The practical application area was divided into dozens of smaller training zones, each marked by glowing boundary lines and supervised by an Academy instructor.
We were split into groups of ten, assigned randomly.
My group included Kyle, a nervous-looking commoner boy, three nobles who immediately clustered together and ignored the rest of us, and four others I didn't recognize.
Our instructor was a stern-faced woman in her forties, her grey-streaked hair pulled back severely. "I am Instructor Kael. This trial tests your ability to learn and execute a basic spell under supervision."
She gestured to a row of training dummies at the far end of our zone. "You will each be taught a simple offensive spell suited to your elemental affinity. You have thirty minutes to learn the technique and successfully execute it against the target. Failure to produce results in that time means elimination."
Thirty minutes to learn a spell from scratch.
