Passed.
The Cowelac Ruins.
Lying in the western district of the city of Balamagos, the place was famous as the site of a battle fought long ago between demons and heroes. It was here that three heroes, Isidore among them, faced the Archdemon Gorgot and at last cut off the demon's head to claim victory. To keep that triumph alive in memory, humanity had left the ruins standing as they were.
Into this place, which was quite literally nothing but rubble, people began to gather one by one.
Not, of course, to commemorate that ancient victory. They had come to claim a place among the subjugation squad's mages.
Archmage Violetta stood in an open clearing not far from the ruins, one eye closed, her index and middle fingers pressed together over that shuttered eyelid as she watched the arrivals.
When the demons had sealed off the city's chief source of income—its iron mine—Count Galante found he could no longer stand idle. And so he had extended an invitation to the Archmage who shared a long history with his house.
She had insisted on choosing her own companions for the expedition, and the count's castle had accepted her request, posting announcements not only throughout Balamagos but in the neighboring villages and towns as well.
Most of the applicants would be drifters and riffraff, no doubt—but among the mages residing in the south, or those who had drifted here after the southern troubles, there were bound to be a few worth having. Word had already reached her that one or two mages she had been keeping an eye on had applied.
By the time some fifty mages had assembled among the ruins, Yurik too had appeared.
Looking over the distinguished lineup of applicants, he came to feel, viscerally, just how formidable the title of Archmage truly was.
Six Great Archmages acknowledged by the Magic Tower! And the Great Mother of Arpenheim, as it happened, was one of those very six.
Yurik's gaze was drawn especially to two of the applicants.
One was a brown-haired woman who watched the assembled mages one by one with a faint, almost languid smile, as though savoring each of them; the other was a man of conspicuously enormous build, thick with muscle.
He's studied Conditioning systematically.
The mana density the two of them carried far surpassed that of everyone else. The woman's mana circulation speed in particular was strikingly fast—and the fact that she remained in a perfectly stable state despite it was proof of exceptional control.
The man's mana, meanwhile, was diffusing in fine threads all the way into the outermost reaches of his body. That was the hallmark of reinforcement magic.
Yurik thought of Great Witch Yelni, his teacher and senior in the art of Conditioning. She, it was said, had once beaten a dragon into submission single-handedly using nothing but reinforcement magic. Ordinary mages dismissed reinforcement magic as a lesser art, but he knew well enough what a monster one could become by developing it to its absolute limit.
He was just deciding those two were the end of it when his gaze fell on someone newly arrived at the ruins.
A man so cleanly handsome that not a speck of dust seemed fit to touch him. His clothing, too, was unmistakably luxurious—the look of a prosperous family.
Like the two before him, the mana density throughout his body was considerable. Beyond that, however, there was nothing distinctive about him; there was no telling what school of magic he favored.
After another dozen-odd apparent applicants had arrived, a barrier bloomed into being, enclosing the entire ruin.
The mages stirred and murmured—and now what is this——when Yurik felt a tremendous presence closing in on the site with alarming speed.
So it begins at last.
A figure appeared atop the ruin's shattered remnants.
A tall, slender woman, and a middle-aged man leaning on a long staff.
Yurik sensed the staggering mana radiating from the woman. It was a quantity that would not have yielded an inch to the demon Wigrad himself. He identified her at once. No—every mage present would surely have guessed who she was.
Archmage Violetta.
She carried a dignity worthy of the name, without question.
She swept her gaze across the applicants. A few of them drew her eye in particular—mages far more conspicuous than their years suggested, the kind that vision magic alone could not have detected.
Then her gaze landed on the handsome mage. ...And her eyes narrowed, just slightly.
...
While every mage present was circulating their mana in the most ordinary fashion, one person alone carried circuits threaded through his flesh.
The distance was too great to make out exactly what those circuits were, but one thing was certain: nothing about them was ordinary. He wasn't even on the list her informants had brought her.
But the Archmage could not spare her whole attention on that one man now. From this moment on came the vetting.
"You've all no doubt worked it out by now. I am Violetta."
The introduction was brief—and it struck like a hammer.
"Before we proceed to the vetting, I give you warning first. The demons this squad must fight are beings that transcend common sense. Beasts made of raw mana—monsters that butcher humans for sport."
Several spheres of mana emerged from her body and began to orbit around her in slow circles.
"Some of you have come thinking you need only hang back and lend a bit of support. Nothing could be further from the truth. Anyone harboring that kind of thought would do well to leave right now."
The Archmage's voice was hard as iron.
"I am not looking for people to flail about in the rear. I am looking for those who will hunt demons with me. And I will stake my name on this: anyone who cannot withstand a demon's attack will die. Do not imagine your comrades will shield you. Even for me, when it comes to one defensive spell for my comrades or one offensive spell against a demon, I will choose the offense. Do not forget it. The objective is subjugation. Not survival."
At that, no small number of the mages felt their hearts waver.
Judging the warning sufficient, Violetta moved on to explain the vetting process.
"The vetting will proceed in several stages. But it is not complicated, so don't trouble yourselves over it."
The Archmage leapt down from the rubble and touched the ground with a soundless grace. The mana spheres that had been orbiting her now spun slowly above her head.
"The first stage is a measurement of your total mana. Setting aside questions of skill, in battle against demons absolute mana quantity is the foremost factor. Fall below the threshold, and you are out on the spot."
With the middle-aged mage trailing behind her, the Archmage strode freely among the applicants, pointing out failures with her finger, one after another. Each time she said you, you, you, clusters of applicants peeled away from the line.
That single pass cut down more than half of them. Seventy applicants dwindled to a mere thirty.
"The average level, frankly, is below my expectations. I thought at least half of you would still be standing."
Having vented that much scorn, Violetta moved on to the second test.
"A demon is a being that possesses an ocean of mana. The mana distributed across its skin is, in itself, already a shield. Anything short of an offensive spell carrying enough force to break through that shock is meaningless."
With the barest twitch of her joined index and middle fingers, one of the spheres circling overhead descended and spread wide, becoming a protective barrier.
"Second stage. One at a time, step forward and strike that barrier with everything you have."
Violetta, naturally, did not expect the barrier to break. No—every mage standing there shared the same thought.
It was the Archmage's shield. She would hardly have made it flimsy.
As it happened, the first to step up was the muscle-bound mage Yurik had noted earlier.
"Galindus."
He brushed off his right hand with a light slap and cast reinforcement magic—over his fist, and over his legs.
Hwoop.
One deep breath. Then he tore forward at staggering speed and slammed into the barrier.
KWAAAAANG—
Magic interfered with magic, and a violent shockwave rippled outward through the surroundings.
It was, unquestionably, a powerful impact. Yet the muscular mage, evidently dissatisfied, cast again.
This time he conjured a mana bullet in front of his fist, then struck it together with his reinforced fist, compressing it until it burst. Galindus, it seemed, was full of tricks.
The impact was greater than before—but this time the recoil came back into his own fist.
He looked up at the Archmage with an expression that asked, Well? How's that? Her face remained coldly impassive.
The notion of fighting a demon with this much was absurd. And beyond that, reinforcement magic—unless trained to its uttermost extreme—had never been particularly effective against demons.
"Fail. Next."
Galindus turned away, pride plainly wounded. But what could despair accomplish? This was a judgment handed down by an Archmage herself.
The applicants were culled in an eyeblink after that. Not a single one passed until the ranks had halved again.
And then came the turn of the female mage whose mana coursed furiously through her whole body. Grinning in a way that raised the hairs on the neck, she introduced herself.
"Azbeli."
She spread her arms slightly, palms turned upward, and began her incantation. The mana racing through her body spun faster still.
The moment the spell fired, the compressed mana warped into a curved blade and sheared through the empty air with a tearing hiss. Its range was considerable—it cleaved cleanly from the ground up through a chunk of the old rubble.
A hairline crack spread across the barrier. It did not, of course, break.
But the woman looked faintly displeased all the same.
"Pass. Next."
The first pass of the day. A crack in the barrier meant there was at least some chance a strike could land on a demon. For the Archmage, that was enough—this round, after all, existed only to find a little 'bonus' capable of catching her eye.
And next—the handsome mage's turn had come.
The one whom Archmage Violetta had taken a fresh interest in.
Certainly a curious creature.
A lunatic who had planted circuits in his own body to refine his mana and kept them running there ever since.
In the field of Circuitry alone, at least, his talent was the kind you could comb the continent and never find again.
But being too meticulous is its own ailment. No one can fight while tallying every circuit along the way.
Those gifted in circuits rarely fought well. Combat was not theory; it was instinct.
So Violetta was thinking.
...Right up until Yurik, having finished his introduction, raised his index finger.
—?!
The truth was, Yurik had never intended to use it. No—Tithon's Index Finger was not something he could control in the first place, not yet.
But the finger had reacted to the presence of a demon. And the single thought that he had to pass this vetting to join the subjugation squad against them—that alone was what set the finger moving.
Yurik's right index finger grew hot, as though catching fire. It dragged his circulating mana ruthlessly along every meridian of his body, gathering it at the fingertip, compressing it, compressing it again.
To cut down the demon.
Nothing else. Nothing at all.
The index finger that had stood pointed at the sky swung down and leveled itself at the barrier.
And then—from the fingertip poured a colossal wave of mana.
KWAAAAAAAAAAAAAA—
The mana wave scoured everything around it clean.
That single strike alone consumed nearly all the mana threading through Yurik's body. So great the power, so great the recoil.
But—just one blow.
With that single blow, the barrier was obliterated without a trace.
Every soul present froze, aghast at the impossible sight.
Even Azbeli, the madwoman who never let her smile slip, could not keep her mouth shut.
Archmage Violetta clapped twice. Clap, clap.
"Passed."
Not merely cleared—a full acceptance.
There was no need to see the third test at all.
In the unlikeliest of places, she had found not a bonus, but a comrade to hunt demons beside.