Stepping into the mages guild I walked towards the stairway leading downwards, the nearest secretary looked at me with suspicion but when I flashed the paper and pointed at the room and date she turned back to the man before her with a bag of money complaining about something. Likely the reason he was there in the first place.
I had never been to the room listed on the paper, in fact I didn’t even know there were that many rooms underneath the mages guild. I had only ever assumed that there were around fifty or so as was shown on the small map by the downstairs entrance. ‘Room one hundred and seven. Sounds a little odd just thinking about it. I wonder just how many rooms there are within the guild, maybe one day I will get to see the whole thing.’
I checked the map but I wasn’t surprised to find that it didn’t show anything past the forty ninth floor, though at the end of the floor right near the ninety ninth room there was a piece of the map broken off. Since I didn't have anything else to go on I decided to take a look and see if that was where the fifty seventh room was.
The walk took around fifteen minutes with all the foot traffic and by taking the shortest route I knew of I eventually reached it. To a small bit of surprise I found a stairway in the wall right across the hallway from the ninety ninth room, and right next to this stairway was a map of the next fifty rooms one floor below.
Thankfully the one hundred and seventh room was only straight down the hallway from the stairs so I managed to reach it in good time. Once I was inside I noticed it was a large room about the size of one of the classrooms but with most of the furniture removed. What remained was just a few chairs and a table where three mages were sitting and writing something.
The first to notice me was a human dressed in typical mage attire in the same grey color as the mages guild, she was sitting in the middle of the other two who were both high elven men dressed in more casual clothes that I still felt were mage-like enough.
“Good morning Mr. Arthur. I am Avita and I will be taking care of your entrance test today.” Avita looked to be in her mid to late forties and seemed only half interested in her job with the flat tone she was using to speak with. The other two seemed a little more energetic.
Avita had the two high elves set up a large area within the room with some sort of magical barrier while both she and I stood inside of it. As they finished a dim humming sound filled the room which I assumed was from the barrier itself.
“I will be the one testing your magical abilities today, instead of fighting back right away like in the regular exam I will allow you 1 minute to try and break past my defenses. That way I can get a proper grasp of your offensive capabilities before I test your defensive ones.” Avita spoke with a high born arrogance that I assumed came from her position within the guild. I didn’t let that get to me, instead I started casting the Tri Earth Bolt spell three times resulting in nine floating bolts of earth after around twenty seconds.
With some decent magical weapons around myself I started by conjuring up a small block of earth and shooting it towards Avita with a moderate amount of force. Like I was half expecting it bounced off a mostly invisible wall that I didn’t even notice until it happened.
“Testing my defenses, not a terrible idea but it will take more than that to do any damage.” Avita said in a taunting tone. I wasn’t certain if she was trying to rile me up, but she was making a good point.
Instead of using earth again to test her invisible wall I instead chose to try fire. I conjured up a handful of fire and shot it forwards like a small geyser of fire. Like I predicted it harmlessly was blocked and broken apart like the earth before it, only this time I didn’t drop my control over the fire when I gave it a push. With my mostly intact control I commanded the fire to try and snake around the invisible wall before me and see where it ended.
Behind the flames and invisible wall I noticed that Avita’s eyes twitched at the sudden change and she made a wide and intentional movement with her hands that I assume made the wall even larger as the fire started to spread itself out wider and wider yet never found the edge. Eventually it was becoming far to mana expensive to maintain and I allowed the fire to dissipate into nothing.
“I must admit your control and creativity are more impressive than I would have expected from someone so young and without proper education. However my age and experience have overcome both of those. Perhaps you should try something else and see what else can happen in our little duel.”
‘I'm not a master in language, but I think that was a touch of respect in Avita’s voice. That little maneuver must have impressed her somewhat, and I still have around fifteen seconds to try something else and bypass her invisible wall.’ I thought to myself while I studied the fading semi transparent wall just a meter from Avita. Suddenly I had an idea and I started conjuring up another small torrent of fire in my right hand while I discreetly did something else in my left hand.
Like before I thrusted my hands forwards and the torrent of flame shot forwards and rapidly started spreading across the wall looking for the edge, Avita didn’t look very impressed and gave me an unhappy look as she watched what was a futile attempt. Then suddenly she felt something strike her just enough to force her back a few steps.
Her eyes quickly darted towards me with a look of confusion on her face, she tried to say something when the force returned and forced her back another step. With a wide wave of her hands she dispelled the invisible force and looked at the nearby clock on the wall before smiling slightly. My one minute to test her defences freely had ended.
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I also noticed this and quickly switched to defend myself instead of attacking but Avita was a bit quicker than me. I only barely managed to get part of an earth wall up before I was suddenly pushed back by an invisible force like I had done earlier and I fell to my but. Before she could follow up I ended my attempt at my first wall and quickly conjured up a dome around myself from earth which managed to weather the next attack.
I breathed a sigh of relief as I had a few moments to think of something before I needed to do anything to block the next attack.
With little else to defend myself with to do I mentally commanded three of the earth bolts I still controlled to fly out in wide arcs towards Avita to force to on the defensive. I had one go around to the left, another went to the right, and the last went above. I braced myself for what she would do by standing up and extending the small barrier I created to protect myself entirely.
To my surprise Avita didn’t just block with her invisible barrier like last time, instead she chose to fire at them with clear orbs of what appeared to be air and shatter them before they reached her. I looked on with a shocked expression on my face that she definitely noticed when she started throwing more of those orbs at me.
The first orb broke on contact leaving only a small amount of damage in its wake, but the next several started to leave more and more damage each time as the integrity worsened with each hit. I was forced to dig into my position and constantly reinforce and repair my barrier while it slowly was falling apart.
Eventually I felt my mana reserves reach about the halfway point at twenty one units of mana, I started panicking somewhat and hastily used the remaining earth bolts and fired towards Avita without even having a visual confirmation as my barrier was blocking the way. I heard six more cracks, one for each remaining bolt as I did my best to repair any damage I could with the small amount of time it would buy me.
Then suddenly from beyond my view something collided with the front face of my barrier that caused it to crack like it had been struck with a bolder leaving a large crack down the middle. Then it pushed harder more and more until the crack became a hole and the barrier shattered into a hundred pieces and the conjured earth dissipated into nothing.
With nothing to protect me I faced the full brunt of this invisible force and I flew backwards towards the outside of the magical barrier entrapping the two of us. With some quick thinking I used my aeromancy to slow and rotate myself so I didn’t collide face first into the barrier. To my surprise however that wasn’t necessary as the barrier warped and stretched to catch me safely before pushing back and back inside.
“I think that is enough for now, you have shown me just about everything you are capable of as a mage.” As Avita spoke the bubble-like barrier around us slowly dissipated into nothingness as the two high elven mages stepped back.
Avita walked over to the table the three were sitting at a few minutes earlier and wrote something down on a piece of paper, it took her several seconds to write everything which I noticed included a signature. When she was done she walked towards me and handed me the paper. “Here, this is my certificate of approval for you. Show it to one of the secretaries at the front desk and they will get you what you need.”
I looked down at the certificate with a smile on my face, Avita saw this and decided she needed to say something to change that. “Now don’t be all happy about where you are, you still have a lot to learn if you want to master even one of the four evocations. I suggest you find yourself an apprenticeship to get someone who will care enough to teach you anything past the most basic evoker skills.”
Avita quickly stepped out of the room after that statement leaving me alone with the two high elven mages who were cleaning up the room and stacking the furniture off to the corner of the room which I found a little odd.
“Don’t worry about what she tells you, you still have plenty of time before you need to worry about finding a powerful master to teach you. In the meantime I recommend that you take a look in the library for some tier three spells to add to your arsenal and practice a bit.” One of the high elven mages suddenly piped up after Avita’s footsteps were mostly gone.
“I was going to do that as soon as possible. Do you have any spells you would personally recommend I try out?” I asked, I had only a few ideas of what I wanted for tier three spells. The most obvious was the fireball spell that Calavia used against me while we were testing the defensive capabilities of the mage staff I was gifted.
“Well that would depend on your favorite type of magic.” The elven mage said matter of factly. “For someone who favors pyromancy I would recommend the fireball spell. Aeromancy on the other hand I would say something like the levitation spell.”
“Well I personally find myself using geomancy spells the most, what would you recommend for me?” The elven mage paused for a moment as he thought.
“Do you by any chance use normal weapons, like a sword or a mace?”
“I have a sword I use on occasion, I am by no means a master but I know what I am doing.”
The elf smiled. “I have a spell in mind that I think you would like. The spell is of course a geomancy spell called Free Handed Earth Weapon.” I looked at the elf with a mix of curiosity and confusion at the name of the spell, it sounded like it would conjure up a melee weapon for me to use. But that was something I was already able to somewhat do on my own with just my skill in manipulating earth. Still I waited for his explanation.
“The spell will allow you to conjure up a weapon that you can either control with your geomancy skill or use like a normal weapon, like the basic Tri Earth Bolt spell I know many young images are fond of. The one major difference between those two is that the weapons conjured by this spell can be used again and again until the weapons break apart. It does come with a fairly long casting time, but all tier three spells are like that and it allows you to always have a weapon on hand.”
I remained silent as the elven mage gave his explanation, his colleague not caring had left just a few moments before. When he was done I had already committed everything he said to memory, despite the few downsides of the spell it sounded like something that might give me the edge that I need to defeat the vampire lord on my own.
“That sounds very interesting, where might I find this spell in the library?”
“Definitely in the evoker section since it is a tier three spell and all, I don’t recall the title of the book but at the higher levels spells start getting grouped by the type of magic rather than the skill needed to cast it. So you would find it with other geomancy spells, the same applies with all other types of spells.”