Leaving the shop, Nora strolled towards the market place. Instead of going to the adventurer's guild, Nora decided to stop by the marketplace first as it was along the way. Due to the fact that she just spent almost all her gold, Nora was almost penniless. She needed to get some materials to start her business. Nora felt a pain in her heart as she walked to the streets. In just one day she managed to spend a silver one mage’s life savings. Nora dread the day she had all of her followers back. The thought of how much gold they would spend made her heartache.
Each and everyone of her generals was troublesome. All of them had the magical ability to waste all her of money. Thus, Nora urgently wanted to make a fortune before summoning them. Nora sighed thinking about it.
As for Evelyn, she was returning to the inn to get some money. After finding out that they were almost out of gold, Nora had ordered her to steal some money from the nobles at the inn. With her powers of possession, it was easy for her to steal things. Although, Nora didn’t want to draw any attention, she decided that Evelyn stealing small amounts of gold from each noble was not that much of a risk. By stealing small amounts, it wasn’t likely for the nobles to notice it. They were rich enough that 10 to 20 gold was spare change for them.
Arriving at the market place, Nora looked around till she found a shop which sold enchanting tools. This was going to be her business plan.
Entering the shop, Nora saw an old woman sat behind the counter.
“What can i do for you missy?”
“I’m here to purchase some enchanting tools.”
“My my, aren't you little young to be enchanter?”
Hearing how she was being called young, Nora almost laughed out loud. She was much older than the old women and in fact she was more than a few centuries old. The amount of experience she had in enchanting was insurmountable. Nora doubt that there was anyone on the planet who was better than her at enchanting. However, Nora decided to play along.
“Don’t worry, i had a little dabble in it, my father taught me when i was young. Currently I am in need of an enchanting rod and some primers. Can you get for me all the primers you have?”
“Sure, wait a moment please,” the old woman shrugged and turned around to look through the shelves. She started picking up bottles and reading the label. After a while, she collected everything and spoke up.
“Here you go, 6 primers for different materials and an enchanting rod.”
“Is that all the primers you have? Aren’t there supposed to be one more?”
“I’m sorry missy but we don’t have any milroot primer in our store. As you’ve noticed, this town is not as advanced as other towns. Only beginner adventurers come here, it is quite rare for any strong adventurers to visit. Thus we only have stock for things we sell to beginner. Milroot primer is too advanced and expensive to sell to beginner.”
“Sigh, never mind then, how much is it?”
“Ah that’ll be 16 gold total.”
After paying the gold, Nora turned and left. She got what she needed. Although the lack of milroot primer was quite problematic, she was confident that she could make do without it for now.
Wandering through the streets, Nora soon arrived at the adventurer's guild building. Nora had thought that she would have to spend some time looking for it due to Evelyn not giving proper directions. All Evelyn told Nora was that she wouldn’t miss it. Nora was quite pissed at Evelyn for not giving proper directions but Nora soon found that Evelyn was indeed right. The building was easy to find. With it’s large size and eye catching appearance, only the blind could miss it.
The windows were huge and seemingly inspired by something truly alien. Anyone could see into the building from an uncomfortable distance. Even from the outside, Nora could see the hectic atmosphere of young adventurers talking and hanging about. Above the building was a large decoration of a sword and staff crossing each other, in the middle was a large triangular shield.
Entering the guild, all eyes turned to Nora. Some turned back, carrying on with their business while some stared at the new face. Despite wearing a cloak which covered her whole body except her face, Nora still attracted attention. Ignoring the stares, Nora brisked through the building towards the receptionist.
In front of the receptionist was a young man filling in a form. Joining the queue, Nora stood behind him, waiting for her turn. Turning towards the receptionist face, Nora became shocked.
Elf! What is an elf doing here? An elf living in an human country and not in chains! Evelyn was right! Times has changed!
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Humans aren’t treating her with scorn or prejudice and in fact the man in front of me is even trying to court her! Moreover, she seem to be laughing and smiling too! This is incredible!
“Welcome miss! How may I help you?” The front lady gives Nora a professional smile.
“Miss?”
“Miss?”
Noticing that she was in fact, stoning, Nora knocked herself out of her shock. Looking forward, Nora saw that the man in front of her had already left and that the receptionist was talking to her. Shaking her head to calm herself, Nora answered, “ah yes, i would like to take a mages colour ranking test and register as an adventurer please.”
“Please fill out this form and the cost of registering is ten piece of silver.” Jenny handed the registration form to Nora.
After reading through the form, Nora filled in her particulars while leaving out her family name. Done filling up, Nora returned the form to the receptionist and gave the gold.
“Please, come over this way.” She turned and guided Nora towards the back door.
*Murmur* *murmur*
“Oi, there’s someone taking a color ranking examination,” the people watching Nora whispered. Discussions started brewing as people started wonder what rank the young new mage will get.
Passing through the door, Nora noticed that they were inside a small room with a glowing crystal ball in the middle. On the far end of the room was a desk facing the door with a robed man seated, his head down and staring at a book.
“Hmm?”
The man looked up revealing an angular face. He had black hair parted down the center that reached his shoulders. His glasses were thick and frameless, giving his narrow eyes an even sharper look. On his robes were two silver magic wands.
The receptionist next to Nora gave the man a deep bow and gave him the form before explaining, “Mister Magus, this girl here would like to take the colour ranking test.”
“Oh, she’s quite young isn’t she. Ah, oh well, let’s see what she can do. You can go now.”
The receptionist turned and left, leaving Nora and the man alone in the room. Squinting his eyes, he stared at Nora, trying to find any anything about her. After trying for a few seconds, he gave up.
“Tell me girl, who’s your teacher and what your real name? For your age, I sense a large amount of mana inside of you, i doubt you are an ordinary person. Your birthday states that you are 15 in a week. What’s going on?”
“I’m sorry, i am not allowed to disclosed that information,” Nora replied with a straight face.
“I see. Nevermind then, let’s start the test. What element are you most practiced in?”
Being asked about her knowledge of the elements, Nora thought to herself for a second before answering “ice”. Nora had to think for a second due to the fact that her best element was soul and death. There was no way she could say the truth as it would definitely raised suspicions.
With the hunt for dark practitioners, Nora had no choice but to lie and choose another option. In the end, she decided to chose ice as it was the first element she practiced in. Not only did it remind her of her time as a prince, Nora was also quite proficient in it. In fact, Nora was quite proficient in a myriad of elements. It was just that soul and death was boosted by her death lord class, making it her strongest.
“What is the strongest and most reliably spell you can use and what tier is it?”
Thinking about it for a second, Nora tried to remember all the ice element spells she knew. She knew a lot of them but it was inappropriate to just blurt out what her strongest was as it was a 10 circle spell. Right now, it was impossible for her to cast it. After thinking about what she want her rank to be, Nora decided to answer “frost nova, 4 circle spell”. It was a tier that all silver one knew how to cast.
Noting down what Nora said onto the form, he turned to the crystal ball and said “Okay girl, place your hand on the ball and pour in some of your mana. You are going to have a simulated battle using your mana.”
Hearing what she had to do, Nora walked towards the ball and followed his instructions. A moment later, she found herself in a field as a wooden dummy. However, she wasn’t surprised. She already knew what was going happen. She was going to have a mock battle.
Unlike the other ranking system where it was hard to accurately measure a person’s skills, mage color ranking was fairly accurate. It used a magic crystal ball to measure the total amount of mana a person has and create a mock battle using it. Mana would be placed into the dummy and the user would control it. The finer the control, the easier the dummy would move.
However, although this test was more accurate than the adventurer’s letter ranking system, it could only be used by mages. Unlike mages, other professions were not as capable as they were in controlling mana, thus they could not control the dummy at all.
“Okay, we will have a mock battle, i have already set the dummy to be at silver one rank. Don’t worry about anything, just go all out. Nothing there affects you in real life. Although i wanted to set the dummy at bronze three, you’re going to have to fight it at silver one. Since you said you can use a 4 circle spell reliably, i have no choice. Okay start! Try your best, even if you fail, it’s okay. I just wish to see what your skills are and how well you used them.”
Nora quickly control the dummy to cast multiple tier 3 ‘ice arrow’ and shot them at the AI controlled dummy. However, to conceal the fact that she was highly proficient at controlling her mana, Nora set a second of delay to the the dummy, causing all its attacks to be easily dodged.
Seeing that direct attacks would be pointless Nora’s dummy quickly moved to AI’s side and shot ice arrows. However as they got close they suddenly broke and formed a thin wall of ice. This was due to a 4 circle spell called “Ice wall” which turned ice or water into a wall.
However, even though the AI’s view of Nora’s dummy was blocked, it could still easily sense where Nora's dummy was and knew what it was doing. Nora's dummy rapidly prepared many Ice arrows and shot them toward AI's dummy. The AI’s dummy shot multiple tier 4 ‘fire bomb’ at the wall, trying to break it. However, the wall blocked it.
The ice arrows phased through the ice wall and hit the AI, stunning it. Suddenly the wall expanded rapidly and surrounded AI's dummy, forming a dome. The AI’s dummy attacked again with a fire bombs but the dome blocked it. However, under the sheer power of the fire spell, the dome slowly melted.
However, it was all under Nora’s predictions. Even though Nora could end it quickly through lightning fast attacks or powerful spells, Nora decided not to. She need to pull herself back a bit as her current power was vastly inferior to her skills shown in the mock battle. She knew that if she evaluated herself by her skills and mana pool, she would just be silver one. Perhaps, she might be able to beat silver two mages through tactics or through necromancy. But she decided not to risk it. She needed to hold herself back. There was no point in her showing off.
While the dome was slowly being melted, Nora’s dummy began to cast ‘frost nova’. Using large amount of the moisture in the air due to melting of the ice, Nora froze it and shot it at the AI’s dummy. The particles storm of snow and ice pelted the AI’s dummy, barraging it with a hailstorm of freezing cold attack. Using her perfect control of mana, Nora not only made sure that her dummy was fast enough to cast it before the AI’s dummy could escape but also slow enough that it wasn’t out of the ordinary.
Under the endless storm of ice particles, the AI’s dummy froze solid before cracking into pieces.
With that the battle ended. The AI was defeated.
Turning to face the silver two mage, Nora saw that his face was in a state of shock. His jaws were wide open.
“15 year old and you’re already at the peak of silver one! When i was 15, i was barely bronze two. Moreover, i was born with my mana pool already being awakened.”
Recovering from his shock, he sighed and passed the form back to her. He waved her hand and signal her to go. He didn’t want to see the genius who hurt his pride anymore.