’t just a test anymore.
It’s survival.
And survival means moving forward.
***
In a different corner of the Ruby sector, Balt could feel the thrum of mana beneath his skin, his gloves humming faintly as the etched circuits along the leather lit up with his every movement.
The forest stretched endlessly around him, dense, green, and deceptively quiet.
A slight breeze rustled the leaves above.
Somewhere far off, a branch snapped.
Somewhere else, a roar.
But here, for now, it was quiet.
He raised his gloved hand and summoned a small, curved barrier panel at an angle before him.
It shimmered briefly in the light filtering through the canopy.
“Alright… first step: height.”
That had been his plan from the beginning.
The forest was too unpredictable, too wild.
Waiting for something to find him felt suicidal.
Instead, he needed elevation, a vantage point to scout out a path and get a sense of what kind of terrain and obstacles lay ahead.
He moved carefully at first, avoiding loose stones and patches of tangled roots.
The bracelet on his wrist, number 038, glinted gold under the rising sun.
He picked up speed.
The moment he spotted a hill in the distance, modest, but prominent, he locked in on it.
Jagged outcrops peeked through the foliage, and the incline looked steep in places, but it would give him the view he needed.
As he moved, he threw up occasional barrier plates at head height, angled just enough to protect from falling debris or redirect him around dense patches of undergrowth.
It was a rhythm he had trained for, mana control flowing with his breath.
Jumping over a shallow pit, Balt was halfway across a log bridge when a sudden gust of wind blasted down from above.
A shadow loomed over him.
He looked up, eyes narrowing as a massive shape swooped through the air, feathers, talons, wings wide as a sail.
It was some kind of eagle-vulture hybrid, a grotesque mix of predatory instinct and raw muscle. Its eyes locked onto him, its screech piercing.
“Shit!”
Balt dove to the side just as claws slammed into the wood where he’d been.
The log cracked loudly beneath the pressure, splintering down the middle.
He rolled, summoned a wide rectangular barrier mid-air, and used it to bounce off the ground, propelling himself forward in a clumsy scramble.
The creature screeched again and turned in the sky, already preparing another dive.
Balt didn’t wait.
He sprinted forward, chest heaving, the hill now only a few dozen meters ahead.
The sky opened up above him.
He was exposed.
He cursed as he stumbled through a break in the trees, only to feel the ground change beneath his feet.
Not dirt.
Not roots.
Smooth.
Flat.
Almost warm.
He skidded to a halt and looked down.
Yellow brick.
It stretched ahead in a clean, orderly path.
The stones were laid in precise patterns, lined with faint etchings that pulsed softly with magical energy.
The Yellow Brick Road.
Balt didn’t have time to admire it.
The bird was circling again.
He braced himself.
The massive beast dove, its wings kicking up dust as it shrieked and descended toward the open clearing where Balt now stood, completely exposed.
He raised a barrier instinctively, knowing it wouldn’t hold for long.
But the attack never came.
Instead, the creature slowed.
It hovered in place for a moment, just outside the edge of the yellow brick path, letting out an uncertain cry.
Its wings twitched, and then, without warning, it turned and flew off, flapping powerfully into the trees and disappearing beyond the canopy.
Balt blinked.
“What…?”
He slowly lowered his hand, still panting, and looked around.
Nothing else stirred.
No monsters.
No hidden traps.
No sudden bursts of magic.
Just the strange, sun-warmed road, stretching ahead toward the north.
His bracelet buzzed once.
He looked down.
The meaning was clear.
North.
“Okay,” he breathed out, still catching his breath.
“So this is the path. This… this is it.”
He let out a tired, relieved laugh and slumped forward, hands on his knees.
For a second there, he thought he was done for.
Thought he’d end up getting carried off like prey.
But now?
Now he had direction.
He adjusted the straps of his gloves, stood upright again, and brushed the dirt from his sleeves.
With the bird gone and the forest thinning just a little, Balt began walking, then jogging, along the yellow brick road.
The buzz of his mana dampened to a low thrum, and the tension in his shoulders eased.
If this was the path to the checkpoint, he was going to follow it.
And maybe, just maybe, he’d survive this insane test after all.
