Chương 9: System Evaluation

Arielle almost didn't hear what Archmage Elric said. She was too busy looking at his companion and the aura emanating from him. Ari had never encountered anything like it before, but she knew what it was. He oozed authority, plain and simple. It was the Celestial's blessing, an acknowledgement of the supreme rank of an Ascendant who had achieved or surpassed the Master Level. It shimmered in the air like an oppressive heat.

"Arielle? Arielle." Areille blinked up at Elric, who gestured.

"You have to greet Master Phineas. He's an old classmate of mine and one of the best, kindest, and most open-hearted mages of our generation. Truly a man with the soul of the Sentinel himself."

"Your capacity for shameless flattery is almost terrifying, Elric." Mage Phineas' expression didn't change, his eyes shrewdly scanning Ari.

"Especially when you're asking favors from me."

"Of course. After all, what are dear friends for if not to flatter and favor each other?" Ah. So I was right. That is what friendships are about. Ari couldn't convincingly flatter anyone, but she could do favors for people. She glanced at the boys who remained bowing. She wondered why for a second before realization hit her.

One of the things she'd been taught in her later classes at the schoolyard was that, when meeting an Ascendant of Master tier or above, she was supposed to bow deeply and not straighten until the Ascendant allowed it. She had not done that with Elric, thanks to their familiarity, but this man probably expected something like that. Without further ado, Ari got to her feet and executed a deep bow.

"Oh, no need for that," the other man said, but when she looked up, his piercing gaze made her look away again. She had enough trouble maintaining eye contact daily, but she could manage better with Archmage Elric, who had warm eyes and who, while being powerful, didn't ooze as much command. She wondered why it was that Elric, despite clearly having more power than this man, still felt more approachable. Elric also did not have the Celestial's blessing oozing from his pores.

However, the badges and adornments on his robes ascertained that he was more accomplished than Phineas.

"Is she alright?" the man murmured to Elric.

"Yes. She's just shy and gets distracted easily. Ari, you can stop bowing now." Ari straightened in time to watch Phineas throw Elric a wry look.

"Of course, there had to be something wrong with her. She is your cousin after all."

"Ah, Phineas," Elric laid a hand on his chest.

"You wound me."

"Cousin?" Ari inquired. Elric gave her a sharp look.

"Yes, silly. We're cousins." And then he did something even stranger. He winked. Ari frowned. He winked at her again. She thought maybe he had an eye problem. Oh wait. Her brother often sent her a signal like that when he wanted her to lie for him. Was that what Elric wanted? Was he asking her to go along with his lie? Why? And why did he lie in the first place? Luckily, Phineas wasn't staring at the winking Elric or the befuddled Ari. Instead, he glanced at the boys.

"Why are you still here, Colin?"

"Sorry, Master Phineas," the blonde stammered.

"I was just waiting for my father."

"Your father's busy. You should go back to campus. Just because Basillica offers an obscene amount of exeats doesn't mean you should spend them all here."

"Of course, sir," Colin said.

"I'll leave now." But as he and his dark-haired friend hurried away, he called out over his shoulder, "Bye, Ari!"

"Bye," Ari responded, waving distantly. She felt a little sad that their conversation had been cut short. She would have liked to explore his concept of friendship a little more.

"So," Phineas asked.

"The two of you are cousins." Ari froze and just about kept herself from looking at the ceiling. What should she do now? If she said yes, she would give it away because she was not a good liar. But she also did not want to betray Elric by denying whatever he'd just said.

"Yes," Elric answered before she could.

"I'll tell you all about it later, but can we get on with the test, if you don't mind? Her sister threatened to poison me if I didn't get her back home on time." Phineas snorted and turned away with a swish of his robes, walking briskly without waiting for them to follow.

"Just play along," Elric told her when the other man was out of earshot.

"I'll explain later." Ari bobbed her head and followed Elric, who was in turn following the Master with deep green robes. They went down a long, spiral staircase at the end of the hall, which might have led them underground as though they were moles. Although this was no molehouse. They appeared in a grand central hall, a tall, gleaming chamber with polished granite floors and dark green tiles. Golden statues stood at each corner, behind sigils that had been carved into the ground.

This was overlayed by desks where mages sat, black ink appearing and disappearing with a wave of the hand as they chattered amongst each other and wrote on the scrolls. The center point of the room was a hollow circle, surrounding a single, golden point. Phineas clapped once, and all activity ceased.

"Please clear the room," he said, and he didn't need to repeat himself. The rest of the mages instantly got to their feet and began to stream out in an orderly fashion.

"Happy?" Phineas asked Elric when the room was empty.

"Yes," Elric said.

"Thank you."

"Well, madam," Phineas switched his attention to Ari.

"Your cousin insisted on emptying the evaluation hall for your use today. He said you were too shy to have it in front of people, and he urged that since I'm so kindhearted, I must accommodate you." He raised his eyebrow.

"I've just put the productivity of this entire department on hold for your sake, so I truly hope you don't disappoint me." Ari nodded. She didn't want to disappoint him either.

"Okay. Let me go through it, so you're not confused. You're going to get evaluated by the system today. You will stand right on that dot..." He pointed at the one at the center of the circle.

"And the system will welcome you aboard, and it will start reading your stats. Most beginners' stats are the same. You'll either be at an initiate or apprentice tier, and you will probably be anywhere from Level 1 to 20. Rarely will a new student go above that, no matter how much you've trained. Oh, and we will also read your lean today." He pointed up, and she suddenly noticed identical black blocks fused into the walls on all four sides, the leylines running down from them.

"Those will emit essences, and it's your job to simply focus on inhaling them until they fill up your cores. It should be primarily effortless on your part. The machines are doing most of the work. Once you've reached your core limit, the machine will stop on its own, and I'll take that read into account when assigning your final stats. Understood?"

"Yes, sir."

"Alright. I will explain everything else to you after the evaluation is done. Now, if you please." Ari followed the direction of his pointed finger and went to stand on the dot. Phineas and Elric then moved to the far end of the room, where a desk was planted on a raised stage with a glass that separated them from her. Arielle spotted a cylindrical rolling device on the desk, which Phineas twisted as she waited.

"Don't strain too much, Arielle." Master Phineas called out, voice only slightly muffled by the glass.

"You're not in control here. Just inhale. And exhale. Keep doing that, and your cores should naturally fill up slowly, until they're done, okay?" She nodded.

"Okay. Let's go, She breathed in and out, but there was one more interruption.

"Can you close your eyes while you do it?" Elric asked.

"You don't have to close your eyes," Phineas said.

"Yes, she does."

"I'm the one running the evaluation here. I should know whether or not she has to keep her eyes closed, which indeed, she does not."

"I'm just trying to see something."

"What difference does it make if her eyes are closed or not?"

"If it makes no difference, then why are you being such a hardass about it?" Arielle blinked at the floating orbs as she waited for the two mages to finish their bickering. She didn't like arguments, but this one was much quieter than the ones her family would have, and she could zone out of these much more easily. The orbs hummed to her. She imagined them introducing themselves.

"I'm Arielle," she told them under her breath.

"Fine! Heavens, I forgot how irritating you are." Phineas released a sigh, then announced.

"Arielle, you may close your eyes for this next part if you wish." She didn't wish it, but it seemed Mage Elric did, and at the end of the day, she didn't mind. He was probably trying to test her affinity without the added advantage of her essence-sight. So she closed her eyes and took a deep breath.

"Okay. I'm ready."

"We're starting." This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there. Arielle began the breathing exercises. She could still feel the essences entering her cores, could almost visualize them even with her eyes closed. Additionally, she got a pleasant message echoing in her ears [WELCOME, ARIELLE BLACKSOIL, TO THE SYSTEM OF STOICHIOMANCY. PLEASE WAIT WHILE WE EVALUATE YOU...] While the test was ongoing, Phineas watched Elric, suspicious of the look on his face as he watched the young girl inhale and exhale.

"Do you want to tell me now what this is about?"

"What?" Phineas raised an eyebrow.

"You call me at the dead of the night, interrupting my meditation to beg me to fit in a last-minute evaluation for you. Then, on the day of, you have me sack my assistants from the room for your cousin. Now you order her to evaluate with her eyes closed." Elric didn't answer. He still hadn't taken his eyes off the girl, and when Phineas nudged him, he only blinked and said, "Sorry, I wasn't listening. Could you repeat the question?" Phineas resisted the urge to throttle the Archmage.

To be fair, he should be used to Elric's peculiarity by now. The archmage had always been a strange one, even when they were in the Academy. Then, he'd foolishly insisted on helping people out even when everyone else was competitively throwing each other under the bus. Elric had even encouraged and propped up the hopeless candidates who should have rightly failed out of the course earlier because they simply didn't have what it takes. Phineas didn't like that he'd enabled them.

His insistence on helping only dragged out their failure and made them waste even more of their time, making their eventual power suppression more painful. However, Elric didn't see it that way. He said he had to give everyone a chance, whatever that meant. The world wasn't fair, but Elric clearly, desperately wanted it to be. It was probably because he'd been raised by two unascended mundanes. That was also why, as an Archmage, he was working in the worst departments in the Ministry.

Their entire graduating class constantly marvelled at the news. It was as if a Prince had decided to one day shirk his title to chase a life of clownery.

"You're being strange," Phineas told him.

"Stranger than normal. Does this have anything to do with the rumors swirling around?"

"What rumors?"

"About massa bases running dry and massa thinning." While most of the accredited leyline geographers reported that environmental equilibrium had been safely achieved for another year in a row, there were rumors of a whistleblower report stating that this was a lie. Massa was still the most overused element in the atmosphere, because massa was the easiest negatively-charged stabilizing element to use. Vacu tended towards entropy, and was difficult for anyone who wasn't a master to utilize.

It also required far more runes than any other element. So most avoided vacu-dominant and vacu-supportive spells. Massa was safe and easy and was now often required more than just about any other element, putting pressure on massa mines and refineries.

"I haven't heard of those rumors," Elric said.

"Is that so?" Phineas didn't believe that for a second.

"It is. You should stop listening to gossip, Phineas. Massa is as abundant as it ever was." Liar. Phinease sighed and looked back at his control board. He expected the inflow to be done or at least near its trickle point, where they could see what Arielle's dominant cores were. But what he saw made his jaw drop. He released a choked sound that had Elric staring at the control board.

"What? What is it?" Phineas could not respond. He could only shake his head. What he observed was too shocking for words. First of all, the inflow hadn't stopped. In fact, it was still going as strong as ever, as though her cores weren't even half full. How was that possible? The girl looked no more than fifteen years old. How did she have the capacity of a century-old mage?

"Have you been training her?" he asked Elric, but Elric didn't respond. Phineas stared at the other abnormality on the girl's presentation. Her cores were in perfect equilibrium. Typically, at this stage, even without being at the trickle point, one could already see slight variations in the inflow speed that hinted at dominance. But not here. Each core was filling at equal speed, down to the very last decimal point. Perfect equilibrium. He'd never seen anything like it.

The only one who had come close was Selina Gregor, the Calor Princess and genius of her generation. She was in her final year at Erynwall and was already a Master. It was said she would likely become the youngest Archmage they'd had in a millennium. A once-in-a-lifetime talent. Yet, even she had had slight variations in her cores. Arielle did not. It was abnormal. Phineas rubbed his eyes, wondering if he was seeing things, but it didn't change the numbers on the screen.

He glanced back at the Elric, then at the girl, then at Elric once more. The archmage didn't appear shocked. Merely amazed. Now, Phineas understood why Elric had demanded absolute secrecy. A discovery like this was more than a little terrifying. It was world-changing.

"What on Earth is she?" he whispered.

"That's what I want to know," Elric said with a weak smile.

"You said she's your cousin? How did you find her?" He didn't answer. Instead, he said, "In a situation like this, what do we do? We can't just let the counter keep going, right? Can we stop it? Is there any way to alter the results? Not to insult your integrity, but I've heard that alterations happen sometimes, and though I normally wouldn't ask, I want her to pass as normally as possible." Phineas bit his lip. Even if he wanted to, there was no way for him to normalize results like this.

Most alterations were slight shifts to give a different lean or a higher score. Right now, they were too out of range to tease the system into compliance. Phineas glanced back at the control board. The inflow was rushing. Her core capacity was at the master level right now and still going strong. What was she? An Archmage? A Legendary Mage? Heavens forbid... a Mythical mage?

"I don't know," he said.

"I don't know that you can pass this off as normal."

"Please, Phineas. You have to do something. If they find out, they'll hurt her."

"I don't.." His brain wasn't working well enough to form a sentence.

"I don't know..."

"Arielle, stop," Elric said, and the girl opened her eyes and stopped inhaling. Shockingly, the count stopped there. It shouldn't have. It was the machine that controlled the inflow, not the individual. She shouldn't be able to stop while the machine was still running. But somehow she had. Even more shockingly, Elric said, "Slowly try to empty your cores." Phineas opened his mouth to tell Elric that it was impossible.

The machine was designed to keep the essences steady moving into your core, and no one had such fine control over their cores to fight against it. To his shame, Phineas was proven wrong yet again. Because the counter began to tick down. His mouth slackened. How on earth.... Was she... Was she actually, actively removing the essences from her cores? That was... That was.... His mind could not form words anymore.

"Okay, that's a good number, Ari. You can stop there." Elric gestured at Phineas.

"That's an apprentice level, right? We can just record that for her and forget everything else that came before." Phineas swallowed. He opened his mouth, but then closed it without speaking. What the girl was... was terrifying. She was not just an unsanctioned power; she was a threat that needed to be reported. But if he reported it, they would likely do unspeakable things to get rid of that power. She was yet a child, an innocent. A girl who was blinking in the air and smiling vaguely. Phineas stared at Elric.

Elric stared back at him. He finally inclined his head, and Elric breathed a sigh of relief.

"I knew I could count on you." Phineas bit his tongue. He still wasn't sure Elric could count on him at all. He'd not yet made up his mind what he would do.

"Now the problem is that her cores are still in perfect alignment," Elric said.

"But we have to select her lean. Should I ask her what she wants?" Elric thought about it and shook his head.

"No. We have to put something down now. I don't think she has a preference anyway. We'll give her a Luxa-Massa lean. Slight Luxa dominance because she loves to read. She'll enjoy it."

"I suppose," he said.

"That will also keep her power within a reasonable level. As reasonable as it can be anyway. We'll try to keep it under control this way. With power like hers, imagine the calamity she would cause with a Vacu-Calor combo."

"No, certainly not that." Phineas shuddered. The last person to bear that combo had been a literal and figurative demon, and even he hadn't been as naturally gifted as this girl.

"Luxa-Massa is a good choice," Phineas said, clearing his throat and attempting to regain some composure.

"But how do you know she won't change it later? What if at the academy, she gains an interest in calor or vacu-dominant spells?" Elric sighed.

"We just have to hope she doesn't. Or Sentinel help us all." A tension wedged in Phineas throat. It was like his lips were fused, but he wanted to scream. He also wanted to laugh hysterically or simply lie down. He didn't even think he could complete the rest of the evaluation like this.

"Before I talk to her, the two of you should give me a moment to collect myself," Phineas said.

"Perhaps return in an hour for my full guidance."

"Of course." Elric took a vial out of his pocket and said, "One more thing."

"What–" Phineas didn't get to finish his thought before Elric blew the powder in his face. Phineas came back to himself, sneezing and rubbing his eyes from whatever had gotten in them. He sneezed again.

"What was that?"

"Allergies, probably," Elric said. He frowned. There was a nagging at the corner of his brain, but he couldn't identify what it was. After the totally unremarkable evaluation of Elric's cousin Arielle, his mind felt strange. He looked at Elric, then at Arielle, and back at Elric. Then at the board. The feeling of vague confusion was familiar.

"Did you use an Unknowing potion on me?"

"I would never," Elric said.

"You bastard. You did, didn't you? What is it? What did you make me forget?"

"Nothing. Only an insult that might have hurt your feelings." Elric patted his shoulder.

"Thank you, old friend. We'll be back in an hour."

After leaving the evaluation hall, Elric assured Ari that she'd done a good job and that her stats would show soon. There was typically a few minutes' lag between the evaluation and the presentation of the stats on her system screen, he said, but in the meantime, she could assess the preliminary stats of those around her who were weaker than her. He showed her how to do it on a passing mage as he took her outside. into the roiling market.

They cut efficiently through the crowd, with traders yelling out their wares and their bargains. They were going to get ice cream at one of the corner stores, and later they would go shopping for school supplies. Ari was looking forward to both. At least that was the plan before an explosion rocked the earth. Both Ari and Elric jerked as people turned to stare. It came from quite a distance away, so no one was in panic mode yet.

They were all merely curious and probably used to explosions here and there, considering their proximity to the ministry. Elric murmured, "[Bird's Eye View]" and stared in that direction.

"Whatever he saw made him frown deeply.

"Stay put, Arielle," he said.

"Don't move." She nodded as he instantly vanished. As the people in the market returned to their business, there was another explosion coming from the opposite direction. This time, it was close enough for people to scream and rush to seek shelter. Ari wished she could use Elric's spell to see what was going on, but she didn't have any essence to do that right now. However, it didn't matter. It wasn't long before the problem came to her.

She saw it from a distance, a rush of fire headed to the market way, explosions shattering nearby buildings, the blaze getting stronger with each one. Above the fire, floated a man with a smiley mask on his face.

"It's a Phasewalker!" The man at the ice cream store yelled.

"Someone stop him!" No one did that. Most people screamed and ran fiercely, bumping and crawling over each other to get out of the way. Ari, of course, stayed put, because that was what Elric had asked her to do. Also, she was curious about what a Phasewalker was. He was causing a lot of damage on the roads he passed, and he would reach her soon, though she still had plenty of time to interrupt his progress. She, of course, didn't have any essence to stop him. But perhaps... she could steal them from him.

She could see clearly the complex lattice that wrapped around him and around his magic. The bonds shifted around, unlike any other spells Ari had seen. Fascinating. But she only had to tug one of the essences out of place for it to trigger a blowback and destroy his complex spell. She had to wait for him to get a little closer, and she also got concerned about the public nature of it all. Elric had warned her about unsanctioned magic use.

No one was paying attention to her, currently, but could she reveal her powers in such a public place? Should she do nothing but hide? Or should she prevent his advance? As the people screamed and ran, Ari murmured, "What do do... what to do..."