Chapter 11 - Humiliated
Immediately Maxmillan climbed up the floating square-shaped platform, he walked to a spot where he would exhibit his own ability.
So, with his eyes closed and fully ignoring the cacophonous sounds of various magical effects manifesting around him, Maxmillan tried to sense Astra Mystralis.
He had a theory that he wanted to test, which was that since about sixty people were on the platform and made use of their Astra Mystralis harmonization ability to produce astonishing magical effects around them, then him sensing Astra Mystralis should be much more easier.
The energy which he felt was absolutely imperceivable by him because he wasn't from this world, should be made much more easier to detect because of the users of Astra Mystralis who surrounded him and continuously casted myriad magical effects. Therefore, that alone should have a great influence on his seemingly inexistent perception ability, so he thought.
After ignoring the loud and disharmonious sounds that occurred constantly around him to focus on the rampantly fluctuating pulses of Astra Mystralis, as mentioned by his mother months ago when she was tirelessly teaching him, with the aim of detecting it and attuning his inner perceptivity to it, he found to his dismay that he could sense nothing, except the bewildered gazes of nearly everyone gathered around the platform on his body.
'I can do this.' Maxmillan said with a resolute tone within himself. He simply wasn't ready to give up yet as he was a strong-willed person.
But after trying for more than twenty minutes more, with an imperceptible aura of gloominess beginning to exude from his body, and a strongly oppressive stygian atmosphere descending upon him and weighing down greatly upon his heart because he had failed and had brought endless shame and reproach upon himself, Maxmillan opened his eyes and prepared to walk down the platform.
Now the cynosure of all eyes, where the other fifty-nine people that performed brilliantly on stage to astoundingly dazzle the judges and be selected, had stopped performing to look at him with utter confusion in their faces, which were then immediately replaced by irritatingly disgustful expressions.
"Get out of here, you damned cripple and unlucky bearer of misfortune." One of the young teenage people performing on stage, shouted in both anger and irritation and immediately used a skillfully controlled fireblast directed at Maxmillan to shove him off the platform that hovered many feet above the ground.
Thud!
Maxmillan crashed heavily to the ground from a height of about eight feet with the air in his lungs instantly expelled out of them, which then caused him to directly slip into a state of total unconsciousness.
As for the teenage boy that unleashed the offensive fire attack at Maxmillan, he wasn't reproached by anyone, including the elders who just looked away after shaking their heads in total repulsive disgust.
The exam continued as usual, with everyone on the platform trying their best to impressively awe the exam judges and be selected as students that will proudly study at the academy.
Fifteen minutes later, Maxmillan awakened from his unconscious state and found out that many parts of his body had swollen because of the blast of searing fire that he was loathingly hit with by the teenage boy who had already been selected as one of the students that will study and train at the academy due to his remarkable stellar performance on the examination platform.
Filled with anger which he couldn't do absolutely anything about, Maxmillan prepared to leave. Now, his plan was to immediately return home and live out his sad and miserable life of completely shattered dreams as a farmer.
The moment he backed the platform to face the crowd who immediately produced a wide path for him to leave, therefore invoking a forlorn thought in him that he was someone that carried an extremely contagious, incurable lethal disease that they didn't want to be infected with, Maxmillan shook his head and sighed inwardly, resigning himself to the dark fate that would diminish him from a somebody to a useless, valueless and purposeless nonentity.
'How would my family look at me when I return and tell them I failed, despite all their repetitive warnings filled with love and protective care for me?'
'Can I actually return home to them and bring them this kind of enormously saddening news?'
'Definitely no. I will not return home. Instead, I will live out my life of lamentation and overwhelming anguish without them involved. If they don't see me, they will surely understand what had happened.'
'But I hope they don't look for me and simply forget about me.' Maxmillan said with his eyes beginning to glisten, as tears had welled up in each of them and slowly formed into beads that rolled down his cheeks from the corners of his eyes.
Immediately he placed a feet on the path formed by the crowd to leave their midst, with each of them looking at him with scornful, vexed, contemptible and impatient looks in their faces, a fireball that blazed with raging flame, suddenly shot at him from the other side of the platform.
Bang!
As soon as the fireball heavily impacted Maxmillan's back and knocked him flying forward by a few feet, the shirt he wore immediately caught fire. But Maxmillan who was a veteran soldier from earth and was heavily trained by his expert military instructors, didn't try to stand up from the ground to put out the fire in a panicked manner. Instead, he methodically rolled on the ground which was covered in sand to skillfully extinguish the flame that his shirt had caught.
After killing off the flame, Maxmillan stood to his feet and looked vengefully and piercingly at the teenage boy whom he suspected was the one that hurled the fireball at him.
"What is a disgustingly and awfully useless person like you going to do about it? Why don't you develop magical wings and fly over here to come face me? Haha! I bet a condemned person like you can't."
"Better run out of here at your top speed, or I will hurl more fireballs of bigger sizes at you, an unfortunate trashy being that I firmly believe will carry about with him an infectious cheerless aura of incomparable misfortune and unending tragedy. Hehehe." The teenage kid scathingly said and derisively cackled, while many others immediately joined in and contemptuously laughed at Maxmillan who produced a gaze of both wrath and sorrow in his eyes. The lofty elders and aloof exam judges that sat high on a platform, gazed at Maxmillan who had once again become the epicenter of attention and simply shook their heads. Only they understood what they were thinking.
Maxmillan who was irked to the extreme that he memorized the face of the unlikable boy and promised that he would deal with him, even when he knew there was nothing he could do about it except absorb the totally humiliating acts of the emotionally combustive teenage boy and stop lamenting within himself, gradually allowed his pent-up wrath and grudge to gradually disperse, as there was no point holding or clinging onto something that will only cause him more emotional distress.
Then he began to walk into the distance before the seemingly short-fused teenage boy who seemed hellbent on publicly humiliating him and willfully disgracing him with the probable intention of drawing attention towards himself, would unleash more fireballs at him that would cause more painful burns and aching blister-like swells to surface on his body.
As Maxmillan walked to the other end of the wide path that was produced by the crowd, he could see them looking really hard at him which made him feel like they were trying to brand his face to their memory so that they won't forget who he was and would always remember to stay extremely far away from him.
These morose thoughts surfaced in Maxmillan's head and only caused him to shake his head. But a few seconds later, tear beads immediately formed in his glistening eyes and rolled down his cheeks before falling to the ground.
As he sobbed on the way, he didn't even bother to approach any of the carriage drivers for a paid ride to the city, or they would shout disgustedly at him and possibly hurl offensive magical attacks at him to send him away, which was a scene he didn't want to create and so tactfully avoided it.
He believed that they would have also gotten the gist of what happened and presumably comprehend who he was; an incompatible, inharmonious, magically inept person that was rejected by the world itself and would taint everything he touches with the bleak aura of rejection and forlornness that followed him about.
Once he pondered up to here, Maxmillan shook his head once more and simply headed for the widely opened enormous golden gate.
He was completely prepared to walk with legs to the city where he would find a less dangerous valley that he would banish himself to, since he didn't want to bring with him the strings of impending disasters that would accompany him everywhere he went to his parent's home, or cause a disconsolate somber atmosphere to descend upon everyone of them with his presence and cause them unbearable degrees of sadness and dejection.