Chapter 117: His First Demonstration

Phase One of the Ascension Tournament had officially begun

The Individual Demonstration required each novice to present their mastery of a specific Gift to the panel.

Father Marius sat at the center of the table with Brother Thomas to his right and Sister Nefeli to his left.

Raziel stood in the observation area next to Lucian and Lara, watching the first twenty novices complete their evaluations with a completely blank expression.

The presentations matched exactly what Raziel expected.

Standard ecclesiastical training and all lacked any real tactical imagination.

A novice channeled his mana to summon a fireball the size of a melon and threw it at a wooden training dummy, turning the target into ash.

Another girl created a concentrated gust of wind strong enough to knock over a heavy row of wooden chairs and push the nearby spectators back.

A third novice formed a basic kinetic barrier of hard light to block a thrown iron dagger, letting the weapon bounce off harmlessly onto the stone floor.

They were functional and predictable.

Gideon stepped into the evaluation circle next.

The large novice rolled his shoulders and channeled his mana directly into his own body instead of summoning any external elements.

He activated the Gift of Amplified Strength and walked over to a solid stone pillar supporting the ceiling.

He pulled his right arm back and punched the stone with his bare fist.

CRACK!

The impact echoed loudly through the Great Hall and a deep fracture appeared in the solid stone from the point of contact.

Father Marius nodded while Brother Thomas took detailed notes.

Sister Nefeli smiled and wrote something down.

“Novice Lucian Valerius Nyxian,” Marius called out with a loud voice.

Lucian stepped into the center of the circle wearing dark and fitted clothes instead of the standard bulky novice robes.

“What discipline are you presenting?” Marius asked, his tone hostile toward the noble.

“Perception and Stealth,” Lucian answered clearly.

He didn’t wait for a signal to begin and closed his eyes to drop his mana signature to zero.

He stepped backward into the shadow cast by one of the large stone pillars and vanished completely from sight, erasing his physical and magical presence from the environment.

Marius frowned and leaned forward over the wooden table to scan the empty hall.

“This is not a game of hide and seek, novice. Show yourself.”

“I am right here, Father.”

Lucian spoke directly from behind Marius’s chair.

Marius jumped and spun around rapidly, nearly knocking over his glass inkwell in the process.

Lucian stood exactly two feet behind the director and remained completely undetected by the magical wards or the physical guards stationed in the room.

Brother Thomas hid a small smile behind his right hand while Marius turned red with fury.

Sister Nefeli looked fascinated and tracked Lucian with her eyes as he walked back to the observation area.

***

“Novice Lara Whitecliff,”

Lara walked into the circle and kept her hands steady by her sides despite her nervousness.

“Discipline?” Marius asked.

“Perception,” Lara replied softly. “Specifically empathic reading.”

Marius scoffed and crossed his arms. “Empathy is a passive trait and it lacks combat utility. How do you intend to demonstrate mastery?”

“I will read the current emotional states of the judging panel aloud,” Lara stated.

She closed her eyes and focused her mind, pushing past the mental barriers Brother Thomas had taught her to build and extending her senses.

“Father Marius,” Lara began with a steady voice. “You are currently experiencing deep resentment and intense impatience and a lingering sense of fear.”

Marius tightened his grip on his cane and confirmed the accuracy of her reading without saying a single word.

“Brother Thomas,” Lara continued. “You feel genuine curiosity and mild exhaustion and a slight amount of physical hunger.”

Thomas nodded slowly and tapped his stomach with his fingers.

Lara shifted her focus to the third judge and concentrated her gift on Sister Nefeli.

Lara frowned deeply and pushed her mana harder to find the emotional core of the woman in white robes.

She opened her eyes and blinked in total confusion.

“Sister Nefeli.” Lara hesitated. “Nothing. I feel absolutely nothing.”

The entire hall went completely silent and the other novices shifted uncomfortably in their spots.

Someone possessing zero detectable emotions was highly unnatural even for a trained Inquisitor.

Sister Nefeli smiled again. “Correct, dear.”

Lara bowed her head quickly and retreated to the observation area because the encounter visibly shook her nerves.

***

“Novice Raziel Celeste,” Marius called out.

Raziel stepped into the evaluation circle and felt the combined weight of hundreds of eyes staring at him.

“Discipline?” Marius asked with a aggressive tone.

“Runic Inscription,” Raziel answered.

A loud noise ran through the crowd because Inscription occupied the lowest rank in the academy and the instructors usually reserved it for weak novices lacking active combat or healing magic.

Marius narrowed his eyes. “You registered as a Fire Elementalist during your inquisitorial evaluation. Are you changing your discipline?”

“I discovered a new affinity,” Raziel stated flatly.

“Proceed.”

Raziel raised his right hand and channeled the gold and black energy of the Umbral Paragon to his index finger.

He pulled the standard blue runic ink over the dark mana to perfectly mask the heretical signature and prevent the judges from executing him.

He drew three separate seals in the empty air in rapid succession.

He drew the Seal of Silence and the Anchor Seal and the Pulse Seal.

The three geometric structures hovered in front of him and glowed with a standard blue light.

He chained them together using a delayed activation sequence he had practiced with Zorya for weeks instead of triggering them manually.

He snapped his fingers and the three seals activated at the same time.

The Seal of Silence expanded instantly and created a perfect vacuum of sound that muted the entire evaluation hall.

The Anchor Seal shot forward and locked onto the wooden legs of Father Marius’s chair to fix the object perfectly still in physical space.

The Pulse Seal released a controlled wave of kinetic force that traveled across the room and gently pushed Sister Nefeli exactly one step backward in her own chair.

The demonstration was clean and technically flawless and completely unspectacular. It was exactly the result Raziel wanted to achieve.

He snapped his fingers a second time.

The three seals dissolved into blue sparks and the ambient noise of the hall rushed back into the room.

Marius tried to stand up from his chair to yell at Raziel, but the residual energy of the Anchor

Seal kept the furniture locked to the stone floor.

He struggled against the invisible weight and his face turned an angry shade of purple.

“Novice. Release me,”

Raziel waved his hand and cleared the remaining mana from the area.

The chair unlocked instantly and Marius stumbled forward slightly before catching his balance.

“Inscription,” Marius sneered. “When exactly did you learn this?”

“I studied the texts available in the library, Father.”

“In three weeks?” Marius challenged him.

Brother Thomas intervened and adjusted his glasses calmly. “Novice Raziel always reads voraciously, Marius.”

Marius glared at Thomas and chose not to start a verbal argument in front of the external evaluator.

Sister Nefeli wrote something down and her expression remained impossible to read.

“Phase One is complete,” Marius announced to the hall. “The results will be posted tonight. Dismissed.”

Raziel turned and walked out of the Great Hall, blending into the crowd of exiting novices.

He had survived the first evaluation without exposing his true core to the Exarchs.

He walked down the main corridor toward the East Basement to meet with Zorya for their afternoon training session.

The hallway was relatively empty because the other students had rushed to the refectory for dinner.

“Runic Inscription.”

Raziel stopped walking.

Sister Nefeli stepped out from the shadow of a stone archway and blocked his path.

“An interesting choice for someone officially registered as a Fire Elementalist,”

Raziel maintained his calm expression. “I discovered a new affinity, Sister.”

“A new affinity?” Nefeli tilted her head to the side.

“Do you know what is truly curious, Novice Raziel?”

Raziel didn’t answer.

“In three hundred years of official records at St. Celeste only one single person ever mastered a completely new Gift in less than a month,” Nefeli stated smoothly.

“Do you know who that was?”

“No.”

“The founder of this academy,” Nefeli answered.

“The man who built this entire institution directly over the ruins of a temple that everyone prefers to forget.”

“Sleep well, novice. The second phase of the tournament will be revealing.”

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