Vance stood in front of his assessor, Aaron Olstater. Through his mana sense, Vance noticed that Aaron was no longer pulsing with the power of his mantle, leaving only his ordinary membrane in its place.

"It's good to meet you, Master Olstater," Vance said.

Vance had decided that he'd best put his best foot forward with these guests, considering their stations.

"Hi, Vance. Sorry for messing up your last name so badly." Aaron's voice betrayed an ongoing self-deprecating chuckle. "What's with the closed eyes? I didn't think I was that ugly."

"I'm blind, Sir. I'm told my eyes have a frightening appearance, so I tend to keep them shut."

Aaron's laughter stopped immediately.

"Well, that's two distinct faux pas on my part." Aaron sounded genuinely remorseful. Vance took that as a good sign. At the very least, he was dealing with someone with a reasonably normal set of social sensibilities. Vance picked up that his voice became a tone more serious.

"It's fine. That sort of thing happens all the time." Vance used one of his canned lines to comfort someone who'd stepped into territory that made them uncomfortable. To his surprise, he received quite a delayed response.

"It occurs to me that I've never known an Arcanist able to perform magic without the use of their eyesight. I don't have time to pick apart the particulars of that right now, but I'd love to talk to you after this if you're willing?"

"I'd be honoured, Sir."

"Very well. Shall we begin, for now? I'd hate to keep the other students waiting." Aaron's voice now regained a slight hint of excitement in it, like he was impatient. "Tell me, what shifts are you capable of?"

"Metal, fire, water and earth."

"Cores?"

"Fire, Sir." Vance didn't exactly want to take the time to explain the complex mechanism he'd sealed within his fire core right now; that was a conversation for later.

"Excellent. Then, to begin..."

Aaron produced a silver coin from his pocket. Vance was able to pick up on it immediately. He'd become intimately familiar with the natural mana residing in coins in his time spent with the trinket he kept around his neck.

"I would like you to crush this coin."

Vance wanted to put on a good show, so he made sure that he had all of his willpower available to him. He hadn't tried crushing anything before, but he supposed it was simple enough in theory.

He cast out his will and reached for the natural mana within the coin. There wasn't a lot there, but he'd need control over it if he wanted to affect the shape of the object.

Elijah had taught Vance that to take away natural mana from an object was to take away part of what that object was on a fundamental level. It, therefore, stood to reason that if you altered the configuration of natural mana within an object you could affect the properties of said object.

Vance focused on the internal mana structure of the coin. Metallic mana was suspended within its confines, adhering to the coin's shape perfectly. Vance pulled on this mana with his will, urging it to move towards the centre of the coin. It responded sluggishly, flowing like liquid metal towards the centre where Vance packed it tightly.

Then, once he'd gathered all of that mana, he locked it in place with a burst of his will as if he was finalizing a construct.

The coin instantly collapsed inwards into a tightly packed, tiny ball of silver. It perfectly matched the shape Vance had created inside. It made a brief, high pitched squeal as the metal was forcibly shaped.

"Natural mana manipulation? Interesting. I'd expected you to smash it with rocks, or something." Aaron was chuckling, dropping the metal ball to the ground where it clattered and rolled to the side.

Before Vance got a word in, Aaron had moved on.

"Next, I'd like you to create a useful construct. I don't care what it does, It must simply be useful."

Immediately, Vance was relieved.

"May I use a reagent I have on my person, Sir?"

"Sure."

Vance removed a small stone from his backpack. He carried one or two of these with him in case he got stuck in a boring situation and wanted to practice.

Vance then recalled that the last time he'd created a firestone charm it had taken him hours. Not to mention, he'd just emptied his fire core so that he'd have more of his willpower free to act. Vance was about to get very worried, then he realised he was overcomplicating things.

He'd only been asked to make a useful construct, not a fully functional magical item. With a relieved sigh, Vance went about creating a simple gatherer construct.

He was surprised to discover how easy it was to create the construct with his newfound willpower. It barely took him a few seconds and he was ready to lock it in place.

Vance locked the relatively simple construct in place in the air then set the small metallic core into a spin, whereupon it began pulling mana inwards.

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"Is this sufficient?" Vance asked, nervousness clear in his voice.

"The construct is passably useful but basic. I'm more impressed by the speed at which you produced it. Your willpower is operating at a level far beyond your years." Aaron took a moment to think, then carried on. "I'm going to begin testing you to the standards of second-year students."

This made Vance very, very nervous.

"But I'm..."

"Just a first-year, I know. Let's just say I have a feeling you're capable of more than any basic tests will allow me to observe. Don't worry, I know what I'm doing."

The confidence Aaron was exuding was contagious. Vance found that he didn't particularly want to argue. Considering one of his aims was to impress the guests, this was a great opportunity.

"Alright, first thing's first. I want you to extinguish this fire," Aaron said, sounding relaxed.

At the end of Aaron's sentence, a circle of flame suddenly flared into life around Vance.

Vance could sense the flames were nearly as tall as him and the heat was immense and all-encompassing. Fortunately, with his fire core, this level of heat posed no real threat of burning him so long as he didn't get closer to the flames.

The feather construct in his core began to flare up a little. He returned a small portion of his willpower to its normal task of keeping it in check. He didn't need to use much as long as he caught it early enough.

He had about three feet of clearance between himself and the flames and immediately cast out his mana sense. He pushed it through the flames and could sense the constant stream of mana flowing inwards, feeding the flames.

Feeling around, he could tell the mana stream wasn't being controlled by Aaron. Instead, it was being pulled from the environment. When he checked closer, he discovered that there were gatherer constructs hidden amongst the chaotic fire mana. All of these flames were the result of a collection of constructs.

The first thing Vance tried was reaching out to one of the constructs with his will. He discovered that the willpower that had locked the construct into place was vastly superior to his and even if he pushed as hard as he could, he couldn't seize control. He'd expected that but wanted to try.

He began probing the constructs for weaknesses. Vance could feel himself starting to sweat, it was getting hotter by the moment and the air was becoming very, very dry.

Amidst the myriad unpleasant sensations, he focused his mind on his task. Over these last couple of years, he'd gotten quite good at this.

The constructs each consisted of a powerful gatherer construct, an efficient shifter construct and some form of emission construct that was actually producing the flames.

Vance was almost entirely unfamiliar with the latter, but the first two were concepts he was familiar with, just scaled up. He noticed that the shifter construct was different to the kinds he'd learned before. Rather than a lattice made of a particular element, it was a loop with two exits, one on each side.

The fire mana in the loop moved around in a clockwise circle and ambient mana was pushed into the loop from the gatherer construct. As soon as the two types of mana came into contact with one another, the ambient mana joined the circular flow and began shifting to a fire aspect.

Then, when the emission construct required it, the loop would eject some of the fire mana out of the other exit.

Vance noticed that the gatherer construct wasn't holding any ambient mana, meaning the shifter construct was consuming it as fast as it could get.

Vance had an idea. He also had very little time, so decided to just give it a try. He pooled all of the willpower he could and cast it outwards. He grabbed hold of every piece of ambient mana that he could in the area around him and thrust outwards with his will.

He pushed as hard as he could and caused all of the nearby ambient mana to flee the area for a moment.

At that moment, the fire mana in the loop was consumed immediately by the emission construct. The gatherer could no longer get any additional ambient mana and had nothing to refuel the shifter.

Without any fire mana left in the shifter construct to act as a catalyst for the shift, no more fire mana was generated when the ambient mana flooded back inwards.

The flames around Vance vanished almost instantly.

Vance breathed a sigh of relief. It came to his attention that his shirt was entirely stuck to his upper body.

"Very good!" Aaron actually began clapping. "I'm impressed!"

"That was unpleasant," Vance said cheerily, wiping away the sweat from his face with the bottom of his shirt. He'd only been amongst the flames for roughly a minute, but that was enough. His fire core protected his skin from burning, but it was still roasting.

"Well, you did great. Ready for the next test?"

"Probably not."

"That's the spirit!" Aaron laughed. "No fire this time, I promise. This is actually my favourite test."

Aaron produced an apple, handing it to Vance.

"I'd like you to return that to me in two pieces, as equal as possible."

Vance had noticed a few people fail this test by this point. He had a few ideas on how he might be able to solve this problem with magic, but he'd come to a decision a while ago while he was thinking about the rules of the tests.

"Got a knife?" Vance asked with a big smile on his face.

"Haha! Yes!" Aaron cackled and produced a small metal knife from his pocket and handed it to Vance, who began casually slicing the apple in half.

From nearby, Vance heard a few people in the crowd yelling things like "Oh, wait, seriously?!" or "Ah, man! That's so obvious!"

A Chorus of laughter staggered its way through the room as some of the older students who had clearly seen this before began telling their fellow attendees that this was something of a tradition for the new students. It was originally supposed to be a lesson about how magic doesn't solve every problem, but it quickly turned into something of a running joke.

"Alright, back to the real tests," Aaron said, taking back the sliced apple and taking a bite out of it.

"Wait a moment." Vance interrupted. "If that's a test you use for a joke, isn't it unfair that so many student's tests stopped at that one?"

"Relax, we only use that test once we're certain the next test will be beyond the capabilities of the student we're testing," Aaron replied, seriousness back in his voice.

"By that logic..." Vance started.

"Yeah, I do not expect you to succeed in the next test that I give you. I've seen that you're capable of handling mana capacities at or above a second-year standard but you obviously don't have the experience to back it up. Therefore, this will probably be where your test ends. I'm confident I have a good measure of your skills. Plus, you passed the apple test. Bonus points."

Vance was quite happy with this assessment. He smiled, then asked the question on his mind.

"Can I try it anyway?"

A few seconds of silence passed, then Aaron replied.

"Sure, why not?"

Vance noticed that Aaron sounded far too excited about this.

Aaron waved his hand and Vance felt an absolutely absurd amount of mana flood in towards him from around the room. Vance found himself surrounded once again, this time by ambient mana which suddenly shifted to metal mana. Then, by some miracle that Vance didn't understand, the metal mana solidified in place, locking him inside of a giant iron box.

Vance heard three knocks come from the outside of the box, followed by Aaron's shouting voice.

"Escape. You have ten minutes. I'll be administering another test, good luck!" Aaron's voice rose in pitch towards the end of his sentence. Evidently, he found this very funny.

Vance stood stock still for a moment, taking in this new scenario. He ran his hands along the inside of the box and found that it was unnaturally smooth. He felt no holes for air. The floor had, at some point, also been transmuted into metal from stone and the roof of the box was too high for him to reach.

"...Shit." He muttered.