Chapter 59

Utaz is actually a great receptionist once he wakes up. After he had a moment to shake off his drowsiness, he quickly ushered us into the testing area in the back room once he heard we were here to test our magic capabilities. Handing him our last 2 gold coins was painful beyond belief but I keep repeatedly imagining Olin entangling me with his roots to forget about the pain. 

I still have a few goodies stashed away that I held onto from Jerome’s lockboxes but I won’t dip into those unless I need them. The back room is divided into six individual rooms where we’ll be taking our test. The very first thing we’ll be doing is testing our natural talent with mana by stepping into a room with what Utaz called a mana gathering array. We’ll be trying our best to feel the abundant ambient mana in the air and once we can do that, we should be able to feel the natural reserve of mana in our bodies as well. He says as long as we can light up the brightstone he’s handing us, we’ll pass the first test. 

Wraine’s fidgeting with anticipation the whole time Utaz is talking and I let him go before me since this is the first time I’ve seen him smile the whole morning. Although he doesn’t remember his uncle very well, it was still someone closely related to him and finding out about their passing will hurt no matter how distant they were. 

Wraine disappears into the first dark room on the left and doesn’t emerge for close to 30 minutes. Once he’s out, he hands the lit brightstone over to Utaz who lifts it up to his eye and examines the stone. “Mm, mmm, mhmm.” 

Utaz keeps making strange noises with his throat as he turns the stone around in his hand until he’s satisfied with what he’s seeing, “Not bad. Not bad at all. Little Wraine here is average on both fronts it seems. It took him around 30 minutes to feel the mana around him and inside him before guiding it into this brightstone. The stone’s well lit which means his capacity for mana isn’t too bad either and should fall within the average range. Which is all good news considering as long as you put in the effort, you’ll be able to cast moderate rank spells with ease after a few years of training. Who knows, maybe you’ll reach masterful rank in a few decades and the entire kingdom will celebrate your name. Isn’t that wonderful? Now, it’s time for little Isaac’s turn.” 

Utaz tosses the lit brightstone into a drawer filled with other lit brightstones and closes it, cutting off the glaring ray of light that blinded Wraine and I for a second. He opens the drawer next to it that’s filled with unlit brightstones and grabs one before handing it to me. Holding the stone in my hand, I can feel the anticipation welling up within me and I don’t waste anymore time before I head into the test room before closing the door behind me. 

It’s a dark room that’s only dimly lit by blue brightstones inside glass cases hanging from each of the four walls. In the center of the room is a platform with a coffin on top of it. Okay… I definitely wasn’t expecting a coffin but alright. On further inspection, it really is a wooden coffin but there are symbols etched all around the inside of the coffin with black ink. I’m thinking this is the mana gathering array. I asked Wraine what to expect before we got here but he wouldn’t tell me anything and said he wanted me to be surprised. I think this is the surprise he meant. 

Regardless, I unfasten my shield and sword from my belt and lay them next to the coffin before lying down in the coffin myself with the brightstone in my hand and closing my eyes. The only thing I can hear is my own breathing and I’m not too sure what… Oh. What was that? It feels like there’s a… thickness in the air surrounding me. It’s hard to describe but it’s like there’s something swirling around in the air that I couldn’t notice before but I’m aware of now. 

Once I’ve become aware of what I suspect to be the ambient mana around me, I try to feel the same thickness inside me and it’s there. It’s a little more difficult to try and direct the mana inside me into the brightstone but after about 30 seconds of trying, it worked, I think. Opening my eyes, I can see a dimly lit brightstone in my hand. It’s much darker than Wraine’s but I don’t think I can make it brighter no matter how much longer I try. It should be fine though, right? I mean it’s dimmer than his but I was much faster getting it lit than he was. Putting my sword and shield back on, I head out the room with my dim brightstone in hand. 

Both Wraine and Utaz are surprised by seeing how fast I was but Utaz quickly grabs the stone out of my hands and carefully inspects it. Each second he spends seriously scrutinizing my brightstone increases my anxiety greatly. He’s not even making the same weird throat sounds like before and there’s a solemn look on his face. 

After spending about two minutes turning the stone around in his hands, which is twice as long as he took for Wraine’s, he sighs before murmuring, “Unfortunate. Very, very unfortunate. Little Isaac took less than three minutes inside the room to be able to guide his mana which is an impressive feat even in the entirety of the Old Realm but he doesn’t have the capacity to accommodate that talent. What a shame, what an utter shame. Apologies, that was incredibly unprofessional of me.” 

It’s concerning seeing the jovial old man regretful as if he’s the one who just found out his uncle was dead, “What does that mean for me, Utaz?”

“It means you have the talent to learn spells at an abnormal speed, faster than nearly every magic practitioner currently practicing in the world and your mastery over those spells will be second to none with appropriate effort. But you’ll never be able to cast a ranked spell in your life. Judging by the shine of this brightstone, rankless spells seem to be the limit of what you'll be able to cast with your capacity.”

My disappointment is immeasurable as it churns waves within me but I ask nonetheless, “Is there no way to increase my capacity?”

Shaking his head, Utaz answers me, “No. Our natural capacities within us are largely determined at birth and there has never been a case for someone increasing their capacity artificially. It seems to me the gods have decided to play a terrible joke on you by giving you the talent to become an exceptional mage while depriving you of the other elements essential to actually do so. Unfortunate. Very, very unfortunate.” 

Wraine pats me on the shoulder to make sure I’m alright but I’m not willing to give up just yet, “What about when you told Wraine he could become a masterful rank in a few decades? Is he not reaching that rank by practicing magic and making his mana capacity larger?”

“No, little Isaac. The Institute’s spell ranks are classified according to spell complexity and the ability to successfully cast those spells. As one gradually moves up spell ranks and subsequently learns more difficult spells at higher ranks, all of that intrinsic knowledge you’ve learned accumulates and helps build the foundation for learning and casting masterful rank spells. An average mana capacity is already sufficient enough to cast most masterful spells because most of the master mages who created those spells had average capacities themselves. 

“Although what I mean by average only encompasses the entirety of The Institute and its members. Most of the world is insufficient in terms of both magical talent and mana capacity and cannot learn magic at all which already proves that the both of you are special. Isaac, your natural capacity for mana is too small to construct any ranked spell and in all likelihood, you’ll only be able to cast a rankless spell two or three times at once depending on the spell’s consumption. If you were to attempt to construct a fledgling level spell, you’d fully drain your reserves before the spell completed and depending on the spell being cast, it could explode in your face, either killing you outright or severely maiming you for life.” 

Still unwilling to give up, I ask Utaz to give me a second try in the mana gathering array room. He stares at my dimly lit brightstone for a while before he stares out a window, his thoughts undecipherable to me. I didn’t want to get my hopes up before I came here because I needed to be ready for anything but being told I didn’t have the ability to cast magic while having the talent to learn it is devastating. I wish I never came here. 

At least I’d still have a gold coin in my pocket. Utaz finally makes up his mind and tosses my brightstone in with the other lit brightstones, their contrasting brightness only disheartens me further but I’m not giving up yet. There’s still a chance. He grabs an unlit brightstone from the adjacent drawer and inspects it before handing it to me. He never did that for our previous two attempts and I can only thank him in my mind for his diligence and kindness. With the stone in my hand, I head back into the room with renewed vigor and spirit. 

…

Utaz looks at the dimly lit brightstone in his hands and only shakes his head, mumbling, “Unfortunate. Very, very unfortunate.” Godsdamnit. I literally never expect anything in life ever considering my upbringing but the gods couldn’t just give me magic? Really? Fine, you know what? I didn’t want to cast magic anyways. Bertrand said I’m damned talented with the sword and that’s good enough for me. I mean, take a look at Olin. Naturally gifted with magic with the fucking mana eyes or whatever the fuck he called it and I still held his life in my hands. Who needs magic? I don’t. Damnit. 

I’d love to just leave right now and never look back but I still paid a whole gold coin for this and I’m not wasting that even though the rest of the tests seem pointless to me since I can’t cast spells. The next four rooms are the same inside except they each represent one of the four main conventional elements. Wraine and I can take the tests together since we don’t need to test for our ability to detect and guide mana anymore and all that remains is testing our affinities for spell families. 

The first room we go in has a large basin of water in the center of the room. The three of us stand next to the basin and Utaz hands both of us blue manastones. Manastones and brightstones are similar in that both of them can be dug up in mines and that both of them have mana related properties but the similarities end there. Manastones are stones that absorb the ambient mana in the environment around them for years and turn into sources from which mana can be drawn from. 

And no, they can’t help me with casting spells because the mana inside them already has elemental attributes and spell construction requires pure, unattributed mana otherwise as Utaz so eloquently put it: big boom, fire, death! There are pure manastones out there but mixing mana from my natural reserves and mana from those manastones and then injecting that amalgamation into a spell will nullify the spell construction and instead of a big boom, there’ll be a sad fizzle sound instead. Sigh. 

With the blue manastone in his left hand, Wraine puts his right hand into the water and concentrates. After a moment, there’s a tiny ripple emanating from his hand even though I’m pretty sure his hand stayed perfectly still. I do the same when he’s done and even after a few minutes, there’s no ripples whatsoever. “Alright, Wraine has low affinity while Isaac has no affinity.” You know what, I wouldn’t even learn water spells if you paid me. What am I going to do with water? Squirt my enemy with a jet of water while they stab me in the gut? No thank you. 

The next room’s for the earth element and instead of a pool of water inside, there’s a sand table instead. Hey, I’ve seen these before.