Chapter 16 — The Awakening Orb

  The awakening orb that stood before him was impressively large, about an arm’s length in diameter, a sleek, pitch black sphere of such unnatural perfection that it could not possibly have originated from the human world. It was an artifact, a precious commodity found within the ruins and dungeons of the other world. Although he couldn’t sense otherworld energy from it, he could imagine that the black sphere contained an enormous amount of it, swirling and stirring within like a tumultuous storm.

  William turned on the screen light of his phone, prompting murmurs from the judges. He ignored them, focusing all of his attention on the smooth surface of the glassy sphere in front of him. He reached out with his other hand, then placed his palm onto the curved surface.

  As his palm touched the orb, a strange trickle of cold energy began to seep from the orb into his arm, then into his torso, before spreading across his entire body. That sensation of mana from that other night—he felt it again! The hairs on the back of his neck were sticking up as he concentrated his focus.

  But something felt wrong this time around. The flow of mana to his phone seemed weak—much weaker than during the other night when he faced off against the skulk, when the thread of mana connecting his body with his phone seemed so overwhelmingly powerful he could even touch it. But that was not all. Within him he felt the presence of a strange, new sensation, an energy different in its very nature from the light.

  If the nature of light could be described as stable and robust, this new sensation was raw, explosive in nature, uncontrollable, all consuming, and it had come into direct contact with the waning energy from his other mana. The two opposing forces clashed, light and this new force, and upon first contact the new energy tried to push through, to engulf and consume, and yet its efforts were quietly parried by the waning energy, which seemed to hold its strength despite its weakened state.

  As the new, explosive mana crashed against the stable, ethereal mana, it pushed harder and harder, trying to overwhelm its adversary, but the more it flared up in its efforts the more futile it became. It crashed against the light again and again, as if in utter desperation, but each attempt seemed to get weaker and less forceful. Then, after countless tries and to William’s astonishment, the explosive mana receded. It then approached one final time, this time not in an attempt to overwhelm, but rather in deference, as it began to take on some of the characteristics of the waning energy. Although it was still explosive and consumptive in nature, it now bore a hint of ethereal stability that was wholly contradictory to the very nature of the mana, and it too lessened in force.

  William opened his eyes—he didn’t even remember closing them—as the first sensation he felt was heat above his dominant hand. Not a lot of heat, but just the presence of heat. And then he saw the flame. It floated obediently above his palm, its size no larger than a thumb, flickering as it levitated. The size of the flame was so diminutive that it reminded him of the flame above a candlestick. He observed it curiously, like it was a peculiar oddity presented by a magician at some kind of magic show, and he was an audience member trying his best to find out the trick behind how the magic functioned.

  He raised his palm a little, and the ball of flame rose with it, maintaining a respectful distance from his palm. The ball of fire—yes, it was in fact a ball at its core, with an obedient flame rising up to give it a teardrop shape—had an ordinary color, a reddish yellow that one would expect from any other flame, and it felt non-threatening, which was in all respects a strange way to perceive an elemental power as destructive in nature as fire.

  Because of its small size, he felt instinctively comfortable moving it around with just a thought. No longer fixed to his palm, the small wisp floating about calmly in front of his body.

  Seeing that the awakening had settled and there were no more accidental explosions waiting to happen, the soldier with the scanner emerged from behind the safety of the barrier and proceeded towards the orb. With a curt nod to William, he placed the scanner against the orb.

  The scanner let out a high pitched sound denoting that it had registered the reading, and the soldier pulled it back to read the screen.

  “Level one ability, Fire manipulation.”

  The announcement almost felt surreal, and yet as the seconds passed and William registered what he said as reality, he felt a sense of disappointment building up within his chest. He had gone into this awakening with high hopes that the powerful light ability would show itself once again, and yet even after touching the awakening orb, it didn’t resurface. He instead awakened some kind of laughably weak fire ability.

  William looked at the phone in his left hand. The screen was white but otherwise entirely normal, simply operating off of battery power like any other phone in the world. He blinked, then glanced between the phone screen and the little ball of fire floating in front of him, still refusing to believe it. After touching the orb, he had felt the presence of the light mana within him, so where did it go? Even if it was weakened, surely it should have at least showed up a little bit? How come he couldn’t manifest the light ability at all this time?

  The questions he had been building up had no clear answer, and as the judges scribbled down notes onto their evaluation forms while looking as if they had lost most of their interest, the reality of the situation hit once again. He had awakened a level one power. A level one power! And not just that, it was even weaker than a normal level one! It seemed like the judges were expecting more from a Trinity Academy student, and looked mildly disappointed.

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  The evaluation administrator coughed as he passed by the soldier, who was now returning to his previous position. “Your power evaluation is level one, Mr. Blackwood,” the administrator said. “But the judges will give you three minutes to display your power and prove that it may be more effective than its orb reading. Apologies, normally we would extend more time, but the line today is long, and please understand that your reading was only at level one. Do you understand the instructions?”

  “I do.”

  “Very well. Your three minutes start now. Begin.”

  It was strange. The main benefit of awakening the fire element, the reason why he’d chosen to try to manifest it for so long, was its explosive nature. Even with a low power level, the typical physical type fire element user could generate a flame striking attack, and the typical mage type fire element user could use a fire spell that had an explosive or scorching effect that produced results beyond its power level.

  That was why fire element users were employable on raids even at low power levels. The common level one or two flame user could do a lot better than a level one water or telekinesis user. That was the whole reason why he wanted to awaken a fire ability in the first place—it was guaranteed employment.

  And yet, now he seemed to have awakened a fire ability that had subdued its explosive characteristics, negating the main advantage of the element. William glanced at the judges, who were still observing him carefully. Perhaps the first thing he should focus on was increasing the explosive force of his ability.

  William frowned heavily, his brows creased in concentration as he tried to pour more mana into the ball of fire. With immense effort, he seemed to be having success, as the wisp of flame grew slightly larger and was now approaching the size of a fist. But once it reached that size, his efforts plateaued. He tried to grit his teeth and force more mana into the ball, but it appeared to refuse any additional mana input rather decidedly.

  That was frustrating, but at the very least he’d produced a ball of flame large enough to work as a passable fire spell. He pulled his arm back, then pointed forward at the target dummy to the side, letting loose a single word.

  “Go.”

  The ball of flames launched itself obligingly, traveling at a speed a bit faster than he’d anticipated, almost as if the mana itself was exhilarated to finally be let loose a little. As the judges watched on, the fireball collided with the target dummy and seemed to splash outwards, causing a small blackened patch to appear on the target dummy.

  It was more or less comparable to the spell a novice level one fire mage could cast, William thought. Perhaps even a bit weaker. The judges continued to look thoroughly unimpressed. But unlike a normal fire mage, something strange was happening with William’s spell. The fireball that had splashed against the dummy seemed to now be reforming into a ball again by the dummy. One of the judges stopped gossiping for a moment and lowered her glasses to get a better look at the rare sight.

  Now that the flame ball had reformed, it floated slowly back towards WIlliam. He felt that the reforming of the ball took a significant chunk of mana, which made him sweat a little and feel a bit weak, but he didn’t want to keel over and show weakness in front of the judges. Instead, he raised his finger one more time before the flame had fully retreated to him, then pointed at the target dummy once again.

  “Attack.”

  The fireball hurtled forward once more with eagerness, once again slamming into the target dummy with middling effect. He tried a few more times, but was not able to produce a stronger spell than the first time. At this point, the panel had completely lost interest, talking between each other without casting a single glance at him.

  And with that, one of the judges spoke.

  “Time is up, Mr. Blackwood. We will make deliberations now as the administrator will walk you through the physical evaluation.”

  The evaluation administrator nodded politely at the judges, then walked to William. “Give them a few minutes,” he said, pulling out a grip strength testing machine. “Now, we’ve added a physical evaluation to check your overall fitness levels as well as act as a test on how your awakened powers have enhanced your physical capabilities. Please put your fingers around this machine like so, and squeeze with as much force as you can muster.”

  William took the machine and squeezed, but he felt how weak he was. He had already been a bit on the thinner side before his trip to the hospital, but now he was even weaker than before because of having rotted in bed subsisting on only IV fluids for approximately a week.

  “Now we’ll be testing your push-up and pull-up ability.”

  Needless to say, as he proceeded with the range of exercises designed to evaluate his physical form, he struggled to perform as well as he could in his weakened state. William was already starting to feel a bit of despair about this whole evaluation.

  After completing the exercises, the administrator turned to him as the judges filed out of the room to the back. “Your fitness score is C-. Passable, but needs improvement.”

  The soldier jogged over and passed the administrator the evaluation forms from the judges, which the administrator quickly read.

  “As for your ranking, you’ve been evaluated to be Rank 1 on the middle to low end. That puts you in the general ballpark of people from your cohort with average to below average physical ability, and a middling level one ability.”

  The words hurt, but William resigned himself to his fate for now. There was nothing more he could do. Time to regroup and consider his options. He had a lot of thinking and planning to go through, now that the awakening dealt him a second-rate hand.

  The evaluation administrator then passed William a file of paperwork. “You’ll receive an email with these details later. This includes the obligations of your role as well as other important details.”

  William took the paper and scanned through it quickly, skipping past the sections about the training sessions and mandatory meetings, no longer as interested, and skimmed until he reached the compensation section. The payment amount he saw did not make him happy. The base rate was less than a third of his current rent, not including utilities. If he wanted to pay his rent and treat himself to a nice dinner later this week, he needed to take on missions and join raid parties—lots of them, and soon.