35 Natural Selection III (1/2)

”Let The Selection Begin!”

Nero had made his way to Junior's group when the announcement was made.

Being the narrow-minded incels they were, nothing more than sneers and embarrassed gazes from the older girls came Nero's way.

In front of the queue, a pure-black cube lay on a table hooked to a few wires that went into a palm-shaped rest where one place their palm on.

Nero carefully looked and saw two needles that pierced out into the candidate's hand, taking some sort of blood test.

He saw the first candidate's blood travel through a tube in the cube, which emitted deep blue light, exactly how Ether did.

When Nero had gotten his hands on Ether, he'd studied carefully of the reaction of it on his mana and the surroundings.

He'd come to learn something, Ether was just a form of solidified mana.

Looking at the process going on in front of him, he realised what the aptitude test was.

'The user is perfectly correct, the cube is running tests on the candidate's blood. It's checking whether the blood can bond with mana, and if so, how much of the blood can be bonded and how well. It checks for these two criteria and then based on the results, defines the level and possible aptitude for the candidate.'

The system gave a precise answer to Nero's speculation.

'OH SHIIIT. How am I supposed to hide my aptitude? I know the Queen loves little boys and I don't want any part in that... wait!'

Nero thought of an amazing idea.

'Nova, assimilate the bone marrow, completely stop all circulation of mana in the dual vein system, and circulate the freshly made new-blood along with a bit of unbonded beast-mana.'

There were two steps to Nero's plan.

First, he would circulate only pure fresh blood into his index where the prong was.

Second, to off-put how well his blood bonded with mana, he would add erratic, unbonded beast mana, which would prevent some of the blood from bonding.

What this achieved was that even though he may have extremely high compatibility with mana, not a lot of his blood would actually be able to bond.

It was quite a plan, that's for sure.

After four other candidates, Nero's check arrived.

'Alright, now.' Nova carried out the given commands perfectly. Nero placed his palm inside the grooves, suddenly feeling a slight painful jab into his finger.

-

The last four candidates had all been failed, for their results did, at best, only reach Hunter potential.

One's aptitude was measured by the shade of light glowing off of the cube and its brightness. The brightness represented how much of the bonded with the mana and the shade represent how well.

The starting colour was dim light blue, showing little to no aptitude in mana manipulation.

After that, there was just blue, not too deep nor too light, which represented Hunter level potential.

Following that, there was deep sea blue, representing Slayer level potential.

Very rarely, the light given off of the cube went further from just deep blue.

It reached light purple. The colour that signified Demon level potential.

There was, of course, the brightness of the cube. The brightness directly correlated to how fast one would advance to their peak. If one's potential was Demon but they had low speed in advancement, they could be stuck forever in the Slayer realm, or even Hunter Realm!

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