Heuk-jae felt the shift not as a sudden jolt, but as a silent, profound unlocking. The memory of the crushed Viper Dust vial, the relic of his past contacts, had somehow synthesized with his relentless will. He moved his hand, and the Geomantic Regulator he held—a piece of illicit tech designed to mimic elemental control—suddenly felt redundant.
Magic Mastery and Facial.
The skill was a direct line, a new sense. He could feel the latent Aetheric Force swirling in the air, the raw, untapped energy that nobles spent lifetimes learning to channel through intricate spell matrices. He didn't need a matrix; he just needed a thought.
He stood before a cracked mirror in their rented room. He tried the second part of the skill, the "Facial."
His reflection shifted. His eyes, usually sharp and cold, softened, adopting a look of earnest, wide-eyed innocence. The slight tension around his mouth smoothed out, forming a gentle, unassuming curve. He looked less like a master strategist and more like a lost scholar. The change wasn't just skin deep; it was a subtle adjustment of his aura, the kind that made people trust him, or, more importantly, overlook him.
A tool of the Viper was now fully realized: he could control both the energy of the world and the perception of the self.
"A perfect mask," Heuk-jae whispered, letting the façade dissolve back to his natural, calculating expression.
The 48-Hour Gauntlet
The next morning, they began the endurance simulation. The goal of the actual AATA exam's first stage was to break the will of the test-takers through sensory deprivation, exhaustion, and impossible logic problems.
Heuk-jae had prepared the room to replicate these conditions, using meager resources.
The Light Trap: He covered the small window with several layers of thick, dark cloth, plunging the room into oppressive blackness, broken only by the dim, flickering light of a single, oil-soaked wick. This simulated the Academy's insulated testing cells.
The Hunger Clock: Their rationed bread and water were placed just out of arm's reach, visible but inaccessible, forcing them to confront the psychological drain of hunger and thirst.
The Logic Grind: He placed the worn book of Master Zai's cyclical logic problems directly under the oil wick.
"Forty-eight hours," Heuk-jae stated, pulling the last chair out from under the table. "No sleep. No rest. You solve the puzzles standing up. You solve them while hallucinating."
Eun-ji nodded grimly, her exhaustion from the last four days of intense study already setting in.
The First Test of Magic Mastery
Heuk-jae began the simulation not by solving puzzles, but by controlling the environment. He didn't want the meager oil lamp to burn out prematurely; that would ruin the visual element of the deprivation.
He focused the new Magic Mastery skill. The heat from the oil wick, normally dissipating into the cool room, suddenly felt concentrated. With a subtle, internal command, he created a micro-layer of focused Aetheric energy—not a spell, just an application of raw force—around the wick's flame.
The tiny layer acted as an invisible insulator and fuel-enhancer. The flame stabilized, burning hotter, cleaner, and slower, making the small bit of oil last exponentially longer than it should.
[Insight Gained: Discreet Elemental Manipulation is possible without Incantation.]
This was the key. He wouldn't cast fireballs; he would use magic to manipulate the efficiency and physics of the world around him, unseen and untraceable.
The Collapse and the Compassion
By the 30th hour, Eun-ji was teetering. Her head was slumped over the desk, the lines of Zai's geometric proofs blurring into abstract horrors. She muttered the same solution to every problem: "Avoid the load... avoid the load..."
"Eun-ji!" Heuk-jae's voice was sharp.
She snapped upright, her eyes bloodshot. "The answer is... the answer is three."
Heuk-jae glanced at the paper. The answer was seven. She was officially hallucinating.
"The test is designed to exploit the very thing that makes us fight," Heuk-jae said, his voice dropping to the low, level tone of a mentor. "It convinces you that your own mind is faulty. If you break now, Zai wins."
He knew he needed to restart her focus without violating the terms of the simulation—no sleep, no full meal. He settled on a risky maneuver using his new skill.
He activated Magic Mastery and Facial.
First, the Facial: His sharp gaze softened into one of genuine, deep concern—the mask of an older brother, not a master.
Second, the Magic Mastery: He subtly manipulated the moisture in the air, drawing a fine, nearly invisible mist onto his palm, making it feel cool and invigorating. He pressed this cool palm gently to Eun-ji's forehead. It wasn't a healing spell, just a localized, temporary burst of Hydric Aether to shock her system back into clarity.
Eun-ji gasped, the coolness a sudden anchor in the dizzying heat of her fatigue. She looked up at Heuk-jae's masked, gentle face.
"Heuk-jae," she whispered.
"Focus on the simple rules, Eun-ji," he murmured, his 'brotherly' façade holding perfectly. "The test is a monster. Find the weak point. Don't fight its strength."
The temporary relief lasted just long enough. Eun-ji inhaled, picked up the charcoal stick, and solved the next five problems in succession, powered by a temporary, magical stabilization and the unexpected kindness behind Heuk-jae's perfect mask.
By the 48th hour, they were both bruised, exhausted, and barely functioning, but the puzzles were done. They had endured.
[QUEST OBJECTIVE PROGRESS: Endurance Stage Complete (Simulated)]