Chapter 78 - The Farm in Irttat
Chapter 78: The Ship of Exile 12
The examination was easy for Lucita.
She looked at the single gold ingot Duren had placed at the center of the platform, thought for a moment, and reached into the box to grab a handful more, piling them all in the middle.
Duren: “It’s been done before, but evidence suggests the average mental drain is higher this way. Some people end up unable to melt even the last one...”
Her voice trailed off. She watched Lucita produce a large flame that settled over the platform.
In no more than a moment, the gold ingots softened and began flowing in a sizzling stream.
Duren blinked, then saw liquid gold running outward in large amounts. Even the stone platform itself showed signs of beginning to melt.
"No, no, that's enough, Lucita, you've passed already..." Duren moved anxiously to stop her: "At this rate you'll burn through the platform!"
Lucita was somewhat reluctant, but she was a good child who did not destroy public property.
She pulled the flame back with visible disappointment, watched the pool of molten gold slowly solidify, and glanced at the remaining ingots: "Could we move to a different examination venue then?"
Duren wiped off a film of sweat and repeated: "You have already passed the examination, Lucita."
“But my examination time hasn’t ended yet.” Lucita blinked, pointing to the box, now slightly yellowed from the heat. “I can still melt more.”
Duren blinked, finally processing Lucita's reasoning, and immediately said the sentence Lucita most wanted to hear: "All examination materials belong to the candidate. That goes without saying."
An unexpected stroke of good fortune.
Lucita smiled with a trace of embarrassment, thanked her without false modesty, and quickly picked up the small box, planning to put it into her space the moment she stepped outside. "So I'm now a certified mage?"
"You... yes. I have never seen a certified mage this young." Duren was still recovering from the shock, and smiled, shaking her head as she sighed: "Time is truly merciless. Our generation is completely old now."
"We'll need three days to have a craftswoman work your certified entry-level mage's badge. You can come and collect it in three days. Now you can come and choose a design you like..."
As she spoke, she pushed the door open to head out.
Lucita didn't move from where she stood: "Can I take the intermediate mage examination right now?"
Duren wondered if she had misheard.
"What did you say?"
Lucita repeated herself.
Duren looked at Lucita with a complicated expression.
With any ordinary student, she would have delivered a sharp rebuke for attempting the intermediate examination immediately after passing the entry-level one. Aiming too high, living in fantasy. No amount of talent could carry such a person far.
After all, magic was in its nature an ability that required repeated study and practice to gradually master at deeper levels.
Currently, the intermediate mage examination was most commonly passed by middle-aged candidates. Passing intermediate in one’s forties was normal; passing in one’s thirties marked rare talent. Most of that group eventually stayed on at the Spring Tower due to their superior magical ability, becoming professor-level figures, and from there climbing toward advanced and even senior mage status, challenging the highest path and acquiring prestige through means other than family lineage.
Lucita's current teacher, Astrid, was the most talented of that generation of young professors who had stayed on.
Intermediate mage meant an earldom. Advanced mage meant a marquisate. There was only one senior mage in all of Kenting: the court sorcerer who had died of illness three years ago. As the kingdom’s highest military force, treated by the monarch with utmost honor and holding considerable power, she had been granted a duke’s title, buried in the royal cemetery at death, and posthumously elevated to a princedom.
In fact, for children of great noble families without primary inheritance rights, this was an excellent path if they possessed magical talent.
A noble title could pass to only one heir, but so long as one studied magic and passed the examinations, one could secure stable rank within a single lifetime. Few fates were more fortunate.
It was precisely for this reason that they guarded the right to study magic so fiercely. The Spring Tower admitted only direct descendants of marquises or above. At the earldom threshold, talent became the deciding factor. Those with insufficient talent could only study here as apprentices alongside descendants of viscounts and even baronesses, shaping their own and their families’ plans for the future.
Now, a just-enrolled student not yet twenty was claiming to want to take the intermediate mage examination. Duren ought to have given a rebuke and refused. But she opened her mouth, and nothing came out.
From what Lucita had just demonstrated, nearly melting the examination platform, she seemed to... actually be capable of passing the intermediate examination.
Lucita glanced at the scorched platform and offered advice quite sincerely, “By the way, you might want to consider replacing this examination platform with something more durable. The damage rate on this one must be fairly high.”
Duren started to object, then glanced at the damage on the platform and silently closed her mouth.
This examination chamber was designated for fire-stream testing, and it was usually adequate all the way up to advanced mage examinations.
The platform material was moonblue crystal, similar to quartz in quality but extraordinarily rare, with exceptional hardness and an extremely high melting point. It was a high-grade enchanting material, frequently used in magical experiments, with a melting point above four thousand degrees Celsius.
In theory, a simple examination like this should have no impact whatsoever on the examination platform...
But faced with the bare reality before her, any further argument would have sounded hollow.
Duren studied Lucita.
She had lived a very long time, spending every day immersed in her own laboratory, cut off from the world, with little contact with other people.
This was the first time in all these years she had deliberately observed a person this closely.
Something like curiosity rekindled in her chest, making her want to step out of the Spring Tower and see what the world looked like decades later.
Were all young people like this now?
Had her own research into enchanting materials become a little... outdated?
The temperature of Lucita's flame-layering had nearly melted the platform. And she hadn't even seen this child make any particular effort to draw fire elements, no deliberate attempt to layer the flame level by level. She had simply formed a fireball, and melted everything.
Duren had heard that outstanding advanced mages, after repeated practice and gaining a complete understanding of fire element's combustion structure and principles, could achieve instantaneous flame-layering. But she had yet to see it herself.
The first time she did, it was a child not yet twenty…
At this point Duren found it very difficult to describe her own state of mind. She confirmed that Lucita had the qualifications to take the intermediate mage examination, and offered a solution for the platform: "Use it freely. The damage won’t be counted against you. It’s considered standard examination wear. I guarantee that before the platform melts, your examination materials will already be gone. It won’t affect your result."
Since she wouldn't be charged for the damage, Lucita had no objection.
Duren pulled out another box from the drawer, this one filled with crystals of various colors.
Unlike gold, natural crystals, once melted, had their properties irreversibly changed and became waste.
Lucita frowned: "Aren't crystals excellent magical media? Isn't it a bit wasteful to use them for examinations?"
Lucita, with her limited exposure to these costly magical materials, couldn't help but concern herself with such things, and genuinely felt the loss. This was the first time Duren had received a question about the ownership of gold, or about waste, and both had come from Lucita.
She was patient with her: "These crystals are too small. They’re leftover fragments from staff-setting work. There’s no use keeping them."
As she spoke, she laid the crystal clusters out one by one. Sure enough, they were inconsistent in size and not very pure in color.
Duren had learned from experience this time, and rather than presenting them one by one, she tipped the entire batch onto the table: "This is five pounds of rose-cloud crystal. I will weigh what remains three times. Melting ten ounces within half an hour is the passing threshold."
She added another word of "wait a moment" and hurried out the door.
Lucita leaned against the wall and watched Duren return carrying a bottle of something, a green spray, which she applied vigorously to the wall: "Intermediate examination requires an archival impression to be kept on record."
Lucita asked: "What is that?"
"You don't know?" Duren paused, then recalled that Lucita was newly enrolled and probably knew little about the intermediate examination procedures, and explained: "This is impression-adhesive, a special magical product. Once applied, it gains the function of recording an image of what occurs. After a few days when it dries, it can be peeled off and folded for archiving. A special solution applied to it will allow it to be projected."
An interesting invention, something Irttat didn't have.
"Did you invent this yourself?"
"Yes. It's one of my research achievements." Duren smiled with modesty.
Such inventions earned her respect, but little more. The tower valued strength. She could not establish her worth in the conventional way, and magic itself was kept secret from ordinary people.
Lucita offered a sincere compliment: "Your creativity is genuinely astonishing. It's a great pity for achievements like these to go unrecognized in the magical tower."
Duren smiled, and said nothing.
The examination process and result were self-evident. Lucita formed a fireball with ease, and with a mix of regret and resolve melted the crystals on the table.
She judged the amount sufficient and stopped early. Natural crystals, unlike gold, could not be recovered once melted. Out of consideration for resources, less was better.
Ten ounces passed. Melting all of it also passed. There was no difference.
For Lucita, it was also a useful opportunity to gauge the current strength of her own flame.
In truth, the upper limit of her flame temperature was essentially the upper limit of what any flame in this world could reach.
What she paid attention to this time was maintaining her flame above the melting point of rose-cloud crystal, while not reaching the melting point of the examination platform, as she had nearly done before.
In executing the quiet rule she had set herself, she performed perfectly — the platform did not melt again, though it did show some scorching.
Duren had been shocked too many times already, and had gone numb. She almost felt the outcome had been inevitable.
She gathered the remaining rose-cloud crystal from the table, then looked up and met Lucita's eyes. For a moment, she said nothing.
Sure enough, Lucita said with a hint of lingering dissatisfaction: "I hear that intermediate mage comes with an earldom. What about advanced mage?"
Predictable.
Duren answered: "A marquisate."
"Can I try for that one now?"
"Of course you can." Duren studied her, feeling a chill rise from somewhere below her feet. "But the advanced mage examination requires five advanced mages present simultaneously, with archival impressions recorded for verification purposes. Please wait a moment. I’ll go up and see whether any of the advanced professors are available."
Lucita nodded in agreement.
She was very sensitive to other people's emotions, and it was clear that Duren had moved past her initial shock and astonishment and was settling into deeper thought.
The way Duren looked at her now carried faint, careful wariness, something like the unease of not quite looking at someone of her own kind.
Lucita had received the same look from Lesley earlier that morning.
Obviously, Duren, who had lived her whole life in the magical tower, knew something of other races, and her mind had gone to that question when faced with capabilities so clearly beyond human range.
But Lucita was not concerned. She had no elven ears, no merfolk's tail, no dragon horns. Her original form was simply human.
Would the advanced mage examination be more challenging?
She leaned against the wall, chin in hand, and pondered.
Duren did not keep Lucita waiting long.
Coming down from what must have been many floors above were not five advanced mages, but nearly ten, pressing in all at once.
Lucita suspected that every advanced mage currently in the tower had come down to watch her take the examination.
How difficult was it to become an advanced mage?
In all the centuries of the Spring Tower’s operation in Kenting, only a single shelf of advanced mage records existed. From what Duren could vaguely recall while sorting the archives, the youngest advanced mage on record had been Charlotte, a mage from the era two monarchs ago, who had achieved advanced status at thirty-six, a record unbroken for over a hundred years.
And now, a child not yet twenty was claiming to climb this peak?
Under normal circumstances, no one would believe it. But Lucita had just earned intermediate mage status at a level far exceeding the intermediate standard.
That news alone was enough to shake the entire Spring Tower. No one could look at her as some ordinary person any longer.
Lucita felt the subtle weight of skeptical gazes circling around her.
She paid no attention to them, looked past the assembled figures, and let her eyes settle on Astrid's face: "Professor."
Astrid gave a rueful smile: "Only now can I still be called your professor. In truth, I haven’t had time to teach you anything. Ah, truly..."
Astrid remembered Lucita's flame-layering technique vividly.
But without a direct temperature test, she had only known that Lucita was fluent in flame-layering and was already at the standard of a certified mage from the moment she walked in. She had not known the actual intensity of her magic was this alarming.
Right now, she was almost desperately composing a mental letter to her old friend Stasia, asking about this child.
So much for "a talented young person"!
Lucita understood what Astrid meant.
If Lucita passed the examination, Astrid’s humility would be the only appropriate response. And if Lucita’s background later proved problematic, those words also quietly allowed Astrid to distance herself from her.
The two had only just become teacher and student, and Lucita had never genuinely treated her as a teacher. She gave the customary greeting, but in truth paid no particular attention to Astrid's position.
As for the doubts about her origins, they were not particularly well-founded.
In this circle, the open secret was that only humans could learn magic. Due to the Great Calamity and similar reasons, humanity had lost much of its pre-historic knowledge, and their understanding of other races was uncertain at best, hence these suspicions.
If they investigated further, they would discover that Lucita was absolutely not of another race.
Lucita, who possessed magic, was entirely convincing as a human being.
She inclined slightly and began her performance.
The examination material for the advanced mage test was starlight crystal, the same material used for the sculptures in the fire-stream garden. Crystal-like in nature, but extraordinarily precious in its deposits, with extreme hardness and an exceptionally high melting point.
Every fire-stream mage pursuing strength and flame-layering technique set the ability to disturb the structure of starlight crystal as their highest goal.
As for senior mage... that was a dream too distant to be practical.
But all of this shattered the moment Lucita began.
The eminent advanced mages crowded in a ring around the stone platform, watching this child barely in her teens casually pull out a flame, wrap it over and over on itself, and the starlight crystal began visibly losing its brilliance at a rate the naked eye could follow.
She didn't even need to think. There was no visible process of drawing elemental power, no careful effort to sustain the stability of the flame-layering.
Astrid had already witnessed this once, and so her state of mind was slightly more composed than her colleagues’.
But the greatest question remained. Why was her stamina so terrifyingly long?
Did drawing fire elements require no mental expenditure from her at all? With her age — talent was one thing, but why was her sheer accumulated mental power also this formidable?
Surely she was not someone for whom forming a fireball was like kneading clay, requiring no focus at all?
In a certain sense, Astrid was on the right path.
Although she didn't have enough imagination to flesh out her wild speculation.
After the starlight crystal was completely destroyed, the entire examination chamber fell silent.
A tall, thin woman pushed her glasses up and spoke very quietly: "Strid… is fire-stream magic really that easy to practice?"
Astrid: "It isn't, and it is..."
The first to recover herself was, unexpectedly, Duren.
She cleared her throat and found the courage to break the silence:“Your Excellencies. As regards the examination of Young Master Lucita... I mean, Lord Lucita...”
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