Kael, Earl Gideon, and Elalios arrived late to their targeted time of arrival. There’s only one day left before the assessment begins. The Earl was the most frustrated, as he was unable to let Kael explore the whole of Deyrem. The only things that they were able to do that day, on their first day in the town, was some unexciting tasks that they need to do to sustain themselves. They didn’t have much of a window to do some adventuring around town.
The next day, the Earl woke up Kael to prepare for the assessment. Kael got a chance to look at the new place during their short travel towards the kingdom’s academy. It gave him some relief from the nervousness he was feeling as they drew closer to the academy.
“We should go somewhere after your assessment”, Elalios said. Such invite made Kael display his enthusiasm to roam around town. Elalios was satisfied as he fulfilled his objective.
It wasn’t a long journey, and soon enough, they found themselves in front of a metal gate, which attracted many carriages the same as theirs. The vehicles unloaded their important passengers, typically fathers with their child, which signaled to them that the assessment was really happening that day.
“That’s more than I could remember”, the Earl said, looking at the influx of young aspirants entering the grounds of the academy. Since the time they arrived, there were many young hopefuls that already entered, and yet, more carriages kept on coming. The Earl thought that most of the aspirants were from foreign lands, and his suspicion was confirmed by someone.
“They’re from other kingdoms”, a man said.
Earl Gideon recognized the man. It’s Earl Alrich, who governs a town near Edrei. They couldn’t be considered friends like how Earl Gideon is to the Duke of Levaldis, but they do socialize whenever a gathering takes place. They exchanged pleasantries, and reminisced about their experiences in the academy.
After some small talks, Earl Alrich explained the situation in the academy. It could be recalled that a grandmaster mage was said to return, and teach the future students of the academy for that year. It was a widespread news across several kingdoms, but Earl Gideon only heard about it because of Earl Alrich. The occurrences that involved the demon Talzer, and the grave condition of Kael, made Earl Gideon to not pay attention to anything happening in the kingdom.
“Kael.. I don’t feel like I saw you before”, Earl Alrich said after Kael introduced himself.
Earl Gideon attempted to evade Earl Alrich’s curious inquiries. He turned the situation, so that they could finally go inside the academy. Although Earl Alrich knew what the Earl was doing, he didn’t try to force an answer from Earl Gideon.
Stolen novel; please report.
Entering the metal gate, Kael was led away from Earl Gideon and Elalios. He was guided to go with his fellow aspirants inside a large assembly hall. There, the aspirants waited for the time of the assessment.
As he was waiting, Kael looked around seeing the great number of young people surrounding him. There are those that already knew each other, and were talking about what they think the tests will be. Others kept quiet by themselves, patiently waiting for an instructor’s speech about the assessment. Then his other peers were just like him, looking around the assembly hall, curious about their fellow examinees. By his constant observations, Kael managed to catch someone who was looking at him.
They locked eyes for a moment, then the person that Kael was looking at decided to go to him. Kael stood as the person got close enough.
“Yulian, son of Lord Alrich of Iradre”
Kael introduced himself in return, and then they talked like they’re friends just then. Although they already met each other from before, they didn’t get much opportunity to interact with each other.
They didn’t have anyone that they know from the people that were inside the assembly hall, so they decided to stick together until the assessment comes. They talked about the nervousness they were feeling that time. Yulian narrated how he prepared for that day, practicing his developing magical capability. Kael could only pretend to do some of the things that Yulian did, as he didn’t have much time to actually do supplemental practice. It connected them somehow, which became the kindle of a future friendship.
Kael was surprised with Yulian’s impressive ability to think about something they could talk about. Although random ramblings, his conversation with Yulian distracted him from the nervousness and confusion he had.
Aspirants kept on coming inside the assembly hall. Eventually, the flow of entering examinees stopped, and the hall were filled with more than a hundred examinees coming from different kingdoms. A little moment after, one of the people of the academy went in front of all of them as an announcer.
The announcer introduced herself as Magister Honnora. She announced the three main divisions of the assessment; namely, written, spoken, and performance assessment. Then, she divided the examinees into six groups, and told them where each group should go first. Before she let anyone leave the assembly hall, she finished her speech with a wish of good fortune.
Kael was grouped with Yulian along with nineteen others. They were led into a room with chairs and writing desks equal to their number. The first test that they were going to do was a simple arithmetic test.
Kael zoomed through all the questions, and answered all of it correctly. He looked around the room, and saw that some of his peers, in fact more than half of them, were struggling quite a bit. He realized that what he just accomplished was outside the norms, and as someone seeking to blend in, he pretended to be confused as well.
After all of them were done, the instructor gave them another test, which was to test their language skills. Kael didn’t have much trouble on some of the questions, but most of it were puzzling to him. He didn’t know it at that time, but all of the questions he couldn’t answer were questions related to the so called “formal language”, which is the language used by every magic book in every human kingdoms. He couldn’t answer any of it, because the language didn’t exist when he was Lucien.