Akari began her Missile portion on Round Twenty-Five. Clearly, the Artegium had much higher standards for its incoming second-years. Or was this because she’d reached the Artisan realm? No one had told her the exact reasoning.

  Either way, she breezed through the first twelve rounds, destroying the dream mana opponents like paper dolls. These rounds had challenged her last semester, pushing her body and mind to their limits. Today, they felt like a total joke.

  Her opponents telegraphed all their moves, and her instincts caught a hundred tiny details she’d missed before. Even when they attacked, the mana seemed to float through the air in slow motion. Akari didn’t even bother trying to block or deflect it. She just stepped aside, weaving through the attacks like a leaf in the wind.

  Talek. If Artisans were this good, then how had she faced them in battle? Much less a Master like Valeria Zantano.

  “You never want to be the strongest person in any room,” her mother had said. Those dragons spent all day playing politics and trampling the people below them. Hard to keep a blade sharp when you honed it on fresh grass.

  Good teachers made a difference, too. Akari had to remember that fact whenever she argued with her parents or the Darklights. She didn’t always agree with them, but they’d gotten her this far.

  And so she continued her glorious montage, listening to the satisfying dings as one round flowed seamlessly into the next. Her mana zipped and whistled through the air, adding another layer to the music.

  A part of her was afraid to think too hard, as if thinking would break the trance. A year ago, her mana had been wild and unwieldy, and a single lapse in focus could send it spiraling out of control.

  Today, her techniques felt as natural as taking a breath. Every Missile obeyed her commands, responding to the slightest touch from her channels. Only a conscious choice could ruin this.

  Ding! The familiar sound echoed through the testing chamber, announcing her latest victory. Then the words “Round Thirty-Seven” appeared in floating gold letters.

  Akari wet her lips and focused harder. The past few rounds had involved combat with simulated opponents, but this was a test of true precision.

  Iron bars formed a cage around her body, stretching from the floor to the ceiling. A steel key sat on the pedestal to her left, roughly six feet away from the cage. A control panel stood six feet to her right with a keyhole in its center.

  Akari had failed this round last semester, and she’d practiced the set up more than a thousand times over the summer. Glim wouldn’t help her cheat again, but that didn’t matter. She’d ordered some supplies online and rebuilt the room from memory. Not just that, but she’d practiced every variation she could imagine.

  No sooner had the room formed than she shot a pure Missile toward the key, shaping her mana like a bowl to retrieve it from the pedestal. Then she arced the Missile around the cage, straight toward the waiting lock. The key snapped into place a second later. She twisted her wrist, and her mana moved like an extension of her arm.

  Ding! “Round Thirty-Eight.”

  Akari stood inside another iron cage, with a control panel to her right. But this time, a massive sign loomed over the panel with an illustration of an orange flame.

  She turned to her left and found a table with three keys. Simple enough. One of those keys was the flame key. But which one? All three looked like ordinary steel, with no differences in shape or size.

  Akari opened her Silver Sight and bore down on the table. The left key felt cold to her mental senses, like ice mana. The middle key felt strong, like metal or stone. Finally, the right key gave off a vague impression of heat.

  She reached out and grabbed the last key with her mana, placing it in the lock with the same technique as before.

  Ding! “Round Thirty-Nine.”

  Now she felt better about her failure last semester. Even if she had gotten that first key in the lock, she never would have sensed the different aspects in this round. Most Apprentices didn’t have that level of training.

  Round Thirty-Nine was a variation of the last. Only this time, an illustration of a happy face hung above the control panel, and each key exuded a different feeling. One was hostile, one was fearful, and the other was . . . content?

  Weird. The emotions felt so real. Had they extracted the mana from people at just the right moment? Then again, this whole test was made of dream mana, so that probably made things easier.

  Akari completed the round, and things got even trickier. Round Forty had a blade symbol over the control panel, and all five keys had some variation of metal or stone mana. She couldn’t even name half the aspects on the table, but she didn’t need to. Blade mana had a specific feel—not just metal, but the knowledge of past battles, and the urge to destroy. It also helped that she’d spent so much time around Kalden.

  The variations continued over the next few rounds. Some had obstacles between her and the control panel. Others had opponents who tried to sabotage her efforts. One round had an upside-down keyhole, and it took several seconds before she realized that.

  Round Forty-Eight was the hardest by far. Each key was split down the center, and Akari had to combine the fragments of the ice and fire keys to make a frostflame key. After that, she shaped her mana into a partial Construct, squeezing the key from both sides to keep the fragments firmly in place.

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  Then Round Forty-Nine combined all the previous rounds into one. Here, she made a “happy fire” key, and wove it through a transparent maze while two opponents tried to sabotage her. The whole thing happened in a blur, and she doubted she could recreate her success more than once.

  Still, this was nothing compared to her time mana lessons. Her mother must have the patience of an Archangel to learn an aspect like that.

  Things actually got easier on Round Fifty. The room had no gravity, and she used her Missiles to propel her body through a forest of blades. This might have caught her peers off guard, but Akari was a spacetime artist, and she moved through the maze as if she’d built it herself.

  The zero-gravity theme continued until Round Fifty-Three. Here, she had to push her mana through a ring of impedium and hit the target beyond. Fortunately, this alloy wasn’t half as strong as the Martials’ cuffs back on Arkala.

  A few more rounds followed, pushing her power and control to their limits once again. One round made her split her Missile in midair, and then reform it behind a wall. Another round had a mix of solid and invisible obstacles, forcing her to switch between her eyes and her Silver Sight.

  Round Sixty was just an empty room, a stark contrast to all the challenges before it. Akari stood on one side with a single target on the opposite wall. Her eyes darted left and right, and she half-expected someone to jump out and attack her.

  Then she noticed a glass barrier that bisected the chamber. She stepped forward, pressing a hand to the smooth surface. It felt as solid as it looked, with no gaps near the floor, walls, or ceiling.

  “What am I supposed to do with this?”

  Akari opened her Silver Sight and saw a thick cloud of ambient mana beyond the glass. Apparently, they expected her to form a Missile in midair, without adding any mana from her soul.

  She gave it her best shot, but nothing happened; no Artisan had that sort of control over ambient mana. Even her Aeon soul couldn’t solve this problem. Not that she would reveal that secret for a test like this. Her team had discussed it beforehand, and they’d agreed to keep these powers a secret unless they had no choice.

  In fact . . . what if this was a different kind of test? What if the school wanted to see her true power? Either that, or she’d just reached the end of the Artisan-level rounds. That had to happen sooner or later.

  Time ran out, and golden letters appeared in the air, revealing her final score for the Missile portion:

  276.

  She’d known this was coming, but . . . Talek, it felt good to see the actual number. She’d beaten her old Missile score by over a hundred points. Even her jump between Novice and Apprentice hadn’t been that extreme.

  Akari would need at least 525 points to become a three-year, but she wasn’t worried about that. She’d already earned half those points, and she’d done it in a single portion of the test.

  How far could she push this? What if she beat more just the average third-year? What if she reached the top ten, or even the top five?

  ~~~

  Akari took a quick break, then she returned for the Construct portion. This was much simpler than the Missile portion, with an emphasis on power and stability. She’d struggled with these skills as a newly minted Apprentice. Now, her soul was twice as deep, offering a vast well of mana to draw from.

  The early rounds focused on defensive techniques. First, she protected herself from a variety of threats, both physical and mana-based. After that, she protected small groups of civilians.

  The offensive techniques started on Round Thirty, forcing her to weaponize small fragments of her shields. This lasted until Round Forty, where she created increasingly complex shapes in midair. A sphere, a cube, a cylinder, and a pyramid

  Things came to a screeching halt on Round Forty-Seven where they gave her a reference picture that looked like a torus knot. Akari’s attempt looked right to the naked eye, but the test disagreed. Probably some trickery or math bullshit she’d overlooked.

  She ended the Construct portion with 199 points. That was still seventy-five points higher than last time, so she couldn’t complain.

  The Cloak portion offered no surprises. This test only had ten rounds, and each round went until failure. Everyone would slip up here eventually; even Masters couldn’t hold a flawless technique forever.

  Akari wiped the sweat from her brow as she finished with 170 points.

  That was good, but not amazing. Cloaks were . . . tricky, to say the least. Everyone’s mana and channels were unique, and it took years of practice to refine your cycling pattern. Akari had gotten her first Cloak technique less than a year ago, and there weren’t any shortcuts to this sort of training.

  Well . . . that wasn’t technically true. There must be some shortcuts out there. Akari just hadn’t found them yet.

  ~~~

  After a quick shower, she joined Kalden in the building’s main lobby to check the results. As always, several wall-mounted screens displayed their results, divided by year. Akari turned her gaze to the second-years in the middle.

  Kalden held the top spot with a total score of 649. Akari’s name sat directly below him with 645 points.

  Honestly, she couldn’t complain about losing to him this time. Kalden’s aspect and fighting style were better suited for tests like this, and he’d reached the Apprentice realm several months before her.

  Zukan held the third spot with 521 points, which was still amazing for an Apprentice. He hadn’t beaten the average third-year, but he’d definitely beaten the bottom third.

  “Hey,” Kalden stepped up beside her. His hair was still wet from his shower, and the cedar scent of his cologne filled her nostrils. “Look who’s coming back to school.”

  She followed his gaze to the third-year monitor. There, “Relia Moonfire” held the top spot with 670 points.

  Akari drew in a deep breath. “You think we’ll see her in class?”

  “Assuming we get accepted as third-years?” Kalden shrugged. “They only have one class block, so I’d say the odds are good.”

  “Unless the teachers make house calls,” Akari muttered. That seemed crazy to imagine, but Ashur Moonfire was a Mystic, and Mystics always got the red carpet treatment.

  “I doubt it,” Kalden said. “Things are crazy right now, and the third-years go on a lot of field trips. You can’t do that from the Palace Prime.”

  She gave a slow nod as she scanned the list below Relia. The next student only had 585 points. So, not only had Akari beaten her fellow second-years, she’d reached the third spot in the entire Artegium.

  Euphoria surged through her as she processed that. Despite all her achievements this past year, her doubts had still clung to her like a wet hoodie. Did she really have what it took to advance further and save the Archipelago?

  Only one in ten thousand mana artists reached the Master realm and barely one in a million reached Mystic. Countless people had failed over the years, and many of them worked even harder than Akari. Others had more resources, better genetics, or more natural talent.

  The odds had always been against her, and no amount of wishing would change that.

  But this . . . Talek. She’d earned the third-highest score in the Artegium, and she hadn’t even cheated this time. She also hadn’t relied on her Aeon soul, or her bond with Kalden.

  What if all that hard work was finally bearing fruit? What if this was the score of a future Mystic?

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