I stared at the shattered barrier.
For several seconds...
I said nothing.
Neither did anyone else.
Hjördis descended through the fragments of the broken dome as though gravity itself had forgotten to apply to her.
The sight brought back something I'd learned very early after playing this game.
And that's only her on tier two.
I get in now.
Affinity.
Affinity was compatibility, a phenomenon that suited you.
Something in the world that responded more naturally to your existence than everything else.
Fire.
Water.
Wind.
Earth.
Lightning.
Ice.
Light.
Darkness.
Space.
Time.
Life.
Death.
And then the stranger ones.
Reflection.
Transformation.
Perception.
Will.
Order.
Chaos.
Self.
The list became increasingly ridiculous the further you went.
Your affinity was determined at birth, but birth wasn't the only factor.
Environment mattered.
A child raised in the frozen north was more likely to develop a strong affinity toward ice.
Someone raised around volcanoes could develop an affinity toward fire.
Someone born into a family that spent generations studying a particular phenomenon like maria who inherit not only knowledge...
But compatibility, letting her have Fire and Continuance as her phenomena.
Upbringing shaped the soul.
The world you grew up in quietly taught your existence what it was supposed to resonate with.
Take water.
A water mage could manipulate water.
With enough understanding, they could manipulate its temperature.
Lower it.
Lower it further.
Until the water became ice.
Simple.
Water, heat manipulation, freezing.
That same mage could take that heat and turn it into fire, however they lacked the necessary affinity to control it.
Because fire wasn't merely "hot."
Fire was its own phenomenon.
Its own manifestation.
Its own existence.
The mage's affinity determined the boundary.
They could stretch that boundary until it became almost unrecognizable...
But there was still a boundary.
Water remained water.
Fire remained fire.
The laws of Existence maintained the distinction.
If anyone could simply decide that water was fire.
The entire system would collapse into nonsense.
I looked at Hjördis.
She was the nonsense.
Which meant...
Balin and Hjördis weren't separated merely by skill.
They were separated by affinity.
I glanced toward Balin.
He was still staring at Hjördis.
The difference between Hjördis and this world wasn't simply that Hjördis was more talented.
That explanation was too shallow.
Balin had an affinity.
A very specific one.
The Phenomenon Of Self, the manifestation Of Self.
His entire magic system was built around
Himself quite literally.
And yet...
The more I thought about it, the more terrifying it became.
Because Balin had spent years squeezing everything possible out of one phenomenon.
He had practically turned a single branch of magic into a martial art.
Hjördis was the opposite.
I looked back toward the silver-haired woman.
She wasn't bound to any phenomenon.
She had an affinity toward almost everything.
Hjördis had no conventional skill tree.
No predetermined route.
No neat little list of spells she could unlock by reaching the next tier.
She simply...
Designed magic.
That was the terrifying part.
Most mages were given a road.
They could improve the road.
Expand it.
Build bridges.
Maybe even create a few shortcuts.
Hjördis was given an entire continent and told:
"Go wherever you want."
Her magic wasn't about selecting skills.
It was about understanding phenomena well enough to construct something from them.
Which explained why her fights looked so fundamentally wrong.
The tier are not merely restricted by mana but by understanding
And the difference became enormous at higher tiers.
At Tier One, your affinity mostly determined what kind of magic came naturally, intuition.
At Tier Two, you started understanding the interaction between phenomena.
Tier Three allows a mage to deliberately manipulate the interactions and governing principles of multiple phenomena they understand.
This require genuine scientific or philosophical understanding.
Good for my ass i didn't have to go through all that, I've never been good at studying.
You could begin doing things that made academy professors develop migraines.
I remembered one particular forum post.
Someone had apparently designed a black hole at Tier Three.
A genuine gravitational singularity.
At Tier Three.
The thread had several hundred replies.
One person had asked:
"Big dawg, what purpose could this possibly serve."
The creator replied:
"I wanted to see if I could."
Honestly?
Respect.
There was another comment beneath it.
"What happens if you combine spatial compression with rotational force?"
The answer was apparently:
"I cast testicular torsion."
I had laughed for five straight minutes.
I still didn't know why that was funny.
It just was.
The point was...
Magic in this world wasn't really a list of spells.
It was closer to programming reality.
Your affinity determined which parts of the language you can speak.
Your knowledge determined what words you knew.
Your imagination determined what sentences you could write.
And your tier determined how much of the language the world allowed you to speak.
I looked at Hjördis again.
She had practically mastered the language.
Balin?
He had memorized one word.
Then spent his entire life discovering how many different sentences could be made from it.
The floating fragments of the barrier continued drifting downward.
The examination grounds had become completely silent.
Thousands of applicants were looking toward the same person.
Hjördis.
The strongest mage in the academy.
The woman whose affinity encompassed phenomena that most people spent entire lifetimes trying to understand.
The woman who had apparently ended the examination without even entering the battlefield.
I watched her descend.
And then I realized something.
She didn't destroy it didn't she?, she overwritten it.
Hjördis hadn't attacked the barrier with some absurd amount of power.
She had interacted with the phenomenon governing it.
Found the rule.
Then changed it.
My smile disappeared.
Hjördis landed.
The fragments of the barrier continued falling around her.
My brain is starting to hurt, after always searching for the lore counterpart of a game mechanic.
Meanwhile, on the opposite side of the examination grounds...
Nobody knew.
Not the thousands of applicants still scattered throughout the battlefield.
The Third Trial was already over, on the other side.
But their barrier was still intact.
Their trial was still running.
And without Hjördis to tear the entire thing apart...
They had to survive the old-fashioned way.
By eating.
By drinking.
By fighting.
And, preferably...
By not getting their faces beaten in.
Unfortunately for Aldren...
He had already failed the last part.
"Easy."
"Careful with him."
Two of his teammates carried Aldren between them.
His feet barely touched the ground.
His clothes were torn.
His hair was a mess.
His face was pale.
For once...
Aldren wasn't smiling.
"You're alright, right?"
One of them asked.
Aldren stared blankly at the sky.
"I don't think so..., I'm seeing two suns."
His teammate swallowed.
Nobody really knew what had happened.
They knew the heir of the Voldigoad Kingdom had found them.
Aldren manage to lose them by separating from the team.
He was unfortunately caught but.
They knew Aldren had somehow gotten away.
And they knew that whatever happened between those two...
It hadn't been a fight.
Aldren hadn't been defeated.
He'd simply been...
Tortured.
Aldren shuddered.
"I really don't want to see that guy again."
His teammate tightened their grip around him.
"You won't."
"Hopefully."
Aldren smiled weakly.
"Actually..."
He looked toward them.
"Could you promise?"
"...Yeah."
"Thanks."
His smile returned.
Bright.
Almost absurdly bright considering the circumstances.
"You still have it?" Aldren asked
Aldren had already handed his Crystal Core to them.
It was the only reason they were still in the trial.
"If you hadn't given us the Core..."
"I know."
Aldren smiled weakly.
"Then we'd already be out."
He glanced at the empty bracelet around his wrist.
"Still worth it."
"How is that worth it?!"
"We've survived another day as a team didn't we.."
The others fell silent.
Aldren's smile remained.
"We can work out the rest."
They continued walking.
The battlefield around them looked nothing like the academy grounds they had entered two days ago.
The trial had begun with fifteen thousand applicants.
Now...
Everywhere they looked, there were signs of conflict.
Broken weapons.
Abandoned camps.
Collapsed shelters.
Scattered supplies.
Exhausted students.
Some teams had secured Neutral Cores.
Some had stolen them.
Some had lost everything.
And some...
Had simply hidden.
Because there was a fundamental problem with the examination.
There were only around five hundred Neutral Cores.
Five hundred.
For thousands upon thousands of applicants.
There had never been enough resources for everyone.
Naturally...
The moment people realized that...
Everything descended into chaos.
But elimination wasn't instantaneous.
The academy's emergency system prevented serious injuries from becoming deaths.
Which created an unusual kind of warfare.
Nobody wanted to waste resources fighting someone who had nothing worth taking.
A wounded team was sometimes more trouble than it was worth.
Why attack prey that couldn't feed you?
So teams began calculating everything.
Mana.
Food.
Water.
Injuries.
Distance.
Risk.
Every fight became a question.
Is the reward worth the cost?
Aldren's team had learned that lesson too late.
No reliable food supply.
Almost no water.
And they had been moving for nearly two days.
Aldren's stomach growled.
Loudly.
Everyone stopped.
Aldren looked down.
"..."
His stomach growled again.
He slowly looked toward his teammates.
"That wasn't me."
One of them stared.
"It absolutely was."
"No."
"It literally came from your stomach."
Aldren placed a hand over his abdomen.
"He's just saying things."
"Your stomach?"
"He's been under a lot of pressure."
His teammate sighed.
"We haven't eaten properly in two days."
"I know."
"We're running out of water."
"I know."
"If we don't find supplies soon..."
"I know."
Aldren smiled.
"Everything's going to be fine."
His teammate stared at him.
"How can you say that so confidently?"
Aldren shrugged.
"Because worrying won't make food appear."
He pointed toward the horizon.
"So we find food."
"Water."
"Somewhere safe."
"And then..."
He gave them a thumbs-up.
"We eat until we're happy."
The others stared at him.
"That's your plan?"
"Yep."
"That's it?"
"Yep."
Aldren's smile widened.
"Simple plans are easier to remember."
One teammate groaned.
"We're going to starve."
"No, no."
Aldren shook his head.
"We're going to find something."
"And if we don't?"
Aldren thought about it.
"Then I'll start eating grass."
"You can't eat grass."
"I absolutely can, I'm a goat sure I only have one horn, but still."
Despite themselves...
His teammates laughed.
Only briefly.
Because another sound interrupted them.
A distant explosion.
BOOM!
Everyone froze.
Aldren slowly turned his head.
"...Was that close?"
"Very."
"Wonderful."
He sighed.
Then smiled again.
"I should've eaten a full-course meal before getting here."
His stomach growled.
"And dessert."