Lina waited for the examiner, who’d started making her way over to her.

The examiner gathered her clipboard and portable ink quill, then went around the table.

“Lina of the Reen family?”

Lina nodded as she fiddled with her fingers.

“Would you like to do the evaluation in the pocket dimension, or out here?”

Lina held both of her hands together. Her nerves were present, but they were not as debilitating as she’d expected them to be.

“In the pocket dimension please.”

The examiner wrote it on the clipboard, then signalled for the analysts to head into the pocket dimension.

“Alright, let’s get started then.”

They walked through the portal into the pocket dimension.

Lina looked around once she walked in. Surprisingly, there wasn’t much to look at. The walls were simply made of white panels, as were the floor and ceiling. It felt like Lina had just entered a big box. Just like in the testing ground outside, there was an orb in the middle of the room. The training dummy was another similarity with the pocket dimension and the setup in the testing ground.

It looks just as creepy in here as it looked out there.

“What should I do first?” Lina asked the examiner.

The examiner had just finished enabling the defensive measures made to keep them all safe if anything went wrong in the pocket dimension. She then pointed at the orb.

“You can start by letting all of your mana flow into that orb. It’ll come back once the orb has finished analysing it, just like how it worked in your entrance exam.”

“Alright.”

Lina swiped a curly strand of hair behind her ear as she made her way over to the orb. She placed her hand against it. The surface of the orb’s glass was cool against her palm.

Lina let it flow. All of her mana, she allowed to flow into the orb.

In the entrance exam, the orb glowed bright whenever she did this. But this time, there was no change in the orb’s colour. It remained as translucent as ever.

Shortly after, Lina felt her mana return to her.

“Good. Now, we can test any of the techniques you like. If you want, we can test all of them, or we can test whatever ones you’d want to be evaluated. Which one would you like to do?”

“Does the process change depending on what I pick?” Lina asked.

“Interesting. I’m surprised you asked. None of the other students did.” The examiner said. “Well, to answer your question, it changes a little bit. If you want to test all of your techniques, then we have a scenario that would allow you to use them all in a short time span. The data would then be analysed by the analysts, and your techniques would get rated.”

Lina nodded. She didn’t want to test out all of her techniques, but there were a handful that Lina thought were pretty good. She wanted to be at the same level as her friends. They’re all so strong and confident all the time. They’re... all my inspiration!

“Which would you like to do?” The examiner asked.

Lina shook as she was broken away from her thoughts. She nodded to herself as she made a decision.

“I’ll just test a few techniques. Not all of them.”

“Alright. Do they have names?”

“Not... really.”

“That’s nothing to worry about. As long as it’s a coherent spell that you use consistently, it doesn’t matter if there’s a name or not.”

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Lina nodded as she listened to the examiner.

“One last question. Do you have any enhancement type spells?”

Lina shook her head, “No...” then she waved her hands frantically, “Wait! I do. But it’s my divine form. It makes my water spells stronger. There’s... a spell that I can only use in my divine form too.”

“Alright. That’s fine. It’s something that people do all the time. I think you’d call it ‘divine casting’. Your spells will all have a ‘divine’ variant. As a follow-up then, do you have any limit on your divine form? Like a time limit or do you have to use mana to maintain it?”

“No, I can use it for as long as I want and without using any mana to keep it up.”

“In that case, what we’ll do is evaluate the spells you want first without your divine form, then you can do them again a second time with your divine form. In the second run, you can use your divine form exclusive spells as well. We’ll compare them and you’ll get an idea of how strong your divine form actually is. If you’re able to cast divine spells a whole tier above their base level variants, then you can consider yourself exceptionally talented.”

Lina blushed a little at the possibility of her being the talented one.

“Okay... we’ll do that.” She said.

“Then, since you don’t have any traditional enhancement type spells, you can start by casting the spells one by one on the training dummy. We’ll show you their base rating, and then we’ll do the same with your divine form. Does that sound good?”

Lina nodded.

“Good. Whenever you’re ready then.”

Lina walked over to the dummy and prepared herself. It’s still so... scary. Deep breaths, Lina. Deep breaths. You can do this.

Lina didn’t have many offensive spells. They were all rather basic or simply an external manifestation of certain elements that were far too crude to count as a technique. What she wanted to test here was something different.

Healing and shielding spells.

Lina and her sister specialised in healing and shielding spells. They were far more proficient with them over any kind of offense.

The first spell that Lina wanted to use was a barrier that she’d come up with herself.

She aimed her hand at the dummy.

A cold frost emanated from Lina’s hand. Her voice sounded like cracking ice.

Glacies Atmosphaera

A barrier made entirely of thick ice surrounded the dummy. The dummy tried to destroy the barrier with an array of spells, but none broke through.

Lina let out a sigh of relief. It held. Thank goodness...

“That’s good, you can use the next spell now!”

Lina turned and nodded at the examiner. She released the ice barrier.

Okay, next spell. C’mon, we can do this!

The next spell was a healing spell.

Lina summoned a ball of water in her hand. The ball of water that Lina summoned was different to typical water. There were arcane runes inside it. Golden runes that lit up under the water’s surface made their presence known as Lina moulded the water to test its flexibility.

The analysts eyed the water ball curiously.

Lina split the ball of water into two duplicates. Both of the balls of water had the same runes and volume of water as the original ball. They were perfect clones of each other.

One of them shot straight at the dummy.

It made contact, but instead of splashing like a normal ball of water would do, the water instead encased the dummy completely.

Just a moment after, the dummy had completely absorbed the water and its runes alongside it.

Lina turned to the examiner expectantly.

The examiner looked at the data. Her eyes widened. What... it had so much healing potency even though she only used that much water? What kind of spell is that?! But... It’s still only epic tier at best. If the spell improves drastically with her divine form, then it would certainly surpass legendary.

Lina interrupted her thoughts.

“Should I do the next spell? I’ve only got one more I want to try before using my divine form.”

“Oh, sorry! Yes. Please continue.”

Lina turned her focus back to the dummy. Okay. This is the last spell. Wait... I don’t think the dummy will work for this one... She turned to the examiner, “Uh, sorry. I don’t know if the dummy will work well for the next spell.”

The examiner tilted her head at Lina, “Oh? How so?”

Lina frowned, “Well... it’s a golem.”

The analysts went silent. They were discussing something, but at her mention of a golem, they all turned their attention back to Lina. Most of all, the examiner’s eyes lit up.

“A golem?! At your age?! Are you SERIOUS?!?!” She exclaimed.

Lina didn’t expect the very vocal reaction, so she panicked.

“Uh... mayb-... yes. I’m sorry!” She bowed.

The examiner stared at the girl. She ran over to her and gently lifted her up from her shoulders.

“No, you don’t get it! I’m not mad! It’s the opposite. From my experience, all combat focused golems are epic tier at the very least! If you’re able to enhance it with any of your spells, then they’re considered to be legendary tier, regardless of their attributes!”

“I... I didn’t know...”

The examiner tempered her excitement and cleared her throat.

“Ahem. Okay... If you can summon it and buff it up then it’ll be classed as legendary. Can you do that?”

“Yes I can. But I can only buff it in my divine form. Otherwise, I can still heal or shield it. Sometimes I can even make a weapon for it.”

“Then, you’ll summon the golem in your divine form. We’ll treat it as a separate spell, so you don’t have to worry about that.” Her grin turned into a wide smile, “So far, your techniques are both epic tier. We’ll see how that changes when you use your divine form.”

Lina smiled to herself. Epic tier is good! I’m doing well! Phew... okay, let’s try to keep this up! She riled herself up.

The examiner started reorganising the analysts. Once she was done, she returned to Lina.

“We can get started on your divine techniques so you should transform now.”

Lina mentally prepared herself as she nodded.

She took a step back, and begun her transformation.