"You are the rising stars of your respective academies and the reason why I organized this gala. Your achievements bring great prestige to the Distar marquisate, so I'm going to personally introduce you to my guests. You should use this opportunity to distinguish yourself and show your value to the Kingdom."

The Marchioness took a few steps back, throwing a short but meaningful look at Lith. She turned around, rubbing her throat and activating a first magic air spell.

"May I have your attention, please?" Her magically enhanced voice resounded through the ball room, making all the heads turn and conversations stop.

"Tonight, we have assembled to celebrate the new year. To remember all the hardships we have endured. Two academies are temporarily lost. Balkor has once again put the Griffon Kingdom on its knees. Yet we survived. Our future may seem grim, but our present is worthy of celebration.

"I'll introduce to you, one by one, the brightest minds of this generation. I'd like to ask them to show us a little bit of their talent, so that they can demonstrate the progress they have made during the past year and make this evening more enjoyable.

"There are a lot of rumors about the rankings being unfair." Marchioness Distar looked at all the six youths, but indulged on Friya for a second longer than the others.

"Magic, however, doesn't allow one to bluff. Either you can do something, or you can't. There is no faking talent. What is required from you is to perform at your best by using only first magic.

For security reasons, tier one magic and above are sealed by the mansion's protective arrays and so are all the magical items that are not defensive in nature."

Lith was surprised by the announcement. He hadn't encountered such a powerful formation since during the plague, when he was under the effects of the Small World artifact.

Solus activated her mana sense, scouting their surroundings.

'There are a lot of arrays around us, but no Small World.' She thought.

'This is not something I would have expected from a medium importance noble like the Marchioness. I thought only the royals had access to magical formations this strong. Let's see how they fare against true magic.'

Lith silently waved a tier one spell in his mind, connecting his mana with the world energy surrounding him. The idea was to perform something simple and unnoticeable, raising the temperature of the room by a few degrees.

Everything went fine until he mixed the mana with the fire element. As soon as the energy started to build, the arrays around him activated. They weren't actually capable of preventing him from casting a spell, only to disrupt the execution by causing fluctuations in the mana in the room.

'That's why the security is so lax. Intruders and guests are both stripped of all their powers.

'The arrays can definitely stop a fake mage, but not a true one. I could continue if I wanted. I only need to adapt my flow according to the fluctuations, something that a fake mage's fixed pattern is incapable of doing. What about our dimensional pocket?'

Lith was reassured by his findings. He had walked into the arrays without even noticing them. He had gravely underestimated a noble household's resources.

'I think we can open it but it's going to take some time and effort. In our case, rather than block our magic, these arrays make casting any spell much harder and mana expensive.' Solus replied.

Lith mind nodded to her words, checking if both spirit magic and fusion magic still worked. Everything went without a hitch. No matter how much energy he conjured, the arrays remained inactive.

"Let's start from the first rankers." The Marchioness continued.

"Yurial Deirus, the white hand, from the White Griffon academy."

"Yurial the what now?" Lith whispered in Friya's ear.

"It's his custom title. High rankers often receive one or more nicknames from their Professors in the fields they are more talented in." She explained.

"I never heard anyone calling him like that, though."

"And probably you never will. He probably wouldn't have one if not for Linjos's you know what." Her voice was barely audible, even with his heightened senses.

Lith was able to notice Yurial being embarrassed by the pompous title and the deafening applause that followed.

'Poor Yurial.' Solus's voice was full of compassion. 'Not only he gets constantly reminded of his fake achievement, but he also got the short end of the stick by going first. Hope he doesn't get stage fright.'

'Right now he has only two choices. Either to keep drowning himself in self-pity or do his best to turn the lie into truth. I hope he'll choose the second one.' Lith replied.

Before their telepathic talk could finish, Yurial was already moving.

Stage fright was something he had overcome years ago. As the heir of the Deirus' household, Yurial had followed his father to all the most important social events ever since he was little, often opening his speeches in the role of valet.

After being paraded around the whole Kingdom for the last two months, bragging was second nature to him. Yurial slowly spun around, waving his hands in the air while collecting small wisps of fire from every candle that met his eyes.

The ballroom was mostly lighted with magical crystals, but there would always be other sources of light at a banquet, to give the room warmth. No matter how brilliant it was, magic generated light had something cold about it, especially to non mages.

The wisps danced around Yurial forming an ethereal river, until he widened his arms making them spread around. The wisps rose a few meters above the guests' heads, taking advantage of the high ceiling.

Then, each wisp grew to the size of a football, assuming the shape of a griffon that shrieked its challenge to its fiery companions. Each wisp-griffon was of a different color, ranging from red to green.

Handling so many griffons with only first magic put a cap on the temperatures the conjured flames could reach. The whole room gasped in amazement while the pseudo creatures charged at each other like they were fighting to the death.

Then, Yurial made them fly out from an open window, sending them as high as he could before he lost control. When it happened, they exploded forming multi-colored fireworks. His performance caused a spontaneous applause that continued until the Marchioness announced the next student.

"Lusa Erjar, the Mistress of the Storm." The Lightning Griffon first ranker was in quite a pinch. She had not prepared anything, the show wasn't planned. Lusa didn't want to be outshined, but fire was the flashiest element and it had already been used.

So, she resorted to water magic, collecting a few drops from the drinks of those presents to form a multi colored sphere of liquid that created multiple rainbows across the room before turning it into an ice dragon that flew out of the window before exploding into a huge rainbow.

The crowd applauded, but after Yurial's performance Lusa's was lackluster.

"Friya Ernas, the master of space."

When her name was called, Friya went to the center stage. She used light and darkness magic to recreate the celestial sphere, giving to those present the illusion the ceiling had disappeared.