The witch led everyone to another room. In this room, several blue cubes were set up on a row of tables, stretching from one end of the room to the other. And standing inside of the room was a man in pink, white, and dark-gray robes.

I quietly wondered if the pink on the man’s robes meant he worked as a midwife. If so, did that mean shapers had some sort of healing related abilities? Or did the man just have an interest in helping mothers give birth? Or did the pink mean something else in this context?

The dark-gray, at least, was easy to figure out. It was probably the color for shapers. Since a Witch had watched over our manifestation essence test, it seemed reasonable that a Shaper would watch over our alteration essence tests. I did find the fact that shapers wore dark-colored robes interesting, since that tended to be associated with warriors and adventurers, but decided to ask about it later.

The witch gave us all a final smile, interrupting my inspection of the shaper. “Good luck. It’s rare to have talent as both a witch and a shaper, but it sometimes happens. Maybe you’ll get lucky. I’ll see you after your tests!” Then, she turned around, and addressed the other children who hadn’t been found to have talent as a spellcaster. “Good luck to all of you as well. If you’re found to be a shaper, it’ll be a great honor. But if you don’t have the talent, you can still be an exceptional person in the future, so don’t feel too sad if you don’t have any magical talent. I hope you do well on your shaping tests!” Then, she started heading away from our group.

The Shaper gave us all curious looks, noting the group of us at the front who had been found to have manifestation essence talent, before nodding. “Twenty six this year for the witches and wizards, eh? Pretty good intake this year.” He cleared his throat, before speaking more loudly this time. “Now that you’ve finished the test for spellcasting talent, you will be given the test to determine whether you have talent as a shaper,” he said, giving the group of children a cursory glance. “I don’t know if any of you will pass the test; it’s honestly uncommon for anyone to pass the manifestation essence test. But I hope all of you will do your best. First, please find a table with a cube on it and sit down.”

I moved closer to Sallia and Felix, so that the three of us could sit next to each other. I also made a mental note to keep an eye on the shaper. I wanted to see the look on the shaper’s face when all three of us passed his test. It might have been childish to get excited about the man’s reaction, but I thought it would be fun to see how he reacted to all three of us having shaping talent.

As the three of us sat down on tables bordering each other, I could see that laying right next to each blue cube was a small bottle of orange paint. The bottle was open, and there was a paintbrush laying next to it. I gazed at the bottle of orange paint, baffled.

I remembered that Felix had mentioned that the objective of the shaper test was to make a blue cube turn orange, but I couldn’t figure out why they were giving us paint. Were we just supposed to paint the cube? Maybe the paint was special and only Shapers could use it, or something?

I looked at the paint, trying to figure out if there was something magical about it. However, it appeared to be completely ordinary orange paint. It was probably made from one of the colored mosses of the nearby caverns, and didn’t look like it had been made with very much care, either. It honestly looked like someone had slapped it together as fast as possible, dumped it in a bottle, and then shoved it on the table without thinking much about it. This made me feel even more confused. Was I missing something here?

I gave the Shaper a confused look. He simply gestured for us to sit down, ignoring me as he made sure everyone was sitting at their own table.

“All right, so the first thing I want all of you to keep in mind is that the Shaper test is harder than the Spellcasting Test. There’s even some debate that the reason we find so few Shapers in the population is because our testing methods are flawed. I don’t know if this is true, but I can see why people would believe that. While it’s rare for a spellcaster to fail the manifestation test, it occasionally happens, and the kid with magic talent usually gets discovered a year or two later when they accidentally construct a few symbols on their own and create the world’s most undirected and inefficient spell. It’s not common, but it happens sometimes.

“For shaping, it’s much more common for shapers to fail the test and then show up later on. So pay careful attention to my words, and try to follow my instructions; but at the same time, know that shaping is a finicky art, and what works for one shaper may not work for another. Witches and Wizards can use the exact same spell model to create the exact same spell, over and over again once they learn how to do something. This is why it’s usually easy to find spellcasters with a test; most spellcasters react the same way if you give them a wand and a visualization method, and so it’s pretty easy to find spellcasters. Shaping is much less… precise. And that means sometimes, you need to get creative if you feel something isn’t working for you. If you feel that my instructions are almost working for you, but don’t quite fit, feel free to do your own thing and try something different. Experiment with visualization methods, try new things, do weird stuff. There’s a reason you’re given 15 minutes for the magic test and three hours for shaping test, and it’s because one has a lot more quirks to its use. Does that make sense?”

Most of the children nodded.

“Good. Now, since the shaping test can’t just be automated with items, the way caster tests are, we’ll need to go into some basic shaping theory for the test.” I perked up. I was very curious about new magic systems. Especially since this had a one in two chance of being my extreme affinity.

“Shaping, in and of itself, is the art of taking reality as it could be and then making it so… within reason. For example, what is the difference between the blue cube you have sitting in front of you and an orange cube?”

I paused, wondering if this was a trick question, and Felix raised his hand. “They’re different colors?”

“Good. Very simple answer, and it’s the one I’m looking for right now. They’re different colors. What might you do if you wanted to change those colors?”

I raised my hand, and after the teacher pointed at me, I picked up the jar of orange paint. “We could just paint it, right?”

The man grinned. “Exactly! The simplest way to change the color of the cube would be to pick up a paintbrush and then paint the cube orange.” His smile widened. “Now, shaping is the art of doing the same thing, but entirely using magic. Shaping is, fundamentally, the art of shaping the world around you. There are a lot of limitations to that, some of which are due to knowledge being lost during the dawn of the black sun and some due to the nature of shaping itself. However, at its heart, shaping is about changing the world around us, hopping from one possible shape of the world to another.” He chuckled. “At least, that’s the current most popular being of scholarly theory.

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“Now, what I want you to do is focus on how similar the blue cube currently is to the orange cube. With just a few simple actions, it would be really easy to change it from a blue cube to an orange cube, right? So all we need to do is use alteration essence to skip the step of actually painting the cube, and make the end result into reality instantly. Modern Shaping theory states that, starting from our current point in time, countless potential ‘futures’ are continuously being generated, based on actions we could potentially be taking, and whatever actions we’re most likely to take. Kind of like a cloud of infinite different ideas and possible paths we can choose, as well as all of the people, animals, and monsters around us. What I want you to do is reach into one of those possible futures, one where you pick up your little jar of orange paint… and then bring the painted cube from that future into the present.”

I frowned. It was a little hard to wrap my head around what the man wanted me to do, but it sounded kind of like shaping was… rather more unique than I thought it was.

However, I did as he suggested, imagining my blue cube being painted orange in some potential future, and then trying to fuse that cube with reality.

As I did, I almost immediately accessed a new reservoir of energy inside of me. I immediately realized that this was alteration essence.

And manipulating it was so… easy.

I knew how hard it was for me to use other essences. I had a lot of practice using absorption essence, after all, and I had a rough idea how to use manifestation essence. Using either essence was kind of like going to a well, drawing water out with the power of my own hard work, and then retrieving the water and moving it back home for use. I knew how to do it, and it wasn’t hard, per se. But it wasn’t easy either; it was still a lot of labor and thinking to make either essence work.

By contrast, Alteration Essence was like turning on a faucet and just having water pour out of a pipe. The difference was so utterly and completely ridiculous that I wondered how I had ever functioned, using other essences all this time.

At the same time, I got the feeling that the man’s explanation of how Alteration Essence worked wasn’t quite right. I couldn’t put my finger on why, exactly, but his explanation of ‘potential futures’ just didn’t sit right with me. It felt a little bit off, although I couldn’t quite figure out why yet. I decided to focus on finishing my test first.

I imagined transposing another image of a cube on top of the cube in front of me. Instead of imagining the cube as blue, I imagined it being orange. I felt my Alteration essence reach for the nearby jar of orange paint, and connect it to the cube. Then, the orange paint in the jar grew… dimmer, turning from orange paint into gray paint. At the same time, my cube immediately turned bright orange.

I looked at my jar of now nearly colorless paint, and then glanced at the shaper’s dark-gray clothes again. I had a better idea why shapers were associated with gray now.

“I see that although I haven’t finished my explanation yet, you’ve… already succeeded,” said the shaper, breaking me out of my thoughts. I gave the man a wide eyed look, and he chuckled as he stood a few tables away from me. The previous gloominess in his posture seemed to have melted away. “To think we have another shaper-witch this year. This year really is exceptional!” He seemed far more energetic than he had at the start of the test, and I could see him practically vibrating with excitement. He had stopped his explanation mid-sentence to gush over my success.

I took a look at Sallia and Felix, and saw an unspoken question in their eyes.

I grinned, and nodded.

After using Absorption and Manifestation Essence, the comparison was like night and day.

Alteration Essence was my extreme affinity.

I wondered what I could do with this magic system, but did my best to tamp down on my rising excitement. The warnings from the witch about blowing ourselves up with magic was still fresh on my mind, and I should probably wait until I knew more about Alteration magic before I started experimenting on my own. I didn’t want to mess up and kill myself before I had a chance to get started in this world.

The shaper was still giving me a huge grin as he finally made his way to my table, inspected the jar of gray paint, and grinned. “Anyway, I’m glad to see another shaper join our little community, young lady. Rest assured, I’m sure the other will be just as excited as I am to get to know you. I’ve never heard of anyone passing the test in under two minutes before!” he chuckled. “For the longest time, Nelson has been boasting that he only took eight minutes to complete his test. You just beat his record by a whole six minutes.” Then, the shaper coughed a few times, before he seemed to remember that the other children were still here. He turned to me, as if I was now more interesting than the rest of the children he was supposed to be testing. “If you want to, see if you can remove the orange color from the cube and put it back in the bottle. You shouldn’t be able to hurt yourself if you’re just doing that much, and it’ll be good practice for the future. We haven’t taught you how to start building an affinity yet, but some basic shaping practice is always useful for whatever you decide to learn later.” He paused, giving me a grim look. “But don’t do anything else, okay? You might hurt yourself if you do. I’m going to continue the shaping test now, but call me if you have any questions.”

I decided to do as he suggested, and he returned to focusing on the other children. However, I kept one eye focused on the man, excited to see how he would react once Sallia and Felix unlocked their shaping as well. Meanwhile, I focused on the cube again, and tried to remove the orange color and return it to the jar of gray paint. I had a much harder time with returning the cube to its original state, and part of it was because my visualization method - imagining ‘possible futures’ and then making one a reality, just felt wrong to me.

As I worked at it, I finally realized why the explanation about ‘possible futures’ felt weird.

So far, absorption essence had been all about absorbing mana. It devoured the mana in my surroundings and made it part of my body. Manifestation Essence was manifesting… something. I assumed it had something to do with the magic symbols.

Why did it seem like alteration essence wasn’t ‘altering’ things very much? Instead, it felt almost like I was trying to manifest an alternate timeline or something, at least the way I was currently being told to visualize it. It just felt incredibly odd and clunky.

I thought about the dawn of the black sun, and the massive destruction it had caused. Perhaps most of the knowledge of alteration had been lost during the chaos? Shapers were incredibly rare, after all, so it was much easier for their notes and teaching methods to get lost during an already chaotic time period. If that was the case, perhaps shapers had tried to use manifestation essence theory to restart their own magic system, leading to our current, incredibly odd system for using shaping essence. Of course, I didn’t know much about Alteration Essence, and the man had mentioned ‘building an affinity’ or something. Clearly, there was a lot about Shaping essence I still needed to learn, before I started seeing if I could change the system. Still…

I definitely knew what research notes I wanted to find the most now, whenever the three of us started adventuring through the wastes above ground. Kick-starting a new branch of alteration essence spellcasting would probably be worth a huge amount of Achievement, and it would probably get me a good keyword ability to go along with it.