Once they were next to me, they then had questioning looks on their faces, looking at me in surprise. Lars yelled out, "Adoh! You have made your core already?"
I could see that Alyx wanted to know as well, though he did not yell out his question in surprise like Lar's.
Smiling as I spoke. "Yes I have. Though how can you tell?"
Lars although it seemed he already knew, froze with his mouth open.
'I could probably fit a whole turnip in there and have room to spare.' That thought made me chuckle a bit, Alyx joined in quickly. In the end the chuckling became all out laughter. We got a lot of odd looks from the other people that were near us.
Lars eventually closed his mouth and began to go red from embarrassment, as he had seemingly worked out that we were laughing at him.
As we had nothing to laugh about now, we eventually stopped but me and Alyx still had massive grins plastered on our faces.
"Adoh anyway, once you work out more of your core, you can have your elemental vision or maa vision whatever you wish to call it, at around twenty five percent active all the time. So we can tell as the mana reacts differently to those who have a core. There are exceptions, but that is the main rule." Once Alyx had finished, it dawned on me why. In fact it makes perfect sense.
The two seeing my almost enlightened gaze just smiled at me. Then they both talk me off to teach me some more of the basic fire spells which they both seemed to know. Apparently if you were around here for long enough you pick up fire spells, this is due to the fact almost everyone here uses them. Or at least this is what I was told by Lars who by practise is a wind mage.
A week had passed and the tournament was days away now. Today though was the qualifying matches for the main tournament. Of which much to my annoyance I had to take part in as well. In the past week, I had been with Lars and Alyx as well as my two teachers learning as much as I could. If I wasn't with them I was in the Library or Meditation hall. I had leant a wide variety of new spells, through the fire weaver path was more about making objects and control with fire, so it had fewer spells and would be up to me how I would use it. Darkness however I was focusing on the shadow path much to the surprise of my master. It only had a few combat spells however.
The que to enter the tournament grounds were long, from what I had been told each individual wishing to take part would undergo a test which would determine their rough strength at least in terms of how far they can sense mana. This would enable the fights to be fairly fair, at least in this stage.
As I was queuing, I could hear lots of commotion near the back of the line. Curious about what was going on, I turned around. What I saw astonished me. There was a massive group of people ignoring the group as I looked at them. I saw that they were people from the great clans, behind them though in twos and the occasional bigger group of three or maybe even four. Were people who were not part of the clans.
What astonished me though is that all of the commotion was for those people. Turning to the person next to me, who appeared to recognise who those people are.
"Excuse me, who are those people?"
The person I asked looked at me in surprise but when he saw that I was only a new student, the surprise went away.
"I guess you do not know as you are new to the tower. Those people are the most talented individuals here. Much more so than the great clan people, not only that some are successor displaced as well. They are the best around here and will only come out for the major events like this one. Also you have golden eyes why are you not with that lot."
'The people from the great clans are really not liked at all here, not only that it seems like they are not the most powerful around. I am glad I am not one of them now, if I was I doubt I would have been made a successor disciples at all.'
"I am not one of them, in fact we don't really talk at all, I just try to avoid them. People like me I have heard tend to be discriminated against quite badly by them." As I spoke I was watching the people the man had called the successor disciples.
'So they are the others huh. I can't tell much about them from here but they all seem strong. Really strong.'
The man hearing what I said gave me a look of what I thought was pity. "You are the forgotten or whatever you lot are called nowadays. Not many of your people around now, most have been taken in by a clan now and returned or remembered as they call it. From what I heard some didn't want to go and let's just say it was messy. So I would watch yourself, especially in the world outside."
'So the great clan's are like that. I better be careful, especially when I am outside of the tower's land. I don't want to end up running into one of the stronger members of the clans. I better make sure they are safe back home. They will be in more danger than me.'
"Thank you for telling me that. Oh and good luck in the competition."
"You too." After he said that simple reply, he began to just watch the people walking by us.
As time went on, I got closer and closer to where the testing was taking place. All it was by the looks of it, was a machine that seemed to measure how far you could manipulate mana.
'It looks like it would be easy to cheat in something like this.'
As I thought of that, the machine flared a bright red. The person in question then started bubbling and cursing, he had also gone really pale. The master next to him, just shook her head. Looking at the people still in the que.
"This is what happens if you try to hide the truth, you will get a rather nasty attack on your soul. For those of you who don't know what that does. It hurts alot and will drastically affect your ability to lose mana for a while. For those with a weak soul. It could leave you hospitalised for a while." Once she finished speaking, she indicated for the next person to come forward.
It turned out to be me. Approaching quickly. I put my hands on the crystal much like the machines I used when I had first arrived here not so long ago. What happened next was that I was almost forced into a focused state and I could see the mana all around me. I faintly heard. The voice of the master to show my limits. Doing it as far as I could, it turned out that I could use mana up to a few metres away.
After making sure I didn't cheat, I was let inside the main arena.