Chapter 48: Registration [4]

Rael stepped up to the marked line with the temporary wand in hand. He felt none of the anxiety that had gripped the others. The calm surprised even him. He closed his eyes for a brief moment, opened them again, and spoke the skill name clearly.

"Inferno Bolt."

Fire bloomed into existence just above his head. It started as a small sphere of ordinary orange flame, then rapidly intensified. The temperature in the testing room climbed in seconds. Heat pressed against every surface. The white walls seemed to shimmer. On the large screen the orange-haired woman’s brows drew together as she leaned closer to her camera.

The flame compressed. It shrank toward the tip of the wand, growing smaller and denser while the heat continued to rise. What had been a visible fireball became a tight, almost white-hot core no larger than a closed fist. Then it released.

A bolt of blazing infernal fire screamed down the range. It left a glowing trail of distorted air in its wake, struck the nearest high-class dummy dead center, and detonated on impact. The dummy did not simply crack or lose a limb—it exploded outward in every direction. Fragments of reinforced material scattered across the floor and walls before the regeneration function even had time to activate. What remained was a blackened crater and drifting ash.

Silence filled the room.

Every pair of eyes stared at the destruction. The other remaining candidates sat frozen. Clara Rose, who had stayed specifically to watch, looked as if someone had struck her. Her earlier confidence was gone, replaced by pure disbelief. On the screen the orange-haired woman’s lips parted; for several seconds she forgot she was supposed to speak.

An Expert-rank mastery skill. In a basic registration test. Used by someone who had only just been confirmed as Awakened. None of them had expected anything close to this level of power.

Rael glanced down at the wand. Even without the Archer class he had once copied, something of the understanding remained. The way he had focused the bolt, the instinctive sense of trajectory and penetration—those lessons had not vanished when the class was sacrificed. Knowledge gained through a copied class, it seemed, left traces that stayed.

He turned back toward the screen. Everyone was still staring at him.

"I passed, right?"

The woman on the screen jerked as if waking from a trance. She nodded rapidly, almost frantically. "Yes. Yes—passed. Proceed to the next stage."

Rael walked toward the exit. Clara pushed herself off the wall and followed without a word, still looking dazed.

In the control room above, chaos had erupted.

More than a hundred Association staff and analysts sat in tiered rows facing a wall of monitors. The moment the dummy exploded, every conversation stopped, then restarted at once in urgent whispers.

"Did you see the compression ratio?"

"That heat signature isn’t possible for a new Awakened—"

"Replay it. Slow it down. The penetration happened before the explosion."

"Expert-tier output at minimum. Maybe higher."

"A registration candidate just erased a reinforced dummy with one skill."

Senior observers leaned forward, fingers flying across their consoles as they pulled raw data. The dummies used in this stage were designed to withstand repeated Intermediate-rank attacks. Destroying one outright in a single hit normally required an Expert-tier awakener with refined control. The boy on the screen had done it casually, as if testing a new tool.

On the main observation platform Susan—the orange-haired woman—turned to the woman seated beside her. Samantha sat with perfect posture, ponytail neat, expression carefully neutral. She was the same woman Rael had woken up beside two days earlier.

"Sister," Susan said, "is this normal for the outskirts?"

Samantha shook her head slowly. "No. I’ve never seen anything like it. Not even in the capital."

Susan studied her for a moment. "Why did you push this shift onto me? Father gave you the investigator role, not me."

Color rose in Samantha’s cheeks. She had been ready to handle the on-screen duties herself until the final candidate of the previous group walked in. Even with the subtle changes of Conceal, she had recognized him instantly. The memory of that morning—the awkwardness, the missing clothes, the assumptions she had made—had hit her so hard she could not stay on camera.

She stood quickly, practically guiding Susan into the primary seat. "Just this once. Please. I’ll explain later."

Susan watched her with narrowed eyes. She had known Samantha since childhood; the other woman had never acted this flustered. Something was off. Still, she nodded.

"Fine. But you owe me the full story."

Samantha’s face smoothed back into seriousness. The earlier embarrassment vanished. "Do you think he could be the one?"

Susan glanced at the replay still looping on a side monitor—the bolt forming, compressing, erasing the dummy. "Maybe. Maybe not. We’ll see."

Rael stepped into the waiting area for the final stage. The room was larger and quieter, with simple benches along the walls. Lucas spotted him at once and broke into a wide smile.

"I knew you’d pass," the shorter boy said, walking over with an outstretched hand. Rael shook it. "Can I know your name?"

"Rael Ashborne. You’re Lucas, right?"

"Yes. Thank you again for earlier."

"No problem."

Clara entered a few steps behind Rael. She stopped in front of him, still searching for words.

"What kind of monster are you?"

Rael blinked. "What did I do?"

Clara opened her mouth, closed it, then opened it again. Nothing coherent came out. In the end she simply shook her head, gave up, and sat down heavily on the nearest bench. She had decided further conversation was pointless.

Rael and Lucas took seats a short distance away and spoke quietly while the last candidates filtered in. One boy never appeared; the door to the testing range finally sealed, confirming he had failed the three-miss limit.

A few minutes later Susan’s image appeared on the waiting-room screen. Her earlier irritation was gone, replaced by professional calm.

"Congratulations on completing the first two stages," she said. "We will now begin the final stage."

The door at the far end of the room unlocked with a soft click.

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