Chapter 52: Aptitude Test (4)
The cave wasn’t nearly as deep or ominous as Lucien had feared. No endless tunnel or beastly snarl echoing from within.
Just a short, rocky passage that opened into a surprisingly spacious hollow.
“Thank the stars”
And there was water.
A small, glittering spring bubbled out from a crack in the stone wall, pooling into a clear basin carved naturally into the rock before slowly trickling into a narrow crevice on the other end.
The water glimmered faintly in the dappled sunlight that spilled in from above, where the canopy had split open to reveal a jagged hole in the cave’s ceiling.
Beyond it, blue sky stretched peacefully overhead, rimmed by the leaves of distant treetops swaying gently in the breeze.
Corin smiled wide and pointed at the spring like a proud child revealing treasure.
“There. Told you.”
Lucien didn’t answer at first.
His breath caught at the sight of it.
Water.
Clean, unclouded, blessed water.
He didn’t run to it immediately though.
His instincts, sharpened by a full day of nonsense and near-death experiences, still held him back.
“What if it’s not safe to drink?”
Lucien muttered, crouching beside it.
“Could be poisoned. Or filled with parasites that hatch in your stomach and liquify your guts.”
Corin tilted his head.
“It is spring water.”
Lucien blinked.
“...And?”
“Filtered by the earth,” Corin added with conviction, kneeling by the edge.
“It comes from deep below. Not like rivers or swamps. It is... true water. You should thank the land for it.”
Lucien’s eyes flicked to Corin.
His voice hadn’t just been confident, it had been reverent.
Like he wasn’t just explaining, but honoring something.
There was a sincerity to it, almost ritualistic in tone.
He hadn’t spoken like that when describing anything else.
Lucien hesitated a moment longer.
Then sighed, cupped his hands, and drank.
Cool, crisp, and unbelievably refreshing.
He didn’t even realize how thirsty he was until he started gulping it down like a dying man at an oasis.
When he finished, he wiped his mouth and gave a small, awkward bow toward the spring.
“Uh... thanks, land.”
Corin gave him a look, surprised, then pleased.
“Good. You are polite.”
“No, I’m just... desperate. But thanks.” Lucien leaned back against a smooth stone, letting the cave’s stillness wash over him.
“And also polite. A little.”
Corin laughed softly, axe resting beside him.
The sunlight from the open ceiling warmed their backs, a welcome contrast to the forest’s humid gloom.
Lucien stretched his legs and finally let his body relax.
The cool stone under his thighs, the soft bubbling of the spring, the rays of sunlight cutting through the cave in golden sheets, it all felt like the first moment of peace he’d had since this nightmare test began.
For a moment, they were just two boys, resting under the sun, away from the madness outside.
Lucien leaned his head back and closed his eyes.
His throat no longer burned.
His mind, while still racing, had at least slowed to a tolerable jog.
And then, inevitably... he thought of Balt.
Lucien had no idea where he’d ended up.
Whether he was still in the forest.
Whether he’d found a path or been thrown into a fight.
Balt was reliable, sure, but this place was chaos, and chaos didn’t care about how reliable someone was.
“I hope he’s not getting eaten by something,” Lucien muttered.
“Hm?”
Corin asked, scratching lazily at his horns.
Lucien waved it off.
“Nothing. Just thinking about a friend.”
Corin nodded, eyes drifting up to the open patch of sky.
“Sky’s nice.”
“Yeah,” Lucien agreed quietly.
“It is.”
They sat in silence a while longer.
It wouldn’t last, Lucien knew.
Peace was temporary here, a footnote before the next disaster.
But for now, the spring water was cool, the sun was warm, and neither of them was being chased.
That was enough.
***
Somewhere far away from fresh water and spiritual bonding…
Balt was airborne.
Again.
“Who even builds statues that can dodge like that?!”
He shouted mid-flight, tumbling through the air like an overcooked pancake before landing with all the bravado of a flightless bird .
His boots skidded against the yellow brick road, and he immediately threw up a hexagonal barrier in front of him.
A split second later, CLANG!, a spear slammed into it hard enough to rattle his molars.
“Not even a second to breathe, huh?”
He muttered, watching the statue’s glowing eyes behind the shimmering shield.
“That’s fine. Totally fine.”
The statue didn’t respond.
Statues rarely did.
Behind him, the second statue lunged.
Balt ducked instinctively, dropping to his knees and rolling forward just in time to avoid getting kebabed.
His palm slammed the brick road and activated a horizontal barrier, flinging him straight into the air.
As he rose, he twisted his hands mid-flight, conjuring a compact spherical barrier around himself.
“Ball mode!”
He yelled, not because it helped, but because naming his moves made him feel less like a magical chew toy.
He crashed into the shoulder of the second statue.
The impact made it stumble, just barely, but Balt grinned all the same.
“Ha!!”
Of course, that little victory was short-lived.
The statues regrouped with military efficiency, their feet stomping in sync, their spears poised and ready.
Balt, not to be deterred, pulled out his next plan.
He conjured a long, flexible barrier strip, coating both sides with sticky magic, and whipped it around the back of one of the statue’s shoulders, high up, just between where the neck and backplate met.
“Let’s see you reach that,” he muttered.
Then he stuck himself to the barrier.
“Now,” he said with triumph, “your buddy over there can’t attack me without-”
The second statue stopped moving.
Balt smirked.
‘Even they get it.’
Then the statue raised its spear again.
“Wait… wait wait wait. He doesn’t get it.”
With absolutely no hesitation, the second statue drove the tip of its weapon right toward its twin, and Balt.
Only at the very last second did the first statue twist its torso slightly to catch the blow on its pauldron, sending a reverberating shockwave through the stone and into Balt’s ribs.
“Ow! Okay! Okay! How are these two so smart! Stop!”
Balt let go of the sticky barrier strip and tumbled off the statue’s back, coughing as he hit the ground.
His legs wobbled as he tried to stand again.
They were toying with him now.
He could feel it.
Calculated movements, minimal overextension… they weren’t trying to kill him quickly.
They were measuring him.
Watching how long he could last.
“Alright,” he panted.
‘These things are wasting my time while also draining my stamina. Fighting isn’t the answer. I need to find a way to get out of here. Fast.’
But as he turned to bolt, a stone hand seized his ankle.
“Shit!” he shouted.
And then.
SLAM.
The impact rattled through his whole body.
His barrier flickered into place a second too late, absorbing only part of the force before he absorbed the rest.
His breath left him in a rush as the world spun.
Everything ached.
His ears rang.
The road pressed cold against his cheek.
He groaned and blinked up at the grey, overcast sky beyond the towering walls.
The sun was gone now.
Hidden by the gray clouds.
So was his hope, apparently.
“I’m... not winning this.”
His vision shifted to the left, statues were already circling again, closing in.
Their movements were still patient.
Still exact.
Balt’s hands trembled as he forced himself to his feet.
“I might not even… get away…”
The weight of that thought settled like a stone in his gut.
This wasn’t a spar.
This wasn’t even a fair fight.
This was a trial by execution disguised as a test.
He wasn’t strong enough.
But even so, his hands rose again, bloodied and shaking.
He cast another barrier.
“Come on then,” he muttered, teeth clenched.
“Let’s see how long I can make you work for it.”
The two statues raised their spears in unison.
***
Magic, at its core, was never truly about the spell.
It wasn’t about the chant, the sigil, the wand, the glyph, though all of those were lovely distractions, as helpful to a fledgling mage as training wheels to a child learning to walk.
No, the essence of magic, the true pulse of arcana, was mana.
Invisible.
Omnipresent.
Unruly.
Mana was a second nervous system, a muscle beneath the skin of reality.
It flowed through mages like blood, but unlike blood, it thought.
It listened.
It reacted.
And just like the body it inhabited, it had instincts.
Faced with danger, mana could either become a force of salvation or an agent of catastrophe.
Some people, under intense threat, found their spells sharper, faster, more intuitive, like a soldier finding clarity in the fog of war.
Others… well.
Others would find their mana turning skittish, unstable.
Uncooperative.
Like a cornered animal too afraid to act.
This, dear reader, was the gamble of real-world magic.
It was not static.
It breathed with its wielder.
And right now, Balt’s mana was wheezing.
He ducked under a horizontal sweep, the stone spear missing his throat by inches.
A barrier sprang up in front of him, reflexive, instinctive, weak.
He felt it even before the impact.
The resonance in the spell structure jittered like a cracked mirror straining to hold form.
“Nonononono-!”
CRASH.
The barrier shattered on contact, just like he feared.
It broke exactly how he imagined it would, fragments of golden light slicing into the air like jagged glass.
Only…
The statue flinched.
Balt blinked.
One of the shards had lodged deep into the statue’s torso.
“What the-”
The statue tried to lift its arm for another strike, but a second shard had buried itself into its joint, grinding against the stone mechanism within.
Without thinking, Balt reached out, not with his hands, but with his will.
He commanded the shards.
Push.
And they did.
Mana surged, driven by instinct more than intent.
The shard buried in the shoulder joint drove deeper, humming with energy, splitting the joint in half with a sound like cracking bone.
Chipped stone exploded outward.
The statue’s spear arm tumbled to the ground.
Balt stared.
“I just… wait. I did that?!”
He blinked, stunned, as realization dawned like morning sun across his face.
He could control barrier fragments.
He’d always viewed his barriers as either whole or broken, tools of defense or blunt-force offense.
But never… never as components.
Never as weapons made sharper by their own destruction.
That wasn’t in any of the textbooks.
Not in theory, not in principle, not even in the fringe footnotes.
He had just invented something.
“Ha… Ha!”
He gasped, laughing through the exhaustion.
“Oh, wait till Lucien hears about this, he’s going-”
He raised his arms for another spell, only to watch, dumbfounded, as the armless statue paused… then picked up the spear with its other arm.
Like a waiter shifting a tray.
Like a butcher choosing a different knife.
Like it had been doing this for centuries.
“…Okay,” Balt muttered, his smile faltering.
Then it lunged.
Balt dove, rolling just out of the weapon’s path.
He gasped, grit burning his eyes as the road scraped his palms raw.
He barely registered that he’d rolled too far, straight into the striking range of the second statue, which had been waiting like a trapdoor spider.
Its foot came down like a falling mountain.
“Wait- WAIT-!”
CRUNCH.
Pain unlike anything Balt had ever felt before exploded up his legs.
His vision went white.
The scream that tore out of his throat felt detached from his own mouth, like he was watching someone else suffer.
He lay there, gasping, twitching.
One statue stood looming over him, raising its spear again.
The other silently stood back, as if the attack had been made on its behalf.
Balt’s hands clawed at the yellow bricks, frantic, bloodied, fumbling to cast anything, anything.
But his mana was no longer precise, no longer balanced.
It was wild now, echoing his panic.
For the first time since entering this test, Balt realized that innovation and clever tricks weren’t enough to save him.
Neither could make up for ruthless brute strength.
***
High above the forest, nestled atop a needle-thin spire of white stone, the Observation Tower stood like a forgotten monument to the gods.
Crystalline panels shimmered like glass but were forged of condensed mana, transparent to the eye but layered with wards, allowing those within to see all without being seen.
Inside, a low hush had settled over the invigilators.
“...Candidate thirty-eight,” murmured a woman dressed in the charcoal-gray robes of the Crown’s Examination Office, her tone more concerned than clinical.
Her eyes, sharp as a falcon’s, stayed locked to the illusion hovering over her desk, a projection of Balt, barely recognizable through the dirt, blood, and broken limbs.
“Civilian-born. Non-affiliated. Ranked outside the top fifty in theory, but scores high in creative application.”
“Higher than most,” another man added, arms folded as he watched the projection in silence.
“That barrier rotation technique, lifting himself mid-air to slam into a target? Ingenious.”
“He’s a clever one,” the woman agreed.
“Quick-witted. Adaptive. And far too aware for his age.”
The room was quiet again, save for the scrying pools flickering with hazy images of other candidates.
But none of them were fighting like Balt was.
None of them had gotten this far by sheer force of improvisation.
And none of them were about to be disqualified in the most brutal way possible.
“I wish that was enough,” the woman finally said.
Her voice had softened, turned brittle.
“But if grit alone won battles, we'd have no gravestones on the battlefield.”
They didn’t want to say it, but the truth weighed heavy in the room.
Balt’s legs were gone, crushed like twigs beneath a boulder.
His magic, erratic.
His mana signature, faltering.
His fate, for all intents and purposes, sealed.
“He can’t run,” one of the junior mages whispered.
“And if he can’t move…”
The statue’s spear lifted.
Balt, barely able to keep his eyes open, braced for it.
Then.
Something small broke through the illusion’s frame.
A blur.
A smudge of soggy white paper, crumpled, dirt-stained, and visibly dripping wet, flitted onto the scene like a wind-tossed leaf.
It wobbled in the air, comically pathetic compared to the towering stone giants, but it dove like it had purpose.
A paper crane, fragile and misshapen.
“…What?”
Someone muttered in the tower.
“What in the name of the Stars is that?”
The illusion shimmered to zoom in.
The paper crane spun lazily in the air, now wedged between the tip of the spear and the broken ground where Balt lay.
The woman stared.
“It flew here. On its own.”
“Impossible.”
“Or perfectly timed.”
They turned back to the illusion.
Balt lay stunned, blinking through bloodied lashes as the spear trembled above his head, frozen.
And the crane… just hovered there, like some absurd, divine intervention made of pulpy fibers and wishful thinking.
