The first-year students were gathering in the courtyard under the cheering of the observers. The second-years that were responsible for the practice hall and that supervised the battles also gathered at one side. After all students arrived, a huge gong on the magister's balcony was hit with a blunt, leather-covered, hammer. The courtyard and galleries fell silent. Magister Roheim rose from his chair, took a few steps forward and raised his hand.

“My dear students. I was very pleased to see the progress you all made in the past half-year. You all showed us an exciting and beautiful performance in the theoretical and combat assessment. I don't need to lie when I say that the visiting officers of Moria's army would gladly take all of you under their wings.”

He made a short break, nodding friendly to the army officials.

“We had a grand total of 28 teams showcasing their skills and excellence. Of those 28 teams, 3 remained unbeaten! A superb achievement!” Please step forward, Team 12, Rah'kor Thunderroar, Tanja Welswick, and Erik Rhanoff. Team 17, Markus Keppar, Jena Foruna, and Theos Foruna. And last but not least, Team 23, Sanna Helm, IdrI'ka Darkpaw and Herula Bariblossom.”

The excited students walked in front of the crowd. Nathan only recognized the team that they met in their last round. He had a vague impression of the other six from the mandatory lectures but had never talked to them.

“As a reward for remaining unbeaten, you will have the privilege to join a research group of your choice regardless of their normal requirements. Take your time and chose wisely, this is a rare opportunity for you and will heavily influence your future career as a magician. You may step back now, please inform the respective magister about your choice within the next few days.”

After the nine students mixed back into the crowd, Magister Roheim continued,

“Everyone, even if you lost one or two, or maybe even all of your battles, do not worry. This assessment doesn't look for victories but for performance. And from the cheering of your fellow schoolmates and the animated discussions between the magisters behind me, I could tell, that your performances were very entertaining. While you all were giving your best, the magisters and I picked several students for our research groups. At the same time, our esteemed guests also had the chance to extend a fixed number of invitations. My assistants will deliver the invitations to the respective students in a minute. You may choose to join any number of research groups that invited you. But remember, everyone has only so much time for research and learning, so know your limits!. If you were to chose to accept the invitation of the military I would ask you to come to my office tomorrow.”

After a few more polite, empty phrases, Magister Roheim left the balcony through a door and a dozen students swarmed the courtyard with a batch of invitations in their hands. Many of the first-years only got one or two invitations and only a few got more than three. When it was Nathans turn the assistant gave him two invitations. One for another light research group under the faculty head for magic theory, Magister Fae as well as an invitation to an acceleration circuit research group of Magister Hennen, a name that he had never heard before. Revar seemed to have caught much more attention. Not only was he invited by three different acceleration research groups, but he also got an invitation for enhanced martial arts from Magister Kennen as well as one of the few invitations of the military. Thomas got two invitations, similar to Nathan, but he didn't even look at them before putting them away, When Nathan asked, he answered that he was content with his group and higher profile ones would also have a higher workload, thus he wasn't interested.

“What will you pick, Revar? The military?” Nathan asked.

“I'm not sure yet. But probably not. If I remember correctly joining the military means I'd have to join for at least 10 years. Didn't plan to stay away from home for so long.”

“I see. Guess that's a good point.”

“Most likely I'll join Magister Kennen. I should've won the last fight against Theos without your tool.” His voice sounded annoyed as he threw a short glare towards Theo who stood a few meters apart from them, talking to his sister.

“Didn't he invite us anyways? Right when we arrived at the school?”

“Let's just say I lacked the urge to join.” Revar scratched his head embarrassedly.

“What will you do?” he asked.

“The acceleration research group sounds interesting, they don't only deal with micro acceleration but also its related macro acceleration patterns and how to combine them. If I can believe the text on the invitation, Magister Hennen is one of the best air magicians at the school.”

“Air huh? Taking your micro accel up a notch.” He grinned.

“Let's search for the other guys, I'm curious how their assessment went.”

It didn't take long for them to find Terran, Devan, and Alina in the courtyard. A few minutes later they left the castle together.

“How many invitations did you guys get?” Terran asked cheerfully.

“Don't answer him, he only wants to brag.” Alina interrupted Nathan when he wanted to reply to the question.

“Oh c'mon Alina, don't be such a kill-joy,” Terran said.

“I got four and one from the military,” Revar answered his question and gave Terran a challenging look.

“Hah!” Alina giggled, “serves you right!”

“Oh damn, really?” Terran was suspicious, “Nathan, how many invitations did Revar get?”

“As he said, five.”

“Fu-” He interrupted himself, “How the hell did you get five when I got only four?”

“Guess I'm just better than you.” Revar gloated before he faced Alina, “ And you?”

“I got two from research groups, and one from the military.” She proudly answered.

“Oh, really? From the military too?”

“Yep.”

“And will you join?”

“Certainly not. How could I? They aren't exactly friendly with my country.”

“Oh. I didn't know that. I only knew that our two countries were on bad terms with each other. Why is Arkanda opposed to Moria?”

“Some dispute about a few islands on the coast. When Moria began to increase its mana crystal, ore and essence imports it also hugely increased its mining efforts. They found a few islands with really pure ore nodes, so they simply declared them as their territory, even tho they belong to Arkanda. When my country officially complained they just argued that every Island in the Central Sea belongs to Moria.”

“Wow, that's harsh. What did Arkanda do?”

“What were we supposed to do? Our Navy is far inferior to Moria's, so we couldn't do anything at all except for some minor economic consequences. But I don't care, it happened long before I was born, like 50 years ago. Only those old geezers in the parliament still complain about it.”

“Why did the military invite you?” Nathan used his chance to ask her. He hadn't thought that Alina was the fighting-type, so he was a bit confused.

She straightened her back and said proudly, “I'll show you.”

Alina raised her outstretched right arm in a parallel position to the ground and turned her palm towards the sky. Nathan observed how complicated patterns formed a few centimeters above her hand. When the circuit was finished, a flat sphere of very transparent ice as large as a head formed above her hand. Then she raised her left hand beside her left eye and channeled mana into a second circuit. Nathan immediately recognized it as a sharp light circuit. Then a thick ray of light shot from her hand through the ice sphere. Nathan raised his right brow interested when he saw that the sphere focused the sharp light into a tiny point a few meters away before it started to diverge again until it was so weak, that the light wasn't visible anymore.

“Now watch!” Alina shouted excited.

With a slight change of the circuit in her right hand, the thickness of the sphere changed and the focus point jumped a dozen meters further away. Then she tilted her right hand, and the focused sharp light spot hit a rock at the ground. Immediately the stone started to melt where the ray hit it and a second later it blasted apart. Alina ended her demonstration grinning broadly at Nathan who let out a gasp of astonishment.

“That was unexpected. So you focused all the energy of the ray into a tiny point, which in turn was much hotter than normal?”

“Yep.”

He mumbled to himself, “And then the stone exploded due to the inner tension. I understand”

Nathan walked towards a piece of the destroyed stone, examining the traces of the sharp light ray.

“Maybe I should have also learned ice magic, who knew it can be this powerful... THIS IS SO ANNOYING!”

“What's up with ye?” Thomas, once again chewing on something, asked.

“There are just too many interesting spells, how can anyone decide what to learn and what not to?” Nathan sighed.

“Where did you get this idea from Alina? It's great!” Revar asked.

“I browsed through a list of past magicians and searched if there was anyone who also used light and ice magic. I found exactly one, Magister Drebbos. He invented the ice-lenses and created some really powerful spells with them.”

Revar took the stone fragment out of Nathan's hand and also examined it.

“No wonder that the army wanted you.” he said, “If you can focus sharp light that extremely, then you can destroy far stronger armor than normally possible. If you can control the shape of the focus you can maybe even form a sharp light line that cuts through a large area. Very useful.” Revar said.

“Yes. Magister Drebbos could do that. And much more. Once in a battle, he channeled mana with his whole body to form dozens of sharp light and ice-lense circuits at his chest, belly, legs and so on, and focused all the sharp light rays into a single point which could evaporate stone, metal, everything.”

“Sounds amazing.” Revar shook his head, “Maybe I should also research some old kinetic magicians.”

“It's definitely worth it!” Alina said.

“And what about you Devan? How're your results?” Nathan asked while Alina and Revar still excitedly talked about the possibilities of combining ice and light circuits.

“I was completely overshadowed by Alina. I got a single invite for a light research group. Maybe I'll attend it additionally to Magister Duskvales group and see what they're researching.” He didn't seem to be bothered much by it, so Nathan didn't pursue it.

“Why'd ye get so many invites as crafter Terran?” Thomas asked after he finished chewing.

“Hah, because I'm great. That's why.” Overacting a bit, Terran threw his head back and laughed in a comical arrogant manner.

“I got three invites from crafting groups and, dunno why, one from a fire martial arts group.”

“Three from craftin' groups? What the heck did ye build?”

“Hmm, my most useful tool was the sandstorm cannon I guess?” Terran seemed to ponder about the battles he experienced, “Yeah, that should be it. It's a tool that grinds rocks to sand and accelerates the sand to extremely fast velocities, basically creating a sand ray that can grind up flesh in quite a short time.”

“It worked really well in our second battle,” Alina added, “We lured our opponents into a tight space between two huge rock formations and Terran activated it. They lost immediately. Devan and I couldn't do anything in this fight.”

“Tch. If I knew that those big 'quipment stuff would be dominatin' the assessment I wouldn't have crafted all that small personal gear.” Thomas muttered., “What a waste.”

“Why, though?” Revar asked, “I heard that in the past years that wasn't the case. That there were many teams without a loss, which didn't use large magic tools.”

“Probably because of the lack of students,” Devan answered.

“Lack of students?”

“Yeah, didn't you see how empty the lecture halls are? In the past our school had several hundreds of new students each year, resulting in roughly 200 teams instead of 28. This year we only are 91 new students.”

“Huh? I always wondered why the halls were so big, so its because the school declined?” Nathan asked.

“I wouldn't call it decline. They just sent all the magicians which talent would be barely enough to become tool magicians to a new school and only kept those with a high talent here. If all those lower talented ones would still attend Gilsbeck, then the halls would be too small. The overall number of enrolled students was way higher in the last few years than in the past.” Devan elaborated.

“The hell, why do you know all that?” Terran asked.

Devan avoided their eyes and looked to the ground. “Well, I … My family is quite poor so I work part-time in the administration. Sorting files and similar things. I overheard some of the other staffers there worry about their jobs because there were so few students in Gilsbeck now.”

“And what does it have to do with the magic tools?” Terran asked.

“Well, fewer students means fewer members in the research groups. Normally they were filled with second years and first-years barely got in. Now many research groups lack members and we had the chance to join. That also means we have access to spell circuits that the previous first-years didn't have.”

“Oh. So that's why the rewards of the assessment seemed so lackluster.” Revar said.

Devan nodded as an answer. Alina, however, became fidgety.

“Why is Moria training so many magicians, it must cost them hundred-thousands of gold each year.”

The six friends looked at each other without giving an answer. Besides Revar's, each of their countries was a neighbor to Moria so they could understand her worries. Terran cleared his throat before answering unconvincingly, “Well, most of the students are foreigners to Moria. So I don't think they will use them to attack other countries... probably?”

The group became silent, everyone lingering in their thoughts, wondering if they'd join an attack on a different country when enough incentives were given.