Chapter 61: Aptitude Test (13)

Just moments earlier.

Before the ice lion statue took to the skies.

Before the frost breath lit the heavens.

Before Balt rose on barrier-born legs.

Lucien moved.

The instant Corin and the others charged, Lucien dropped low, boots skidding over broken stone and patches of frost.

The elemental winds tore at his remaining skin as he slid under the massive bulk of the grounded lion statue.

It was suicide.

Madness.

His breath steamed as he slid across the frozen stone, the low hum of arcane pressure trembling beneath his palms.

Above him loomed the lion, its massive paws already curling, its wings flexing.

‘Now or never.’

The ice-coated underbelly swept over him like a passing mountain, and Lucien reached out, casting a spell he was stockpiling since he dropped Balt off.

“Stitch.”

It was the same spell he had once accidentally used to sew a silver spoon to his hand during a practice gone very, very wrong.

Invisible mana threads burst from his fingers and knees, writhing like tendrils of smoke.

They dug into the lion’s underbelly, sewing his limbs directly into its stone surface.

The spell clung like desperation incarnate.

With a wrenching pull, Lucien snapped into place, latched like a leech beneath the belly of the great construct.

This was the plan from the start, he knew one sneaky hit with trap spells would not be enough to take this monstrosity down, he had used them as distraction.

And now was the time for the actual plan.

“They’re constructs,” he whispered under his breath, eyes wild.

“They’re just automatons. Oversized, enchanted golems with fancy programming.”

The guardians, the statues, everything about this exam screamed ancient arcane engineering.

All the runes, the reactive enchantments, the mechanical precision of their movements.

That snap-precision.

That pre-programmed intent.

They had to run on mana circuits.

Like all automatons.

And where there were mana circuits… there was a chance.

A chance to override.

He didn’t need to completely control it, he wasn’t that delusional.

A thousand lines of embedded magical code, tucked beneath stone skin and polished runework.

Far more advanced than anything he understood.

But that wasn’t the point.

He didn’t have to understand it to ruin it.

His mind drifted to his old life.

To cold university labs and sleepless nights.

The blinking screen.

The slow death of debugging.

The time he had stayed up for 27 hours rewriting a movement script, only to realize a single extra semicolon at the end of a line had broken the entire program.

It had taken him three days to find that mistake.

Three days of feeling like an idiot.

But that mistake, just one sliver of syntax, had unraveled everything.

Lucien grinned grimly, almost laughing.

“A machine can be elegant. A spell can be perfect. But if you shove in the wrong type of garbage at the right place…”

“…you make the whole thing choke.”

His hand pressed against a seam in the lion’s underbelly.

A perfectly delicate veins of glowing blue mana.

A heartbeat.

A rhythm.

A living script running beneath the surface.

And here he was, with the mana equivalent of a mud-stained brick.

He took a breath, and pushed.

His mana wasn’t elegant.

It wasn’t refined.

It was sludge.

Thick, chaotic, volatile.

The kind that didn’t thread through arrays neatly, but splattered.

He reached up.

His fingers brushing against the smooth, icy stone of the lion’s underside.

“Please work,” he muttered.

The lion roared in frustration as Lucien locked into place beneath it.

And then.

It took flight.

The force of the launch nearly dislocated his shoulder.

Lucien’s body snapped upward as the wind howled around him.

His stomach lurched violently.

The world turned upside down.

But he held on.

“I really, really hate heights-!!”

The beast’s wings flared wide, catching the wind as it rose higher, its head craning back toward the battlefield, ready to unleash another wave of icy death.

But as he continued to flood the lion’s core with a surge of foreign mana.

The construct twitched.

Its wings wobbled mid-beat, its head jerking slightly to the side.

Lucien clung harder to its underside as the beast faltered in flight, its breath cycle misfiring for half a second.

But it kept going.

He hadn’t shut it down, but he’d interfered.

Introduced chaos into its pristine, programmed order.

And that might just be enough.

Far below, he saw Corin and the others watching the beast, bracing for impact.

Balt nowhere in sight.

The fire lion was now circling back.

Their allies were too far to help.

Lucien felt a chill in his spine, not from the lion’s body, but from what he was about to do next.

He pressed his forehead against the cold stone.

Then the lion jerked violently as a foreign element flooded its circuits, a backlash.

The core tried to flush Lucien’s input.

And that’s when everything tilted.

Lucien’s body swung out of position as the lion bucked in midair, its mana lines flashing erratically.

And then.

From behind, a shimmering sphere bloomed.

The breath fired.

And Lucien, still dangling beneath the construct, smiled.

‘Balt.’

Lucien’s breath caught.

The lion fired its frost breath, only to have it rebound inside the dome, freezing itself.

He felt the impact.

He shuddered as it passed through the body.

The lion’s wing seized.

The flight faltered.

And Lucien’s stitched body plummeted with it, still tethered beneath.

He didn’t know if the crash would kill him.

But as he closed his eyes, blood on his lips, the only thought running through his mind was:

“One semicolon.”

***

For a few stunned moments, no one moved.

Not even the statues.

The frozen lion, cracked and caked with shards of its own magic, staggered upright. Its movements were disjointed, stiff like an old puppet on fraying strings, but unmistakably hostile.

Not toward the examinees.

But toward its kin.

The fire lion gave a confused snarl, wings flaring as it turned to face the source of the new aggression.

Then, with a roar that no longer sounded entirely its own, the ice lion lunged at it.

Stone crashed into stone.

Claws scraped across enchanted plating.

The statues, those terrifying twin sentinels that had, until moments ago, moved in flawless sync like twin aspects of a god, turned on each other.

A stunned silence swept through the examinees.

“What… the hell?”

Corin muttered, wide-eyed, lowering his axe as he stumbled forward.

Then he saw it.

Lucien.

Clinging to the underbelly of the ice lion like a ragged barnacle.

His body was a sickening shade of blue, frozen over from head to toe, his fingers fused to the stone.

Frost crackled down his shoulders, his limbs locked in place.

And yet, he was still there.

Still attached.

Still alive, or at least, not yet dead.

“LUC-!”

Corin's voice cracked mid-scream.

But Balt was too far to hear Corin.

Too far to see Lucien.

The young mage, legs reinforced with his makeshift barrier-casts, stepped forward with authority.

His mana flared around him, his voice rising above the confusion.

“ALL MAGES- NOW!”

He roared, pointing to the battling statues.

“While they’re distracted! Pour EVERYTHING into them!”

There was a heartbeat of hesitation.

Then, shouts, incantations, and the crescendo of gathering power.

Runes ignited across the arena like a second sunrise.

Sigils flared in the air, arcane circles, elemental conduits, amplification glyphs.

Mages old and young, exhausted and bleeding, lifted their hands and let fly.

Dozens of spells ripped through the sky.

Fire.

Lightning.

Ice.

Wind.

Earth.

Pure force.

Everything.

Every ounce of mana they had left.

Corin’s eyes widened in horror as he realized what was about to happen.

“Lucien was still there!!!!”

“STOP- HE’S TOO CLOSE!”

Corin roared, his voice hoarse with panic.

He sprinted forward.

Past the mages.

Past Balt.

Past the front lines.

Toward the statues.

“HE’S STILL THERE! DAMN IT, STOP!”

But it was too late.

The spells struck.

Like stars falling from the heavens, the battlefield was swallowed in light.

A torrent of destruction slammed into the two lions mid-clash, explosions crashing atop each other, stone pulverized to dust, wind shrieking like a banshee caught in a forge.

The shockwave rippled across the entire arena, forcing even the most hardened examinees to stumble or fall.

Corin skidded to a halt, shielding his face as the blast sent a hurricane of dust and debris out in every direction.

There was no sound for several seconds after the impact.

Only the dull ringing in his ears.

Only the feeling of something, someone, having been too close to that.

His hands trembled.

The smoke began to clear.

Chunks of lion statue scattered across the platform.

A wing.

A shattered claw.

The head of one lion, rolling gently to a stop, its empty stone eyes cracked and lifeless.

“...Lucien?”

No answer.

Balt stood a few paces behind, face pale, chest heaving as he lowered his hands.

His expression was one of raw triumph, the kind that came at the end of surviving something impossible.

Others began to cheer.

Slowly at first.

Then louder.

Laughs.

Tears.

People collapsing to their knees.

Some mages hugged.

Others simply dropped to the ground and stared up at the sky, unable to believe they were still alive.

The statues were defeated.

The final guardians were down.

They had made it.

They had won.

And yet…

Corin didn’t feel it.

He stood there, unmoving. His axe hung limp in one hand.

The wind kicked up the dust and ash, but he didn’t blink.

His eyes were fixed on the crater where the lions had fallen.

Where Lucien had been.

Had still been.

A silence took hold in his chest, hollow and cold.

The victory shouts behind him felt distant, like echoes from another world.

Because he’d seen it.

He’d seen Lucien’s fingers frozen to the belly of that beast.

Seen the glint of pain in his eyes as the frost crept across his shoulders.

Heard him scream, or try to, before the blast had swallowed it all.

He hadn’t made it in time.

Corin’s lips moved.

No sound came out.

His hand curled into a fist.

The cheers still rang out behind him.

But all he could do was stare into the smoke, eyes red and burning, waiting for a shape, any shape, to emerge from the rubble.

***

“WHAT THE HELL WERE YOU THINKING, BALT?!”

Corin’s voice cracked like a thunderclap across the shattered battlefield, louder even than the distant crumble of falling stone.

The remaining dust from the explosion had barely settled before he stomped over, chest heaving, eyes burning with rage and something deeper, something far more fragile.

Balt turned to him, blinking in confusion, still half-dazed.

The cheers and celebrations of the examinees had already started to die down, drawn to the sudden violence in Corin’s voice.

His brows knit together, lips parting.

“What… what are you talking about?”

Corin didn’t answer at first. He just pointed, to the crater.

To the ruined battlefield where two ancient winged lions now lay in pieces, and where Lucien had last been seen.

“HE WAS STILL THERE!” Corin roared, the words torn from his throat like shrapnel.

“He was stuck to that damn thing when it blew! When you told them all to fire, he was still clinging to the lion’s belly!”

Balt’s eyes widened. His mouth opened, closed, then opened again, but no words came out.

He looked back toward the wreckage, back to the place where Lucien had tried to hijack the automaton.

Where they had all seen him last.

“That’s not… I didn’t know,” Balt whispered, voice hoarse.

“I didn’t see him…”

“You didn’t have to see! You should’ve waited! Thought for half a damned second!”

Corin spat, jabbing a finger into Balt’s chest.

“You gave the command! You made the call! And now, now he’s-!”

He couldn’t finish the sentence.

Couldn’t make himself say the word.

Dead.

Instead, he choked, voice breaking as he turned away, dragging a hand through his sweat-and-dust-soaked hair.

Several melee fighters came forward, grim-faced and silent.

One of them, the broad-shouldered duelist with the broken blade, nodded sharply.

“I saw him too,” he said.

“He was stuck to the ice lion. We all saw him. We were trying to get to him.”

“He told us to buy him time,” another added, her voice trembling.

“He went under the thing like he had a plan. And then… then the lion turned. Started attacking the other one.”

“You should’ve waited,” they growled, glaring at the mages.

The line between the two groups was suddenly visible in the air, a rift of silence, of blame and disbelief.

The spellcasters on the far side began murmuring, their expressions twisting from celebration to confusion and defensiveness.

“Wait a minute,” one of them, a tall girl with scorch marks across her robes, snapped.

“Nobody told us to hold back! You think we can hear a single voice with all that chaos?! If someone knew he was there, why didn’t you send a message or signal?!”

“We were in the middle of fighting for our lives!”

Another added.

“He went off on his own! How were we supposed to know?!”

“You’re telling me you didn’t hear anyone shout to stop?!”

Corin shouted back.

“No one told us! You should’ve said something sooner!”

“I DID!”

Corin bellowed, the veins in his neck straining, fists shaking.

“I screamed it at the top of my lungs, but by then it was already too late. You’d already started firing.”

His voice cracked, broke, then fell to a rasp.

There was a long, awful pause.

Then a faint hiss, like wind escaping from a sealed jar.

Balt’s barrier-cast legs flickered.

Then shattered, fading like blue mist around his calves.

His knees buckled.

He collapsed forward on the bloodstained stone.

The impact jarred his whole frame, and for a moment, he didn’t move.

His eyes were blank.

Empty.

Like the realization had punched a hole through him.

“I didn’t…” he whispered.

“I didn’t mean to…”

Corin turned back.

He didn’t yell this time.

Didn’t curse.

He just looked at Balt, really looked at him.

And saw a boy.

A boy with trembling fingers and wide, disbelieving eyes.

A boy who had stood tall for the first time in his life, on legs forged of mana and desperation, and had believed, if only for a moment, that he could change the tide.

A boy who might have just killed the person who believed in him most.

The argument died on everyone’s lips.

Even the mages went silent.

Because whatever was or wasn’t said, whatever mistakes had been made, one truth hovered like ash above the battlefield now:

Lucien hadn’t come out of that blast.

And he had been right there.

The examinees, one by one, turned to the crater.

To the debris-strewn wreckage of the twin lions.

Without a word, they began to move, toward it.

Climbing over rubble.

Rushing.

Searching.