Chapter 53: Aptitude Test (5)

The water spring in the cave burbled gently, its crystalline surface disturbed only by the occasional ripple as a droplet slipped down from the moss-lined rocks above.

The sunlight streaming in from the hole in the cave’s ceiling cast the entire space in a muted glow, calm, peaceful, almost sacred in the way light and shadow danced around the pool.

Lucien leaned back on his elbows, trying to savor the rare moment of rest.

His shirt clung to him in damp patches, his boots were caked in mud, and a stray twig had somehow wormed its way into his collar.

And yet, for all that, he almost, almost, felt human again.

Corin, now seated beside him with his giant battleaxe laid carefully to the side like some docile pet, sipped from cupped hands and exhaled with an oddly contented sigh.

It was a surprisingly tranquil scene for two examinees stranded in a monster-infested death forest.

“...So,” Corin said, his voice low and thoughtful, “what now?”

Lucien blinked, pulled from his reverie.

“Huh?”

“The plan,” Corin clarified, motioning vaguely toward the cave entrance.

“We drink. We breathe. We not die. What’s next?”

Lucien ran a hand through his mess of damp hair and let out a breath.

“We… we try to find others. Stick together. That’s our best shot.”

Corin’s brows furrowed.

“Others?”

“If we gather a few examinees,” Lucien explained, “we can cover more ground, set watches, defend as a unit. Some are probably more skilled than us, others less, but numbers give us leverage.”

Corin scratched his chin.

“Would they listen?”

Lucien shrugged.

“No clue. Maybe? Maybe not. But it’s worth trying. And I think… I think at least one person will definitely join us.”

“Oh?”

Corin tilted his head.

“Someone you know?”

Lucien gave a faint smile, pulling out something from his satchel: a soggy, dirt-streaked notebook, its pages sticking together like wet leaves.

He carefully pried it open, revealing a set of rough sketches, notes, and diagrams.

“We need to find him.”

Corin leaned closer, watching with quiet curiosity as Lucien tore out one of the few less-damaged pages and laid it flat on a stone.

From a side pouch, he produced a pencil, blunted and waterlogged but still functional, and began scribbling instructions in neat, if shaky, handwriting.

Corin watched, eyes narrowing in fascination.

“Magic?”

Lucien didn’t answer.

He focused, pressing two fingers against the paper and whispering an incantation not found in any formal grimoire but cobbled together from fragments of old textbooks and some well-read theory.

The paper twitched.

It shivered.

And slowly, painfully, like an old man rising from a too-soft chair, it began to fold.

Soggy and limp though it was, the paper curled, crumpled, then tucked itself into shape, each crease guided by invisible mana threads.

Corin let out a slow whistle as the half-pulp bird took form.

“A crane?”

He said, blinking.

“Cute.”

The crane fluttered its wings, rose a few inches from the stone with a wet fwump... and immediately plopped back down like a sad meatball.

It wobbled on its belly.

Corin gave it a respectful nod.

“Well, that was a nice trick.”

Lucien stared at it, eyebrows furrowed.

“No, no, wait, it’s not just a trick.”

He picked it back up, shaking water off gently, and this time he closed his eyes, not focusing on the how, but the why.

Not the wings.

Not the balance.

Not the mechanics of flight.

But the purpose.

‘Find Balt. Reach him.’

He let his thoughts pour into the paper as mana, not as commands.

A mental pulse of yearning and urgency shaped the core of the message.

Not flight, but seeking.

The crane lifted again.

This time, it shuddered, twitched, zig-zagged like a drunk bee, and then, with a strange grace, rose into the air.

It rose into the sky, beyond the canopy, turning in all the Cardinal direction, before coming back down.

Lucien and Corin watched as it hovered uncertainly, then turned in place twice before diving toward Lucien’s chest and giving a hard peck.

“What the-”

“I think it wants us to follow,” Corin observed, impressed.

The crane looped around them once, flying like a tossed rag in the wind, but it didn’t fall.

It darted toward the mouth of the cave, stopped, fluttered in place, then pecked the air again.

Lucien stood, heart racing.

He grabbed his satchel, wiping his face clean with a sleeve.

“He’s not far. That direction. Come on.”

Corin reached for his axe.

“To your friend?”

Lucien nodded.

“I think so, I hope so...”

Corin grinned.

“Then let’s not let him die.”

And with that, the two figures sprinted after the drunken origami, chasing a thread of hope through the thickets, led by a paper crane made of desperation, mana, and the stubborn belief that maybe, just maybe, they were not too late.

***

In the case of typical automatons, the relationship between the creation and its creator is seamless.

A direct line of communication is established the moment mana is used to breathe life into the form.

Through this mana link, commands and feedback travel not as words or logic, but as instinct.

Intent becomes comprehension.

The automaton knows what its master wants, and the master feels what the automaton sees.

But Lucien, as always, was a bit of a problem.

His mana… wasn’t like everyone else’s.

To put it politely, it had a mind of its own.

Not in the sense of being sentient, but rather, it was temperamental, slippery, and often refused to follow direct instructions.

Lucien didn’t control his mana so much as negotiate with it.

And when it came to the creation of automatons, this meant the usual intuitive exchange was, at best, janky.

Which was why, as he and Corin dashed through the underbrush, Lucien had no idea where the flying paper crane was leading them.

He only knew that it was leading them.

And that was enough.

Paradoxically, the very reason Lucien couldn’t read its thoughts or feel its impressions like most mages would was because his mana had detached itself from his body and now inhabited the crane directly.

That split, that transfer, meant the fragile paper creation now carried not only his energy, but a fragment of his will.

The crane didn’t just know it had to find Balt.

It wanted to.

Because Lucien wanted to.

Because protecting Balt, even now, was carved into the very essence of the bird's fluttering folds.

And it did protect him.

In its own ridiculous, soggy, miraculous way.

At the moment when all hope seemed lost, when Balt’s bloodied figure lay still between the statues, too injured to escape or defend himself, the paper crane had dove, crumpled wings extended in defiance, and inserted itself between the two titans and the battered boy.

Everyone, Balt, the statues, even the invigilators watching from the scrying mirror, were dumbfounded.

What kind of guardian was made of mushy pulp?

The crane flapped furiously in place, bobbing up and down as if trying to appear larger than it was.

A weak breeze caught it, tilting it sideways.

It straightened.

Tilted again.

It straightened again.

And in that absurd moment of resistance, help arrived.

“HAH!!”

The shout came with the impact of a battleaxe slamming into stone.

Corin descended like a bolt of muscle and fury, his axe crashing into the shoulder of the one-armed statue as he yelled something in a dialect no one could understand.

The stone cracked, staggering under the force of raw physical power.

The second statue turned to respond, only for a wet slap to echo through the clearing.

A ball of soggy paper struck its torso.

Then another.

And another.

Lucien stepped out of the forest, walking swiftly, calmly, his eyes locked on the enemy.

A single trickle of sweat ran down his cheek.

His shirt clung to his back.

But his hand didn’t shake.

The invigilators at the tower leaned forward, squinting at the strange scene.

“…What is he doing?”

One murmured.

“Did he just throw a paper towel at a stone golem?”

At first, it looked… foolish.

Absurd, even.

Until the first explosion detonated, an icy blast that erupted from the paper talisman, freezing the statue’s left arm at the shoulder.

Then came the second, a roar of fire that knocked the statue off balance, searing black cracks across its torso.

And finally, the third paper bomb hissed as green smoke began to rise from the spot of impact.

Acid.

Real, burning, alchemical acid.

The stone sizzled.

Cracks formed like spiderwebs.

The statue faltered.

In the observation tower, the watching invigilators now wore expressions of surprise, and respect.

“…That’s not just paper magic,” said one.

“That’s trap sigil inscription on remote-reactive scroll fragments.”

“But how did he embed it on wet paper-?”

“I don’t know. But I think he layered them. Overlapping sigils coded to trigger in sequence. I’ve never seen anyone do it with scrap material.”

Administrator Vaencel walked up behind them, arms folded behind his back.

He said nothing at first, simply watching.

Corin continued to press the one-armed statue, striking fast and hard, using his momentum to keep the hulking construct on the defensive.

Lucien, meanwhile, moved carefully, laying down subtle barriers between Balt and the second statue, not strong enough to stop it, but enough to deflect if needed.

He knelt beside his fallen friend without looking, hand hovering near Balt’s chest.

“Please don’t be dead,” Lucien muttered, flicking a glance toward him.

Balt groaned something unintelligible.

Lucien sighed.

“Close enough.”

Administrator Vaencel finally spoke.

“…Ingenuity. Grit. And a complete disregard for conventional form,” he mused.

He turned to his staff.

“That paper bird may have saved a life. Mark the boy’s aptitude rating accordingly.”

“But Administrator,” one of them asked hesitantly, “they still might lose. The statues aren’t-”

Vaencel raised a hand.

“While it is true that willpower alone cannot win battles.”

He leaned closer to the mirror, eyes narrowing.

“To turn the tides of any battle, one needs willpower."

***

The statues weren’t slowing down.

Corin’s axe struck hard, breaking stone.

Lucien’s spells exploded with fire and frost.

But the damn things kept coming, relentless in their pursuit, silent, unthinking, yet driven by some unbending directive etched into their stone cores.

Lucien grit his teeth, breath ragged, watching Balt struggle to even lift his head.

This wasn’t sustainable.

“Corin,” he said, eyes never leaving the advancing constructs, “we can’t keep fighting them.”

“No shit,” Corin grunted, swinging his axe to parry another spear strike.

“You got a plan, paper boy?”

“Yeah,” Lucien said.

“Run.”

With that, he dropped beside Balt.

The boy’s legs were an utter ruin, mangled beyond any use.

Lucien tried to hoist him up, but Balt couldn’t support his weight.

Blood soaked through his trousers and pooled beneath him.

His breathing was shallow, but present.

“Come on, Balt. I need you to help me out here,” Lucien muttered, looping Balt’s arm over his shoulders and struggling to stand.

He staggered under the weight.

“Damn it, don’t make me do all the heavy lifting-”

Suddenly, strong arms scooped Balt up by the waist.

Lucien looked up just in time to see Corin, jaw clenched and eyes wild, sprint into the forest, carrying Balt over his shoulder like a sack of potatoes.

Lucien didn’t waste a second.

With one last look at the statues bearing down on him, he pulled a soggy ball of paper from his coat pocket, murmured a spell under his breath, and lobbed it toward the lead construct.

The resulting fireblast was more bark than bite, but it did its job, it staggered the statues, the heat igniting dry foliage and forcing them to pause.

Lucien turned and ran.

***

From the high vantage of the Observation Tower, the invigilators muttered to one another, frowning at the escape.

“They’re fleeing.”

“Smart, but… disappointing.”

Administrator Vaencel didn’t look away from the scrying mirror. He simply exhaled, his expression unreadable.

“It’s not over,” he said.

“They’ve delayed death. Now let’s see if they can survive it.”

The mirror shimmered, shifting its focus elsewhere.

***

Back in the forest, the three boys stumbled into the cave, the very same one with the spring and the hole in the ceiling through which sunlight filtered in like divine mercy.

Corin laid Balt down gently on the stone floor, his chest heaving as he caught his breath.

He immediately began stripping off Balt’s shirt, grimacing at the blood and bruises beneath.

“Lucien, clothes. Get the rest off. We need to wash this off before it gets worse.”

Lucien, flustered but focused, hurried to remove Balt’s shoes and torn trousers.

He moved quickly but carefully, Balt was unconscious, and even the smallest jostle made his body twitch in pain.

Corin grabbed the bloodied garments and rushed to the spring, submerging them into the cold, clean water.

The red bled out like ink into clear glass.

Lucien, meanwhile, knelt beside Balt, eyes wide and breathing fast.

‘This is bad.’

The cave was cool, the water fresh, but none of it mattered if Balt lost consciousness.

‘If he passed out now, it could trigger an automatic fail in the Aptitude test, especially given his condition.’

He’d be pulled from the grounds, and that would be it.

Lucien slapped Balt’s cheek lightly.

Then again.

“Come on,” he whispered, “don’t you dare sleep right now. Not after all that.”

No response.

“Balt,” he tried again, a little louder this time, “wake up. I swear to God, if I carried your sorry ass all the way here just for you to die dramatically in a cave, I’m going to raise your ghost and haunt you until the end of your afterlife.”

Still nothing.

Lucien grabbed both sides of Balt’s face and gave him a light shake, desperation leaking into his voice now. “Wake up, you stubborn bastard! If you don’t-”

“...Lucien?”

Balt’s voice was hoarse.

Ragged.

Barely audible.

But it was there.

Lucien’s eyes widened.

He leaned down.

“You’re awake?”

Balt opened one swollen eye and winced.

Then, after a few long seconds and a shallow breath, he said:

“...I fucking hate those damn cursed statues.”

Lucien blinked.