Merlin's POV:
I woke up and felt something oppressing my chest, but to my surprise, when I opened my eyes to see what it was, I saw Adelle’s sleeping face. I recalled last night’s events, and I remembered Adelle going to sleep on one of the sides of the bed, and Lupa was between us… Taking Adelle’s personality into consideration, it was almost impossible for her to be this bold on the first night, so it was probably a prank that Lupa and Bastet had thought of… well, I’ll have to reward them later, this situation is not half bad… On the other hand, this means I’ll have to wait until the three of them wake up to go do my morning routine… It’s worth it though.
I wonder what face will Adelle make when she wakes up and see the situation… it’s gonna be really funny!
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Adelle was so embarrassed that she didn’t say a word for two days. When she started talking again, the adults asked her why she had acted that way, but she didn’t give them any reason. Merlin and the girls felt a little guilty for they were the ones responsible for Adelle’s odd behavior but none of them dared to come clean.
Days passed and, soon, Merlin’s birthday arrived. The whole household was in a celebrating mood. That would the last year they would be able to celebrate his birthday as a family, so they wanted it to be really special. As soon as Merlin established himself in his new position, he’d have to deal with all the annoying protocol the nobility had, in which, the celebration of birthdays was also included, of course.
What nobody had expected was the King making a brief visit to personally wish Merlin “a very happy birthday”, and also to ask him about the design he wanted to be his family crest. Merlin disappeared for a minute, and when he came back he had a parchment in his hand. He then extended the parchment on the table, and showed it to the King.
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It was actually Avalon Kingdom’s Royal family’s crest, but any record or knowledge about it should have disappeared millennia ago, so Merlin intended to make the crest his own. The King didn’t say anything either, he just took the parchment and went back to the Palace.
After his departure, everyone started talking about Merlin’s Magic Awakening Test, which would take place the following day, and they were wondering to which element or elements Merlin would have affinity. Only Emely and the girls knew about his affinity to all eight attributes, but they kept quiet about it. Merlin had already decided the elements he was going to show affinity to, and with the disguising magic he had learned from the book left behind by the original Merlin Pendragon, he wouldn’t have much trouble hiding his real abilities. Besides, he had planned to use the affinities of the three girls to mask his own when attacking in a party, but that would be later on, when they had all become adventurers…
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The following day, the whole Pendragon household accompanied Merlin to the Magic Institute, they all wanted to know the results of the test first-hand. A surprise was waiting for them at the Magic Institute, the King had come to witness the test along with Laurenz. Their reason was quite simple, they wanted to confirm whether Merlin had affinity to the water element or not. If he really had it, Laurenz was convinced he had witnessed Merlin using it before, it’d mean Merlin would become really powerful in the future, so they’d have to prepare suitable rewards to rope him in and tie him to the kingdom more than he already was.
The Magic Awakening Test, also called Magic Awakening Ritual in some regions, didn’t have much of a mystery: a transparent orb was handed to the person undergoing the test, and depending on the color that the orb takes, and its strength, the person will have affinity to one element on another, and different ranks for their affinities. The affinities were tested by the orb one at a time, so if someone had multiple affinities, then the orb would show them in succession, starting from the strongest affinity to the weakest. In case someone has multiple affinities with equal strength, they’ll be shown at random.
The magus in charge handed the orb to Merlin while the rest of the people present held their breath in anticipation of the results. As soon as Merlin held the orb, it began to glow. The glow turned red and started to grow in intensity until the whole room was bathed in red light.
Magus: Extraordinary affinity to the fire element!
The red light disappeared and the orb started to glow again. The Pendragon household was really excited: Merlin was a dual-element user! The King and Laurenz carefully looked at the orb, but they weren’t happy at all, because the glow wasn’t blue like they expected, but brown. Once again, the glow increased, and finally, the room was immersed in a brown light.
Magus: Extraordinary affinity to the earth element!
The brown light disappeared and most of the people present thought that the test had already finished. The majority of the Pendragon household was already celebrating that Merlin was a fire-earth dual-element magus, just like his mother, when the orb started glowing again. They were dumbfounded, a third affinity? It wouldn’t be that strange if one of the parents had three affinities, or both parents were magi of different affinities and at least one of them was a dual-element magus, but those weren’t Merlin’s case… This time the orb glowed with a blue light, which made the King and Laurenz grin because they were right and Merlin actually had it! Then, following the same process as the other elements…
Magus: Extraordinary affinity to the water element!
After that, the magus in charge of the test was going to retrieve the orb, but just when he was about to touch it, he noticed that it was glowing again. He couldn’t believe his eyes! A fourth affinity! Ever since the Great Magic Era, only one person had ever appeared who had affinity to four elements, and nobody had ever managed to repeat that feat… Until that very instant! The magus realized that he was witnessing something that would become part of the history of the world, and he was part of it!
Everyone’s jaws dropped, they couldn’t understand what they were seeing, only when someone muttered “A fourth affinity?! You’ve gotta be kidding me!” did they understand that they weren’t dreaming and it was really happening: Merlin had become the second person in having affinities to four elements ever since the end of the Great Magic Era!
They carefully looked at the orb and saw it glowing with a grey light. They couldn’t understand what they were seeing, the equivalence between colors and elements were clear: red = fire, green = wind, blue = water, brown = earth, black = darkness, white = light, violet = space-time… but grey? Grey = Non-element affinity, the most mysterious affinity of them all… The Spirit magic used by the elves derived from this affinity, but no human had ever possessed that attribute since the end of the Great Magic Era. That affinity granted the user the power to freely manipulate mana, to a certain degree, and in some cases, it even allowed the user to convert raw mana into mana of a concrete affinity, making possible to use low ranked spells of an affinity different from the user’s.
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Magus: Imp-impossible! Ex-extraordinary affinity to the Non-element attribute?!
Possessing this affinity would definitely bring unwanted attention upon him, so he had initially thought of using space-time as his fourth affinity, but he discarded the idea when he thought about the possible emergency situations he might would come across in the future: If in an emergency situation he unconsciously used a spell of an attribute he wasn’t supposed to have, that would put him in an extremely difficult situation. On the other hand, by making public that he possesses the mythical Non-element attribute, if he ever uses a spell from an attribute he isn’t supposed to have, people will just assume that he used the Non-element attribute’s “mana conversion ability” to cast the spell.
Seeing the uproar that the results of the test were making, the magus decided to get over with it and proceeded to announce the results of the test.
Magus: Earl Merlin Pendragon: Extraordinary affinity to the fire, water and earth elements, as well as extraordinary affinity to the Non-element attribute!
Nobody knew what to say anymore, they stood there, blankly staring at Merlin while he returned the orb and left with his family. King Dollan realized that, given the circumstances, he couldn’t rope Merlin in with the methods he had thought of… so he only had one way left to do it, and that was gaining his friendship without using any tricks… and that was something that he wasn’t used to do!
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Merlin was completely unaware of the uproar that his very existence had caused in the human territories around the world. The news of him possessing the Non-element attribute spread through the kingdom and, in less than a week everyone in the kingdom knew about him. In two weeks, every major organization had already received the information, and started to prepare their course of action.
They all sent spies, with their orders being to observe him and report his growth and behavior. The only exception to that was the Klausna kingdom, who saw him as a potential threat, and instead of spies sent assassins with orders of killing him and leaving no witnesses. Their reasons to send assassins against a six-year-old weren’t only that he had the mythical affinity, but also that his territory was in the middle of the path they had chosen to use in the invasion they had planned to do several years later. If the boy ever had any funny ideas, like fortifying the border, that would seriously hinder their plans, so they decided to eliminate him before he had the opportunity to do so.
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Merlin was unaware of all that, he was in the courtyard celebrating with his family, when he suddenly remembered something. He asked his mother to cast a high level fire barrier around the house, and went into the basement with Adelle. Emelyn immediately understood that he wanted to do Adelle’s Magic Awakening and casted the barrier, after doing so, she also went to the basement, she was curious about what Adelle’s main affinities would be.
When Emelyn entered the basement the had already finished the awakening, so she asked Merlin what Adelle’s affinities were, but he didn’t know yet because Adelle didn’t understand what she had to do in order to sense her attributes. Merlin decided to use his “Analytical Observation” on her to see her status.
*Pling*
Status WindowNameAdelle TenerisAge4RaceHumanLevel1GenderFemaleHealth290/290Health Regen.0.003 / SecMana2 371Mana Regen.0.006 / SecMagic Attribute affinityFire (minimal), Water (high), Wind (extraordinary), Earth (minimal), Space-time (low), Light (minimal), Darkness (minimal), Non-attribute (minimal)Skills
* “Nursering (lv. 3)”
Merlin told his mother that Adelle had extraordinary affinity to the wind element, high affinity to the water element, and a low affinity to the space-time element. Emelyn thought that it was a pity that despite being a triple-element magus, Adelle couldn’t become really proficient in one of them, which would reduce her strength… but she didn’t say it aloud, Adelle was really happy with her affinities, and crushing her hopes of becoming a triple-element user was something that Emelyn couldn’t bring herself to do. Besides, she had witnessed her son doing things deemed impossible by the current common sense, so if it was him, he might just be able to help Adelle to attain her new goal!
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