The afternoon session was held outside.
The students filed onto the terrace with their energy restored to some extent after the lunch. The terrace was wide flagstone open to the pale autumn sky—no equipment, no output crystals, nothing but Thorne standing at the center with his arms folded.
"This morning was theory," he said, when the last student had found a place to stand. "Sit down. On the ground. This is the application."
The students complied.
Two rows ahead of Isaac, Jax lowered himself with a grunt and the expression of someone whose dignity was in shambles. Beside him, Kael sat with the reluctance of sitting on the cold ground that wasn't meant to be clean.
He too sat, in the exact same manner that he did every morning for his daily routine of meditation.
Seeing that everyone sat as he instructed, Thorne resumed.
"You have your Manafold Circuitry. You have your flow. You learned about the Mana Contamination. How its consequences can lead to Mana Overload."
He turned slowly, addressing the circle.
"Now, we will meditate—the same practice that you were extensively taught with during your first-year. It is more the more effective measure than the wand training, although it is just as more tedious and boresome." He paused. "The idea is to 'flare' mana in the calmest state that one can achieve. Mana will pave its way through the plaques and break those deposits."
He stepped to the edge of the circle.
"Begin."
Everyone closed their eyes, trying to focus on getting the grasp of their own mana even though the lack of vision didn't seem to enhance the experience as much. Some opened their eyes back up and sighed.
Isaac closed his eyes. Contrary to what Thorne said, there wasn't even the smallest debris of plaque in his narrow Circuitry. The inner vessel walls were so smooth that when he flared his mana in the conventional manner, his mana—regardless of its viscosity—was able to slide through without an issue.
He already completed his daily routine of meditation during the morning. To him, this afternoon session was, rather, redundant.
Still, he did it, albeit with less focus. His mana circulated within his Circuitry at a leisurely pace, without the application of the 'mana thread' methodology which he developed the night before.
The time, to him, swiftly passed by. It didn't seem to be the case for some others, who seemed to be getting agitated.
…
Thorne moved through the seated students at the twenty-minute mark with the patience of a man performing rounds he had performed many times.
He did not just watch, but felt the ambient mana pressure of each and every single student.
Overall, the flow of mana in this space occupied by hundreds of students was chaotic. Thorne knew that this was natural, especially since it has only been three days post-Rite.
He noted that a boy near the front had his mana getting especially shaky, in correspondence with his frustrated breathing. Corrected him quietly. Moved on.
He felt Jax before he reached him—the jagged, effortful quality of someone fighting the practice rather than entering it. It wasn't the meditation that he was performing, but a noble's established means of widening one's vessels by bumping mana into them. In other words, he was flaring his mana too strongly.
"Gentler, Jax Wason."
He moved past Kael, who seemed to be jolting off. Gave a light stomp of his foot to wake the student up.
He moved past Cassiopeia. Faring well, as expected of the offspring of House Terra. Noted and moved on.
He reached Lyra.
He paused here with the specific satisfaction of encountering something that confirmed an existing assessment. Her mana was the quietest that he approached so far by a meaningful margin—not the quiet of someone forcibly trying to suppress turbulence, but the settled quiet of Circuitry that had been in regular precise use long enough to develop natural gentleness.
Her 5.6% Overload Risk had already marked her as exceptional. Feeling her now, he understood it completely.
The royal family's stabilization methodology, the knowledge accumulated across generations, resources that most families could not conceive of—impressive and expected.
Thorne made a quiet note.
He then paused, as his mind drifted back through the other numbers of the past that were engraved in his head.
The benchmarks, he thought, with the private attention of a man who had spent thirty-one years accumulating reference points.
Just yesterday, he received from a co-worker that Silas Fulgur's Overload Risk was at 32%. Impressive for someone three days post-Rite, but not as remarkable as the S-rank skill of his.
Then, there was Aldric Zephyr, currently third-year, assessed the previous year. The number back then was 26%.
Impressive, but not as impressive as Caspian Valerius's 17%, whose number was low enough to give him a surprise, but it was a light surprise as best—for he saw a parameter even lower than him before.
1.2%.
By Gladius Aetherion, the crown prince of Aetherion Kingdom. Currently graduated.
Back then, he had written in his private notes: the ceiling, for now.
He had meant it as a professional observation. A methodological marker. The upper boundary of what deliberate preparation could achieve.
Then he reached Isaac just yesterday.
0.005%.
He stopped.
If the previous five assessments—Lyra, Silas, Aldric, Caspian, Gladius—had established the upper range of what Circuitry development produced in human beings, Isaac was something that required a different category entirely.
He stood there and felt it and, for a moment, had no plausible explanation for this. The resistance and Manafold Circuitry which he thought of as possible explanations were hypotheses at best. Issac was, at all means, an anomaly that he has never come across.
Even now, every other student in the circle produced some sensation as he passed. The mana of a living practitioner moved. It breathed, it adjusted, it responded to the ambient temperature and the emotional state of its host in thousands of small, involuntary ways. Thorne had spent thirty-one years learning to read those small movements the way other men read faces.
Even Lyra's mana had those human moments. Spiking up occasionally, although it was quickly brought back to control. It was the movement of something alive and disciplined, the finest product of centuries of royal methodology.
Isaac's mana was as if it were to be still water.
Not suppressed—suppression had its own texture, a coiled quality, pressure held against itself. Not absent—absence felt like standing beside an empty chair. This was something else entirely, just like how a held breath was different from a relaxed breath.
He thought of 1.2%. He thought of the phrase he had written: the ceiling, for now.
He stood at Isaac's position for two seconds longer than he intended to. Then he moved on.
He completed the circle. Returned to the edge of the terrace. Stood with his hands clasped behind his back and looked at the middle distance while the time continued to pass.
Then, Jax's mana buckled again.
"Breathe," Thorne said. "Do not escalate."
And did not look at Isaac again for the remainder of the session.
...
Thorne dismissed them at the forty-minute mark exactly.
The students rose with the collective relief of people released from a task that had been more uncomfortable than expected. Jax stood and rolled his shoulders in the discomfort he was desperately trying to hide. His gaze swept the space as he turned and crossed Isaac's position—paused, for less than a second, looking for a reaction. Found none. Moved on.
Kael left without looking in Isaac's direction at all. A quieter choice. Equally legible.
"Do this daily, if possible," Thorne said, before the first students had taken three steps.
The word landed with the weight of something anticipated and unwelcome. Behind Isaac, someone exhaled and another made a sound too small to be a word.
"Remember how dangerous Mana Contamination is. Be diligent. Make it a habit if applicable." He looked at them with the patience of someone who had watched many students decide to test this. "You may go."
The dispersal was faster than usual.
Isaac remained seated a moment longer than the others—not because he needed to, but because the stillness was comfortable and the transition from it felt like something worth not rushing.
When he rose, Cassiopeia was nearby, brushing stone dust from her sleeve with the unhurried attention of someone whose mind was still half in the practice.
"Your mana didn't move," she said. It wasn't an accusation, but an observation stated with the precision of someone who had been paying attention while appearing not to.
Isaac looked at her. "You felt that?"
"Barely. Only thanks to years of practicing mana." She fell into step beside him toward the corridor entrance. "Most people wriggle. You didn't." She glanced at him sideways. "Which would make sense given how your Overload Risk is at 0.005%, but at the same time, not, given how no one ever had the parameter that low a day after the Rite."
It wasn't a question. She was simply telling him she had noticed what the number meant in the context of forty minutes of absolute stillness.
Isaac said nothing.
"You've done this before," she said. Not accusatory. Just precise.
"So did you," he said. "So did other nobles. Maybe not Jax, however."
She made a light laughter, "In the past, whenever I saw him in the banquets, he was busy chasing girls. Expected."
Around them, the other students too were walking, chatting as they did so. Isaac unintentionally caught onto part of their conversations.
"—sixteen students, someone said. Higher class—"
"—based on three days of assessments? That's—"
Cassiopeia paused, having heard those words as well. She then opened her mouth, "Soon, there will be an assessment, according to what the third-year and fourth-year students told us. Are you aware?"
"Not really."
"It's a rumor. Issue is that pieces of information don't match. Some contradict each other even. However, there is one thing that they all talked about in common—" A pause. "The assessment will be about the infamous 'class designation.'"
"Class designation." Isaac backtracked, recalling his memories. "As in, the division of student cohort into four separate classes—the commoner class, combat class, elite class, and last but not least, the higher class."
"Yes, exactly that."
Soon, their paths diverged, and they were separated.
...
Elara found him at the dry fountain bench before the sun fully set.
"How was yours?" she said.
"Quiet," Isaac said. "Yours?"
"Uncomfortable." She sat. "Our instructor kept stopping people and making them start again. Someone's mana spiked badly enough that the whole class felt it—it may or may not have been Mana Overload." She paused. "I heard something happened in Thorne's afternoon session as well."
"Jax," Isaac said. "Being the star of the class once again."
She looked at him. "You felt it."
"Others probably did as well."
She was quiet for a moment, watching the last of the students on sight cross toward the dormitory wings. The garden was cooling as the evening was approaching.
"I came to tell you that… Silas filed the formal request," she said, carefully. "Officially. After the afternoon session." A pause. "It's in the system. You likely can't decline it."
"…"
He looked at the dry fountain. The stone basin empty, catching the last of the afternoon light in a way that made the interior look deeper than it was.
"Isaac," Elara said.
He looked at her.
"Are you ready?"
He was silent for a moment.
"Not yet," he said. "But I think I found a way."
Elara nodded slowly. She read his expression and seemed to have realized that he wasn't joking around. Her face relaxed, although a genuine curiosity was in her eyes, wondering what he meant by 'a way.'
The fountain stood dry between them.
The stone held its cold.