The door shut as that denizen with the wild affinity left the room. One denizen was all that remained, patiently waiting her own turn from behind her desk’s blinders. The proctor, standing tall with hands behind his back, and his two assistants who remained seated, watched and waited.

  The foreigner stared at the two spellcards, wrapped and sealed, gently laying upon her desk… A strangeness pierced her being as she did so, one even stronger than the denizens had experienced; unlike theirs which remained inactive and…‘asleep’, so to speak, unless commanded and told, hers was perpetually active; always ‘awake’ and therefore attentive… It could infer what was being concealed, a tugging pull calling to it and thus…pulling her along too.

  However, even so… By this point, she had frankly become skeptical of her ability respond to these denizen spellcards and thus…pass this test. Yet, she did spend…months’ worth of rent on this, thus… What else could she do in this moment, besides continue to follow?

  “What is this hold?” one of the proctor’s assistants muttered aloud… “Is the alien confused?” his voice scoffed.

  “Maybe she did not understand our tongue too well…” the other assistant snickered.

  The proctor, however, merely eyed the two with quite the glare, remaining silent.

  The foreigner sighed… “I give the sorry; I became with…too much of the thoughts…” Without further deliberation, she thus finally took action.

  She methodically yet swiftly unwrapped the spellcard on the left, the…exotic syntheticness of the sealing’s material becoming rather apparent as she did so; almost plastic-like yet papery, although very easy to tear. Revealed was that glimmering array of reds and oranges; she immediately deduced that this flame-symbol embroiled card was a ‘fire spell’—the same one she had peekingly observed many moments prior.

  She stared at the exposed card, however… Her mask-obscured ignited eyes brightened, albeit only slightly, the sigil branded reacting as if in preparatory anticipation. Interesting looking thing, this fire spellcard was… She cautiously and procedurally lifted it onto her palm, her skin…feeling it… It certainly felt rather peculiar indeed…

  Nevertheless, she stepped out from her desk and stood at its right, in open view of the spectating proctor, eyes patient and seemingly invested, as if studying her…

  Whelp, here she went… With a breath, she slowly lifted her palm as she stared down, until…that rather obscure yet…now noticeable indicator mark—to its upper center—was seen. She then, thus, flipped the card over and stared into its face as much as it too stared back.

  Immediately, an ever-slight radiant surge as the ignited sigil branded upon her mask-obscured cyanic eyes reacted and twinkled in reply to the sight now within her visual field, locking and focusing in absolute as if unable to pull back; as if unable to detach; as if unable to do anything more than stare and stare… Utterly captivated and entrapped.

  For indeed, embroiled with crafted perfection, engraved and stitched with total precision, was that very same signa of the arcane itself; that very same sigil branded upon her always ignited eyes as if a mark of eternal servitude; that very sigil that defined in totality that certain something else imbued deep within her and all the rest, its ‘alignment’ and ‘definition’.

  Engraved around and within the circular confines of that sigil, however, were symbols and glyphs—distinct and unique yet echoing the general shape and idea of the sigil itself. Gibberish ostensibly, even to the eyes and mind that so gazed, yet were absolutely not: they were logical patterns of coded information that conveyed ‘sequences’ of commands, protocols, and instructions to be decoded, processed, and ‘read’, to be followed and executed… And not by the mind.

  Yet… Despite the priming fixation, the foreigner stared and stared, she herself long used to the…sensation of being dragged along by that certain something else within her… Seconds passed and passed, surpassing four to five and then beyond. Indeed, the proctor waited and watched too, going well over time. Yet, still, nothing happened; no matter how strong or sharp her concentration was, nothing happened.

  “Heh…” one of the assistants snickered; “How unfortunate, it appears the alien’s journey ends here…”

  “The most basic of magics appears to be her match in spite of all the ‘exotics’, pah…” the other snickered in kind.

  “Shut up.” Neither the proctor nor his glaring eyes were amused. “Not a single extra word, or I will see to it that you two are dismissed.” They immediately shut up.

  The foreigner, nevertheless, sighed… “It appears that I have failed…” Her mask-obscured eyes looked up at the proctor ahead; “I cannot…cast this card… It seems that I am the ‘inert’…”

  “Hm…” the proctor merely mumbled; “Well, what you need is…time. Seeing that we have faster than expected, how about one full minute? Let us see what happens…”

  The two assistants gave him quite the look, and not just because of their own biases, but because this was completely out of procedure.

  ? … ? The foreigner stared… Huh… Alright, then… One full minute, albeit she doubted that such would make any difference. Nevertheless, her attention promptly returned to that card’s face; she began to focus and evaluate, analyze and assess… Hmm… She stared and stared…

  Interesting things, spellcards or really any arcane cards were. They were the most basal form of a structured, systematized, and transmissible expression of the arcane—the definitional separation between ‘magic systems’ and the general or ‘ordinary’ arcane.

  When left unstructured and to the whims of pure abstractions, the expression and manifestation of the arcane necessitated deeply internalized frameworks and social-cultural constructions—deep-rooted beliefs, convictions, and presumptions of fundamental ‘truths’ and ‘natures’ that defined conceptions of ‘properties’ and ‘actions’, ‘prohibitions’ and ‘allowances’, shared amongst a tradition and reinforced through organic social influences and collective practice.

  These sorts of deep-rooted internalizations, of course, were usually—but not exclusively—possible through processes of socialization and enculturation that occurred throughout development—being directly reared within that culture and society, in other words.

  In many ways, the arcane was like language even if…absolutely not. There was a ‘window’ during which the necessary frameworks to practice the arcane traditions of a given society and culture could be internalized and acquired, but after which it would become…exceedingly difficult, that certain something imbued deep within—the very source of the arcane itself—becoming so absurdly stubborn…in diverging from these deeply seeded internalizations.

  There were, of course, many complexities and nuances, for these were only general tendencies and patterns in observation… But, nevertheless, this specific tendency relegated the expression of the arcane to the specific rituals, rites, and customs of their respective tradition, with pronounced, even if variable, difficulty in transmission between different cultures and societies, even if not impossible.

  This nigh intercultural exclusivity was an almost ubiquitous feature of the general arcane. Spellcards, however, were designed to circumnavigate this by exploiting another tendency of the source of the arcane.

  Whether it be in an active, partially active, or inactive state, it remained sensitive to alignment sigils, things resembling alignment sigils, and most especially… It could not help but to immediately lock focus onto its own alignment sigil when within awareness. Conversely, it could not help but to then…focus on anything around and within that detected alignment sigil; if those things happened to be intuitive glyphs and symbols which it could decode and ‘read’, it could not help but to then respond to their dictations regardless of prior encodings and existing internalizations.

  This was the fundamental basis of a spellcard: an alignment sigil to act as a ‘primer’ to lock focus and induce responsiveness, and a so-called ‘spell-code’ which conveyed encoded information such as instructions and commands. A well-designed spell-code would be a formalized logic pattern that was intuitive enough to be learnable across different groups and social-cultural apparatuses; most organically developed spell-codes tended to achieve this by ‘mirroring’ the shapes and patterns for which the source of the arcane already had an innate predisposed intuition.

  And, in fact, theoretically due to this tendency of unrelated arcane card systems independently converging upon that so-called ‘universal’ pattern, most individual’s sources of the arcane should be able to decode…at least vaguely and with some accuracy…most cards—hers more especially should be able to regardless of alienness.

  Hmm… So, then, why was she not responding to this card?

  ? Hehm… ? Time slowed down as she concentrated even more, her cogitating thoughts speeding up… Something was off with this card, yet what was wrong remained nebulous...

  Her first instinct was to immediately check the primer—the alignment sigil. Because of that certain something’s sensitivity, the alignment sigil must be…weaved properly and precisely to be an effective primer… Even the most minor errors and differences could imply…definitional misalignment and thus impair responsiveness.

  However, it was instantly obvious that…this was obviously not the problem; indeed, the…esoteric sensations she was experiencing within…implied the opposite: it was perfect.

  Hm…

  Basic arcane cards typically had three other components to their function beyond the primer: an igniter, the general sequences, and a terminator. The igniter was the initializing command that triggered an action state, the general sequences were the intended commands to be executed, and the terminator defined the end limitations that triggered the termination sequences—lest the spell go one forever.

  Any of these being…ill-designed could seriously disrupt the intended effects and functions of the card; an absent or ill-made igniter, of course, rendered would render the spell uncastable.

  Thus, her next step was inspecting…the spell-code. Hmm… These sorts of glyphs and symbols were not necessarily meant to be legible to the eyes, thus she had to peer her sight even closer to be able to inspect the spell-code to see if…

  ? Ehuh… ? Huh… Interesting… The card’s spell-code was…

  Ah… The foreigner immediately realized… Her entire analyses were rendered completely pointless, indeed… She was presuming that the spell-code of this card—of this place—would be more in line with typical expectations, yet… The denizens of this place seemed to utilize their own local-specific set of code glyphs. Although, even so… While the glyphs and symbols could be different, the formalized logic pattern should still be largely same. Thus, she should still be able to…

  No… Wait… The foreigner focused even sharper as time slowed even more, her thoughts speeding up as the reality became clearer… The glyphs themselves, while peculiar, were not completely…counter-intuitive… There was a semblance of…vague…familiarity, as if that which was deeply imbued with her was seeing things that made…sense, but…was…being left terribly confused…

  Indeed, confusion—not lack of comprehension or not understanding, but active confusion… As if the entire flow of the structure and logic pattern of this spell-code was…nonsensical, or rather…scrambled and garbled and…

  ? éncryp?ion? ? Indeed… It was as if this was a spell-code that was ‘universal’ but somehow…encrypted to be…essence-numbingly counter-intuitive and confusing to follow. If this spell-code was merely a local-specific code of patterns and glyphs—thus a non-universal local-exclusive code—, then there would only be a sense of…esoteric incomprehension, not this esoteric sense of numbing confusion…

  In fact, the sheer focused attention she was giving this spell-card was starting to give her a mindache, as if…her very soul was being fried as much as her brain…

  Nevertheless, if this was so, then… Why? What would be the point of…encrypting their own…arcane cards? And, even more peculiar, how were the denizens so easily able to case these encrypted cards at all? That so-called ‘affinity’ aside, there should have been a greater struggle or delay in their casting longer than…

  “Ten seconds left.” the proctor so spoke, having been keeping track of time whilst the foreigner so evidently mused.

  The foreigner swiftly sighed, her mind relaxing as her thoughts slowed and eased, her attention returning to the world around… She bluntly cast her mask-obscured eyes to the proctor. “There is no use… I cannot cast this card; I am completely the ‘inert’…” Indeed, regardless of speculations and questions of cause, such remained the blunt reality.

  The proctor too sighed, albeit a different kind of sigh; “How disappointing…” He was blunt; “Especially considering that trick you pulled… Oh, yes, I am well-aware of what you did for your last assessment; I saw the…damage, inspected the remains left over, and heard the account retold…” he remarked, to not her surprise… “So, I had quite the expectations…”

  The last remaining denizen had no idea what was being talked about; she was perhaps just glad that…this delay gave her more time to…both recover from that prior zap and ease her own mind…from the anxieties of her impending turn. Even so, she could not help but…peek at this situation with curiosity, considering the peculiarity of it all… From the foreigner’s inability to the proctor’s own…leniency.

  “Psst…” the denizen began to…communicate, cautiously eyeing the foreigner at an angle and with one eye closed so that she did not…repeat the mistake of that other snooping denizen.

  The foreigner turned her sight and looked with a slight tilt… “Hm?”

  “You are immune to spellcards?” the denizen mused aloud; “Huh… I have heard that most foreigners, Far Westerners included, could use them finely… In fact, I’ve heard we have even weaved spellcards for their own schools of magic…”

  Hmm… The foreigner listened… That was…interesting information and useful to her deductions, yet…completely useless to her present predicament.

  The proctor, of course, stood there unamused by this interruption; although, he nevertheless allowed it to persist, once again breaking from standard custom.

  “Do you have elven blood in you, by chance?” the denizen gently inquired.

  The foreigner stared rather blankly, confused, though immediately shook her head in a no…or rather…she quickly readjusted to a shrug of…maybe? “I am from the…New World colony…place where the…elves and the mans, they live with the harmony and the peace and…the co-existence…” she replied; “But I do not have the ears, so I do not…know…”

  This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

  “Hhm…” the denizen softly pondered; “Well, I heard that elves struggle immensely with using spellcards… Half-elves fare better, but not all of them… I think elvish magic is incompatible with ours or something…”

  Hmm… ‘Elves’ and ‘elvish magic’… “The elves cannot use the spellcards, you said? What else…cannot use them?”

  “Oh! Uhm… Uhm…” The denizen with a gentle press of her chin began to cogitate… “Basically… Anyone who isn’t a man? By that I mean, man…mans—mankind… Dwarfs, demi-people, orcs, uhm… Yeah, all of those…”

  “And all of these…different types of the persons can…cast the magics?” the foreigner asked.

  “Well, I wouldn’t call them ‘persons’, but yeah, they have their own forms of magecraft…” the denizen replied.

  Hm… Interesting…

  “Spellcards are an invention of the Gods and of mankind.” the proctor finally interjected himself, opting to explain; “Inertness and immunity exists broadly, but the other races seem to show it most gravely. However, half-elves, half-orcs, and other halflites, particularly those born from a maternal line of man, have demonstrated an ability to utilize them without significant issue.”

  “This ‘maternal’ meaning of the mother, no?” the foreigner immediately inquired.

  “Yes.” the proctor answered; “You seem peaked by these inquiries. Do they force your wheels to turn?”

  The foreigner retreated back into her head, her mask-obscured cyanic eyes returning their sight to that spellcard… Interesting, she began to muse… So, denizen responsiveness to these arcane cards and their bizarre code was stratified dependent on…so-called ‘races’, then?

  That could imply a cultural connection, certainly, yet… Hmm… ‘Elves’, not necessarily just a different culture of so-called ‘mans’… Ugh, truly, she was violet, not green—none of this was her expertise nor domain.

  Nevertheless…

  Her immediate inference was that… This had to be a fundamental pre-encoded—not internalized or post-natally acquired—capability to decode and decrypt this spell-code. An intrinsic pre-encoded comprehension would explain the observed fluency even in those who had an ostensibly weak ‘affinity’ and explain the claimed near-total transmission effect of this decryption propensity from mother to offspring.

  Either this was something the denizens somehow did to themselves at some point in their ancestry or… Yet, this still begged the question of why?

  If the purpose was some kind security measure to…restrict usage and discriminate access, there were many simpler techniques and methods that still provided the same outcome… So, why this? Why take the most convoluted method of encrypting an otherwise universal spell-code and then going about somehow pre-encoding…

  Wait… Pre-encoding… Pre-encoding that certain something imbued within was a rather sophisticated and technical process, never mind developing such a soul-skewering spell-code encryption… Doing any of this would require a great deal of advanced understanding of…what any of this even was; from her observations so far, these denizens simply did not…

  No, this was obviously something far broader than merely the denizens themselves. Given her presumption of what this place even was, the only most logical explanation would be that this was part of their… Indeed, there was only one way the denizens could have ended up with a mass-scale pre-encoded…anything…

  She was assuming that these arcane cards were part of an organically developed system, but this was clearly not organically developed; it was given to them, and she already presumed by what…

  However, such only begged much larger questions of why? To control? To…experiment? To…explicitly prohibit those like her from using these cards? Why would it even remotely care about…

  Maybe she was missing something, a broader point, a different detail, or…

  Ugh! Truly, her head was spinning in endless circles around and around, finding itself at why after why when none of that changed the fundamental reality of her present situation: she was functionally incapable of casting these cards; anything beyond that was wasteful speculation.

  “No. This is pointless…” thoughts slowing down, the foreigner thus spoke, “I failed this test of yours. It is simple…” She returned her sight to the proctor.

  “Hm…” Yet the proctor merely mumbled; “You ‘failed’ the last assessment, did you not? Yet here you stand… Why?” he thus asked aloud; “How did you manage to proceed to despite failing? Surely, you must have something…hidden?”

  “Uhm…” Alright, now the foreigner was becoming very confused… The explicit purpose of this test was to assess her utilization of a spellcard; she had demonstrated a total inability to use them, therefore she had failed this test… Why was he being so persistent with not failing her when had so easily failed the others?

  “Hm. Well, I will leave to your musing. But you have one extra full minute. After which if nothing is demonstrated, you will fail.” the proctor thus stated, to the continued bewilderment of his two assistants.

  One extra minute was not going to alter the fundamental outcome of this… Seriously, why was he dragging this out? Ugh… If there was something else to this that he was wanting to her do, then why could he not simply say it explicitly instead of leaving it to…inference and making her think—she already did too much of that…

  Nevertheless, with rather the sigh, the foreigner thus relooked at that card… Seeing the same thing she had seen moments before, no changes to her deductions, inferences, and conclusions… In fact, the more stared, the less certain she became; the more questions emerged.

  “Psst…”

  The foreigner, cogitations terminating, turned her sight to that denizen at the desk next and near; “What?”

  “…I don’t think he…wants you to cast the card…” the denizen astutely observed; “…what exactly did you do…uhm…during the affinity assessment? He said you failed it, but then…still passed? Or, maybe, is he taking about…a different test or…?”

  The foreigner stared rather blankly… “I… Uhm… I…simply showed them the point…”

  The denizen stared… “Uhm… Well…maybe that is what he…wants you to do…then? Do…whatever you did…again…?”

  ? … ? Immediately, the foreigner’s brain malfunctioned as the most obvious of things finally entered realization… ? ?ch de corsa: ut auteram pointam demonstre, ita me vult… ? Of course… Show them just a little once, and suddenly: curiosity for more. Her mask-obscured sight immediately glared at the proctor, still standing where he was… “You want me to show to you another point?”

  Yet the proctor merely shrugged… “I want to see if you and your alleged talents can still somehow pass despite failing.” he practically confirmed.

  Ugh… Truly, why did he not say so to begin with? Would have saved her so much energy. “Fine…” Indeed, absolutely, fine… “If that is what is wanted, then do not become with the anger when that is exactly what will be received.”

  This ‘demonstration’, however, was going to be far more…complicated than the last one and was going to require more…esoteric sequences. She swapped hands, holding the card up between two fingers of her left-hand as she backed away from the desk, needing…ample space.

  She looked at the card with newfound focus and swap in…perspectives.

  What was this card in her hands, fundamentally? Information. Everything in existence, from her body to the arrangement of her cells to the desks around to the very molecular structures and atomic bonds that made it all… Everything was fundamentally information.

  And that certain something which was deeply imbued within her, within that proctor, within that denizen, within all—most—of them… Integrated, connected, and synchronized with their minds and nerves… Essence; that was the source of the arcane. Essence. And essence happened to be one of the greatest information imprinting…things in all of…well, everything—albeit, even if being rather prone to… inconsistency and unreliability.

  Nevertheless, while essence had many peculiarities, complexities, variabilities, and endless nuances and caveats, one aspect of it that held largely constant was… No matter how decayed or faded, no matter how corrupted or contaminated, no matter how detached or severed from its source, so as long as essence was still recognizably present as ‘essence’, even residual specks of it could still hold onto fragments and pieces of the information it had or had been encoded into itself—including pre-encodings and internalizations imprinted from its initial host.

  And it was obvious to her that this spell-card was not made merely by hand, but weaved—crafted—by means of an arcanity. This card was imbued with essence and essence…stuff, forged from the exotic compounds synthesized by essence from essence and therefore still contained traces of essence.

  And it just happened that one of her arcanity’s talents was…extracting such essence-forged composites and associated…stuff generally and recomposing it into her own—extracting information from essence. Thus, all she theoretically had to do was decompose, extract, and resynthesize the integrated essence stuff, assimilate it into her own aura, and hope that her own essence…could extract at least some of the relevant information.

  Indeed… In absence of her true mask and conduit more especially, doing such a precise and targeted process would be…challenging and esoteric, but not impossible or undoable.

  With the card still between her two fingers, she held it up to her half-masked face as she stared into it… Taking a deep and focusing breath, she closed her eyes… Inhaling and exhaling, she concentrated and primed her mind, setting both herself and her essence into the right…state of being.

  She began to bob and drift gently as her ignited eyes reopened, slowly but surely; her right-hand’s fingers weaved as her legs strode and swayed in coordinated synchrony, following each other’s rhythmic flow in this harmonious song of a small ‘dance’.

  Almost immediately, her cyanic eyes luminated more as the ignited sigil engraved became more potent in reply, though still obscured by her tinted masquerade. Strips and wisps of dusty cyanic radiance, hard to see, began to ebb and flow from her nerves and being, weaving along the dancing tune, becoming more sparkly and pronounced yet still ever-faint.

  Much like a spellcard and its spell-code, each mellow gesture, each drifting movement, each bending weave of her finger, each step taken, they were all sequences paired with an implicit command and conveyed instruction.

  There was no cogitation or planning; no structured system or precise procedures; as if a language being spoken fluently, only actions being done to follow that mutual rhythmic flow… Things simply came to her naturally…and intuitively—without conscious consideration or forethought. As if both were guiding each other to the same synchronized goal.

  Indeed, this was hardly a spell being casted as much as an arcane ritual… Yet not one of any existent tradition; one unique to her and her alone, origins lost to both memory and time.

  Strands of cyanic essence flowed towards that card in hand, the wisp-dusty radiance slowly tracing around that beckoning sigil and the encrypted glyphs within, before stitching and weaving itself into the card. The sigil embroiled and all those coded glyphs glowed in more pronounced radiance, a cyanic glow that slowly grew.

  Her arcane ‘dance’ then shifted, as did her essence, for priorities had changed. At a moment only felt than known, she tossed the card into air as it suddenly suspended itself in place, hovering ostensibly yet merely being kept in place by the stretched barely visible roots of her own essence, veins of which infested the card like glowing cyanic nerves. Her left-hand, now free, then joined in this weaving flow as she redirected the…focus.

  Cyanic roots of essence extended out from her aura and being, splitting into multiple strands that spread forth and weaved, threading themselves into her other spell-card and…

  “Hey… Hey… Wait, wait! What… What! What are you doing???” Indeed, the denizen so immediately noticed…

  Suddenly, her two spell-cards’ strange coverings were dissolving away into wisp-dusty glimmer as if somewhat choppy static blew off, the exposed cards finding themselves threaded with cyanic roots. The glittery radiance flared and became slightly more visible as the cards were slowly…yet efficaciously devoured, the process leaving behind sizzling wisps and even sparkly heat. The exoticisms imbued were stripped away, dissolving into that same cyanic wispy radiance, resynthesized and chewed, and streaming through to return to its source, to be assimilated, decompiled, and digested as if her aura was its stomach.

  Indeed, her essence was…expanding its sample-size, so to speak; all she did was guide the tune of this ‘song’ being ‘danced’.

  She began to…actually sweat as this weaving flow continued, her concentration having become exhaustively absolute as she followed the rhythmic flow as much as her essence followed in kind, each in synchrony and each sequence so carefully done to avoid miscommunication. Owing to the esoterics of this…ritualized dance of inference and feeling, she had little idea if she was doing this correctly or not… Just the vague sense that…things were…working.

  The threads of flaring radiance continued to devour and extract as her essence’s aura processed and digested, encoding into itself whatever relevant information it could—hopefully. All the while, remaining stitched into the very was her principal spell-card, the signa embroiled glowing more intense.

  Before, finally, those devouring threads streamed away from the other spell-cards which had been reduced to despoiled and sundered corpses, information having been extracted and processed. Hopefully, that should be enough… It…felt like…it was enough… Though, of course, even if it were all perfectly extracted, attrition and loss were inevitabilities of this very process—attrition and loss of information that was already likely…partial and fragmented.

  Nevertheless, all attention focused onto that spell-card suspended in place; the cyanic weaves began to throb and pulsate responsively, more veins threading and stitching; more and more of that card became more her own than what it had once been before. She slowed her flowing pace as she fixated her sight onto that card’s radiating face.

  Her essence was doing something… She could tell… Yet, moments passed only for nothing to happen. More moments passed, yet more nothing happened…

  Before, suddenly, something happened.

  Her mask-obscured ignited eyes ‘flashed’ in a shifting change, the card ripping apart as it spontaneously dissolved into flaring dusty radiance. She froze in her weaving dance, yet her essence continued to act without her guiding input, the strands…having completely shifted color to a virulent fiery orange-yellow, becoming so pronouncedly more visible than it ought to be and more than even the spell’s dictating commands.

  Flaring as if on fire, a concentrated patch formed in the air as if a newborn sun, glowing unnecessarily intense as a…freezing cold spewed out, the temperatures around rapidly collapsing as the entire energy system within the room wintered.

  So cold it became, the denizen began to shiver as if being embraced by Winter’s blizzardy touch. So cold it became, moisture in the immediate vicinity of her fiery spell began to frost as breaths exhaled smoke.

  Seventeen seconds, seven more seconds than intended, passed before that spell finally reached its termination. The concentrated filtering patch disintegrating and disappearing as her ignited eyes returned to cyanic normalcy, her essence returning to its to prior automated doings and active standby.

  Even though the wisp-dusty exoticism and radiance quickly withered away, disappearing into obscurity, the room remained irreversibly colder even as temperatures normalized with the air’s redistribution.

  Silence, absolute silence.

  Inhaling and exhaling, breathing in and out, still sweating in spite of that that freezing effect, the foreigner eyed around, fatigued somewhat…

  The proctor stared; the denizen stared; the two assistants stared; all bewildered in their ways, as if their minds struggled to process everything they had just witnessed.

  Huh… That actually worked… That stunt actually worked… Her essence managed to decrypt that spell-code and had…actually…managed to cast that spell—its color had even changed; she did not even know her essence could be anything BUT cyan…

  Granted, of course, she had fizzled that spell so immensely that…her essence had done the complete and total opposite of what that ‘fire’ spell was supposed to do… But such outcome was to be expected, considering her essence was operating off information forcefully extracted and assimilated from residual leftovers, and thus had to make inferences and…guesses to fill in the gaps and holes.

  Exhaling a deep satiated breath, she shifted her sight to that very proctor; “Satisfied?” Her voice was blunt. Although she had, indeed, once again exposed far more than these primitives needed to know, she could not help but feel…this strange sense of…smug satisfaction deep down within, albeit filtered and obscured by her mind’s shadow.

  “…w… W-w-w-w-what, WHAT even w-w-w-was that?! Magic?? Was that even magic?? What even is magic anymore???” the denizen, absolutely dumbfounded, finally blurted aloud, her eyes then renoticing her ravaged and crumbled spell-cards… “Awww! Hey! How am I even supposed to do this now?! No!! My gold is going to be wasted!!”

  The proctor, however, simply stepped forth with eyes analyzing; “What even was that, indeed…” he merely mused whilst he strolled forth, arriving behind and in-between the desks of the foreigner and the denizen. “Hmm…” he mumbled, approaching the foreigner’s desk and evaluating that single ravaged corpse of a former spell-card left thereon; “Its mana has been completely stripped, flayed, left only being the…” His head withdrew; “But how did that give you…the talent to cast your other card? Hm… You did not just eat the mana as much as digest it…unravel it, or… Hm…”

  “That was supposed to be fire magic, no?” an assistant, still seated, so impeccably observed; “Yet it created a freeze!”

  “Surely, that is grounds for failure? Her alien talent is clearly faulty and unstable—dangerous, even…” the other so replied.

  The proctor’s eyes, however, so flipped and stared into them. “You two. You are dismissed.”

  “Huh?” The assistants were confused. “B-but, we need to be here—”

  “You are no longer needed here. You are dismissed.” the proctor reiterated.

  And thus the two assistants stood up…and departed.

  He then turned his attention to that denizen whose breaths were still lamenting her two devoured spell-cards. “You.” His voice made her flinch; “Go fetch a new affinity card. I will test you exclusively on that, considering these…extra-ordinary circumstances.”

  The denizen sniffled, slightly teary, as she looked at him; “Really?”

  “Yes.” the proctor replied; “You were certainly more useful than those two hag-twats…”

  “Alrightly, then… I hope I won’t disappoint…” The denizen thus…gently stepped off and departed in kind.

  The proctor immediately lanced his attention to the foreigner; “Come here, closer…” he thus gestured, before he began to fill out her document still on her desk, slightly wet now.

  “Uhm… So, then, does this mean that I have…passed?” the foreigner asked as she…stood closer.

  “Passed?” the proctor’s voice answered already; “I am more than willing to personally recommend you for immediate selection, not merely ‘pass’—should you continue to apply, of course… Gods may know there are better places than the Collegium for someone such as you…” His voice spoke with solemn sincerity; “Truthfully, you have reminded me of what the Collegium—of what all artisans of the magical arts—should be reminded… That there is still so little we understand of magic and the arcane… And I am certain there is much we may learn from you as much as you may from us…” he thus stated, providing that final conclusive stamp.

  Fascinating…

  Truly, you continue to intrigue

  You continue to impress

  And not merely just me.