The training grounds were bigger than anything Nagi had ever stood inside — a stone arena ringed by stands already filling with examiners, noble families, and students who hadn’t yet learned to hide their nerves.
Morning light cut across a wide circular field marked with glowing rune circles, each one waiting to measure something different.
Banners overhead read *Entrance Exam — Day 1: Baseline & Practical Flow.*
Nagi left his bag at the side of the commoner line and stood with his hands in his pockets, taking it all in without much expression.
*Big place,* he thought.
*Lots of eyes.* He watched the arena settle, the noise of hundreds of teenagers folding into a low, restless murmur.
*Still just another road.*
The nobles from the plaza had regrouped a few paces off, loud in the particular way that came from never having had a reason to be quiet.
The blond boy was stretching theatrically, small arcs of lightning crackling between his fingers.
“Watch this,” he told whoever was listening.
“My family’s thunder heritage. These commoners are going to cry when they see real power.”
The girl beside him didn’t bother lowering her voice.
“Especially that dusty speed boy. D-rank? How pathetic.”
Nagi heard it.
He didn’t turn.
A stern man in flowing robes stepped onto a raised platform at the arena’s edge, his voice carrying easily across the field even before the amplification magic caught it.
“Welcome, applicants. Today we test baseline magic and practical application. You’ll demonstrate your primary ability here, in the arena. Ranks will be adjusted live.” His eyes swept the crowd, noble and common alike, without favoring either.
“The runes judge fairly. Step forward when called.”
The first few names went by quickly.
A noble girl summoned a water serpent that moved with an easy, practiced elegance, drawing applause from the stands — “See?” she called out, pleased with herself.
“Flowing grace.” A commoner boy after her tried a flame punch that sputtered and died at a dim, embarrassed D-rank, and looked like he wanted the ground to open up beneath him.
Then a farm kid from a few places ahead of Nagi in line got called — someone Nagi recognized from the plaza, the girl who’d been gripping her staff too tight.
She raised a wall of vines from the stone floor, solid, respectable work.
“For my village,” she murmured, like she needed to say it out loud to believe she’d actually done it.
The blond noble went next.
He surged forward with augmented strength and drove a fist into the ground, cracking stone in a small crater that pulled a genuine cheer from the crowd.
“That’s how it’s done,” he said, grinning at no one in particular.
“Bet the speed villager can’t even move fast enough to dodge a snail.”
“Nagi Akama — Juju Village!”
Nagi walked into the arena at the same pace he walked everywhere.
The field went a little quieter as he crossed it — nobles whispering behind their hands, commoners watching with open curiosity — until he came to a stop in the center of the rune circle, where the scanning orb hovered waiting for him.
“Demonstrate your primary magic,” the head examiner said.
“No time limit on the attempt. Show us what you can do.”
Nagi nodded once.
“Alright.”
*Sixty seconds max,* he reminded himself.
*Don’t push it.
Just flow.*
He breathed in, and the world thinned at the edges the way it always did.
He moved.
There were no elemental flares, no summoned creatures, nothing to catch the light — just Nagi, blurring into tight, controlled circles around the arena, kicking dust into smooth arcs behind him.
He passed close enough to the noble group to ruffle their carefully arranged hair before any of them registered he’d been there at all.
He looped through the fading remnant of the water serpent and scattered it on wind pressure alone.
He came to a dead stop in front of a target dummy and tapped it once, lightly, sending it spinning on its post from momentum it hadn’t seen coming.
Above him, the scanning orb brightened and shifted — D climbing unsteadily toward a flickering C, a note appearing beneath it: *Unique Speed.*
“Pure speed variant,” the head examiner said, something genuinely surprised in his voice now.
“No elemental support. No blessing behind it. Just velocity. Continue.”
At fifty-eight seconds, Nagi slowed to a stop in the center of the circle.
His chest worked harder than it should have for something that had looked so effortless, sweat beading along his hairline, but his face stayed exactly as calm as it had been walking in.
“That’s it for now,” he said.
The arena held a beat of silence before the reactions split — nobles laughing behind their hands, a few of the common kids watching him with something closer to hope than mockery.
“Sixty seconds?” the blond noble called, loud enough for the whole field to hear.
“That’s all? My thunder can go all day. You’re still just a D-ranker playing at speed.”
Nagi didn’t answer him.
He walked back toward the line, wiping the sweat from his forehead with his sleeve, while the head examiner made a note on his scroll and the orb above the arena settled into its final verdict: *C-rank potential — Unique Speed Magic (Limited Duration).*
Limited duration.
That part, Nagi agreed with.
He’d known his limit since he was eight years old, had felt its edges a thousand times in a hundred different backyards and forest paths, always the same wall arriving at almost exactly the same place.
What he didn’t know — what nobody standing in that arena had thought to ask, and what the orb hovering over his head had no way of measuring — was who had built that wall in the first place, and why it had been built to hold for exactly that long, and not one second more.
*End of Chapter 4*