Two days passed in quiet, meticulous preparation within the confines of the Corvus estate.
During those forty-eight hours, the atmosphere inside the manor remained eerily calm on the surface, though every movement Wralq made was measured to the millimeter.
He spent his mornings walking through the manicured gardens, maintaining the image of a quiet, withdrawn child who was simply trying to stay out of the way of the noble family that had taken him in.
He spoke only when spoken to, kept his shoulders slightly sloped in a posture of modest deference, and ensured that neither Baroness Eleanor nor the two sisters could find any reason to suspect the dark current running beneath his submissive exterior.
According to the ancient and rigid regulations of the Royal Academy, the annual entrance examination was a singular, ruthless opportunity.
It was reserved exclusively for new applicants who had never before stepped foot inside the institution as enrolled students.
Former students who had failed or been expelled were strictly barred from re-entering, and those who missed their age window were forever cut off from the academy’s prestigious halls.
Wralq understood the weight of this rule better than anyone.
He knew that this single trial would dictate whether he secured a permanent, unassailable foothold in high society or remained a vulnerable piece on someone else’s chessboard.
On the morning of the examination, long before the sun had risen above the eastern horizon, a dense, frigid fog rolled across the capital, blanketing the cobblestone streets and dampening the grand stone facades of the noble district.
Wralq woke early, dressing in the simple yet respectable attire provided by the house.
He made his way down to the small morning parlor where Baron Ronald and phu nhân Eleanor were having an early tea before the day’s political engagements began.
Wralq stood near the doorway, dipping his head in a practiced, graceful gesture of respect that he had perfected over the past three days.
He waited until Baron Ronald set down his teacup before speaking in a low, gentle tone, requesting permission to leave the estate for the day.
He explained that he wished to visit the grand market square near the central district to purchase additional study manuscripts, parchment, and specialized ink, while also taking the opportunity to quietly observe the proper etiquette of the capital’s upper-class youth.
Baron Ronald looked up from his correspondence, his eyes softening as he took in the boy’s polite demeanor.
Pleased by what he perceived as genuine diligence and a desire to better himself without causing trouble, the Baron waved his hand in warm approval.
Phu nhân Eleanor offered a soft, permissive smile from across the table, adding a brief reminder for him to be cautious in the crowded streets before returning her attention to her tea.
Wralq expressed his quiet gratitude, bowed once more, and turned away.
The moment his back was to the parlor doors, his expression flattened into absolute neutrality.
The first hurdle of the morning was cleared; his presence outside the estate was now completely justified, and no one in the house would think to search for him until nightfall.
Leaving the iron gates of the Corvus manor behind, Wralq walked briskly through the mist-shrouded streets.
The air grew progressively louder and more chaotic as he approached the grand avenue leading toward the central district.
Hundreds of carriages bearing the ornate crests of various noble houses were already crawling along the wide stone roads, their iron-rimmed wheels clattering against the damp cobblestones.
Escorts in polished armor rode alongside the carriages, clearing pathways through the gathering crowds of commoners, merchants, and onlookers who had lined the streets to witness the annual influx of elite youth.
Before long, the massive architecture of the Royal Academy loomed out of the gray morning mist like a sleeping stone leviathan.
The academy was encircled by high, ancient walls of dark granite, topped with wrought-iron spires that glowed faintly with defensive magic matrices.
The main entrance was a sweeping double archway, wide enough to accommodate dozens of people walking abreast.
Beyond the gates, the registration grounds were already a sea of human activity.
Thousands of prospective examinees, ranging from cocky young lords in velvet doublets to nervous prodigies from outlying provinces, milled about in anxious clusters.
Wralq moved through the crowd like a shadow, keeping his eyes downcast just enough to avoid drawing attention while taking in every detail of his surroundings.
He navigated toward the far side of the registration plaza where a long row of heavy wooden desks had been erected under silk awnings.
Behind each desk sat a senior academy official, tasked with verifying credentials, checking magic registers, and issuing official examination tokens.
The line Wralq selected was moving slowly.
At the head of the desk stood a middle-aged registrar with deep dark circles beneath his eyes, clearly exhausted from hours of dealing with entitled noble youths and frantic guardians.
The official scrutinized every document presented to him with a sharp, cynical eye, searching for any minor discrepancy that would allow him to reject an applicant and shorten his workload.
As Wralq stepped up to the desk, the official did not even look up initially.
He merely extended a dry, calloused hand, his voice raspy from repetition as he demanded the applicant’s credentials, noble recommendation, and proof of guardianship.
For an unaccompanied child of fourteen to present credentials from a noble house without an adult escort or a family butler standing beside him was an immediate anomaly.
The official raised his eyes, his brow furrowing as he took in Wralq’s solitary figure.
Suspicion flickered instantly in the man’s tired gaze.
He opened his mouth, clearly preparing to bark a sharp interrogation regarding where the boy’s parents were and why a minor from House Corvus was wandering the registration grounds alone.
Wralq did not flinch, nor did he offer a spoken explanation.
Instead, he subtly shifted his internal mana, drawing upon the deep reservoir of dark energy within his core.
Without moving a finger or twitching a single muscle, he engaged the specialized spell structure Mammon had refined for him over the previous nights: the Dual-Ring Memory Compulsion.
An invisible, weightless ripple of altered mana seeped out from Wralq’s body, passing silently through the wooden desk and washing over the registrar’s mind.
The spell was not a violent mental invasion; rather, it was a delicate, insidious rewriting of the man’s immediate perception and short-term memory, sliding into his consciousness like ink dissolving into water.
First, Wralq targeted the glaring issue of his lack of a guardian.
Within the official’s mind, the spell smoothly constructed a vivid, flawless false memory.
To the official’s perception, the reality of the past five minutes shifted entirely.
He now distinctly remembered that just a moment ago, Baron Ronald Corvus himself had been standing right next to the boy.
In this fabricated memory, the Baron had presented his official house signet ring, signed the primary authorization scroll with his own hand, offered a brief word of praise for his adopted son, and then politely excused himself to attend an urgent high-level ministerial meeting at the nearby royal palace.
Next, the spell addressed the dangerous gap regarding Wralq’s official records.
In the real world, Wralq had only been brought into the Corvus household three days prior, a fact that any deep verification of kingdom records would quickly expose.
To neutralize this threat, the mental compulsion gently distorted the official’s perception of time and historical continuity.
The spell reshaped the man’s thoughts so that he firmly believed Wralq was not some street orphan picked up on a whim, but rather a long-kept secret ward of House Corvus.
In the official’s newly altered memory, Wralq had been raised under strict private tutelage at the family’s distant, secluded border estate for years, specifically groomed in secret to serve as the house’s dark-horse applicant for this exact academy intake.
While the mental compulsion locked these false realities into the registrar’s mind, Mammon’s ancient demonic magic went to work on the physical document resting on the desk.
Wralq placed a forged duplicate of his adoption paper onto the wooden surface.
The paper had been prepared the night before, but as the official reached for his heavy iron verification stamp, a microscopic thread of dark mana bled from Wralq’s fingertips into the parchment.
The magic altered the underlying ink structure, aligning the magical signature of the paper with the official enchanted registry of the academy.
The registrar, completely oblivious to the mental and physical manipulation taking place, picked up the heavy stamp and brought it down onto the parchment with a firm, rhythmic thud.
The red ink glowed briefly as the academy’s enchantment recognized the document as authentic, permanently binding the name Wralq Corvus into the official roster of examinees.
Once the seal was set, the spell matrix in the official’s mind quietly dissolved, leaving no lingering trace of mana or mental intrusion.
In its place remained a perfectly seamless, logical narrative.
The registrar blinked once, his tired expression softening into a look of professional courtesy.
He picked up a polished brass token engraved with an examination number and handed it across the desk to Wralq, offering a brief, respectful nod.
He was entirely convinced that everything had proceeded strictly by the book, from the Baron’s earlier departure to the flawless authenticity of the paperwork.
Wralq accepted the token with a quiet, polite bow, slipping it into his inner pocket before stepping away from the desk.
He walked away smoothly, his heartbeat steady and his expression unreadable.
The dangerous gamble had paid off; his identity was now legally sealed into the academy’s official records, completely bypassing his adoptive family and leaving no paper trail that could be traced back to his sudden appearance three days ago.
Passing through the heavy iron gates that separated the registration plaza from the academy’s inner grounds, Wralq found himself stepping into a vast, sprawling stone courtyard.
The courtyard was surrounded by towering arcades of white stone, with grand staircases leading up to elevated balconies and academic halls.
Thousands of examinees had already gathered here, creating a dense, humming crowd that vibrated with nervous energy, quiet arrogance, and frantic last-minute preparation.
Rather than wading into the center of the crowd where he might be drawn into unwanted interactions, Wralq immediately sought out a position of tactical advantage.
He walked toward the eastern perimeter of the courtyard, where an ancient, towering oak tree stood near a massive stone pillar.
He stepped beneath the deep shadow cast by the oak’s sprawling branches, leaning his back against the cool stone of the pillar.
From this quiet, elevated vantage point, he could observe the entire courtyard without attracting attention to himself.
Wralq narrowed his eyes, his dark, violet-tinted pupils moving methodically from group to group as he began to analyze the competition.
The examinees gathered in the courtyard represented the absolute pinnacle of the younger generation, but Wralq’s analytical mind quickly categorized them into distinct tiers.
The vast majority were ordinary nobles and wealthy commoner prodigies.
They moved in nervous clusters, their hands twitching near their spell-foci or sword hilts, their voices hushed as they exchanged rumors about the upcoming trials.
They were competent, certainly, but their mana signatures were unstable, fluttering with anxiety and unrefined emotion.
Wralq dismissed them almost instantly; they were mere background noise, cannon fodder designed to be filtered out during the preliminary rounds.
However, as his gaze swept across the center of the plaza, his attention was drawn to several distinct groups that stood apart from the rest.
These were the true elites, the individuals whose presence commanded immediate space around them.
As Wralq listened intently to the hushed conversations of the surrounding examinees, filtering through the background chatter with practiced focus, he began to piece together the identities of the key figures.
In total, Wralq identified nineteen individuals who possessed mana signatures and physical postures that marked them as truly dangerous.
These nineteen youths were widely rumored to possess talent that transcended their age group, individuals who had been nurtured with vast resources, elite instruction, and top-tier mana cultivation techniques since early childhood.
Positioned near the central fountain was a tall, silver-haired boy flanked by three heavily armored retainers.
He carried himself with absolute, effortless arrogance, his hand resting lightly on the pommel of a rapier that hummed with condensed wind mana.
Surrounding examinees kept a respectful distance of at least ten paces from him, whispering his name in hushed, reverent tones.
He was the eldest son of a high-ranking duke from the northern provinces, a sword-mage who had reportedly slain a mid-tier beast single-handedly at the age of twelve.
To his left stood a group of young women dressed in silk robes embroidered with intricate runic patterns.
At the center of this group was a girl with striking golden hair and piercing blue eyes.
She stood with quiet, majestic composure, her posture regal and unyielding.
The rumors circulating through the crowd confirmed her identity: she was the First Princess of the Norden Kingdom, the very realm in which the academy resided.
Her mana core vibrated with a remarkably pure, dense light element, an innate affinity so rare that the kingdom’s high priests had declared her a divine prodigy at her birth.
Not far from the Norden princess stood another young woman who commanded equal, if not greater, attention.
She was accompanied by a small retinue of foreign diplomats and battle-mages clad in dark crimson cloaks.
Her hair was as black as obsidian, tied back in a sharp, military braid, and her dark eyes swept across the courtyard with cold, calculating detachment.
Through the internal link in his mind, Mammon’s deep, resonant voice echoed softly, confirming the girl’s origin before Wralq even overheard the crowd’s chatter.
She was the youngest princess of the neighboring Lopre Kingdom, a powerful empire known for its ruthless military doctrine and advanced martial magic.
She had been sent to the Royal Academy as a high-profile foreign exchange scholar, a living symbol of the delicate peace treaty between the two kingdoms.
Her mana signature was vastly different from that of the Norden princess; it was sharp, compressed, and laced with a subtle, aggressive heat that suggested a high mastery over explosive fire magic.
Wralq watched the two princesses silently, noting the subtle tension between their respective retinues.
Around them were the remaining members of the elite nineteen: heirs to ancient marquessates, prodigy elementalists from distant vassal states, and young martial artists who had already unlocked advanced aura channels.
Each of them possessed a level of power that far surpassed the average examinee, and each carried the pride of their respective lineages.
Wralq’s expression remained completely neutral as he cataloged their faces, mana signatures, and physical habits.
He felt no intimidation, nor did he feel any desire to measure his ego against theirs.
To him, these nineteen prodigies were simply high-value variables in a complex equation.
They were targets to be observed, analyzed, and, if necessary, dismantled when the time was right.
As the morning sun reached its zenith, burning away the last traces of fog from the sky, a massive brass bell mounted atop the central spire of the academy began to toll.
The deep, booming chime reverberated through the stone courtyard, instantly cutting through the noise of thousands of chatting voices.
Silence fell over the crowd as all eyes turned toward the grand balcony overlooking the plaza.
A tall, austere figure dressed in the dark crimson robes of a senior archmage stepped forward to the stone railing.
His long white beard was neatly trimmed, and his eyes glowed with a faint, terrifying aura of mana that amplified his voice naturally, sending his words echoing across the vast space without the need for a mechanical speaker.
The archmage did not waste time with long speeches or welcoming pleasantries.
He laid out the rules of the first trial with cold, clinical efficiency.
The first trial was titled the Magical Aptitude and Survival Assessment.
The entire body of examinees would be transported via a massive, short-range spatial teleportation matrix into a grand, enclosed testing domain known as the Ironwood Trial Grounds.
The domain was an artificial wilderness constructed specifically to evaluate an examinee’s raw combat capability, mana efficiency, and psychological fortitude under pressure.
Once inside the domain, the examinees would face continuous, relentless waves of artificial beasts and magical constructs spawned by the domain’s core matrix.
The objective was simple: kill the beasts to earn points, which were automatically tracked and recorded by the brass examination tokens issued at registration.
Smaller, weaker beasts were worth fewer points, while larger, more dangerous constructs yielded massive point values.
However, the trial possessed a ruthless mechanic that elevated it far beyond a simple monster-slaying exercise.
The waves operated on a scaling difficulty system.
The initial waves would consist of weak, slow-moving beasts designed to test basic spellwork and physical reactions.
But as time progressed, subsequent waves would grow exponentially stronger, faster, and far more aggressive.
More importantly, the beasts in the later waves would possess crude tactical intelligence, forming hunting packs and actively flanking examinees who tried to hide or turtle in defensive positions.
Furthermore, points were not permanently secured upon killing a beast.
If an examinee was struck, injured, or forced into a defensive posture that consumed excessive mana, their point score would decay.
Most brutally, examinees were permitted to contest one another.
While lethal force against fellow applicants was strictly forbidden and monitored by observing faculty spirits, examinees could attack others to drain their point totals or force them to activate their emergency escape talismans, effectively eliminating them from the trial entirely.
To pass the first trial and advance to the second stage, an examinee had to survive the duration of the assessment while maintaining a point total that placed them in the top twenty percent of the overall applicant pool.
Standing in the shadow of the oak tree, Wralq listened to every word with sharp, focused intensity.
In his mind, Mammon let out a low, gravelly chuckle, the sound dripping with ancient, dark amusement.
This is not a test of mere muscle or loud, wasteful spells, Mammon analyzed in his deep, echoing voice, vibrating through Wralq’s consciousness.
The academy administrators wish to see who possesses the mind of a true predator.
The fools in this crowd will exhaust their mana early, throwing grand, flashy elemental spells at the weak initial waves to flex their power before the crowd.
They will build up high scores in the first twenty minutes, only to find themselves completely drained when the intelligent, high-tier waves begin to spawn.
Wralq offered a subtle, almost imperceptible nod of agreement as he adjusted the collar of his coat.
The key to this trial, Mammon continued, lies in absolute efficiency and environmental control.
You must use the dual-ring matrix to construct low-cost, high-precision spells that destroy the beasts’ core nodes with minimal energy expenditure.
You must conserve your mana while constantly moving, letting the arrogant nobles waste their strength fighting the larger hordes while you pick off high-value targets from the shadows.
And when the later waves arrive, you will use the Concealment matrix to let the intelligent beasts pass over you and attack the exhausted groups of examinees.
Wralq tightened his grip on his brass examination token, feeling the subtle magical circuits humming inside the metal.
He mapped out his strategy in a matter of seconds.
He would not attempt to claim the top spot on the scoreboard during the opening minutes; doing so would only draw the attention of the nineteen elites and force him into early confrontations.
Instead, he would maintain a steady, mathematically precise pace, staying comfortably within the passing threshold while keeping his true capabilities completely hidden.
Above the balcony, the senior archmage raised his staff, casting a blinding ray of crimson light into the sky.
The light expanded into a massive, shimmering magic circle that spanned the entire width of the courtyard, illuminating the faces of the thousands of waiting youths below.
The amplified voice of the invigilator boomed across the arena one final time, echoing off the ancient granite walls and ringing in the ears of every examinee.
The spatial matrix is fully charged, the archmage’s voice declared, cold and unyielding.
Prepare yourselves.
The countdown has begun.
Five minutes remaining until domain deployment.
Standing beneath the deep shadow of the ancient oak, Wralq stood entirely still.
His hands rested calmly at his sides, his breath slow and rhythmic, and his dark violet eyes fixed on the glowing spell circle above.
The quiet before the storm had arrived, and as the seconds began to tick away, Wralq Corvus prepared to take his first step into the meat grinder of the Royal Academy.