Vance completed four laps of the box, each time searching for any distinct markings or changes in the material. Of course, he found none. Determined to make sure he had all of the information available, Vance jumped in place, extending a hand upwards.

He felt his fingertips brush against another cold, metal surface. The roof had only been a few inches out of reach.

Vance had heard his instructors voice fairly clearly when he'd been told to escape. Now, he could still faintly hear muffled noises from outside of the box. Armed with this information, he reasoned the walls couldn't be too thick.

The air inside was very still. It reminded Vance that the reason for the ten-minute time limit might not just be for the sake of the test. If he took too long, he might suffocate in here.

Vance found that there was no better motivator than survival, so he got to work straight away.

He started simple. Reaching out, he felt for the mana within the metal walls. It wasn't natural mana, it was shifted and dense. In addition, it was absolutely nailed in place by Aaron's will. Just like before, this was predictable but always worth trying.

Next, he pushed his mana sense outwards to the outside of the box, searching for constructs that could be maintaining the structure. He found none.

With these two things out of the way, Vance determined that this test was likely one of Arcane might. The question was whether or not he could muster a force powerful enough to break out. It was a simple test, but there was little room for negotiation.

Vance shifted a little fire mana from the air around him and provoked his fire core. His best way of generating a large amount of mana was using the feather construct, so he kicked that process off as early as he could. Purposefully, he didn't assign a lot of his willpower to fight it off, he needed it to perpetuate freely for now.

While that was happening, Vance turned his attention to other matters. First, he had no idea how much power he'd need to get through this thing. Experimentally, he created a tiny piece of fire mana and flung it at the metal wall.

As expected, nothing happened. The mana inside the wall was barely even disturbed as the flames licked harmlessly against the cold iron. He couldn't help but think that his attempts to break through would look an awful lot like those wind mana users trying to cut through the apple.

On closer inspection of his situation, Vance noticed that the air around him had warmed slightly. Now that he thought about it, that should've been an obvious consequence of creating fire in an enclosed space. He added that to his list of problems. Creating too much heat in here too quickly could end up roasting him alive.

Unfortunately, fire mana was still his most powerful and abundant resource.

Vance began testing his various mana types against the metal to no avail. The most success he had was with metal mana of his own, where he left a small indent in the wall about as thin as his fingernail.

Thinking it over, Vance concluded that his inability to control a larger quantity of mana was probably why he was expected to fail. Fortunately, Vance had a little something up his sleeve. He couldn't control mana on the scale of a third-year, but he did know one of their tricks. Luckily for him, there was nobody in here to see what he was up to.

Vance figured he'd only get one real chance at this, so he purposely let some of the time he had left lapse. If he failed, he didn't want to spend long stuck inside of a superheated box.

With about two minutes to spare, he got to work.

Vance carefully extracted the fire mana within his core and seized control of it outside of his body, where he gathered it. Immediately, the temperature began to slowly rise.

He continued to add more until he had brought forth a ball of mana roughly half a foot wide. Then, he compressed it to half of the size. He felt the ball compress, becoming denser and more potent. To his surprise, it was very, very easy. Feeling confident, he compressed it by half a second time. This time was a little tougher, so he reclaimed the rest of his will from his fire core, beating it down to a sputter. He already had the mana he needed, now he just needed to pull this off.

He knew if he pushed it too hard, he'd end up losing control and letting all of this fire mana run rampant inside of this enclosed metal space. In his head, Vance defined that outcome as sub-optimal and decided to avoid it at all costs.

Still, he felt like he could perform at least one more compression. He wasn't really sure how he knew. He couldn't precisely measure his willpower, but he felt relatively comfortable, though he knew it'd be tough. So, he waited until he thought there'd be less than a minute left. He couldn't be exactly sure how long he had, but he had a rough idea.

When he pushed to compress the mana again, he felt heavy resistance. It was at this moment that Vance realised he would not be able to hold this level of compression for more than a few moments.

That being the case, he opted to take his shot. He aimed upwards, towards one of the top corners of the iron box. He didn't want to aim above himself in case he was successful. That would result in molten metal dripping onto him. At the same time, he didn't want to aim at the sides. He was confident Aaron had taken precautions, but if he pushed too hard and hit a student out there with compressed fire mana, that'd be even worse.

Thus, the corners seemed to be the best bet. He thrust out his hands, directing the now tiny ball of fire mana in that direction. He carefully observed with his mana sense, ready to dive backwards at a moments notice.

He used his shaping skills to carve open a tiny hole in his own will, opening a small gap in the spherical shape he was using to compress the fire mana. The fire mana on the inside was under immense pressure and so when it was presented with this tiny opening, it flooded out violently in that direction.

The heat that emerged reminded Vance of standing in Ethan's blacksmith shop back home. Even though he'd directed the flames to the opposite side of the large metal box, It was like he was standing inches away from the open flames of the forge.

With his will, Vance directed the newly released flames towards their target.

He could sense the intensely concentrated fire mana pressing against the metal wall begin to slowly cause the metal mana inside to flee from the point of impact, slowly running down the length of the walls. To Vance's delight, it was working. The wall was melting.

Very quickly, Vance found that it started to become quite difficult to breathe as the air heated up much faster than he'd expected.

He decided that he had no choice but to press on. He did not allow all of the mana to escape at once, and instead kept the continuous beam of heat pressing against the wall. It only lasted for a few seconds before his mana was exhausted, but each passing second raised the internal temperature significantly and burned deeper into the wall.

Vance's mana sense allowed him to notice the joyous moment that the flames made their way outside of the box, finally having scorched a hole roughly the size of his head through the corner of his iron prison.

He felt the temperature begin to drop over the next few seconds as the hot air began to escape out of the hole he'd carved. He heard the sounds of dozens of clear exclamations from outside of the box, reaffirming his success.

Barely a few moments after Vance performed the greatest magical feat of his life to date, the entire metal box disappeared in an instant. The rush of much cooler air that presented itself to Vance was absolute bliss. It felt to him like he was sitting outside amongst a cool breeze.

"You're crazy, kid." Aaron's voice rang out to Vance from somewhere in the room.

At the moment, Vance was so exhausted from the intense heat exposure that he didn't bother to figure out exactly where his assessor was. Also, Vance had decided that he wanted to sit down, so he did.

"Sorry, Sir. I realised about halfway through that it was a terrible plan. That's why I waited until the last second."

When Vance spoke, he found that his breath was coming in short, quick bursts. He'd pushed much harder than he thought.

"That it was, but you did it! Sort of. That hole wasn't really big enough for you to escape through but I'm counting it! Hell, I didn't expect you to scratch the thing. Well done! Up for another test?"

"Absolutely not. I give."

"Good decision." Aaron turned outwards to the room. "Anyone here friends with Mr Kalliea? I think he could do with a hand. Fair warning, he's quite sweaty."

Aaron grabbed hold of Vance's hand and pulled him to his feet. Then, Aaron leaned in close and whispered to Vance.

"You're not supposed to know that trick yet. That was dangerous, I expect you will be cautious with it in the future, yes?" His voice sounded different. It was deeper, firmer. He used a tone that left no room for argument. For a second, Vance heard of a glimpse of the man behind the metaphorical mask.

"Yes, sir."

"Good, as long as you understand." In an instant, his boyish tone returned and he seemed as pleasant as ever. Aaron returned to a reasonable distance from Vance, patted him on the shoulder and shouted "Good show! Consider me impressed. First-years, pay attention to this one, you could learn a thing or two!"

Not long after, Mariah came over to Vance and helped get him back over to the group, making conversation on the way.

"Yikes, he wasn't kidding. You're absolutely drenched." She complained as she peeled little pieces of his clothing away from his skin with two fingers, seemingly amused by the slight resistance.

"Sorry about that. Didn't really expect to be surrounded by so much fire today."

"You're a wizard, what did you expect?"

"Arcanist." Vance corrected with a smile.

"Damn, Leon really got that in my head. You did great by the way. Everyone is really impressed. James is furious, obviously. You really made a stink out there, in more than one way."

Vance giggled at that, he'd learned it was one of his life's small pleasures to rile James up now and again.

Vance didn't actually need Mariah to warn him about James. He got all the warning he needed when he heard the words "son of a bitch" come from James' familiar voice several times on the way over. Vance was laughing openly by the time they arrived back at the crowd.

Vance spent only a few minutes joking around with his friends and accepting congratulations before he realised that the people nearby were actively moving away from him.

"I'm a bit of a sweaty mess at the moment. I probably stink. Maybe I should pop outside and sort that out?" Vance said quietly out to the group, looking for confirmation.

"Oh, no problem, I can help with that. Actually, it'd be my pleasure," James said. Vance noticed a hint of mischief in James' voice and knew that his friend had seen an opportunity for revenge.

The next moment, he was blasted with a wave of water from James' water core. It sent Vance onto his ass, but on the plus side, he was certainly washed off a little.

Around him, a few complaining voices rang out having been caught in the splash zone, which Vance and the crew found hilarious and once again burst into uproarious laughter.

James helped Vance back up to his feet and the two had a lovely, private giggling fit amongst the chaos. A few minutes later, the masters announced the beginning of the tests for the third-year students.

It seemed they would be tested last to allow the younger students to get a good, uninterrupted look at what they were capable of. Essentially, they were used to put on a show.

Quickly, Vance understood why.

Their tests were not things as simple as lighting something on fire or producing a simple construct. They were given real, complex arcane problems.

Vance didn't understand half of them, but he recognised all of the tests that focused on assessing their control or compression skills. At one point, a student was asked to procure a piece of the roof of the building. Originally, Vance thought they might go and retrieve a tile by performing some sort of magic to fly or move quickly.

Instead, the student simply tore a hole in the roof of the building using highly compressed wind mana, then gently lowered it down to the ground. It took less than a minute. That was their first test.

"Thomas, how come the third-years are so much better than you? No offence, but you're supposed to be one of them in what, half a year? The difference is too much." James asked.

"Honestly? No idea. I know there's some change in practice going into the third year but they won't tell me what it is. I've tried asking my folks before, but they told me I'd learn eventually and to stop asking. My guess? It's dangerous."

"Change in practice? Anyone got any ideas?" James asked openly out to the group, seemingly undeterred by the prospect of danger.

Brad and Mariah said "Nah" at the same time. Vance remained quiet. Apparently, that was a mistake, because James picked up on it, somehow.

"Vance...?" James' tone of voice clearly stated that he'd just discovered a conspiracy of some kind and would swiftly be cracking the case wide open.

"I don't know anything." Vance blurted out way too quickly. Then, he realised that his voice might've cracked. It was very possible that Vance was a terrible, terrible liar.

"Son of a bitch. You know, don't you?"

"Would you believe me if I said...no?"