Chapter 45 - Hunter test

  “Each of you will come forth when your name is called and you will place both your palms on these stones.” Announce the middle-aged man who was in charge of their twenty-person group.

  All eyes shifted to where he was pointing, and most of the kid's faces started to get a little pale. The single most important event in their lives so far would be decided in a few minutes. Many of the teens had shaking hands and rapidly beating hearts by now.

  “The black stone will light up depending on your talent. If the stone doesn’t gain color, you will not be able to become a hunter and will be unable to participate in the Awakening tomorrow.”

  The crowd was silent as they stared at the two stones that would decide their fate. Each was about the size of a bowling bowl, both on small white pillars carved to cradle the stones and resembling small Roman pillars.

  Those who pass will be able to stay and use the candidate facilities as well as find a room over at the dormitories. Those that do not qualify, however, will not be able to return as becoming a hunter is unfortunately impossible for you.

  After a tense moment, the man called the first name on his list and a young boy stepped forward. He walked in between the two small pillars and froze for a moment.

  Stretching out his arms, he put one hand on the vibrant red stone and one on the black stone. His body jolted slightly for a moment before he tensed. The black stone began to glow a faint red color, it grew in intensity from the center of the black orb until it was half red.

  “Congratulations, you have the talent to become a hunter.” The man didn't leave people time to take in the sight before another name was called.

  The first boy went to stand to the side while another went through with the test.

  The first person not to pass the test was a skinny girl with greasy dark hair. The black orb didn't turn red in the slightest, her face worriedly looked at the man and she knew this was bad. She tried taking her hands off and putting them back on again, but nothing changed.

  The man tried to console her but she was balling her eyes out after that. She was led away, and the sense that that could happen to anyone here gave the air an almost physical presence.

  Adam and Ellio both arrived last so they were at the end of the list. Five more people didn't light up the black orb and were sent away before it was Ellio’s turn. She glanced at Adam who gave her a reassuring nod before she stepped up.

  Her hand was shaking as she placed it on the red stone. She took one last deep breath before placing her other hand on the black orb.

  Her body stiffened as the black orb rapidly grew in intensity. But the red light didn't stop growing stronger as it surpassed the halfway mark most others managed to achieve.

  Gasps could be heard in the group as the black orb became almost completely filled with light. Adam was just as shocked as the rest of them.

  He figured that this process was basically measuring mana conductivity by forming a sort of mana circuit with the person acting as the conductor. Similar to measuring electrical conductivity. But she was making the black orb glow redder than any other.

  “It seems we have a possible genius on our hands.” Said the man who now looked genuinely excited about Ellio’s result.

  Her grin was practically splitting her face apart as she skipped over to the side and turned her eyes to Adam. He was now the last person not to have passed the test. His sister's excellent showing gave him hope that he too would have excellent mana conductivity, but the knowledge that his soul was a weakened fragment made him fear not being able to use magic.

  As the last person, all eyes turned to him with greater intensity now. Everyone was wondering the same thing, would the younger brother be just as strong, or would he be a dud?

  He stepped up and placed his hands on the stones immediately without the usual slow movements the others had. He had no time to waste, if he really couldn’t use magic, he would need to leave this realm and return to his main soul empty-handed. It wasn’t what he wanted, but he had no reason to wait around idly.

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  As soon as his hand made contact with the red stone, he felt a barely noticeable tingling on his hand, but as soon as his other hand reached the black stone, it was like static electricity jolted his entire body. It wasn’t painful, but rather just a split second where the energies raced across his body to fill the circuit.

  He could feel the mana traveling through him from the red orb and landing in the black orb. This was the first time he felt mana since he died, it was a distinctly different feeling from before. This time, it felt so foreign, like having electricity coursing through his body.

  He used to be able to control mana at will but this energy was completely untouchable to him. Moreover, it traveled randomly around his body rather than in the predefined pathways that his own magic used to take. It made sense since his core wasn’t formed yet but he still tried to reach out and guide the mana.

  His mission was to learn as much as he could about magic, so controlling magic without a core was something he wanted to prove was possible or not. He assumed not for most people, but Adam had a little trick, he could control his soul energies at will.

  The soul and soul mana were made of the same thing after all, the only difference was that the soul was already in use, while soul mana was blank soul energy that he could use as he wished.

  Therefore, despite not having the mana pathways one would form alongside their core, he could still nudge the mana in certain directions using his own on-the-fly makeshift pathways.

  He had closed his eyes and concentrated on the feeling of the mana traveling through his body. Unlike before, he couldn’t sense it like he could when he had his core since he currently didn’t have his inner mana sight. Yet he still remembered the feeling he got when the mana traveled across his pathways.

  Narrowing in on that feeling, he squinted his mind’s eye until his silver soul started to become visible while still feeling the mana coursing in his body. He didn’t need to recreate the complex web of paths that had once resided within him, instead, he focused on a single channel. One stretching across his chest and connecting his palms on either side.

  He reached out for his soul, pulled silver energy from his soul fragment and started forming a tube. He had never really understood why souls could channel mana since they seemed to ignore all energies normally, yet as he started forming the small silver tube, he felt the mana begin to follow the path.

  His grin was tense as the pain of directly manipulating his own soul was similar to having his guts squeezed. It was very unpleasant, but with no available soul mana, directly altering his soul was the only way. His spontaneous experiment was starting to pay off as the mana was clearly using the direct root he created through himself to connect the mana between the two stones.

  It was a dozen seconds since he had placed his hand on the stones and his sister smiled when the black stone started to glow a red color. She saw her little brother Dorian close his eyes in concentration and sweat started to appear on his brow before the light really started to increase at a rapid pace.

  It usually took about ten seconds before the black stone stabilized at the maximum brightness it would achieve with each person. But it took half a minute before it stopped growing for Ellio. She assumed her brother had the same great talent for being a hunter as her when the orb continued growing in intensity after ten seconds.

  After twenty seconds, the orb rapidly increased in the speed at which its red color increased. By now it was the same brightness as Ellio, but it didn’t stop. It was fully red after thirty seconds and she saw Dorian’s eyes shut and a pained grimace on his face. Soon, the group wasn’t looking impressed and congratulating Dorian, but went silent and closely observed the orb with confusion.

  For some reason, the orb wasn’t slowing down, in fact, it was rapidly increasing in brightness now that the entire black of the orb had been replaced with red. The red orb itself didn’t change color but the black orb would always rapidly return to its former black self when the hunter candidate removed their hand. But now, it was as if they were both red orbs.

  The red orb was a little larger than the black, yet now they appeared identical in brightness and color. Adam had struggled through the pain of creating a single mana path across his chest and it was working just as intended, his experiment was a success so he at least now had some important information to send back to his main soul if this trick was a failure and he failed to become a hunter.

  Adam opened his eyes for the first time in almost a minute as he looked over at the black orb. He saw the red orb so he looked over at the other one, and once more saw the red orb.

  “Oh, oops” Was the only thing he could think of saying as he looked over at the group of hunter candidates and their group guide. All of them were staring at him with open mouths.

  He felt stupid for forgetting himself and delving into this experiment without thinking of what it might look like to others, but to be fair he believed that his weak soul might prove detrimental in obtaining magic here. The spontaneous soul pathway test was his last ditch effort to obtain something useful to prove this trip wasn’t a complete waste.

  Turns out, this might not be the end of his mission after all. In fact, it looked like he might have just marked himself as an anomaly. Which might be a good thing if he wants to learn the secrets of magic from some wise old wizard. It would have been hard to do if he was just another random hunter.

  “Do I pass?”

  He asked with his best innocent face after removing his hands from the stones. The bridge he had formed out of his soul had now reverted to its previous amorphic shape once he had released control over it.

  “How did you do that?” Asked the group guide. He was in stunned shock like the rest of them but had shook himself out of it when Adam spoke.

  “I don’t know, I just leaned into the feeling I guess.” He replied with a shrug, trying not to act like he knew what he had just done.

  “Oh, well, I mean, yes you pass. I’ve never seen anything like that before” He was clearly thrown off his game by Adam’s stunt, but he quickly told the other candidates to go find a room and explore the different training rooms available.

  His sister stared at him in shock before following him to the dorm building. She had assumed her results to be the highest in the group, yet her brother had had such a massive result that the black orb had still not returned to its original state, it took five minutes for it to fully return to black, compared to the seconds it usually took for the others.

  But his odd showing hadn’t only caught the eyes of his fellow hunter candidates, the middle-aged man who had guided them through the test and marked down their results was equal parts shocked and suspicious. He had seen this process hundreds of times, yet that boy had been different from any he had seen.

  He might not like that old man, but this was definitely part of the ‘unusual behavior’ the old monster had said to look out for. He couldn’t stop the hint of fear that flashed through his eyes as he recalled their conversation. He hoped the kid wouldn’t be in trouble with such talent, yet he also knew that if he reported him to that person, he would likely never be seen again.

  ‘Of the boy is equally unusual during his awakening, I'll have to send him to the old man’ He thought with a grimace. Hopefully, he won’t hurt the boy too much, if he survived, he would definitely become a great asset to Malder city.

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