Christopher was startled by the spectacled man’s bulging eyes. “I’m sorry, did I misunderstand the instructions?”

The man shook himself out of his state. “No, No, please hand me that thing for a second.” He said as he took the Device out of Christopher’s hands. After playing around with it for a little while and making his own musical note, he sat it back down on the pitch-black table.

He continued. “You did understand that you would need more Soul Force for the next two tests?”

“Yes of course. What did I score?”

The reaction and words from the examinator made him think that he had done really well, but he could not be sure, and he always had the tendency to fear for the worst.

“The ranking will be determined when all the tests have been concluded, please move your eyes towards the second item.”

Christopher complied. This second item looked somewhat familiar and looked like a slightly larger version of the Soul Alarm.

“This large cylinder is filled to the brim with a special liquid. Your score will be determined by the amount of smoke that you manage to produce by infusing the metal strip. I will stand at a distance to observe the volume of the smoke. Please start infusing the Soul Heat when you are ready.”

This second test also sounded straightforward enough. These tests were not quite what Tamas had dealt with during her exam, but the principles were similar. He did wonder about the best method to create a lot of smoke. Should he be precise again or brute force as much heat as he could? It made sense to him that he needed to use more Heat this time. He would need to turn this liquid into the smoke, so that would likely require quite some heat.

His interface now showed 66 percent Soul Force. He had been pretty much spot on when imbuing the first device with a third of his Soul Force. He lifted the Cylindrical device between both his hands and started concentrating. He should probably be careful not to overdo it, the exit hole out of the Cylinder was small and he did not want to blow up another expensive device. He felt like five percent over one second should be a good start, and he could quickly increase the amount if it produced too little smoke.

He went through the steps and managed to expend just under five percent, and the reaction was pretty much immediate. White smoke blew out of the cylinder at a dangerous rate, putting far too much pressure on the device. He quickly brought his expenditure down a little further to only three percent, which felt like the optimal heat for the device. The white smoke still billowed out of the cylinder in stunning amounts, it had already covered him entirely, forcing him to hold his breath to prevent himself from coughing. Still, at the rate with which he was pouring in Soul Heat, the interface bar ticked down to 32 percent in only 10 seconds. He quickly shut down the flow, knowing that there would be one last test.

The white smoke hung thick in his immediate surroundings. His eyes could not penetrate the thick fog, which meant that he had no way to tell quite how much he had produced. He put his inner elbow over his mouth, not wanting to breathe in any of the smoke. He patiently waited until the smoke had dissipated enough for him to see clearly. The spectacled man stood at the far side of the room and should have been able to measure the amounts accurately.

“How did it go, how far did the smoke reach? I could not see anything.”

The man cleared his throat a few times.

“Just give me the device would you,” he said impatiently. He opened it up, unlatching the clasps and looking inside. “All gone, let's just move on to the last test shall we” He sounded even more tired somehow. Rubbing his temple with his left hand.

Christopher shuffled to his left, positioning himself before the last item, the mahogany gleaming metal alloy. Almost done now, he kept his focus, he needed to perform well on this final test. Quite different from the two devices, he wondered what he would be expected to produce with this last material.

“This is a special alloy developed at the Academy. This metal has the inherent property of being able to shift its colors based on the amount of Soul Heat it absorbs. I would ask you to pour in all your remaining Soul Force as Soul Heat into the material as quickly as possible. I will be able to score you based on the mix of colors that the metal achieves due to your Soul Heat infusion. You can keep the material on the table, which cannot be affected by the heat.”

Christopher took a few deep breaths, at least this was clear enough. His interface currently showed 36 percent Soul Heat remaining, which kind of surprised him. Had it been that long since he last checked the interface? His Soul Force certainly had quickly regenerated those four percent since he last checked.

All he would have to do now was infuse all his remaining Soul Heat as quickly as possible. Kind of like he had done when busting that Soul Alarm. He did not even bother asking which colors would present the best result, he knew the man was not prone to answer any of his questions.

He placed his hands on the metal, which currently felt very cool to the touch. The key now was to make sure that he imbued it all quickly. He took a few deep breaths before he poured all his focus towards the process, even closing his eyes for a moment, not wanting to be distracted by the shifting colors. As he followed the steps, he succeeded in very quickly expending all his remaining Soul Force into the mahogany metal. He started to feel lightheaded once he completed the task. With his goal accomplished, he opened his eyes.

What he saw in the material was stunningly beautiful. A multitude of colors rippled across the surface of the shining metal. He saw many different shades of red, blue, and yellow, and pretty much all colors that could be formed from those base three. He even saw a few ripples of silver and gold coursing through the material.

He did not want to stop looking, and with a quick glance, he noticed that the instructor was also deeply drawn into the spectacle. He kept looking at the material for what must have been more than a minute before the colors finally trickled down to some singular blues, reds, and yellows. His mind felt somewhat hypnotized by the show that he had witnessed. This was quite the material; he would love to have a little of his own. He thought that even the people on the plaza might enjoy such a show. They clearly had some impressive things at the Academy.

He stood nervously waiting, the two devices and the chunk of metal evenly spaced on the pitch-black table. That was it, he was done now. He could only hope that the instructor would place his performance at a high intermediary level. Surely this should be a good enough performance even with his abysmally low total Soul Force.

The spectacled man finally shook himself from a daze, realizing that it was his turn now to grade the performance.

“Please give me a moment, I need to think on this for a little while. just sit down somewhere.”

The man extracted a pen and paper from his clothing and sat on the floor, clearly deep in thought. Christopher had to resist the temptation to spy on what was being written down.

Christopher actually followed the man’s suggestion to sit down. He really had expended every last bit of Soul Force, and he was still feeling light-headed.

The man scratched furiously away at the paper for some time, which allowed Christopher to at least recover from his lightheadedness, his Soul Force back to a few percent. It really seemed to regenerate quite quickly, he wondered if this had something to do with the air that felt somewhat different here.

He was startled out of his contemplations by the spectacled man speaking up.

“My apologies, I needed to make a few notes. Now about your exam, I needed some time to triangulate where your shown abilities would put you on the Soul Heat scale. Could you maybe tell me a bit more about your experience with Soul Heat?”

Maybe it would be better to not mention that he had only started around a week ago. He did not want to talk himself into being put at fledgling.

“I have started to train my Soul Heat some time ago, trying to master the effect to my utmost ability. In fact, I have dedicated all of my time to improving the Soul Heat effect, passing by on practicing all the other effects.”

“I see, I must admit that I am now confused by the low levels of Soul Force that I detected in your body. Now let me first go over your test results.”

“Regarding the first test, you managed to produce a powerful tone for 38 seconds, which is almost unbelievable since your reserve of Soul Force should not be enough to sustain the tone for anywhere near that time.”

“The second test was no less surprising. I admit that I was not quite able to accurately measure the volume of the smoke that was generated, since even from so many paces away it quickly managed to envelop my body.”

“The final test was what caused me to make you wait for some time since I wanted to document what I observed. Something remarkable clearly happened to the mahogany block of metal, the wide range of cascading colors is not quite an effect that should be produced from the material. It was different for some reason from what should normally happen, even from someone with very large reserves. This final test is very much dependent on the user’s mental understanding of the construct of Heat.”

‘I’ve done it!’ He clearly had performed exceptionally well, it seemed that he had absolutely aced his tests. Surely this would be enough for the rank that he had been hoping for.

He could not keep some of the excitement from his voice. “So where would this place me, what would be my rank based on my performance?”

“I will provide you with the highest rank that I can give you from this exam. You will receive a certificate for Master Five.”