I followed the man to the Examination area. It was at the dead center of the dome; I could feel the sun shining through the 20 meters long opening on the roof.
The inside was really unimpressive to me when compared to the main building. The walls were the same color on the inside than on the outside, pitch black. The floor was made of huge square slabs, with zigzag patterns. I had seen those before, on some photos of Him in the newspaper that mom forced me to look. They were used to absorb the shockwaves created by the powers. By diverting the shockwaves to adjacent slabs in a way they could handle it, and with the help of some magical nanotech, it made the floor basically indestructible.
Except for cameras all around the dome, there were basically no decoration of any sort. Following the border of the dome was a building, the one he just came out from, but other than that, it was an open field. In the middle was a small circular arena, on which was installed a huge metal rod. I guessed that it would be used for the examination. There were other training devices that I could see, but they were tidy against the walls, so they probably were only for the actual students.
Just next to the door I came out from was a large table and three chairs. Two old men were already seated; just like the Vice-Principal, they were from the Military. From their insignia I could see that they actually were captains, but still affiliated with the Academy since they had the two stripes gold and blue. They looked at me with a stern look, probably without any other reason than to try to destabilize me. And I must say, it worked very well.
In the meantime, the 25-ish years old man that brought me here from the waiting room sat in the final chair. He had civilian clothes, so he must be government. It seemed that for the Entry Examination, Government and Military were willing to show a perfect collaboration. Of course, I knew that reality was more complicated, and that in the daily life of the Academy, the entente between the Department of Defense and the Military wasn't that perfect.
The youngest man talked again.
"Mister Blackwell, please give me your Combat Elementary Affinities Assessment Results." I obliged. "Thank you." He took a look at it, before handing it to the other members of the jury. "I would like to confirm with you, since you can pass the Entry Examination in two elements : do you wish to make Lightning Element your main affinity ?"
If one only passed the Entry Examination for one element, then the score for the examination would be the one given out by the jury. But if one wanted to pass the exam for two or more elements, they had to declare their main affinity; all the other one would be secondary affinities. Then, the final score for the examination would be weighted : 66% of the score would come from the main affinity score, and the 33% for all the secondary affinities.
Since I wasn't obligated to go to the Water Element Entry Examination if I declared Lightning Element as my main affinity, I answered by the affirmative. My best chance to get into the Academy was Lightning Element anyways.
"All right. Let me explain how we will proceed. You will have five minutes to demonstrate how you use the powers you have gained when you turned 14 that make use of the Lightning Element. The demonstration can take the form of your choice. For example, you can make the choice to demonstrate your great control of elemental elements, or how great the range of your power is. However, at one point during the demonstration, we will ask of you to hit the metallic rod there." He pointed in the direction of the little arena. "It will serve as a basis to evaluate the intensity of the lightning element that you can output. This is why we advise you to use your strongest move on the rod. At the end of the demonstration, we will give you 3 notes, going from 1 to 100."
" First note, power. It is directly proportional to the intensity of your strike measured by the rod. Second and third notes, control and range. We will use all the monitoring devices you can see on the table…" He showed them with a movement of his hand; there were indeed a lot of stuff, including screens from the cameras installed all around the dome. "… to estimate how well and how far you can manipulate the lightning element. This is where your natural elemental affinity ranking can help you a lot, and for having a C+ ranking in lightning, you start with a capital of 11 points in both those notes."
It was true that the higher the affinity ranking was, the better the control and the range should be. It was not, however, an inalienable truth. It actually would be better named as a better potential. Basically, the elemental affinity characterized the body's affinity to that element. Humans wanted to bend the element to their will, so they needed to align body and mind to get the best out of their power. For the Entry Examination, virtually all the candidates would not have anyone competent to teach them; their progress would be almost only be a consequence of their natural talent, and the alignment between their mind and their body. There were multiple famous examples of D affinity ranking mages becoming very successful combat mages, and of high affinity ranking mages never living to their full potential.
"Last year, the last admitted candidate had a total of 172 points out of the 300 possible. It has been fairly consistent across the year, so this is something you can keep in mind to evaluate your chances to get in. Do you have any questions ?" he concluded.
I had known the details of the Entry Examination, but having them explained out loud didn't help at all to alleviate my stress. Five minutes was super short; it is basically the time I needed to summon a lightning bolt from the sky when I was in my peak mental state. Sometimes it would be six, even seven minutes. But I couldn't turn back now. This was it. I needed to get in. To prove myself I wasn't the loser He said I was. To prove my parents that I wasn't the disappointment He set me up to be.
"No," I answered, keeping it short to keep my voice from quivering.
"Then, good luck, mister Blackwell."
I nodded in thanks, walked a few steps in the direction of the arena until I was in the area under the opening in the roof, and then knelt down. Hands on my knees, palms towards the sky, I took first a few breaths to try to calm myself. This was it. This was the moment I yearned for since I was born. Calm yourself. Five minutes is enough to do your most powerful strike. Don't worry.
I closed my eyes and tried to feel my surroundings with my body. I could sense all the charged particles around me. There were a lot more than what I expected. Was it the consequence of the demonstration previous candidate, the white-haired girl ? No matter. I knew what I had to do.
First, the cloud. There was already a could above the dome, so even if it wasn't a cumulonimbus, it helped a little bit. I had to transform it. I moved the charged particle to give the cloud the shape it needed. It wasn't dense enough, so in addition to making it smaller, I moved particles around it to make it really dense. Allright. Now, I need to make it in a tower form. Slowly but surely, it finally had the optimum shape. Good, on to the next step.
Wait, how much time did I take ? 2 minutes maybe ? Maybe more ? No. I had to focus on the cloud. It wouldn't do much good to worry about the time.
Now was the most complicated part. I had to slowly move charged particles and the lightning elemental particles that started to appear at the same time on the ground and inside the cloud. On the ground, it was easy; the rod made a perfect spike, enhancing the spike effect of the electrical field. So as long as my control allowed to counteract the natural repulsion between particles of same charge, and manage to load the rod with positive charges, I would be fine.
Inside the cloud was trickier. I had to split positive and negative particles; positive to the top, negative to the bottom of the cloud. Lightning elemental particles would then need to be put between the cloud and the rod to serve as a conduit, but only at the last moment.
VLAAAAAAAAAAM
Fuuuuuuuuuuuuuck. I wasn't careful enough, my control slipped for a very short moment, allowing an intracloud thunderbolt to form, discharging a whole part of the cloud. I just lost a lot of "juice", harming the power of the strike I was preparing.
VLAAAAAAAAAAAM, VLAAAAAAAAAAM
As I was trying to bring more charged particles from outside the cloud to compensate, several new intracloud thunderbolts happened.
Shit. What was I supposed to do ? If I took the time to gather more particles, I might use all the time allowed, and be disqualified. But if I discharged now… was the potential differential big enough to pass the test ? I didn't know.
Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Well, I didn't know how much time was left, so the safe bet was to discharge now.
I moved the lightning element particles between the cloud and the rod to form a conduit. And then, I released.
VLAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAM
I felt all the particles from the bottom of the cloud ionizing the air, their way to the rod being greatly facilitated by the lightning element particles.
A lightning bolt with the thickness of a car tire fell from the sky to hit the rod in a deafening roar. It lasted only a fraction of a second, but its might was considerable.
I felt some relief. It was far from the most powerful lightning bolt I had created, but given the circumstances at least I wasn't too disappointed.
I turned around to face the three members of the jury, who still had emotionless faces. Seeing that I wasn't doing anything anymore, the young civilian was once again the one to speak.
"Are you done Mister Blackwell ? If you wish to show something else, you still have twenty to thirty seconds," he told me.
Half a minute wasn't enough time to do anything.
"I'm done, thank you," I answered politely.
"Very well. Please stay where you are while we deliberate. You will be given your results shortly."
I waited patiently, my anxiety coming back slowly. Would it be enough ? I could see the three men exchanging papers in silence, probably the different results given by the various monitoring devices. They didn't say a word, though.
After what felt like ten minutes, the leftmost man, one of the military, looked at me and started to speak.
"Mister Blackwell. After your strike, the capacity connected to the metallic rod had been charged to 52%. As such, you've been given the note of 52/100 for power."
An average result. I wasn't too surprised, but at least it wasn't a complete failure. Power wasn't technically my strength if I didn't have enough time. But I couldn't help to guess what my score would have been, had I not had any intercloud discharging happening.
Then, the second military man in the middle took his turn.
"Concerning the range of your powers, the top of the cloud you formed was at an altitude measured at 2583 meters above the ground, granting you a score of 57/100."
I was a bit surprised, as it was definitely a strong part of my power. You would have thought that controlling lightning element more than two kilometers away would be more impressive. I wondered how far one must control lightning to get a perfect score…
I had a total of 109 points, needing only 63 more points to make it to the 172-points admission bar. At that point, I felt hope, for the first time in forever. The last note would concern control, my biggest strength. All kids watched videos of their favorite mages. I also watched a lot of replays of fights, and I knew perfectly how hard it was to form and control a cloud like I had done. Sure, I had some slip ups, and allowed for a few intracloud lightning bolts to form, but overall, this was the one aspect I felt the most confidence in. Maybe I could even get close to 70 points, assuring me a good ranking. Maybe even 75, or why not 80 ? I mean, it was really hard, and what did they really expect from 15-years old teenagers who only had a year of practice ?
"As for the control part of your demonstration…" started the young civilian man. I'd be satisfied with 63 or 64. Just to consolidate my entry. I'm not asking for much.
"We've given you the score of 12/100."