Supreme Magus novel Chapter 264

"You are the rising stars of your respective academies and the reason why I organized this gala. Your achievements bring great prestige to the Distar marquisate, so I’m going to personally introduce you to my guests. You should use this opportunity to distinguish yourself and show your value to the Kingdom."

The Marchioness took a few steps back, throwing a short but meaningful look at Lith. She turned around, rubbing her throat and activating a first magic air spell.

"May I have your attention, please?" Her magically enhanced voice resounded through the ball room, making all the heads turn and conversations stop.

"Tonight, we have assembled to celebrate the new year. To remember all the hardships we have endured. Two academies are temporarily lost. Balkor has once again put the Griffon Kingdom on its knees. Yet we survived. Our future may seem grim, but our present is worthy of celebration.

"I’ll introduce to you, one by one, the brightest minds of this generation. I’d like to ask them to show us a little bit of their talent, so that they can demonstrate the progress they have made during the past year and make this evening more enjoyable.

"There are a lot of rumors about the rankings being unfair." Marchioness Distar looked at all the six youths, but indulged on Friya for a second longer than the others.

"Magic, however, doesn’t allow one to bluff. Either you can do something, or you can’t. There is no faking talent. What is required from you is to perform at your best by using only first magic.

For security reasons, tier one magic and above are sealed by the mansion’s protective arrays and so are all the magical items that are not defensive in nature."

Lith was surprised by the announcement. He hadn’t encountered such a powerful formation since during the plague, when he was under the effects of the Small World artifact.

Solus activated her mana sense, scouting their surroundings.

’There are a lot of arrays around us, but no Small World.’ She thought.

’This is not something I would have expected from a medium importance noble like the Marchioness. I thought only the royals had access to magical formations this strong. Let’s see how they fare against true magic.’

Lith silently waved a tier one spell in his mind, connecting his mana with the world energy surrounding him. The idea was to perform something simple and unnoticeable, raising the temperature of the room by a few degrees.

Everything went fine until he mixed the mana with the fire element. As soon as the energy started to build, the arrays around him activated. They weren’t actually capable of preventing him from casting a spell, only to disrupt the execution by causing fluctuations in the mana in the room.

’That’s why the security is so lax. Intruders and guests are both stripped of all their powers.

’The arrays can definitely stop a fake mage, but not a true one. I could continue if I wanted. I only need to adapt my flow according to the fluctuations, something that a fake mage’s fixed pattern is incapable of doing. What about our dimensional pocket?’

Lith was reassured by his findings. He had walked into the arrays without even noticing them. He had gravely underestimated a noble household’s resources.

’I think we can open it but it’s going to take some time and effort. In our case, rather than block our magic, these arrays make casting any spell much harder and mana expensive.’ Solus replied.

Lith mind nodded to her words, checking if both spirit magic and fusion magic still worked. Everything went without a hitch. No matter how much energy he conjured, the arrays remained inactive.

"Let’s start from the first rankers." The Marchioness continued.