It was only now that David remembered that Olga just like him was also a freshman, she too would obviously want to get this win the key from professor Anton since she also knew how valuable it was, David didn’t mind at all to let Olga go first, it was just that he couldn’t help but feel through the few interactions he had with Olga that she was always very tense in his presence, her hand that was holding his shoulder was stiff and he could smell her faint sweat as she shook lightly, almost as if she was scared or nervous.

But then again, assuming things wasn’t very good, Olga after all was nice to him.

-Sure, you can go first.

He said, stepping away as he gave her some space, Syndra and Valentia had a few raised eyebrows when they saw what happened, neither of them understood why Olga did what she did when she could have just waited for David to finish his test, her behavior simply didn’t fit with her normal pattern as Olga was known to be extremely patient, calm and collected, she gained this attribute from her constant experimentation that required her to be level headed to improve and produce results, but be it as it may her level-headedness didn’t directly translate over to her social life as the barrier called looks turned out to be too hard to cross, causing Olga to be generally subdued in the presence of strangers and especially good looking males who made her the most jittery.

David was the first person who didn’t seem to mind Olga, he talked with her normally just like the rest of the girls in the dorm, furthermore she had discovered something incredibly scandalous between David and Syndra through her exceptional nose making her even more nervous just by imagining the things they must have done to each other.

Olga’s goal wasn’t very different from the other girls, she too wanted to get close to David, but compared to Syndra who was already in love with David Olga’s feelings hadn’t quite reached that point and were merely still on the interest/attraction level, for Olga she wanted someone who could like her back, she couldn’t be satisfied with just one-sided love even though she knew how horrid her appearance was meaning beggar’s couldn’t be choosers she still wanted to choose who she could love and be accepted in return.

Whether or not David would be that person was questionable, and one of the reason why she wanted to talk to Syndra was because of this.

What she was doing now was merely make sure that nothing unexpected would happen before she could accomplish her goals, while Olga did believe in her senior’s words, she couldn’t be 100% sure that David wasn’t a chosen one, to be 100% sure Olga decided that she would just slightly mess with the results of the test, and to make that happen it was important that she needed to go first or at least before David.

Mind you, there was no way Olga was capable of openly messing with a magic item that the professor himself had made, even secretly doing it was out of question as professor Anton was a powerful wizard with extreme senses, nobody in the academy other than the headmistress knew exactly how strong he was but people guessed that he must be between rank 3 or 4 which was very terrifying.

Instead the way Olga was going to mess with this test was going to be through an irregular method, she was going to use a secret ability only she possessed, Olga was confident that not even the powerful professor would able to see through what she did since not even the headmistress herself had seen through her.

Of course that was quite a bit of confidence on Olga’s part that border lined on arrogance, but this time she was indeed right as her ability was so out of scope of normal wizardry that it was almost completely undetectable.

The only thing professor Anton noticed was how weird Olga was acting, he too knew the personality of this student, even though she wasn’t his student, professor Anton had seen Olga quite a few times in the laboratory doing her experiments, he would at times talk with her as fellow researchers and even though they practiced different fields of studies it didn’t mean they couldn’t inspire each other with ideas.

-A bit hasty no Lady Olga?

-I juzt wanted to zee your magic item az fazt az I could, knowing the quality of the magic itemz you make maybe I will even zee things ordinary magic teztz couldn’t show me before?

-Hohoho there my Lady you are quite right!

The professor laughed, clearly liking Olga’s compliments regarding his craft somewhat even forgetting the weirdness he felt a moment ago, Olga knew that as she had planned what she was going to say, just like how the professor understood Olga’s personality so did Olga understand the professor’s personality, and the professor quite liked it when his magic items were being praised, while he never openly bragged about them he couldn’t resist the praise he received making his mind distracted.

Olga used this opportunity to swiftly do her magic test, the Element Orb in front of her was quite a new model, while it looked exactly the same as previous versions Olga could tell from her researcher’s point of view that it was different, the Orb was slightly bigger, and more transparent it seemed to have been made from a completely different material and as soon as she touched it she felt like she was touching a piece of ice!

She almost let go of the Orb, but didn’t as she quickly noticed that even though it was cold to the touch, it didn’t actually freeze her hand in anyway and instead just made her feel cold, already the Element Orb wasn’t like its predecessors, as none of the previous Element Orbs had such a distinction, Olga could think of numerous different substances and materials that could replicate this effect, but for what the Orb would need this effect she didn’t quite understand until she really thought about the purpose of the Orb itself.

-Itz. Abzorbing heat?

-Yes, yes! I knew someone like you would immediately understand! Indeed, this Element Orb is made out of a material that absorbs heat which is why it’s so transparent as the material comes from a Glacial Moth who absorb sunlight to keep their bodies stable in the cold mountains, lately studies have found that the Glacial Moth not only absorbs heat but also absorbs the mana in the atmosphere together with the heat, I thought that using this unique characteristics would fit the Element Orb quite well as it would make it easier for young people to use the device without negative effects and also make a much more accurate reading on their ability, now don’t worry while the material does Absorb heat I made it so that it wouldn’t do that and only Absorb the person’s mana, the mana absorption effect is limited to the internal battery plus the output of the user meaning as long as you wish you can stop at any time and not be under any risk of suffering mana paralysis.

-I zee, it’s quite miraculouz…

Olga said, this time sounding much sincerer as her researcher side was quite impressed with the ingenuity that went into the Element Orb and how professor Anton had utilized the knowledge, but in the end Olga needed to focus, she wasn’t here to praise the professor’s magic item but to sabotage it.

Keeping that in mind, she finally held the Orb between her hands, she already knew how to operate the Orb, she only needed to imagine her mana flowing into the Orb, the rest the Orb would do by itself, but this time the improved version was even easier to use as she only needed to think a little before the Orb started to Absorb her mana all by itself, as soon as it happened the Orb also started to glow a bright green light mixed with a few other colors that looked like specks in comparison, Olga knew that the colors represented her affinity, since Olga had a high nature affinity it was obvious that green would take most of the space within the orb compared to the other colors.

But this wasn’t the only the orb could do, while the colors were displaying themselves within the Orb they still looked a bit murky and not very clear as if they were made out of smoke, but quickly enough the clarity within the Orb started to increase, the murky green was turning into a gentle green before turning into a clear green and finally transforming into a shining green like mountain dew.

This was what indicated Olga’s soul star rating which was at 4, Olga was quite talented compared to the average student of the academy, but even Olga knew compared to a lot of other people she had met in this academy her talent wasn’t really anything special which is why she didn’t look very excited just by witnessing what her talent was.

The other students weren’t the same though as they looked impressed of what they just witnessed, almost every single one of them had a soul star rating of 3 only a very few of them had a star rating of 4 while 5 wasn’t even present among them as those people were usually rarely seen, each year 500 students are enrolled into the academy since there are 5 year levels as well the academy always had a total of 2500 students at all times within those 500 in each year only 5 to 12 of them had a soul star affinity of 5, since these people were the closest to be chosen ones they were also given a nickname that isn’t used often but everyone knows of which is called semi-chosen, there is a reason why this nickname isn’t used too often as it is usually used to demean the individual.

But in the end soul-star rating was only one aspect of one’s talent, affinity was also very important as it signified your growth in that particular school of magic which is why they were even more astounded as most of them also had only average affinity.

Affinity could be summarized as such, you could have a soul star rating of 1 and have the highest affinity for an element and it would be like your growth rate in that element was comparable to someone who had a soul star rating of 5 while in reverse you could have a soul star rating of 6 and be a chosen one but have the lowest affinity in every element, making your progress in any element only slightly higher than the average.

The main difference here though is that soul star rating defines your likely limit of promotion towards a higher wizard rank, the person with a soul star rating of 1 is likely never going to be anything but a rank 1 wizard his whole life even if he is the greatest in his element while the person with the lowest affinities but a soul star rating of 6 will eventually become a rank 4 wizard albeit a below-average one with his elemental affinity which won’t let him cast a lot of powerful spells.

But even then, a rank 1 wizard will never be as powerful or valuable as a rank 4 wizard, the barrier of ranks is like the difference between heaven and earth, a rank 1 wizard can’t even win against a rank 2 wizard much less a rank 4 wizard who could squash a rank 1 wizard like an ant.

This is why wizarding schools value soul star rating more than affinity, in the end of the day even if the affinity of the wizard who has a soul star rating of 3 or more isn’t too low they can still progress very steadily and promote into a higher rank eventually.

Everyone is aware of this, which is why a subtle but all-encompassing hierarchy is built around how high your soul star rating is in this academy, what is important is still your wizard rank as it is the most physical manifestation of your strength while soul star rating is just a potential.

Even between a person who has a soul star rating of 1 but is a rank 4 wizard and a person who has a soul star rating of 6 but hasn’t yet become a wizard, the rank 4 wizard is the more valuable one as he already has strength present while the one with the soul star rating of 6 would still need time to develop.

In the end potential really means nothing if you can’t convert it into actual strength.

-I need to quickly do my thing before profezzor Anton noticez.

Seeing that the test was about to end, Olga decided now was the time, she used her ability to secretively cause the Orb to become a tad bit slower but not break it, this would cause anyone who subsequently used the Orb to only display 90 percent of their true potential which Olga thought was enough of an error margin that ordinary people wouldn’t drop in rank and make the magic item look faulty, and also good enough for David to barely drop in rank in case he was a chosen one, on other hand if David had a rank 5, 4 or 3 soul star rating the Orb would still display it as Olga had calculated enough to understand the general threshold of those ranks.

But if David got anything below 3…

-(That’s impossible, with his mana control there is simply no way for that to be true)

Olga immediately threw that possibility out of the window as she couldn’t believe someone like David having a soul star rating of anything below 3, it was simply not plausible, but then again she never heard of a person who trained his mana ever since he was little, she also noticed how each time David used his mana to cause phenomena back in their dining haul he didn’t look any worse for wear even though he must have used a lot of mana to cause those things to happen, she didn’t think about this before, but while she was thinking about it she again noticed that the Orb seemed to be doing something strange that other Element Orbs didn’t do before.

The light was getting brighter.

-Hohoho, I knew that Lady Olga would have it in her to finally showcase the third function of the new Element Orb!

Professor Anton seemed to be excited about how the Orb was glowing brighter by the second, his words stirred the crowd as they had never before witnessed a strange Element Orb like this.

Olga too was curious about what the Orb was doing, it was merely just increasing its light radius which meant it was getting brighter and brighter, the light itself wasn’t offensive in nature either no matter how bright it was allowing for a person to look at it as much as they wanted.

Olga tried to figure out what this light could be measuring, but soon enough she didn’t need to as the professor started to explaining right away.

-You see my students, over the course of us wizards trying to understand how our magical abilities worked and who had them, we first created the magic test to see the potential of an individual in magical prowess, since then over thousands of years passed and ever since we didn’t even bother to improve the basic formula to get even more detailed results as there were too many other fields that are still to this unknown to us and more interesting to others, I personally always wanted to know how much mana a person had, many previous studies showed that it was always different from an individual to individual which mainly depended on their soul rank to affinity, but I wasn’t satisfied with that answer alone so I added this to the Element Orb you see now. I call it the mana meter.

-Mana meter?

-How is this remotely useful?

-Yeah, considering how most wizard fights end within seconds I don’t think the amount of mana you have and how quickly it regenerates really matters, and if you do have mana issues you can always just use magic items to cover such weakness.

-It’s not like you can increase your maximum amount of mana or the amount it regenerates through training either, its only through promotion into a higher rank that your maximum mana and the amount you regenerate becomes bigger and by that point it doesn’t really matter no?

The students who bore witness to all this all put out their own opinions most of which weren’t enthusiastic about the added function of the Orb as they didn’t see a big point to it if they couldn’t improve themselves.

David too thought so as well after really considered the few opinions he had heard, but thinking about it again, he also realized that ever since he practiced mana control he had never once stumbled upon any mana problems, which meant he never truly felt empty from using too much mana, he always just practiced for a few hours and upon getting a bit mentally tired he stopped repeating the process the next day.

Calling this being low on mana was wrong since it was really just him getting mentally tired from doing the same thing over and over again, in reality David thought that he could actually do his usual training routine the entire day if he wasn’t bored, but then again he truly didn’t know how much mana he really expended and how much he regenerated, this was a topic interesting to him because he had yet to experience this phenomenon called mana paralysis, it wasn’t the professor who he heard it from first but he also had read about it in the magic book together with Syndra, he didn’t think much about it at the time other than “huh so this is what happens when you run out of mana heh”, the effect of mana paralysis occurs when the person has fully run out of mana, once that happens they go into a paralyzed state where they can’t do anything for the next 24 hours, some people who are weak at heart or soul even go into a unconscious state upon running out of mana, after those 24 hours are over they usually wake up and start being able to move again albeit very slowly as their bodies go into a weakened state unable to use any magic, this period is called mana sickness and it lasts between a week to a month, a person can only use magic once their recovered from their mana sickness.

David had experienced any mana paralysis or mana sickness in his life which is why he became even more curious about the Element Orb as it could maybe shine some light about his strange disposition.

Professor Anton in turn wasn’t perturbed by the crowd of students who didn’t think his function to the Element Orb was useful.

They were after all still first years, even though some of them possessed basic knowledge they still hadn’t really stepped into the wizarding world to understand the significant of his new function which is why he decided to bring a basic lecture to these new comers to make them understand.

-Ahem, you see since time memorial from the existence of the wizards, we wizards were limited by our ability to cast certain spells through 4 aspects, this being affinity, amount of mana, wizard rank and spell formula. As of now we only had answers to 3 of those 4 aspects, we figured out that we could use reagents as replacement for certain spells that required high affinity, while wizarding rank came to those who worked hard or were lucky, finally spell formula is something that improves everyday making it the easiest to answer. It is only mana that is a difficult to answer in our age, we tried to create artificial mana batteries which were half-successful and half-failure as they only could power certain types of spells, mana isn’t a simple topic after all every mana in the world has its own wavelength we all possess our own unique mana, spells in the end are still the most effective when cast by a person, items can be enchanted to cast certain spells but those things require immense amount of resources and extremely rare materials, this is why it is important for us to find a way to not only improve our rank as wizards but also understand how we can increase our own mana reserves if we want to improve.

The professor’s lengthy lecture was met with a bit of boredom as they student’s didn’t really care too much about what the professor was talking about making even the professor a bit stumped, only David and Olga really found the topic interesting David even came forward asking the professor.

-This mana meter, how does it exactly gauge one’s mana?

His question seemed to reinvigorate the professor’s enthusiasm as he quickly explained.

-You see the light that is shining brighter by the second right? This is supposed to measure the amount of mana Lady Olga here possesses soon the light will reach its growth limit which is determined by the items own capacity or that of the person being measured, in this case I am confident to say that there will be no student who will reach the maximum amount of mana this Orb can reach as I made sure that it wouldn’t happen, meaning only the person can hit his limit before the Orb does, but don’t be afraid the Orb won’t suck you dry its actually calibrating your total mana through a process I rather not mention as it would take too long, this is what the light is.

-I think I understand.

David replied, making the professor look satisfied as he could at least teach one student making them return their gazes back to the Orb that was emitting light.

This lasted for about another 10 seconds before the light seemed to reach its maximum length, it was so big that it reached a radius of at least 5 meters, no one really knew how much mana this was, but seeing that no one other than Olga could do this ever since the students started to do the magic tests it was clear that Olga had the most mana out of all of them.

-How is there such a big difference?

-Maybe the amount of mana you have is determined at birth?

-Or maybe the difference lies in soul star rating?

-That can’t be it, I have a soul star rating of 4 but when I did the test with the Orb it didn’t brighten up as much as hers.

All kinds of discussion erupted as soon as everyone saw the results, even Olga was a bit surprised as she didn’t realize she actually had that much mana compared to the other students and while she didn’t know how much mana this was from the way the professor looked at her it seemed to be a pretty chunk.

-Not bad at all! You possess a mana meter of 5 the maximum amount is 10 and it is determined by the radius the light shines, another good news for you is that once you become an official rank 1 wizard your total mana will scale by your base total meaning you will have far more mana then the average person so congratulations Lady Olga.

-Ehm, thank you profezzor.

Olga thanked the professor, letting go of the Orb as it immediately dimmed down as soon as Olga took her hands away from them.

Now it was David’s turn and as he was about to touch the Orb to finally see what his own talents.

Once again someone interrupted him!

-Wait! David before you touch that Orb can I ask something from the professor?

David didn’t reply, he simply sighed and raised his hands in defeat at Valentia who seemed to want to say something, at this point he started to get a bit frustrated, but really what could he do.

-What is it that you want to ask Lady Valentia?

-You talked about all this mana and so and such, but this entire time I came to realize something, how are you determine the winner of this competition for who gets the Vault Key? Is the person who is the most talent going to win? If so what if there are 2 or 3 people with comparable talents present who will then get the key?

-!

Every student as soon as they heard the question quickly realized too how odd this was, really how was the winner going to be determined? So far Olga had shown the most talent making her currently the winner, but that could always change what if someone her equal appeared? They weren’t going to split the key now would they?

The professor didn’t react too much at that question as he merely smiled a gentlemanly smile before answering in a relaxed tone.

-Of course if something like this does happen I believe it will be under my own discretion of who gets the key.

His answer wasn’t very satisfactory; it was only David who really didn’t care as he finally had the chance to touch the Orb.

This time he didn’t even wait, not wanting to be interrupted anymore, he quickly held the Orb with both of his hands.

His sudden grab didn’t really catch the attention of anyone, but as soon as he grabbed the Orb, the Orb shone like a star!

The sudden flash of light was surprising to everyone that people quickly shielded their eyes, even though the light wasn’t offensive before no matter how bright it, now it was very different irritating the eyes because of its intensity giving people no choice but to block them.

Olga, Syndra and Valentia because they were the closest to David when he touched the Orb they suffered far more under the light so much so that they couldn’t even look at David’s direction but still trying as they were worried about him.

It was only Professor Anton who could really see what was going on as he had quickly cast a spell over himself as soon as he noticed the light shielding him from the lights intensity.

And as for David himself?

He felt like his world had suddenly turned white for a second, but soon enough he spotted a gray light revealing itself within this world of whiteness.