7. Prove thyself

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I cursed the old man in my heart and then asked him with a smile “Okay now that we are here, what are we going to do?”

“I am going to test your affinity for Ice, after all if you don’t have affinity for Ice, you are not suitable to be my successor, but don’t worry, I can still give you books that I have written when I researched magic.”

I looked at him and nodded at the reply.

“Okay then, how are we going to test my affinity with ice?”

The old man grinned as he said “We are not going to be testing anything, the one who is going to be tested is you and you alone.”

“Huh? What’s that supposed to mean?”

I looked at him.

“You see, the place we are now is a pocket dimension that is especially made for the succession of Ice Crow Bloodline , the place where teachers pass down their inheritance to their disciples just like my teacher passed down his inheritance to me and it’s also the best place to test the affinity they have for ice”

“Hooo” I was a bit surprised at this and chose to tease the old man.

“Hahaha old man doesn’t it mean that the only reason you are known all over the continents is because you were lucky enough to get an inheritance?”

When the old man heard my words he looked at me with an open jaw and got angry.

Cough

“That’s not it brat, all one gains from the the inheritance is the bloodline of the [Ice Crow] coupled with it’s abilities and amplifies your Ice affinity, so if your affinity with ice is shit the amplification will also be shit.”

“Okay I get it old man, but what’s with your language? Aren’t you supposed to act like a sage or something?”

“You!” The old man looked at me angrily but calmed down and sighed helplessly.

“I can’t see anyone having the patience to deal with a disrespectful and annoying brat like you”

“Thanks” I thanked him for the praise

“See what I mean” He shot me a glare as he said.

I am indeed impressed by my communication abilities, in my last life I think I was more closed than I am now, it’s probably the work of being a demon or something similar to that, but I guess that’s not a bad thing at all, as long as I am not overconfident that is. Moving forward I got serious and asked him.

“Okay then, how do I test my Ice affinity.”

The old man pointed his finger at the top of the mountain nearby.

“You are going to stay at the top of that mountain and see if you can sense the Ice mana in your surroundings, just remember that to sense ice you need to feel it as a part of your body and understand it, and if you suceed in doing so inside in the limited time that I am going to give you, you will pass the test and I am going to give you my inheritance.”

“Eh ? Is that it?” I looked at him confused.

“It is not as easy as you think brat, the time it took me to sense mana was 6 weeks.”

I understood what he meant and asked him another question “But even of it‘s hard to sense ice mana, how come you still haven’t found a single candidate to be your successor?”

Instead of immediately getting an answer, he laughed “Candidates? There were a lot of them, but as I said earlier, you have a time limit to pass the test and nobody was qualified enough to pass the test in the timeframe.”

“ And what is the timeframe?”

“9 weeks” he replied calmly.

I pondered for a bit before looking at him “What if I pass the test before you did.”

“That won’t change anything. You will still pass, obviously.”

The reason I asked that question was not because I got arrogant, but because of the training I did with mana for more than 200 days, I also tried to do various elemental magic, I failed but the reason for that is because I felt something missing and that’s elemental mana, and this place should probably be filled with ice mana making my comprehension on it way more easier than without it.

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“When do we start ?”

I ask excitedly. As I wanted to put to test my theory.

“Whenever you are ready but let me remind you of something, when you are going to take the test, the cold will be incomparable than it is now, right now I am controlling it to be normal, the incomparable cold will also test your durability toward it so be ready.”

“I will” I replied with certainty and as I finished my words he threw me a token which had “Matock Spellfinden” written in it, I caught it with my hand and nodded at him.

I heard him say something to me “If you pass the test earlier than the given timeframe just inject your mana into it and I’ll come and fetch you, good luck!”

And I was suddenly teleported out of my place and fell on a chunk of snow …again, I look around and found out that I was at the top of the mountain that old man said I’ll be doing the test.

“At least he should have warned me, before teleporting me!”

I suppressed my anger when I noticed that the pure white clouds started to turn into ice and so did everything around me. In the pocket dimension, the grass, the hills, the rivers, the already huge chunks of snow on the mountain froze into ice and all the ice connected like it was a puzzle. The Clouds that had already turned to Ice didn’t fall and instead still hovered close above me showing me a magnificent glow in its white-blue surface.

“Ughhh!” I grimaced in pain as I suddenly felt my body’s senses were enhanced more than before, I looked down and saw weird simbols glowing in bright gold.

And as a punchline the ice was already near my foot, making me feel its coldness which made me shiver. Slowly It got closer and closer making me feel even more cold. The extremely low temperature of the surrounding air caused my throat and nose to burn as I slightly struggled to even breathe.

The ice has already made it to my feet and has started going upwards toward my ankles, it reached my kneecaps and still went upward to my chest and then it swallowed my head, making me go on a state of blackness in my mind.

I couldn’t see, hear anything, all I felt is the excruciating coldness that wrapped my body, I felt like I was imprisoned by ice. I tried to calm down and thought about my goal, to become the strongest, how can mere ice be my end.

The pain was still there but my willpower got stronger and stronger. I gritted my teeth and tried moving my mana around my body, and surprisingly it worked, as I felt more comfort and the pain lessened but only minimally.

I grinned and thought “That’s enough for me”

While I moved my mana around my body, I also concentrated my senses towards the mana in the air. I tried feeling the ice mana, but if it was really that easy, somebody else would have already passed this test before I even got the chance to.

Because of the lack of my knowledge of magic I could only be based upon my thoughts on magic.

If I am not wrong elemental magic is the fusion of an element and mana which in the process makes elemental mana.

And that elemental mana allows one to cast elemental magic.

And in this case I have to sense the Ice mana which is a superior element than the basic elements.

Until now, I have only have trained the mana that is within me, so it’s very hard to even sense normal mana outside of my body let alone ice mana.

So I went back to the basics and started to slowly concentrate on the mana closest to my surrounding.

I was able to achieve this only after one week.

After one week of hard work I finally was able to do it. Now that I could sense mana I also got a new skill.

[ Mana Sense ]

I was happy with my progress and continued to the next phase, which was the main part of the test.

Sense Ice mana.

After another week passed I was finally able to slightly glance at the components of the mana in my surroundings, but I still couldn’t feel the ice mana. But just then I felt something touch me from above, although Ice had covered me, making me look like an Ice Statue, I could feel my hair get slightly wet, but even if it was only a little bit, because my enhanced senses I was able to detect it.

When I thought about I finally got to a crucial point. The wetness that I felt reminded me of a crucial information.

Yess!

Water..

I feel stupid for not thinking about this earlier.

Without water there could be no ice, ice is water when its state is frozen. Until now what I have been trying to do, was sense Ice in its direct form and not its process of making.

Feeling enlightened of my new progress, I immediately went in a sensing state, because of two weeks of sensing just the mana in the air, I was able to quickly sense mana within just a few seconds now.

I felt the formless flow of mana in the in the surrounding air touch the ice that had enveloped me, and the moment when the made contact I felt something, the property of mana changed in a second forming something entirely new.

Yes finally….

Ice mana..

Water, coldness and mana.

I could already feel mana and a bit of water properties and the only thing left was coldness as long as I overcome it I can see Ice mana in its true form.

Coldness was something our pain receptors received when we touched something with low temperature, and the weird symbols which appeared on the ground heightened my senses making me feel more pain than usual by more than 5 times. So it made me easer to understand the properties of the coldness.

Another week passed and I noticed that I had already gotten used to the Ice and no longer felt as cold as before. It’s like my pain receptors started to absorb the coldness instead of rejecting it, making my progress faster than before.

I spent another three days and finally everything started to piece together.

Water, coldness and mana. I could sense them forming something new.

Before, I could only tell it was something new, which I guessed it was ice mana but now I could feel it like a part of my body but couldn’t touch it, I wasn’t arrogant to believe I could control ice mana that easily, but it gave me ideas that I could use later.

Now that I could feel that the ice mana, I could instinctively feel that I could destroy the Ice around me but, I took this opportunity to train converting my mana into ice mana.

Now that I have comprehended Ice, I can slowly train myself to be able to turn my mana into ice mana with just a thought.

“Hehe!, I’ll surprise that old bat so much that he will die sooner by shock.”