Ambient Mage

According to the game, there should be 3 golden beads.

There are 10 purple beads, and 30 blue ones.

I could never remember the exact ratio, since I only remember the guide for the '43 beads'

In game you could only pick up mana pills you could sense, and sense this was early game for a mage, you weren't very agile, since your build was made for mage spec i.e. mana capacity and intelligence.

But I've had 6 or so years to prepare, and I could easily reach the deeper parts of the forest where the '43 beads' guide was.

However, I wasn't going for the 43.

Why? Because even though I had 'blue' potential, advance level mana sensitivity while being a 3rd circle mage would raise a lot of suspicions. 

If I brought a mana grain that was of the advance level I'd immediately be sent to the academic integrity building for questioning.

That is not fun.

So I decided to grab a yellow grain.

A green one would make me prodigious, but the whole point is to stay undercover.

I'm not powerful enough to really make my waves.

On top of that, I can't rival other countries' secret weapons.

They'll assassinate me without a doubt.

The three 9th tier people in the empire are extremely powerful, but only because they were backed, and protected from such things.

Theoretically I am too here in the academy by the dean. Practically though, I'm just another student, who has the potential of the 9th tier.

If I'm not interrupted 9th tier isn't impossible by 2nd year, although access to it will probably be restricted and have tons of backlash.

But basically almighty power isn't an issue.

I'd love to have been born into this world as a 9th tier powerhouse, but I don't think I would have ever met Kelson and Annelise, the folks in town, or the kids from the church.

I think I might have led a very unhappy and solitary life.

What's the point of living in my favorite game if I'm just going to be sad the entire time?

Anyways, where's a yellow pill?

Gosh I hate this.

I should have asked the snake.

Actually scratch that. That would have been bad.

Nevermind the snake, if you ask any spirit your practical is ended once you get to preliminary questioning.

Now that I think about it, I've been quite lucky with spirits and spirit-adjacent creatures, like Fiadh and Makarov.

Maybe it's the spirit's blessing within me?

I still wonder how I got it.

I finally found a yellow grain.

I sifted through the ground and picked it up.

With that I was done with the practical.

I sprinted back to the stage.

"Time, Lucas, 25'18" "

"Head to that table over there for prelims"

She pointed over her left shoulder.

At the table there sat the vice dean and a few adjutants.

"You ever been to a adventurers guild?"

"No ma'am"

"That's fine."

"This orb-"

And this is why the community made their names.

The studio got lazy in the naming magic items department.

We called it the appraisal orb.

As for the one on my left.

We called it the truth orb.

Not hard right?

"Will appraise your score"

"As for this one-"

"It'll test the validity of my statements"

"You catch on quick."

"First question: What was the time you received?"

"25 minutes, 18 seconds."

"Second question: What color pill did you obtain?"

"I found a yellow one."

"Third question: Did you cheat using artifacts or asking spirits for help or otherwise obtain the pill through means aside from yourself?"

"No"

"Final question: Did you work alone?"

"Yes."

"Alright, we're done here. You can move to that table in the middle for the rest of the logging and scoring. behind them is the rankings."

Behind them was a massive stone pillar with rankings, names, and scores.

"Name?"

"Lucas."

"Alright Lucas, just a few more questions."

"Why did it take you 25 minutes to retrieve a yellow pill?"

"I couldn't make out the mana signatures well, with my spirit sensitivity"

Might as well let them know now.

Might be putting myself in the spotlight, but better to reveal it now than suffer it later.

"Ok"

Or not.

"Aside from that, why did it take you so long to return? Your speed and stamina indicate, by the time you would've reached the yellow zone only 4 or so minutes would have passed, and you should have returned by the 12th minute mark at most."

"Are you asking if I did something else in the forest?"

"Yes."

"If you're asking if I collected and took other pills I did not."

"Thank you."

It seemed the orb picked up I was telling the truth.

"Alright you have 29,956 points, placing you solidly in 6th."

A little high when trying to be average, but average students don't receive materials, so I need to be average in the best category.

In this case it's almost perfect.

It doesn't upset the top 5, although it bumped someone out of the top ten.

***

After an hour had passed all students were teleported back.

Any with pills had their color demoted a rank, and those without, not that there were any, would have been given 0s.

I was sitting in 7th.

Perfect.

"Alright we have completed the first part of the practical exam."

"Now we will begin to test your mana capacity."

"We will test you one at a time since a tool with the capability to hold up to 8th circle mana is quite rare."

We lined up in ranking based on the last test, meaning Aura was certainly first.

"Wow, approximately 650,000 magic capacity."

In terms of capacity, the most basic spells can range from 1 to 100 mana.

The second circle can go from 10 to 1000, and it scales upwards from there.

Most 3rd and 4th circle magic start at 100 and go up to 10,000.

5th circle has a bottom line of 1000, and moves up to 100, 000.

6th circle and onwards will have a baseline of at least 10,000, with 6th circle's peak of 500,000.

7th circle starts at the 10 to 15,000 range and gets up to 750,000.

8th circle starts to get a little crazy starting in the 50,000s and reaching just over a million.

9th circle in game had a capacity minimum of 500,000, and ranges out of 10 million.

Theoretically, it can go infinite, but no human with infinite mana capacity has been born.

This also applies to formations or mana structures that pull in mana.

Theoretically it is infinite, but the mana they use is either not their own, or the structure falls apart before it's consequential.

Impressive Aura to hold that much mana though.

She could technically launch a lower tier 9th circle spell, but it would wreck her body.

Just the most horrific thing.

In game, when a character did that, it was called mana overreach.

The characters were turned into 2d sprites since a 3d-2d image of someone's entrails or otherwise dying would not allow 'Total Brake' to retain it's teen rating.

However, a 9th tier spell no matter what it is, is still enough to remove a piece of land from existence. Roughly the size of a medieval castle.

I believe the lowest spell in the 9th circle category is the spell void blast.

Just a straight beam of condensed vacuum flying from caster to victim, at the speed of light.

And make no mistake, it is victim, since the only beings capable of throwing 9th tier spells are the 4 archmages who belong to the 9 unified sovereigns. The group of 9 grandmasters and archmages I mentioned before.

Well them and all apocalyptic and some calamity class monsters, although only once.

Despite that her score was totally impressive and I think I'd be hard pressed to find someone with more mana.

"Number six?"

"Yes."

"Come on up"

Andras Lotenheim.

Annoying character and a decent teammate if you're stuck with no one else.

He is a coward though, so don't expect him to have your back in sticky situations.

"309,861."

"Not bad Mr. Lotenheim, now please step to the side."

"Number 7"

I walked up onto the platform.

Andras giving me a smirk.

He must've known the duel was between me and that noble.

We don't have any grudges, and the only thing I'm really known for here, is my relation to Aura.

Otherwise why would he smirk at me, despite him being only one circle above me.

"Place your hands on the device Lucas"

"Yes ma'am."

You know what, I don't care about being close to Aura right now.

For the next few evaluations, which occur at the end of every week for mana capacity.

I will be exactly 1,111 ahead, no more no less.

"310,972"

I smiled back at him.

Oh boy did his face contort like some martial arts novel 3rd rate villain.

Hilarious.

Someone in the peanut gallery must've been crunching the numbers for us because they shouted 

"1,111 more than Andras."

Whoever you are, I want to give you a high five, thanks for the assist.

"Is this really your best try Lucas?"

She stared me down. Yikes.

Thank Nyx above I have the demon core, so I can tell her I was 'hiding' my power.

"Yes."

I nodded meekly.

"Very well. Number 8."

And that's how we got around to testing for 4 hours.

***

"Now I realize some of you might want a retest, and let me tell you now, that won't happen"

"In any case, for today you are dismissed."

Me and a few others followed Ms. Rachelle after dismissal.

"Does anyone here actually need me for something other than a retest?"

With the pressure coming off of her, you'd think she was protecting her students from a monster, not being the monster.

"Anyone?" she asked as she toned down the mana pressure.

Naturally I was the only one left.

"I had already asked you if you wanted to retry on stage Mr. Lucas."

Yikes, Rachelle in game used more honorifics the less acquainted she was with someone.

So we were kindred spirits in some way.

But that wasn't what I was here for.

"Pull me away from here into a closed mana environment" I said.

"What?"

I stimulated the demon core letting out a wisp of demonic energy.

She looked grimly at me.

With that she led me to a her mana training room.

"Tell me why I shouldn't kill you right now."

Wait, how did we get here?

"You threaten me and my students, and now you wish to stay silent?"

I narrowed my eyes and let off some off the mana from Fiadh's egg.

She quickly began to realize, she may not win this fight.

Although in reality she totally would.

'I'm not here to threaten you.'

I sent her a message via mana link.

'So why did you release demonic energy'

'I have a demon core, from fighting and killing a demon inside the academy city yesterday'

She paled.

'What? When? Are you okay?'

'Yes I'm not contaminated.'

'Good, now tell me what happened.'

I relayed to her the story of how Aura was kidnapped and how the twin sisters helped me out.

'You can ask them to corroborate the story.'

'So then let me ask you, based on the pressure you gave off, you can't merely be a 3rd circle'

She was going off track again.

'Just an artifact, same as I'm using to send messages via mana link, because I'm a 3rd circle mage.'

Again another lie, I could totally make mana messages in the 3rd circle, but it helps my story, if I regularly have artifacts, that do weird odds and ends, to avoid questioning.

'Then let me test you.'

'Okay.'

To others if they could see us it would look like we were about to fight, then sat down and meditated, and then held hands.

An awkward thing to think about.

I fully let my mana flow.

'You're in the upper 400,000 range, and you truly are a 3rd circle mage.'

'The more I learn about you the more interested I become.'

'I am completely devoted to my job as Aurelia's knight.'