The violent, copper-rich stench of the Ironwood forest vanished in a single, disorienting breath.
In its place came the heavy, suffocating atmosphere of the Royal Academy’s Grand Atrium—a space defined by cold polished white marble, centuries of dried ink, and the oppressive hum of high-tier arcane containment seals.
Six hundred survivors stood upon the pristine stone floor.
They were a ragged, traumatized remnant of the four thousand who had entered the wilderness three hours prior.
Dirt was caked into the seams of their armor; dried blood blackened their cuffs, and their lungs still heaved with the lingering terror of the sovereign insectoid beasts.
High above them, arranged along three tier balconies crafted from dark mahogany and silver, sat the senior faculty members and observing nobles.
They looked down at the bruised youths not with pity, but with the cold, calculating scrutiny of butchers inspecting raw meat.
In the center of the atrium, hovering silently twenty feet above the ground, were three colossal monoliths carved from seamless obsidian.
Their surfaces pulsed with intricate, interlocking spell arrays—brilliant veins of gold, azure, and emerald light that warped the ambient air with heat and static electricity.
“Welcome, survivors, to the Second Stage: The Academic Tribunal,” the dry, rhythmic voice of Senior Archmage Vane reverberated through the hall, amplified by sonic resonance runes.
“A brute may survive a night in the forest through luck or cowardice.
But a true elite of this kingdom does not merely swing a sword or discharge unrefined mana like a beast.
You must master the geometric language of creation itself.” Archmage Vane gestured toward the hovering obsidian structures.
“Before you hang three foundational spell matrices derived from human military and elven defensive archives.
Each matrix contains deliberate structural flaws, energy bottlenecks, and unstable loop resonances.
You have two hours to dissect their geometry, formulate an optimization thesis on your parchment, and prepare to defend your logic before the Council.” A wave of quiet despair washed through the lower ranks.
Dozens of martial-focused candidates, who had relied entirely on physical muscle and raw sword technique to clear the first trial, turned deathly pale.
To them, the glowing runes were not magic; they were an incomprehensible maze designed to execute their ambitions.
Wralq stood near the shadow of a massive fluted pillar at the far edge of the hall.
He kept his posture stooped, his shoulders slightly rounded, and his chin tilted down to hide his face beneath his dark fringe.
His violet eyes, however, swept over the hovering monoliths with cold, absolute clarity.
“Fools,” Mammon’s voice echoed in the cavernous depths of Wralq’s consciousness, dripping with ancient, velvety mockery.
“Look at how they construct a basic stabilization loop.
Seven redundant containment rings just to prevent a simple fire matrix from exploding in the caster’s hand.
Human spellcraft is like a house built by a blind carpenter—heavy, bloated, and terrified of its own shadow.” “It is bloated because their spiritual veins are fragile,” Wralq replied internally, his thoughts remaining entirely level and detached.
“They cannot handle raw mana throughput without safety valves.
If they cast with our efficiency, their arms would burn to ash from the inside out.” “A valid limitation for cattle,” Mammon purred smoothly, his dark energy coiling lazily around Wralq’s core.
“So, my quiet vessel, how shall we play this game?
Shall I grant you the ancient Demonic Syntax?
A single line of our script would collapse all three of those monoliths into perfect, pristine energy cells and make these old men bow on their knees.” “No,” Wralq answered immediately.
“If I write in Demonic Syntax, I will be executed as a heretic before the sun sets.
We are here to secure my legal status as Wralq Corvus, not to start a war with the Archmages.
We give them human logic—just remarkably clean human logic.” Wralq stepped forward to one of the isolated bronze writing pedestals.
All around him, the hall was a battleground of panic.
Quills scraped frantically against heavy parchment; young nobles argued in hushed, desperate whispers, and several commoner mages stared at the glowing monoliths until tears of frustration leaked from their eyes.
Wralq picked up the enchanted quill, dipping its silver tip into the dark blue ink.
He turned his attention to the second monolith—a complex, multi-layered defensive barrier matrix used by the Kingdom’s border garrisons.
To an ordinary scholar, the matrix was a masterwork of human engineering.
But through the lens of Mammon’s ancient knowledge, Wralq saw the fatal flaw instantly.
The human designers had attempted to convert earth-element mana into pure force shielding, but they had forced the energy through a square conversion node instead of a circular one.
The resulting friction bled off nearly twenty-two percent of the input energy as useless heat.
Wralq began to write.
He did not use shortcuts.
He did not introduce unknown variables.
Instead, he worked through the bloated, traditional human mathematical proofs step-by-step.
He deliberately allowed his handwriting to appear slightly cramped and meticulous—the handwriting of an obsessive, lower-class scholar who spent his nights reading dusty library archives rather than training under grandmasters.
Sentence by sentence, equation by equation, he translated Mammon’s high-tier energy conversion principles into acceptable human terminology.
He demonstrated how rotating the conversion node by precisely twelve degrees would allow the earth mana to slide smoothly into the force array, eliminating the heat bleed entirely without requiring a single additional drop of mana from the caster.
“It is almost painful to watch you write so many useless lines for such a simple truth,” Mammon sighed in his mind, though his tone carried a hint of dark pride.
“You have the patience of a spider weaving a web in the rain, Wralq.” “A spider survives because its web is unseen until the fly is caught,” Wralq thought back, his quill moving with steady, rhythmic precision.
Across the sprawling atrium, bathed in the soft blue light of the first monolith, stood Princess Lehih of the Lopre Kingdom.
Her long, dark blue hair fell over her shoulders like spun silk, and her silver-trimmed robes were spotless, untouched by the grime of the forest trial.
She was surrounded by three junior examiners who watched her with open reverence.
Lehih was not merely writing; she was demonstrating.
Her pale, elegant hand moved through the air, drawing glowing threads of compressed ice mana that mirrored the monolith’s internal circuits.
She spoke in low, melodic tones, pointing out structural flaws with the casual confidence of someone born to rule the academic world.
As she finished a complex proof, her icy blue eyes drifted across the hall.
Her gaze scanned the frantic, sweat-drenched crowds of candidates before pausing briefly on the shadowy pillar at the rear.
There sat Wralq, bent low over his parchment, his ink-stained fingers moving methodically, completely isolated from the rest of the world.
He looked small, exhausted, and utterly ordinary.
A common survivor, Lehih thought silently, her eyes lingering for only a fraction of a second before turning away.
He survived the forest through luck and thickets.
Here, where true intellect is laid bare, the weak fade into the background where they belong.
She did not see the tiny, imperceptible adjustment Wralq made to his writing posture the exact moment her eyes swept over him—relaxing his shoulders just enough to look slightly hunched and strained.
“She has dismissed you again,” Mammon whispered, his dark laughter echoing like dry leaves dragging across stone.
“She thinks you are a worm crawling in the dust while she flies above.” “Let her fly,” Wralq thought cold-bloodedly, placing his quill neatly beside the inkwell as the brass bell chimed to signal the end of the written phase.
“The higher she flies, the harder her bones will shatter when she hits the stone.”