The old lady behind the glass window waved her staff and the floor in the middle of the room opened as a target dummy slowly rose from the opening. Cecil observed the dummy before taking another glance towards the examiners as he raised his hand.

'Huh... so it's only this...'

Without the need for the examiners to say anything, Cecil concentrated his mana and sent his version of an air bolt towards the dummy. The examiners were astonished at Cecil's lack of chanting. They immediately thought that he was using original magic. The next scene however left the examiners, apart from the old lady, dumbfounded.

When the 'air bullet' came into contact with the dummy, the top part of the dummy was immediately blown away, leaving only the base. The surprised examiners stared hard at the decapitated dummy and exclaimed, "H-how is it that powerful?!"

Cecil turned back towards the examinees and waited for the next test. The old lady spoke once more, "Examinee No. 1561, Cecil. Was that an original spell based off of the air bolt spell just now?"

Cecil responded honestly, "Yes, it was."

It was indeed an original spell, but it was not based off the air bolt spell. All Cecil did was use Mana Burst and instead of focusing the mana into his body, he condensed it all onto his hand and fired it. The bolt of mana was pale gold in color, so other than the color, the characteristics were similar to the air bolt spell. Cecil called it the 'Mana Bolt'.

Cecil also had a version of the Mana Bolt where he continuously fired them. He called it 'Mana Volley' and there was another more powerful version where he continuously channeled his mana after firing the Mana Bolt, forming a wave or a laser. At first he wanted to call it Kam*hameha, but he settled with 'Mana Blast', since he wanted to sound original.

The old lady only nodded slightly, since it was an original spell, the characteristics of the spell would not be the same as the normal one so the pale gold color did not bother her. She continued asking, "Are there any other elements you have a good aptitude with?"

"Earth..."

Cecil paused immediately and began thinking quickly, there was no way his mana could imitate an earth bolt, so he made something up on the spot.

"I'll also be using another original spell based off the earth spike spell." Cecil replied. On the outside he looked calm, but he was sweating profusely on the inside.

'Crap! Why'd I have to open my big mouth?!

Cecil was a non-elemental user so he didn't have any affinity with any of the elements. All he did was manipulate his mana into imitating the visual and effects of the elemental spells as best he could.

It wasn't so obvious with the wind element, but if he wanted to use the Earth element there was no way he could imitate an earth spell using the environment in the room. It's not like he could destroy the floor of the exam room. The only thing he could do was replicate some kind of effect of an earth magic spell on the dummy.

The old lady took a look at the dummy and thought for a moment. She then said, "If the effects are the same as the original air bolt, then we will just continue onto the next test."

Cecil released a sigh of relief inwardly and replied, "They're almost the same."

"Then we will move onto the next test, the Stage Evaluation test."

Once again the lady waved her staff. The dummy, or what was left of it, disappeared into the floor and not long after a pedestal with an orb perched atop it rose from the opening. Cecil knew immediately what it was and before the examiners said anything, he was already walking towards the orb.

'It's just like the one Mrs. Anna used.'

Cecil stretched out his arm and concentrated. He was prepared to send his mana into the orb, but made sure that he didn't overload it like he did back then with Mrs. Anna's orb.

'Better not send all my mana in... 500 units should do it.'

Although he and Lucia agreed to not hold back on the exams so that they could get the best scores, Cecil thought that injecting all 5000 plus units of his mana into the orb would be overkill.

'I just need to do well enough so I can stand out in a good way.'

Like the saying goes, the nail that sticks out will be hammered in. Cecil wanted to stand out, but not in an abnormal or bad way, otherwise, it would defeat the whole purpose of him trying to get a good score in the exams. Once he was sure that he had gathered around 500 units of his mana, Cecil sent it into the orb and the orb started to light up.

The body of the pedestal started to glow and a violet bar shone on the bottom most part. As Cecil kept channeling his mana into the orb, the light bars on the pedestal began to light up one by one. First was violet, after that was blue, and then green. This orb was a bit more advanced than the one that Mrs. Anna had. Each Mana Stage level and sub-level was represented with a different color and the more mana you injected, the more colors would light up.

Cecil threw out the idea of only inject 500 units of his mana into the orb. Instead, he decided to keep on injecting mana until the bars lit up at a level that he was satisfied with. When the bar finally hit the orang level, Cecil was satisfied and he quickly stopped injecting any more mana into the orb.

'Great. This should be enough. Orange seems to be the second to the highest level and I only needed to inject 800 units of my mana into it! Nice!'

Upon seeing that the level which Cecil had reached was at the orange level, even the impassive old lady had to be impressed with him. He didn't seem any older than 15 years old, so it was really shocking that he had a mana stage that was even greater than 70% of the academy's student body. Even some of the academy's teachers were weaker than Cecil in terms of their stage in their mana cultivation.

For a complete explanation, the pedestal would light up in color according to how much mana you injected into the orb. Violet was the lowest and it indicated that you were only at the initial stage. Blue indicated the early vapor stage, green was middle vapor stage and so on. Orange was the second highest evaluation possible on the pedestal. It indicated one being at the Mid Mana Sea Stage.

Above that was Red, and it indicated that the person was at the Late Mana Sea Stage. If the red bar began sparkling, then this meant that the person was on the verge of breaking through to the Mana Core Stage, and if the apparatus shutdown, it meant that the person testing themselves had already reached the Mana Core Stage. This model of the Mana Stage Detector could only measure someone's stage when they were still at the initial through mana sea stages. Any higher then the device would shut down.

Cecil's score in the 2nd round of the test was exemplary, and he believed that Lucia would do just as well as him–or even better. Lucia's mana if she added in the mana accumulated from her family's unique mana technique could almost rival the amount of mana that Cecil had.

After half a year of training, Lucia had already successfully condensed 3 authentic mana cores in her 3 tails. Each core could store up to 1000 units of mana, so if she added that number on top of the mana inside of her mana point, Lucia would have almost 4000 units of mana in total.

Cecil sighed and thought 'These tests are all too easy for us two.'

He walked back to stand in front of the long window and waited for the next test to begin. The old lady examiner had regained her composure after seeing him waiting and quickly said, "Examinee No. 1561, Mid-Level Mana Sea Stage. Very good, very good. Now, onto the last spell caster test."

The old lady was happy to find such a promising seedling. She immediately thought that the days ahead for the academy would be very interesting indeed. She already heard rumors of the most talented child of the royal family enrolling into the school, but what she didn't expect was that she was also able to find another child whose talents didn't lose out to the princess.

The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.

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--Lucia's Perspective---

As Cecil had just finished his spell caster exam's second test. In room SF01, Lucia had just finished her Magic Aptitude evaluation. She took much longer than Cecil because she insisted on using both her fire and water spells. Just like Cecil, she used an original spell based off of the water and fire bolt spells.

"Okay, on to the next test."

Lucia only grinned when she thought about the Stage Evaluation test.

'I bet Cel's already stunned his examiners.'

When the pedestal came up, Lucia immediately stepped forward and put her hand on top of the orb. She began channeling her mana into the orb and the first violet color bar shone on the bottom of the pedestal.

'Hoohh... I guess the higher the bar, the better it is then?'

Lucia smirked and quickly started channeling her mana into the orb. The orb quickly lit up all the way until it was yellow. Lucia's original mana capacity without factoring in her mana cores in her tails was only around 700 units. She still needed to cultivate a little bit more until she finally reached 1,000 units of mana in her mana point. There was a momentary pause before she began focusing her mind onto the mana cores in her tails.

'First Core, Release'

Another surge of mana gushed into the orb and the orange and red bar lit up almost immediately, but because Lucia had released her First Core's Seal, all of the mana inside her tail's core ended up rushing into the orb with zero restraints. The orb kept on lighting up until the red bar began sparkling. The examiners behind the window were already on their feet when top most bar of the pedestal, the red bar, had lit up, but now they were exclaiming in shock when it started sparkling.

"Late Mana Sea Stage! Oh my gosh, she's at the Late Mana Sea Stage!"

"Look again! The red bar is sparkling! That means she's on the verge of breaking through to the Mana Core Stage! She's at the Peak Level of the Mana Sea Stage!"

"J-Just a little bit more and she'd be on the same level as most of our academy's instructors!"

"G-genius! Isn't she only 14 years old?!"

"W-Wait! Look at what's happened to the Mana Stage Detector!"

The examiners took a closer look at the device and noticed that it had shut down. This immediately shocked everyone into silence. One of the examiners who was still in disbelief suddenly said while stuttering in shock, "M-Mana Core... she's in the Mana Core Stage!"

"A 14 year old at the Mana Core stage! This is unprecedented!"

"A-Actually, wasn't there someone like her before?! The previous headmaster's talents practically rival this young girl's! Also, wasn't the previous headmaster also a silver haired foxkin?"

"I-I've been thinking about this since earlier, but... don't you think that this girl looks somewhat familiar?"

The shocked examiners took a careful glance at Lucia. Lucia took notice of them sizing her up and felt annoyed. She had accidentally caused the device to malfunction and thought that she was going to be in big trouble, but the way the examiners were looking at her now was really weird. The first thing she thought was that they wanted her to pay up for breaking their equipment.

Lucia felt that she didn't do anything wrong! It was the academy who was at fault for testing her with such faulty equipment. She didn't know that the examiners were just staring at her in the way they did because they were shocked at her talent. Still, it felt unpleasant, so she scoffed and crossed her arms over her chest, clearly showing her displeasure.

After that, she started glaring back at the examiners but her expression and actions caused another round of discussion from the examiners.

"Huh? Look at her... she looks and even acts like our previous headmaster..."

As the examiners were talking, Lucia made her way to the window and knocked on the glass in annoyance. Seeing as the examiners were busily discussing something and essentially ignoring her, Lucia cleared her throat and said loudly.

"Ahem... next?!"

The examiners were shocked and immediately turned towards the young fox girl. One of them spoke out hurriedly, "Eh... ah yes, yes... next is the Mental Capacity test."

With a wave of the examiner's wand, a desk with books on top rose from the floor. The examiner then began explaining.

"Here we have some intermediate and basic level spells, choose any from the table. They're spells from every elemental system. We will test on how fast you can comprehend and use the spell you have chosen. You have 3 attempts. The timer will begin when you pick up the first book."

One of the examiners was already holding onto a clock-like gadget. It was Alterna's version of a stopwatch.

"Okay," Lucia replied plainly and walked to the table.

The books were grouped in colors, red for fire, blue for water, green for air, brown for earth, and purple for lightning. There was also a small amount of white and black books, probably for the light and dark elemental systems.

Lucia went over to the red area and picked up a fire element spell book from the desk. She took a glance at the spell and found that it was the Scorching Array spell. It was the exact same spell that Lucia had been consistently using before she started to mainly use her original spells.

'Heh, Mama had this in her study and I could already cast this spell months ago.'

Lucia only took a small glance at the book and placed it back onto the desk. She walked away from the desk and stood only a couple of paces away from a dummy target that had appeared in the room and began chanting.

"W-what?!"

"No way, that fast?!"

"...remember she's at the mana core stage!" said one of the examiners with an understanding gaze. "She probably already knew how to use this spell in the first place!"

After the last examiner said his piece, the other two also nodded in understanding, it was expected of this talented young girl to be able to do this. Lucia quickly finished her chant and invoked the spell right in front of her.

"SCORCHING ARRAY!"

A magic circle formed on the floor a few steps ahead of her and then a scorching pillar of flames rose from the ground.

"The chant was also fast!" An examiner exclaimed.

Lucia had already abandoned using this spell ever since she created her original spells, but that didn't mean she would forget how to use it. It was perhaps due to the influence of her original spells, but Lucia's chant was relatively quick and she had even shortened it. The output was still the same and it was invoked much faster than a regular spell caster's Scorching Array.

After the spell subsided Lucia turned back towards the table, ready to pick the next spell she was going to use, but before she could pick up another book, the lead examiner quickly stopped her.

"Examinee No. 1560, Lucia. You have already passed the test so there is no longer any need for you to use another spell."

"Oh? Well, that's the final Spell caster test right? So next is the fighter's test right?"

Sensing the impatience in her voice, the examiner stuttered, "Y-yes, ah, congratulations on passing the Spell caster's test, right now you are probably the most promising student candidate from this batch of examinees."

"Thank you, so let's continue onto the next test?" Lucia politely responded.

"For the fighter's test, there will be new examiners to test you. Please wait a bit. It won't take long for them to arrive."

"Okay~"

The examiners quickly went out through a separate door in the room. Lucia walked towards the window and leaned on the wall beside it and crossed her arms.

'I wonder how Cecil's doing. Hah, I bet he's doing better than me!'

Lucia could not be more wrong because right now in room SF02, Cecil had just barely finished the third and last exam of the spell caster division.

"Holy crap... that was a close one, I almost got caught." Cecil said as he tiredly slump down on the floor.