Chương 2: The Aptitude Test, and the Blessing of Being Utterly Average

The octagonal mana-appraisal crystal sat on its marble pedestal in the middle of the great hall, throwing back the face of six-year-old Lucian in a dull, murky grey light — pathetically faint. No golden column of light shot through the ceiling. No thunder rolled. No beasts came bowing in from across the land. Just grey. A flat, unremarkable grey, marking C-grade mana — the same energy level as any ordinary kid selling vegetables at the market.

Lucian pulled his hand back, and his chest let out a quiet, private sigh of relief. Perfect. Thank the gods. Average in the most beautifully average way possible. For a man who'd died of overwork at his desk in his last life, having jaw-dropping magical talent in a world this deep in war was basically signing his own death warrant.

In the Solar Empire, any noble child who tested A-grade or higher at age six got stamped "Strategic Asset" by the Royal Ordnance Bureau and shipped straight to the Frontline Military Academy the second they turned eight, groomed to serve as cannon fodder on the northern border. C-grade meant he was off the military reserve list. Officially exempt. Legally, permanently useless — and about to be raised in silk and comfort for the rest of his life.

Except the mood in the great hall right now didn't match how relaxed Lucian felt. Archmage Bartolo — the senior appraisal official the court had sent over — was on his knees on the stone floor, drenched in cold sweat, his teeth chattering out a dry, rattling clack-clack-clack. To his left stood the Sword Emperor Regulus, arms crossed, one calloused hand resting on his sword hilt. He hadn't drawn it.

He didn't need to — the blade-intent leaking off his fingertips alone was enough to crack the marble floor around him into a dozen razor-thin fault lines. To his right, Lady Valeria sipped her tea with elegant composure. Her shadow on the wall behind her writhed in ways shadows shouldn't, and every so often a black crack would flicker open around the hem of her dress, as if it were considering whether to swallow the room whole.

Two retired war monsters, staring down one very unlucky mage, waiting for an explanation.

"Y-your Grace... my lady..." Bartolo swallowed hard, dredging up every ounce of the flowery court vocabulary he'd spent sixty years polishing, if only to keep his head attached to his neck.

"The young master's mana... carries an extraordinarily— extraordinarily stable quality! Yes! Absolutely stable! None of the wild volatility you see in beast-tainted mana, none of the void's savagery! This is— this is the mark of a calm, steady temperament, still as an autumn lake!"

"Get to the number," Regulus said, low enough that the paintings on the wall rattled.

"It— it's high C-grade... no— pure C-grade, my lord!" Bartolo squeezed his eyes shut, bracing to be cut clean in half. Silence. A silence that lasted an entire century. Lucian stood by the pedestal, hands clasped behind his back, already rehearsing the little speech he'd give his parents about how he was perfectly fine being a talentless son. Then a large, weathered hand landed on his shoulder. Regulus crouched down to look his son in the eye.

There was no disappointment there, no noble-house fury — just a clumsy, overflowing kind of gentleness. He clapped Lucian on the shoulder, hard enough to nearly dislocate it. This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

"It's fine, son," Regulus said, laughing a little too loudly, working hard to sound casual.

"So what if it's C-grade? When you're older, I'll hand you the entire ledger for the Vance Mercenary Company. Chief accountant's a plenty respectable title! Deciding who gets paid is more power than any sword ever gave anyone!" Valeria stepped in too, pulling Lucian into her arms and stroking his dark hair. The clean scent of night-blooming jasmine drifted off her, cutting through the tension in the room instantly.

"You don't need to listen to this fussy old man," Valeria whispered into his ear, her voice sweet and her words absolutely blood-curdling.

"If you want, tonight I'll slip into the Royal Appraisal Institute and change your entire file to SSS-grade. While I'm there, I'll wipe out this appraiser's whole family line too, so nobody asks questions." Kneeling on the floor, Bartolo heard that and his eyes rolled back so far he nearly fainted on the spot.

"You don't have to do that, Mother," Lucian said quickly, shaking his head, dead serious.

"I actually like C-grade. It's very... peaceful." Both Regulus and Valeria froze for a moment, then looked at their six-year-old son with eyes full of aching pity. Neither said another word. They just sighed, told a servant to give Bartolo a fat pouch of gold, and hustled him out the door like he was something you needed a priest to bless the house after. That afternoon, Lucian set the first stage of his freedom-and-leisure plan into motion by walking straight into the family library.

House Vance's library was a seven-story octagonal tower, home to more than thirty thousand books gathered from across the continent. No guards here. No shouting from the training grounds. And best of all: nobody making him swing a sword eight hours a day. Lucian picked a quiet corner by a sunlit window, dragged over a soft armchair, and opened his first book.

He needed to brush up on herbal medicine, trade agreements, and basic domestic skills — all essential groundwork for the long, comfortable retirement he had planned. Clink. The sound of a silver tray touching the table pulled Lucian out of his book. He looked up, startled, to find a maid setting down a massive spread of food, her eyes brimming with tears: a premium dragon-butter cream cake twice the usual size, a steaming glass of hot magic-cow milk, and a plate of snow-mountain fruit sliced with painstaking care.

"Young master..." The maid let out a small hiccup, dabbing at the corner of her eye with a handkerchief.

"Please, don't be too hard on yourself. Even if you can't become a great mage, you'll always be our most cherished young master." Before he could answer, she covered her face and hurried off, as if one more second in the room might shatter what was left of his fragile pride. Lucian looked at the enormous cake, then at the door she'd just fled through, the corner of his mouth twitching. What was that about? He was just sitting here reading. But the cake really was delicious.

The rich, buttery sweetness melted the instant it hit his tongue, the premium cream leaving him strangely, thoroughly content. No ten thousand sword swings a day. No bloody combat-magic drills. Just sit around reading and get served double portions of amazing food. If Lucian had to score this life out of ten, he'd have given it an eleven. Once he'd finished the cake, Lucian stood up, brushed the crumbs off his shirt, and started wandering the shelves.

He climbed the spiral wooden staircase all the way to the tower's top floor, where the air turned dry and thick with the smell of old, musty paper. The seventh floor held nothing but discarded records — tattered books hauled back from battlefield sweeps, things the household's mages had never bothered to look at twice because they contained no useful magic circles. Lucian dragged over a small wooden ladder and climbed toward the top of a shelf tucked deep in a dark corner.

His eyes drifted across the dust-caked spines, then stopped. Wedged between two thick chronicles sat a small book bound in fossilized hide, its cover edges worn ragged. There was no standard Imperial script on the spine — just strange, twisting lines, tangled together like roots straining to break free of the earth. His small six-year-old hand reached out, fingertips brushing lightly against the rough surface of the spine. A faint jolt of static crackled across his skin.

Deep in Lucian's eyes, a faint, ghostly character flickered to life for an instant — and vanished back into the library's quiet dark.