The first thing the group of applicants was made to do was running the obstacle course. There were quite a few different, cool obstacles, but Saiph was in no mood to care.
SPLASH
"Argh!" Saiph shouted as he fell into a mud pit, again.
Climbing the wall was extremely arduous for the one-armed boy; he wasn't sure if it was even possible. His left hand was completely covered in mud and had poor gripping ability. The same went for his feet.
Eventually, after another few attempts, Saiph managed to throw himself over the top and land in another mud pit. But, he couldn't care at this point; he was already caked in drying mud.
He crawled out of the mud pit, looking up ahead on the course. Saiph was dead last after that unfortunate obstacle.
A bitter melancholy reached into his heart, causing him to sigh and look over at his missing arm.
Can a Mage only have one arm? It seemed like a fantasy. Well, no, that's not quite right. A Mage is someone who can change their own fate. Even if Saiph wasn't meant to reach great success, as long as he could become a Mage… it would all work out.
The boy took a deep breath, hopped in place twice, and set off down the course once again.
The rest of the course wasn't too bad, considering. Saiph still ended up dead last, but not terribly so. He managed to catch up to some of the kids on the straights despite expending most of his energy on the wall.
The moment Saiph ran up to the rest of the group, the instructor said, "Alright, push-ups and sit-ups now," much to the dismay of the groaning group.
…
One.
One push-up was all that Saiph could achieve.
Surprisingly, Saiph wasn't the only one to get such a low score out of the 47 applicants. There were another two kids who got only one as well.
Saiph's efforts were valiant, even the instructor said as much. However, the reality of the situation was that he got a very, very low score.
He had approached the push-up with keen awareness of how, most likely, he would fall to his right as soon as he started to go down. Hence, he placed his hand just to the right of the medial position. He went down, slowly and steadily, and came back up. Just as he came back up, however, he lost his balance and spun around over his left shoulder, landing on his back.
"Damn!" He pounded the ground in frustration but let the matter be.
As for sit-ups, things went quite a bit better. He got 64 sit-ups before falling to the side, dropping out. His core was pretty strong from the life of hard labor. On top of the fact that the offset weight from his arm didn't affect sit-ups much, Saiph got one of the best scores.
…
After a few more minor tests, the physical exam quickly ended without incident. Saiph received his score on the ID plate and went back over to where he and Jack had left off.
Jack was sitting on a bench, still reading his book on Runes and jotting down notes in it when Saiph saw him.
Jack noticed the impending muddy boy and looked up from his book, saying, "How'd it go?"
"Not great." Saiph wryly smiled.
"Well as long as you didn't get a 0, right?"
Saiph laughed lightly and replied, "True, true. There should be one more exam, right?"
Jack yawned and said, "Yeah, the general knowledge one. Bu~t"—he checked his wrist—"it's about time to head to a temp dorm and get you checked in." He started walking off, Saiph in tow.
"Oh, okay." Saiph went along with the older teen's idea without fuss. He was exhausted, anyway, so trying to take another test on top of the previous three in one day might just kill him.
"But," Saiph continued, "why do you think it's late?"
"Oh, right. See, on Veritate, we have to use clocks and watches to tell the time, since those things are unreliable as all hell." He finished by pointing at the two suns in the sky.
"Eh?" Saiph's mouth gaped in awe. "There's, there's two suns here?"
"Yeah, and the fuckers never go away, either. Makes sleeping and keeping track of time a pain in the ass."
"Oh! Are you an adult, Jack?"
"...Why do you ask?"
"Oh, it's just that my ma told me that only adults were allowed to swear."
Jack just smiled for a bit before replying, "Maybe back in your house. Here, well, here we all can swear. Just don't let the teachers catch you, right?"
"Although, no, I'm not an adult," Jack continued after a few moment's silence. "I still have my two years left. Then, oh then, I can graduate and go on my journey to Heaven."
Jack took a deep sigh and continued wistfully, "I just... hope that I can become a True Mage before then and get my Runecraft certificate of competency. It would make things quite a bit easier on me in the future."
Saiph wasn't sure if lip service was quite appropriate for the juncture. This was a moment of infirmity that might make or break Saiph and Jack's future relations.
"I think it'll be okay." Saiph's lips started moving without his consent. "This whole time, I've been telling myself the same thing, over and over again... You know what they say, Jack? Mages are the people that can change their fate and reach Heaven. I think that, as long as you try your best, you can do it, whatever it may be."
Saiph's face felt a bit hot, embarrassed by his own sappy words, but Jack just started laughing.
"Fair point. That's, uh, quite the optimistic approach you got there, though. You sure it has any backing in the real world?"
"No, I'm not." The words started flowing out uncontrollably once more. "But, Heaven has a second name, as we all know: Hope. Heaven is, well, the Hope of humankind, I guess. Our desperate attempts at reaching salvation, are they all for naught? No, of course not. This, this idea of Mages beating fate, is my Hope. It brings me closer to Heaven spiritually and physically, too, sort of. It is with this Hope that I seek to reach Heaven with. Perhaps yours is different, and that's okay. But, this is what I believe in, what I have to believe."
The pair had long since stopped walking. Saiph looked up at the older boy, practically tangible determination flowing out of his eyes.
Jack was the first to break the contact. "Ha, where did all of this come from?" he asked, turning around and walking off. "Weren't you the one who was trapped in your own world of despair just a few hours ago?"
Saiph quickly jogged up behind him. "But the situation's changed. I have Jade talent! Fate has given me this opportunity, so I must make the most of it and strike fate down!"
"...So, your entire personal motivation is based on a saying that you heard at one point?"
"I guess it is."
"That's nice. I appreciate it, that idea. I really hope you can keep up that conviction, to the bitter end. I don't think I can physically follow along, though. I'm too cynical. I've seen too much."
Jack once again stopped walking and turned to Saiph. "If Mages can beat fate, then how do you explain what I saw, Saiph? On the 45th world, I saw a blessed child of the heavens, someone with Magenta talent and obscene Runecraft skills, get stabbed through the heart by some random Chaos Beast while she slept. And I… was on guard." A few moments of silence passed with the two just staring at each other.
"The Tower is brutal shit, Saiph. I don't mean to disregard your conviction, really, but I'm convinced that fate has it out for us. All of us, and there's nothing any of us can do."
Saiph nodded and replied, "Yeah, of course. I don't expect everyone to see things my way. But, I still think that you can do it. Good luck."
"Ha, hard to disagree with that." The slight tension between the two dissipated in an instant.
"Well, here we are." Jack turned and faced a nearby building. "Go on inside and check in with your ID. You'll be able to sleep there tonight. Then, in the morning, you can go to the general knowledge exam location, which you can get from the workers there, or just follow the people inside there.
"It's been fun, but I only got told to do one day of chaperoning. I still have class tomorrow, so I won't be seeing you then. Maybe we'll see each other around sometime within the next two years. Veritate isn't that large, after all. Good luck out there, Saiph."
"Oh, alright. Uh, yeah, see you around. Thanks for everything today."
The two waved goodbye and Saiph went inside the directed building. Everything went without a hitch and Saiph slept soundly in a nice, large bed after bathing out around back to wash all of the mud from the physical exam off.