“Put your hand on the orb as you close your eyes and focus on your breathing,” the mage said to Suzy as she kept herself composed trying to hold off from shaking. The orb lit up for a few seconds before the mage sat in silence for a moment.

As Susy took the test James felt his heartbeat faster in his chest worried for his sister. After it felt like he would lose his composure from holding his breathe, he noticed the mage raise an eyebrow with a quick almost unnoticeable grin followed by congratulating her and something whispered after.

She walked back to James and the rest of their family with the biggest grin, her chest puffed up, and her head held high.

“Looks like something good happened. Mind telling us what the result is?” Emily rushed to ask her before Suzy could even speak.

With a huge silly grin Susy said proudly, “Major affinity in nature and a minor affinity in holy element. He said I will have a bright future in a mid-tier school.”

James noticed a quick frown on Emily’s face before she wiped it away so that Susy wouldn’t notice and gave an encouraging smile.

‘Hmm, it looks like lots of things haven’t changed much since my past life. I was going to coast by with an easy element to stay low key but now to stay close by Suzy I will need to pick some useful elements.’ James thought.

Thinking back to what the empire in his last life cared for when evaluating elemental classes, James had to pick a major affinity that won't bring too much attention to himself. He also had to have affinities that meet the requirements for the mid-tier school like Susy.

He thought about his times fighting battles and what elements important mages fought with. Mages near the front line as cannon fodder would have basic elements like fire and earth (subset of nature) as their focus of their class. This is because they were seen in lots of mages and primarily had either damage or defensive spells as the focus of each element. Nature and water elements were usually behind those fire and earth mages as they were ranged spell casters or healers. Healing, and offensive spells were common for nature and water element classes to have as the focus of their spells, but they did have a few weaker defensive spells.

James had to pick something that stood out more than basic elements but was not overboard like lightning from his past life. His thoughts drifted to a certain powerhouse from his memory that had a leader role for one of the parties James was a part of early on. This powerhouse had the element ice as his class focus which was not too common but also not extremely rare and had a huge advantage with mainly offensive spells. It was a good element for slowing enemies, aoe damage, and controlling the battlefield.

The minor affinity is not as important but could eventually be useful because it usually works with your major affinity in effective ways. Of course, this does not become important for a mage until after the second-class upgrade. Mages who gained their first class should focus on the element that makes up their class for multiple of reasons like pushing towards a specific upgrade path or more effective spells. The benefits of a decent minor affinity are the possibilities to combine elements in spells and learn spells fully based of the element of the minor affinity. Granted spells would be weaker if based off a minor affinity and it was recommended to learn them when a mage had access to more spells in their arsenal like the second-class upgrade.

James wanted something that could work with the ice element in an effective way and since ice is mostly damage, he thought of an element based around speed as his minor. This brought him to the conclusion that the wind element would be a perfect for a minor affinity of him.

James overheard a young girl tell her parents that she had a major affinity in the sound element which caught his attention. A second later he also heard another kid talk about his major affinity being in the summoning element. James realized these kids will be forced to become pawns for the powerful or the empire and most likely when they get to school will have their puppet strings attached. Of course, not literal strings but rather it signifies that someone will take control of those innocent kids’ lives. James was still surprised because those two elements were extremely rare, found being tested in the same group, and came from the same town hick town in the middle of nowhere.

“James come on up,” James heard snapping his sight to the mage looking around the room.

James walked up, and as he got closer heard a scoff coming from the Loor boy making him wonder what he did to offend him. Deciding not to pay the Loor boy any mind, he focused on his task at hand.

As James was walking to the test, he focused inside himself on his mana core and started to create ice and wind elements to flood the space surrounding his core. He had to make sure to create more of the ice element while also creating enough of the wind element, and at the same time keep the elements close to his core. This was his plan to deceive the orb into recognizing the elements James picked out as his affinities. While it could be considered a minor trick and maybe pointless, it should be enough for the lesser affinity orb to not pick up on.

Putting his hand on the orb he started revolving the ice and wind elements even faster until he was told otherwise. James started to worry but he remembered the mage shouldn’t be able to see any changes in mana without the help of a magic item. After a few minutes of silence, James started to sweat as he wondered if he was going to be caught.

The mage finally responded as James was going to lose it by announcing, “Congratulations,” and by augmenting the wind element, the mage followed it with a whisper in his ear, “Major affinity in ice and minor affinity in wind. You’ll be accepted into a mid-tier school.” Suddenly a grunt was heard coming from the direction of the Loor boy again when the congratulations was said but again James ignored him.

After thanking the mage, James made his way back to his family looking relieved and happy everything worked out. He was able to get into a mid-tier school which mainly took people with above average elements like ice, magma (subset of fire), metal and blood as some examples. The mid-tier schools also take those with really strong minor elements and also their major elements being basic or lower tier. Susy is a perfect example of someone being accepted because of her high tier minor affinity being the holy element, while her lower tier major affinity nature element was worth nothing in the schools’ eyes. High tier schools focused on students with strong major affinities in elements like holy, lightning, plasma (strong fire subclass), hydromancy (strong divination subclass of water), space, and time to name a few. James expected the summoning and sound major affinity kids to get into the higher tier school because of the extreme rarity and powerful uses of spells available to them. With his sister having a minor affinity in holy James will be able to join her in attending and be able to keep an eye on her.

Once with his family James shared the news which got an eyebrow raise from Emily but smiles and hugs from them all.

Quickly James and his family departed after receiving their written invitations to the mid-tier school from an apprentice mage at the entrance of the testing room. They made their way out of the adventure’s guild building and the trip home was filled with excitement and laughter.

Once home James and his family celebrated with cake and cookies which were of course recommended by Roy again. Emily didn't give Roy a hard time because of the request and instead was to overcome with joy from her children’s results to care. They quickly wore themselves out by talking about the future and what they expected from school.

Susy was nonstop describing all the spells she wanted to learn even if they were not included with her affinities. Breathing fire at monsters or summoning a blizzard were things Susy said as she had starry eyes. James thought this was cute of his little sister and did not want to burst her bubble. At the end of the night James and Suzy could not get to sleep because of their built-up excitement even after stuffing themselves with lots of food. They decided to go to the backyard to continue talking in hopes they were not loud enough to wake up their parents.