The Second Test

In the meeting room.

Two parties sat on opposite sides of a long table, which was covered with numerous paper documents. At the head of the table was a screen, flashing with various data.

“Principal Vera, we’ll have to trouble you to cooperate with our operation,” a woman in a black and white church uniform spoke first. Her face was cold, respectful yet not lacking in authority.

Vera picked up a piece of paper, glanced at the regulations on it, then looked up and said with a chuckle, “I wouldn’t dare. After all, it is our honor to be able to help your esteemed church find a potential pure human.”

But, in the next second, her tone shifted. “However, for you to come here directly without going through the application procedures… wouldn’t that be detrimental to your esteemed church’s reputation? After all, it was so sudden that our school didn’t have time to properly prepare for your reception.”

Most importantly, the members of the Kaos Church had just left with their Highness, the Saintess, and now, God’s Blade had arrived right on their heels.

It was hard to say it wasn’t premeditated.

Having just dealt with one group, and now another. Vera felt that her retired, slacking life was truly difficult. It was not at all like what Her Highness Karin had promised.

She remembered Her Highness the Princess promising her, with a broad smile, that the work would be easy and the salary generous, perfectly fulfilling her fantasies of a retired life. But now…

The person opposite her gave a faint smile. “It was an oversight by the people handling the matter below. We will deal with it.”

“However,” her gaze swept over the thick pile of documents on the table. She randomly pulled out a sheet, which was filled with the information of various students. “We’ve heard that your esteemed school is hiding a pure human. According to the regulations… if you resist inspection, it would be hard not to lead people to a certain misunderstanding.”

Principal Vera’s mind was exploding. This was a complete injustice. She didn’t even know their school was hiding a pure human. It wasn’t like they hadn’t had magic perception classes. If a pure human was really detected, who the hell would hide them away?

She secretly wiped away a bead of sweat. Looking at the other party’s cold and aggressive demeanor, she could only smile wryly and pray that Her Highness Karin would arrive soon.

In the vast meeting room, apart from the occasional conversation, the air was utterly stagnant. You could hear a pin drop.

On the blue screen, the surveillance feeds from various classrooms played silently.

The clock ticked by.

Wang Ning looked at the white instrument in front of her. Besides her, everyone else had the same instrument in front of them.

For the Magic Perception class, they had been led into a huge room, with many things that looked like medical check-up machines arranged in neat rows. Everyone stood by their corresponding instrument.

“Now, everyone, remember the incantation I just taught you,” the teacher said from the front. “This incantation can mobilize a certain amount of magic particles. Perceive it with your heart and chant the spell. You don’t need to do anything, just stand within the instrument’s detection range.”

“If the instrument detects a magic fluctuation, it will emit a ‘beep’ sound, and based on the fluctuation, the screen will display various colors of energy levels—the principle is similar to the ‘Magic Cube’.”

A student let out an “ah” and complained, “Then it’s not as good as the Magic Cube. At least you can play with that. This thing, you just have to stand here like an idiot.”

As she spoke, she reached out and poked the person next to her. “Academic Committee Member, Cecily, that Class President fellow won’t be able to redeem himself this time… Why aren’t you reacting?”

The Academic Committee Member was silent. She just stood in front of the instrument, her breathing heavy. After a while, as if she had just snapped out of it, she glanced at her. “What?”

“Hiss—” The student suddenly hugged her arms, rubbing the goosebumps that had instantly appeared. She took a step back. “Academic Committee Member, you… don’t look at me with such scary eyes.”

“What’s wrong with you?”

The other students noticed the commotion and also looked over.

“It’s nothing, it’s nothing,” the student said hurriedly. The Academic Committee Member said nothing more, as if suppressing something.

“Begin the test,” the teacher said loudly from the front. Everyone stopped being distracted and closed their eyes.

Wang Ning was still only half-understanding after the explanation. The concept of magic spells was too abstract for a transmigrator like her. Even though she had seen many magical girl animes, she really couldn’t imagine the existence of magic particles.

She could only follow suit, silently chanting the spell, thinking she would just go through the motions. It had nothing to do with her anyway.

Time passed in the gradually calming air.

Principal Vera picked up a cup of tea, blew away the jasmine flowers floating on top, and nonchalantly glanced at the group of people opposite her, who had been extremely composed up until now.

The main person in charge of the negotiations was a deacon named Kelbert. She had heard this name before, during a baptism at God’s Blade.

At the time, she had marveled at how simple the baptism ceremony of God’s Blade was. The priest who performed the baptism almost made her jaw drop. The church personnel there wore a style completely different from traditional churches—simple styles and tailoring, decorated with modern gears, chains, celestial bodies, and asters. The golden threadwork, however, showed a certain complexity.

Besides these common elements, each person could also add their own preferences to the clothing, having it custom-tailored.

And the church of God’s Blade also gave the same feeling—modern and integrated with magical elements, which would have seemed incongruous to the people of the past.

The turmoil of five hundred years ago destroyed the old order, and a new life was born from it. The people of that time were still mired in the despair of the gradual passing of the age of magic, and the appearance of God’s Blade directly broke the ancient and stubborn rules and worldview of the time.

—The revolution began with the conversion of magic into power to turn the wheels of progress.

Unfortunately, Fisyat, the creator of God’s Blade, known as the “Absolute Rationalist,” the man who played the funeral march for that great era, was a madman.

A madman who did not believe in gods, but in the end, threw himself into the fire for the sake of gods and faith.

Through the changing of legends, God’s Blade gradually grew into a church that could stand on equal footing with Kaos.

As bloodlines evolved, pure humans became rare, and the number of people who could mobilize magic also gradually decreased. Mages became the stuff of legends, and Magisters entered the public eye.

“Principal Vera,” Kelbert began unhurriedly, “I feel as though I should have met you before.”

Vera paused, breaking away from her memories, and smiled. “I once received a baptism at God’s Blade. At that time, I believe you were the one who baptized me.”

“Is that so? No wonder you seem familiar,” Deacon Kelbert nodded. “That must have been when I was on an external assignment on the Western Fan Continent.”

Principal Vera smiled. “Your memory is very good.”

Then, Kelbert looked at her carefully and said, “But you are not a follower of God’s Blade.”

Principal Vera thought for a moment and said, “Indeed. At that time, I was just curious. I wanted to see what was different about God’s Blade, which had a huge number of followers, compared to traditional churches—please also forgive the frivolity of my thoughts at the time.”

“I was still too young back then.”

Kelbert was unconcerned and just said, “God’s Blade doesn’t mind such things. You don’t need to be nervous.”

“What were your impressions after seeing it?” Perhaps waiting really did make one idle. Kelbert’s tone was relaxed, as if she were chatting with a long-lost acquaintance.

Vera glanced at the clock on the wall, wondering what was holding Her Highness Karin up. “At the time, I felt it was very… novel. I grew up in a traditional religious family. The first time I saw it… to be honest, it was a bit of a shock…”

God’s Blade believed in technology and creation. Rather than being called a religion, it was more like a large-scale knowledge exchange platform. The doctrines that the followers received were more like textbooks.

Allowing people who couldn’t use magic to achieve the same or even better results through a medium—this thing called magitech was truly astonishing.

—And yet, they were indeed required to believe in a god.

After she finished speaking, the meeting room fell silent again.

“So, do you also agree with the philosophy of God’s Blade?” After a while, the deacon in the black and white church uniform spoke.

“Everything we do is for the development of humanity. Compared to the Kaos Church, we need more Magisters—that is, pure humans—to develop magitech.”

“We hope your esteemed school can understand our actions and not privately harbor any pure humans.” Her words were polite, but the content was threatening and provocative no matter how you looked at it.

Principal Vera: “…”

‘How did the topic get back to this again! Her Highness Karin, why aren’t you here yet? I can’t hold on much longer, ahh!’

She anxiously and secretly glanced at the clock. The hour hand pointed to 3:20. The clock, carved with intricate floral patterns, was still ticking unhurriedly.

Wang Ning secretly glanced at her own watch. There were still twenty minutes left until class was over, which meant she had to stand here with her eyes closed for another twenty minutes—to prevent the students from getting distracted and taking the opportunity to sleep, the teacher hadn’t even given them stools.

After all this time, the instrument still hadn’t made a single peep. Wang Ning looked at the detector in front of her, suspecting that this thing was just a scam.

Boli An, next to her, had fallen asleep while standing. Wang Ning simply opened her eyes a tiny crack and looked at what the other students in the classroom were doing.

—Unexpectedly, most of the students had their eyes closed and were listening to the teacher very seriously.

Wang Ning: ‘?’

‘A miscalculation. I thought this lively group of classmates would take the opportunity to pull some stunt.’

The air was very quiet, with the occasional rustling sound like a conversation. Wang Ning, bored, quietly watched her classmates.

Suddenly, she noticed something strange about one person.