In a small village named Suri to the northwest of the Nannu Empire, three children run, laughing and carrying things on their backs. The two smaller ones carried jugs of water, and the largest a heavy load of wood. Upon arriving at the entrance of their home, a woman tending to the animals calls out to them, saying:
"Kal, Sin, and Inala, it's time for school. Come in, eat, and go. Get ready, Kal, today is your first day!"
After hearing their mother, the children enter playfully, shouting a loud yes to their mother outside. It was Ella who, some years after what happened in the kingdom of Tenai, found a beautiful and humble place, met a good man, married, and had two children, in addition to young Kal whom she treated as one of her own legitimate children.
Ella also had two children, Sin, a studious and determined young boy, and Inala, a beautiful, cheerful, and brave little girl. Kal, now 12 years old, had fair skin, silver hair, and large eyes that shone bright as the sun. Unlike his siblings, he had a somewhat subdued personality, speaking only when necessary and having few friends besides his siblings and mother.
His siblings, Sin and Inala, bore the appearance of their father; they had brown hair, dark skin, and large brown eyes. This would be Kal's first day in the young learners' class, while his siblings would still be in the children's class. The vocational school for the youth of the Nannu Empire separated children according to their greatest aptitude, to better guide them in choosing their future and assist in the growth of the empire. Kal bids farewell to his siblings and heads towards the Elhim Vocational School.
"Where can I take the vocational exam, ma'am?" Kal asked the secretary who attended to him.
"You can go to the left side, in the large room at the back," the secretary responded, noting the poor clothes Kal wore.
At that moment, a rich young boy enters, demanding immediate attention, and orders his servant to remove Kal from his path.
"Oka, remove this peasant from my way!" exclaimed the young boy.
"Immediately, young master!" said Oka, moving towards Kal.
Approaching and grabbing Kal's shoulder forcefully, Oka pushes the young boy to the ground so that his master could be attended to. Kal, expressing no deep emotion, gets up and remembers his mother's words not to get upset, after all, she wanted to keep him safe. Indicating the side the nobles would have to go, the rich young boy and his servant leave.
"Be careful when messing with the Umbridges, boy!" the secretary warned.
"I know!" Kal said, getting up and dusting himself off.
Arriving in the test room, Kal sits waiting, and a man begins to explain the nature of the tests. There would be four tests in total: the first related to intellectual aptitude, where the student would have to answer questions related to geography, sciences, calculations, medicine, and history.
The second related to physical aptitude, where the student would participate in simulated combats with examiners. The third would consist of a magic aptitude test, where the student would undergo a series of tests to identify mana levels and elemental or arcane aptitude.
The fourth and final would be a spirit test, as the spirit was considered the main source of growth and experience for a living being. The limit of the spirit indicates how far a living being can go in their life.
"I need to succeed!" Kal thinks, with his eyes shining like the sun.
While Kal waits his turn, a person with a hood slips and falls in front of him. Kal immediately helps them up, noticing the person is trembling and asks:
"Why are you trembling? Are you feeling ill or something?" Kal inquires.
"Thank you for your help, I must go now," the person replies before turning to leave.
However, before they could leave, Kal grabs their arm, and looking into Kal's face, the person notices his eyes shining more intensely, and Kal whispers:
"Heroes fear no terror!" he said, thinking of what his father had told him and his siblings.
A mature piece of advice from a child of only 12 years, it was very strange, but unbelievably the person felt courage returning to their spirit, and nodding their head as if agreeing, they return to their place. Before sitting down, the young man removes his hood and says:
"Pleased to meet you, my name is Morin, what's yours?"
"My name is Kal, nice to meet you!" Kal replied, noticing this young man seemed polite for a commoner.
Then young Morin sits next to Kal to motivate him further. Morin was a boy with very light and pale white skin, short blonde hair, blue eyes, and wore good quality clothes; the boy appeared to be a bit older than Kal. The two kept talking until another 10 boys were called for the test, among them were Kal and young Morin.
Sitting for the first test, the two paid attention to the examiner explaining that they would have only 30 minutes to solve all the stages of the intellectual test.
"These questions are terribly difficult," Morin thought, looking at his exam.
"Kal must be doing very well!" Morin thought, looking at Kal.
Looking at Kal, Morin notices he was focused on his exam with a serious and challenging look. It was the same Kal from a short while ago who gave him a great boost of motivation to continue, and seeing Kal like this, Morin gets motivated, turns to his test, and takes it more seriously than before. Meanwhile, Kal thought:
"I know nothing!" he thought with a foolish face.
After the 30 minutes, everyone had to return their tests and were directed to the second room, the physical aptitude test. As Kal's class arrived at the testing hall, those who went before them had already finished, many failed, defeated on the ground, and few leaving upright; it was natural, after all, this side of the school only had commoners and normally commoners are more uneducated and have no training at all. The 10 students in Kal's class were positioned in different enclosed spaces with different examiners who handed them a wooden sword to prepare.
"Lucky my father taught me a bit about swords!" Kal thought.
Kal's examiner was a strange man, with long hair covering his eyes and a poorly kept beard. He asks Kal to get ready for the signal, and when the signal sounds, he charges at Kal, attacking with all his might. Kal can do nothing but hold the sword against his body as the examiner strikes him over and over.
"This guy is very strong!" Kal thought about the examiner.
Kal trying a desperate strike by stretching his wooden sword to try and hit the teacher, but his attack was so slow that the examiner removed the sword from his hand, throwing it on the ground, and hitting Kal on the head. As Kal falls, he accidentally steps on his sword, which slides and strikes the examiner's foot, causing him to fall backward on the ground, giving Kal time to get up and pick up his wooden sword from the ground. Still on the ground and intrigued, the examiner finds that lucky strike very strange. He gets up and again begins to strike Kal mercilessly, again knocking Kal's sword to disarm him, but Kal raises the handle of the sword which flies into the air, and as the examiner again knocks Kal to the ground, the sword falls towards his head and hits him. Intrigued, the examiner hands the sword back to Kal and says:
"You're going to let your luck protect you, weak boy."
The Examiner stares at Kal who stands up with eyes shining brighter than ever, smiling, and looking strangely mature.
"It's not luck, I'm just counting to 3!" Kal replies, grabbing his sword.
The examiner, in turn, decides to end it all with one last strike and running towards Kal, who also comes in his direction, imbues a bit of mana (a kind of magical energy) in his sword to hit the boy harder this time. When attacked strongly, Kal dodges his body to the left side of the examiner, the side that was knocked down with a strike on his foot. Noticing that Kal went to his left, spinning his torso and neck quickly, he felt dizzy from the hit he received from the sword on the head, and trying to support the left foot stronger, he slips from the pain and falls for the third time, and this time, Kal points the sword at his neck, impressing the examiner who says:
"So this is you, very good boy, you passed!"
Kal celebrates happily, until Morin appears in Kal's room and says he also passed. The two touch hands and go to the next testing room. From afar, a woman approaches the examiner and asks,
"What was that, Alister?"
"The birth of a monster!" responds Alister.
"You know those maneuvers he did wouldn't affect you, right?" the woman asks.
"After examining many young people in these 20 years as an examiner, no one impressed me as much as he did!" Alister said.
"Do you miss the war front?" the woman asked.
"Shun, Shun, we better go eat, you're paying this time!" exclaims Alister, leaving arm in arm with Shun.
Arriving in the third room, a mystical fox-woman with a blindfold over her eyes and a mystical amethyst on her table, received student by student inside her small tent in the middle of the room to test their magical aptitudes. Apparently, she felt the magical capacity and looking at the magic core, she directed students towards the elemental, Arcane test, or directed those without magical aptitude to the next room. Kal and Morin were instructed to line up and wait for their opportunity with the fox-woman. Waiting in line, Morin asks Kal:
"Do you have any aptitude for magic?"
"I don't know, I've never actually used magic, but I have a younger sister who's a prodigy!" Kal responds.
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"And you, are you good with it?" Kal asks.
"Not to brag, but I think this will be the easiest test for me!" Morin replied.
Then Morin, who was called first, goes and sits in front of the fox-woman. Before Morin could say anything, the woman grabs his hands and places them in contact with the amethyst, which begins to glow with a greenish light. After a few seconds, the woman points Morin in the direction of elemental magic, who leaves smiling and full of himself, looking at Kal, who was next to test his aptitude. After Kal sits down, the woman grabs his hands, and before she could place them on the amethyst, she simply becomes paralyzed, a very strange seizure attacks the fox-woman who, in a burst, tears off the blindfold that hid her eyes and looks directly at Kal. He notices her eyes are opaque as if she had been blinded by something. However, her eyes begin to gain a reddish color and at the same time fill with tears. The old fox-woman, looking deeply into Kal, says:
"You can choose what you want to be!" pointing to both sides.
Kal, not understanding anything that happened, was leaving towards the elemental magic room, but before leaving the room, Kal hears the woman whispering with a smile on her face,
"Finally!" speaking with her voice fading to the point of not being able to hear anything after that.
They then move on to the second stage of the magical aptitude test, where it would be considered in which of the elemental branches they had more affinity. Morin was waiting for Kal because he deeply believed that Kal would have the same magical aptitudes as him, after all, Morin was deeply certain that he and Kal could be friends for life. And when Kal appears in the room, Morin opens a smile and asked,
"Why did it take so long?" "It was actually quite quick for me," Kal responded, still not understanding anything.
In the environment they were now in, 10 large open benches and completely visible to the people in the room. In front of the boys, the examiners indicated the direction of the lines up to the benches. In this new test, the student had to insert one of their hands into a specific hole in the center of the bench, and then the mirror above each of them would shine with the colors of the examinee's main element. Kal and Morin were placed in distant lines, but they could still see each other since everything was done in view of everyone in the room. Morin, however, was in a faster line, so he would be examined before Kal.
"According to my family's records, my main element should be water," Morin thought before his turn came.
Next to each of the benches, an examiner noted the names of the students and what their aptitude would be. When Morin places his hand, a weak light, almost fading in shades of blue, appears reflected in the mirror, and at that moment the examiner says:
"Morin Quid, your affinity with elements is inconsistent and weak, but it seems that water is your main element."
"Looks like the apple doesn't fall far from the tree after all," Morin thought after hearing this.
While Morin mused about this, a great noise of astonishment filled the entire room. Quickly looking, Morin notices that Kal was sitting in front of the bench, the examiner scared sitting on the ground, and a strange light emanating from the mirror in front. It was a light different from all that had passed through there until now; it did not have defined colors; instead, it shone like deep space, a multitude of sparkles on a dark background like the ends of the universe. The colors changed within it, and the deeper Kal's hand remained inside the hole, the deeper and infinite became that immensity, and the brighter the lights were lit. The deeper the immensity became, the more yellow and bright Kal's eyes became. The Scared examiner orders Kal to remove his hand and immediately directs him to another separate room. As Kal leaves the room, students and examiners, astonished, gradually calm down, but Morin more than anyone else continued to be astonished by what he saw.
"I think I've seen this somewhere before," Morin thinks, still astonished by what he saw.
Kal, following the examiner, arrives in a room and encounters an old man, dressed in a luxurious magical robe and sitting at a large table. Before the examiner could say anything, the old man stands up and speaks:
"So, this chaotic magic emanation came from you, young man"
"It's impossible to identify the origin of your mana, sir," says the examiner, interrupting him.
"My name is Tiberius, I am one of the 3 great mages of the empire, and what is your name?" the old man asked.
"My name is Kal, sir," the boy responded, a bit startled.
"I would like to look at your spirit, Kal, would you give me permission?" the old man asks again.
"Did I do something wrong, sir?" Kal asks, not understanding anything.
"Actually, you are already at the last stage of the test, the spirit test!" the old man exclaimed.
"Then let's go to the last test," Kal says with a determined look.
Tiberius places his hand in the center of Kal's chest, and then the pupils of his eyes begin to shimmer in red, then the man delves into the depths of Kal's spirit. The examiner who was in the room along with them noticed that Tiberius's eyes fixed on a specific point in the room and that his mouth opened as if he was astonished by what he was seeing. The nerves in Tiberius's eyes began to swell, and blood started to run from them until the pupils of his eyes began to burn like fire, and without even uttering a small scream or groan of pain, Tiberius's eyes exploded from his face, and only then did the old man remove his hand from Kal's chest and fall backward as if fainting and loses consciousness. All the tests proceeded normally with all the students that day, and they were instructed to return in 7 days to receive the final results of the aptitude tests. Kal and Morin meet at the exit, greet each other, and promise to meet at the Elhim Vocational School in 7 days.
For 7 days while the examiners mused and discussed the future of the students, Tiberius was treated by the best clerics available at the time. Even though they were able to guide Tiberius's treatment very well, they still couldn't understand what happened for a great 7th circle mage to be injured with such aggression, and even being at the scene, the examiner also didn't understand what happened. And after 6 days in that state, Tiberius finally wakes up, immediately he summons all the examiners of that school to talk about Kal, and he still in a catatonic state starts the meeting!
"What happened, Tiberius?" an examiner asked.
"He met the prodigious boy," Alister retorted.
"Do you think this boy used some underhanded way to hurt you?" another examiner questioned.
"And do you really think there is any art that a 12-year-old boy knows that could hurt a mage like Tiberius," Shen says loudly.
"Silence, Let master Tiberius tell us what happened," an examiner shouts.
And slowly standing up, Tiberius, who now wore a magical blindfold over his eyes, says:
"I looked into this boy's spirit, and there are still no words to describe what I saw!" says Tiberius, intriguing everyone there.
"I saw something inexplicable in the brilliance of his eyes too, Tiberius," Alister reports.
"Tell us more about it, master," the examiner requests.
"It was like the universe, beautiful and terrible, sublime and monstrous, ordered and chaotic, it was as if I was looking at nothingness and everything at the same time, and even as I felt my eyes burning, I still couldn't stop looking and marveling, I felt perplexed but at the same time terrified by what I saw, it was infinity and the more I looked at it, I felt it looking back at me, and then I felt like the smallest of creatures, and only then was my hand calmly removed from the boy's chest," Tiberius explains.
The old man's explanation filled the room with fear, and a sepulchral silence took hold of everyone there, and then Tiberius says:
"We must send this young man to the capital where I and the other 2 great mages, the 3 divine priests, the 3 great generals, and even the emperor can find out who this young man really is"
And before he could finish the meeting, Tiberius says:
"Before I lost my sight, I was able to see that the young man received a nickname"
After hearing this, everyone was once again astonished.
"A nickname, you say? But only heroes, demon lords, and semi-divinities have nicknames engraved on their spirit, a 12-year-old boy could never have something like that," an examiner questions.
In this world, all the experience lived is engraved in your spirit, and the more grand deeds a person achieves, the more complete their spirit becomes, and according to their acts, the great gods engrave nicknames on their being, so that both on earth and in eternity you are recognized as the one who achieved that feat, only 3 individuals have received divine nicknames in this era, and therefore it was unfathomable that a child of just 12 years could have achieved something so transcendental.
"The one who returned from the dead," says Tiberius before ending the meeting.
At his home, after Kal told his mother and siblings that he apparently did well in the tests, his mother Ella, worried about her son's future, says:
"I hope you stay here" "Of course, he's going to stay, mom," Sin quickly retorted. "I hope so," Kal concludes with a small smile on his face.
That day, during the night while the children were already sleeping, Ella enters her room, kneels by her bed, and prays:
"God of my help, don't let them take Kal away, you've followed his story and know that he can't return from where he came, and God, tell my beloved Laun that I miss him"
Laun, Ella's husband, and father of Sin and Inala, died a few years ago while serving as a soldier in the wars fought by the Nannu Empire. He was like a father to Kal and took care of everyone until he was sent back to the front, where he lost his life. Days later, the big day of the final result was approaching, and all the students returned to Elhim. Kal and Morin met along with their families, after all, this ceremony was the passage to adulthood in the Nannu Empire, so the whole family would attend the event to see how the young member of their family would fare, and again in front of the school, they shook hands and entered. All the students and families were taken to the great ceremonial hall, and there, all the examiners and Tiberius himself were gathered for the final ceremony.
"Stand up, students," Tiberius called out. "We will call name by name and say where each one will be sent within the empire to enhance what he is apt for," Tiberius completes.
Emperor Mordret, having been on a great expansion campaign for many years, encouraged all the cities of the vast empire to always produce talented and capable men and women for any situation. That's why for more than 50 years, aptitude tests have been applied to young people from the age of 12 so that the empire can direct them to the best post and thus help the empire in a more precise and strong way. However, some students without talent are left in their hometowns, and these have much more difficulty forming a family and even feeding themselves.
They get the worst jobs and receive less gold than anyone else. In the ceremony, the examiners one by one shouted the names of the students and then the academy to which the young person would attend. The options were, the Geldorn Lance Academy, where those with great aptitudes for combat were sent, regardless of the type of weapon, those who stood out in the physical were sent there. The scientific academy, where those with greater aptitude for intellectual disciplines were sent to develop scientific studies. The High Tower Academy, where those with the greatest magical aptitude were sent.
The religious academy of Selerian, where those with the greatest spiritual aptitude were sent, and lastly, the Imperial Academy located in the imperial capital Alnuum, the city of waters, where those with the greatest talent among all were sent and where everyone would like to go, heroic warriors, legendary mages, and great celebrities came from there.
With each name that was called and the location indicated, families rejoiced or became sad, after all, no one wanted to be excluded and rejected in the empire, and gradually the names were called one after another until an examiner shouts:
"Kal Launno, Imperial Academy" -the commoners who didn't have a surname received the name of the father along with the suffix (no) for identification.
Kal gets emotional, hugs his family, and greets Morin once again. Ella showed joy but inside was more worried than before, and the fear of Kai being discovered and killed by agents of the kingdom of Tenai was greater than before. Sin celebrated, while Inala cried copiously knowing that she would be without seeing Kal for a long time.
He then heads to the front to pick up the recommendation made by the general rector Tiberius, and despite everything that happened with Kal and Tiberius before, Kal was treated like any other student, picked up his recommendation, and quickly returned to his place. However, before Kal could reach his place, Tiberius himself stands up and says:
"Relon Artal Aquarion, Imperial Academy"
At that moment there was silence in the hall, after all, this was the name of one of the Emperor's sons. People at that moment looked in all directions expecting the prince to stand up, and suddenly while Kai held his recommendation tightly and came smiling, his friend Morin stands up and walks to the front of the hall. When he reaches the front of the hall, the examiners and even Tiberius bow, after that, everyone there also bowed, and seeing his mother bowing, Kal, who apparently disconnected from the real world admiring his recommendation, found it strange and said:
"It's not that much, mom, I'm going to study at the imperial academy, I'm not going to become a king or anything like that," he said, laughing, not understanding what it was really about.
In the end, Tiberius said that within a month everyone should be in their rightful places and congratulates everyone once again before ending the ceremony. Kal, who still hadn't realized who Morin really was, continued to treat him as a commoner friend and said goodbye, saying they would meet at the imperial academy in a month. Relon, however, thought that when Kal found out his true identity, he might not be his friend anymore, and was surprised when Kal continued to treat him the same way, then saying goodbye to Kal, he extends his hand and says:
"Friends"
Kal immediately holds his hand tightly and says:
"Friends"
Then smiling at each other, they say goodbye until a month passes, and they can see each other again.