Crusader King

As Cades saw Mangel he was surprised to see that the colour of his light, which Mangel seemed to barely be able to maintain was red, the lowest ranking out of all the colours, as it required the least amount of energy to maintain.

Mangel seemed like he was really struggling though, his face made a grimace as if he was lifting a tree trunk of of a wounded kitten with his adrenaline.

The light itself also strongly flickered and was barely equal to more than an ember escaping from a glimmering piece of wood.

Suddenly, a flash of white light blinded almost everyone and all of their concentration was lost.

"Well done !" said a instructor with weirdly long ears that had just used her magic to blind and stop everyone.

"Almost everyone passed. You can go and have a break now, those that are applying to special classes like the artificer or specific weapons still need to register themselves and go to their tests. Good luck" 

Most of the aspiring students seemed to be relieved, some broke down and some breathed heavily from the mental exhaustion.

"HEYYYYY !" 

Cades was visibly surprised as he saw the tiny yellow haired girl walking towards him at a surprisingly fast pace while disregarding her friend, Mangel.

As such he asked about that.

"Hello, Nelia. Don't you want to go with Mangel ?"

"No..." She pointed toward Mangel and Cades saw that he had completely broken down and was lying on the ground with his face completely red, " And apart from that, he's gonna go home now anyways while I'm gonna stay for the artificing test"

"I hope that Mangel is okay ?"

"Yes, he's okay. He's kind of badly equipped for this matter. He has very little mana but he is very talented in transfiguration process. As long as you utilize the correct materials there isn't really any mana used during the transfiguration after all."

As Nelia began walking forward she gestured for Cades to follow her and he did.

She was pretty nice, she reminded him of his younger sister, Hecir, that was at a school in another city right now, as was usual with many ehetrians.

"You know" Nelia began, "those guys are all dead tired but they could have just avoided it with an easy mana container."

Cades nodded, as she was clearly right.

A mana container was a surprisingly easy artifact that most magicians could make in the dozens within minutes.

These artifacts basically just consist of a container, whose size didn't matter, and a method of securing it, like a chain or a rings shank.

Lastly, and most importantly, the spell itself.

To engrave a spell onto an object one needed to have a lot of imagination and a lot of mana.

The process consisted of first engraving a magical system containing the wish of will of the power and the wish of what it is supposed to do and after that one has to "bathe" it in mana, so that the circuits and runes are loaded with the energy and those parts of it that were meant to hold the mana and distribute it could do so.

It was a harrowing and long task but it was very rewarding.

These mana containers she was talking about were especially easy artifacts to create because you really just needed the " holding mechanism" and after that you can just put your own mana, which is basically just stamina, into the container and use it later.

Most magicians, including Cades and seemingly also Nelia had one.

His was in the form of a black ring with a dull tiny stone encase in it, it was a very small ring and did not draw any attention, the stone that was encased in it was barely noticeable.

He was not sure what hers was but he thought that it may be the tiny, slightly glowing yellow earring that she was wearing on her left ear.

"You don't talk a lot, do you ?" Nelia asked after Cades had been quiet and thinking for just a bit too long.

Cades was about to answer but Nelia had already began talking again.

"What do you want to create once you are in the artificer class ? I hope to create a 'arba trancîlo', a traditional weapon of the arbahomo.

It's basically a kind of twirled knife which you can easily hold while running and even climbing.

It would be pretty darn useful back home."

Cades didn't really need to think about the answer to that question, none of the ehetrians really needed to, so he answered instantly.

"I would make a lißros."

"What's that ?"

"A lißros is a very expensive artifact that almost every ehetrian wants to have. 

It allows us to turn our wings into a kind of cloak and subsequently hide them.

It`s a very useful tool to go to other planets and dimensions without being thought of as either a angel or a kind of demon.

I already know how to make it, I only really need the materials, and those are going to be given to us by the school once we join."

"Interesting, that's a good choice."

"Say, you are a exchange student aren't you ?"

"Yeah, I am. I'm currently staying with Mangel and his family. Going home in about a week."

While Cades was thinking about the possible reasons of why she took the tests although she didn't have to he welcomed her on ehetria and wished her a good time.

They abruptly stopped talking because they had already arrived at the Artificer exam, and just in time as it was about to begin.

The teachers were going to test the artifacts individually and make sure that they were not common replicas and actually the students own designs or inventions.

There were only about four students that wanted to become artificers, all of which were ehetrian except for Nelia, but she was only an exchange student after all.

Still, she had also given an artifact that would be examined, it was a simple ring that would record and play a rhythm, a complex spell but not too difficult.

The other students had a compass that always pointed to the nearest forest by utilizing the energy of nature waving from that forest, although in this case it was useless because it was just spinning around.

They were in a huge forest known for being saturated with energy after all.

And the last student had a bottle that would make anything put inside hot, it seemed like the spell put onto it was originally supposed to cool things down though.

It seemed like the student had failed to adjust it in time and just passed it of as a heating bottle.

The teacher, a ehetrian man with pretty long dark grey hair and a short beard of the same colour, seemed to be impressed by the rhythm ring, just like he was with the compass, though he did leave a comment about the stupidity of bringing it to a forest, he did however not seem to like the heating bottle.

The heating bottle was of a very stupid design after all, it was made out of a material known to be resistant against the cold but very much meltable , especially with the heat from a direct heating spell.

And lastly the teacher, with his dishevelled look, picked up a 30 cm or 1 foot long light brown, wooden transverse flute with eleven numbered buttons on the side each responding to a different well known melody.