Aethernea : Soulbound [Book 1]

Episode 79 - Kiel's Mana Flow Speed

Rau continued shaking his head. "The Rroda mainhouse is too far away. Without teleporting, it is impossible to cover the distance in time."

The two stayed silent after that, watching the seconds ticking away.

After a while, Kady got up from her seat reluctantly. "Such a pity." She murmured as she went to the classroom entrance to invite the next batch of examinees.

She plastered on an amiable expression to greet the examinees and opened the door. The forced smile turned into pleasant surprise as she noticed a figure standing right in front of the door, with his hand up in the air, just about to knock on the door.

Kiel Rroda's black and blue hair was a bit ruffled giving him a rebellious vibe. His pale blue eyes were calm, without any ripples, like the surface of a pool.

He was momentarily surprised when Kady opened the door, but soon he smiled apologetically and was about to explain, however, she interrupted him. "Quickly! Enter. We don't have much time left." Kady ushered him in gleefully.

Kiel let out an internal sigh of relief. So close!

If he came a minute later, it would have been too late. In fact, initially, he was sure that they wouldn't make it. But when they arrived he realized that he had underestimated the speed they were traveling at.

He got the urge to give Elaru thumbs up, but she had flung him towards the door without bothering to remove her Invisibility, so currently he had no idea where she was. And besides, since he appeared out of thin air, the examinees gathered in front of the classroom were already giving him strange looks, he didn't want to encourage strange rumors by giving thumbs up to an invisible person.

Kiel quickly made his way towards the black, shiny cauldron in the center of the room. On the outside of the cauldron, in the middle, there was a handle in the form of an hourglass. To start the exam, Kiel needed to grasp the hourglass and twist it upside down.

That would activate the crystallizer and would also make the sand inside the hourglass start flowing. When the last grain of sand from the upper half of the hourglass disappeared, the crystallizer would power down, and the exam would be over.

Above the hourglass was a speedometer that would measure Kiel's mana flow speed and provide a score based on his average mana flow and maximum achieved mana flow.

This crystallizer was specifically made for the exam, so its purpose wasn't only to crystalize mana. It would also keep track of mana entering it and calculate the mana flow speed.

Mana Flow Speed was the speed at which the mage could transfer the mana from his soul to his aura, making it ready for usage. It was an important metric that could be used to determine how many spells the mage would be able to cast in a given time, how many spells the mage could sustain, and the mage's theoretical maximum possible casting speed.

Kiel didn't dally around and instantly turned the hourglass upside down. As soon as he did so, the markings on the cauldron lit up and the space inside the cauldron twisted, creating a whirlpool.

To achieve the highest score possible for his Mana Flow Speed, Kiel needed to quickly reach the highest mana transfer speed his body and soul could handle and keep it up as long as possible.

Since Kiel had been mana tempering his body recently, he was aware of how much mana his body could handle so he didn't slowly increase his mana channeling speed but started off from a high speed right away.

Kiel could tell that his and Elaru's shared soul was very close because the soul tendrils connecting his body to the soul were numerous and thick, not stretched at all.