Chapter 34 - Beast In Human Skin.
The crowd watched as the students began casting their spells. Under 7 seconds they watched as some of the students conjured flames.
"Pyromancers!" Claps echoed all around the arena when some of the students conjured flames. Patriotic expressions were on their faces as they cheered the pyromancers that passed the awakening tests.
When it came to fire mages, the Synder empire was at the top. They had the greatest number of outstanding fire mages compared to the other two empires. The members of the royal family that had the bloodline of the founder of the empire, Synder, possessed golden flames as their innate flame color.
Among the types of flames that exist the golden flame was ranked as one of the most powerful flames and this innate ability was possessed by direct descendants of Synder.
During the end of emperor Synder's life, he made the empire's main religion to that of the God of fire and war, Vulcan. The more fire mages the empire had the more prestige, strength and they would gain from Vulcan.
These reasons were why the crowd was more enthusiastic about the students that awakened the fire element.
As the spell casting test went on, different spells were conjured by the students. They watched closely as a water orb was conjured before it turned into a simple dagger.
"An Aquamancer and he can turn it to a weapon… The water element is special in the sense that, it can be used for both attacking and defending. Although its attacking strength can't compare that of fire or lightning, nor the defense of the earth element, it's abilities are pretty decent." The people in the crowd chatted amongst themselves as they enjoyed the show that was going.
A pyromancer and an aquamancer were alike, the warrior level of both the fire and water elements allowed the user to conjure and manipulate fire and water elements.
They were able to change the elements conjured into any shape they wanted as long as their mana could handle it. The amount of mana drained was dependent on the complexity of the transformation.
So, it was better for them to keep it simple because these students who were still at the warrior level didn't have much mana, to begin with.
With their current mana capacity, they wouldn't be able to spam their spells as they wished.
The entire arena watched closely when it was Lucas Ulrik's turn for the spell casting test. Putting on his energy vision, Blake watched closely as energy particles quickly gather towards Lucas.
"As expected of the scion of one of the top three families." Blake sighed as he saw the composition of the ground began changing.
The earth in front of Lucas changed from solid to a slippery surface.
"Earth rendering." Lucas muttered as he cast his spell.
"What!"
"So quick!"
"4 seconds!... He did it in four seconds!"
An uproar was heard all over the arena when they saw how quickly Lucas cast earth rendering.
From the speed at which Lucas gathered the energy particles, Blake had foreseen this outcome.
"Talk about bad luck." From all he had seen, Blake knew that although Lucas did not enter the elite test he should not be underestimated. If Lucas had awakened another element he would have strongly contended for a position in the elite class, but lady luck was not on his side.
In the booth of Prince Bryon.
"His casting speed is quite fast; I think he should have gone for the elite test." Prince Bryon said while attentively looking at the screen.
"As expected of the scion of the Ulrik family, unluckily for him he unlocked the earth element." Hagan replied.
"Not really…" Prince Bryon muttered
Hagan looked at Bryon with a puzzled expression.
That was when Prince Bryon looked at him and said. "Remember, the element doesn't matter, all that matter is the user, also he doesn't have to win the match to get admitted." Prince Bryon smiled at Hagan before turning back to the screen.
Not long after Lucas Ulrik's turn, the phoenix dormitory's test came to an end, and it was the turn of the drake dormitory.
The students of the dorm proceeded and made their way to the center of the arena for their test.
Different emotions could be read on the faces of the students, some were confident and calm, some were indifferent, while some were nervous even how they walked and their posture was a giveaway.
A few minutes later they were done with the orb test and they proceeded to the spellcasting test.
No one seemed to care about the students that held back their tears as they exited the arena, not even Blake.
The number of students that failed the awakening orb test in the drake dormitory were less compared to that of the phoenix dorm, but when it came to the spell casting test the phoenix dorm beat them by a large margin.
"Why did the heavens curse us with professor Arimus." Everyone in the school knew about the phoenix dorm's magic class teacher, professor Gibson. Unlike most teachers that despised commoners, professor Gibson was impartial and also, he tried as much as possible to carry all of his students along.
He was the main reason why the phoenix dorm performed more than the drake dorm in the spell casting test, but unfortunately, professor Arimus was assigned to them.
As for the wind griffin dormitory, Blake didn't have much hope of his dorm competing with the two dorms in terms of spell casting because of their apathetic and discriminating teacher, but if it came down to combats his dorm would be the best.
This was one of his trump cards.
In the awakening test there was no need for combat skills, but when it came to the elite test combat skills would be heavily needed and that was when he planned on using instructor Zirracks's combat lessons to his advantage.
Among all the combat teachers in the school, instructor Zirrack was regarded as the best combat teacher, he was a vicious fighter… no a beast in human skin!