Just Add Mana Novel 124 — Book 3, Chapter 23 — Bitter Focus, Pt 3

Thorn did not know what to think of these mages.

It felt inappropriate to call them novices, which was a disgruntling thought in and of itself, and yet as much as he hated to admit it, the way they carried themselves alone disqualified them from the title.

Perhaps their cores were plainroot cores. Perhaps the rest of Utelia would consider them simple novices. As far as Thorn was concerned, what made a mage was not the state of their cores but the way they reacted to danger.

These mages petitioning to join the Fettered Divinity tournant as Brightscale's support team reacted the way veteran mages did. Thorn had not failed to notice that when he first arrived to greet them, each and every one of them had imdiately evaluated how they would fare against him as an opponent. They had just as quickly determined that they stood no chance individually, and then they had shifted their stances just slightly, preparing to take him on as a team if it beca necessary.

At the ti, he had been about to dismiss them. His colleagues had expressed an interest, but they were only plainroot mages, and there was already a darkwood team they worked well with; Thorn had very little interest in changing their plans for a group of novices last-minute, no matter how promising they were.

That reaction, however, had convinced him to go along with them instead.

He was almost certain it was a waste of his ti, but all of his projects were at a standstill anyway. Another few hours staring at magical diagrams was unlikely to make a difference. These mages, on the other hand, had managed to pique his interest, and he supposed that if he did intend to reject them he might as well see what they were about.

Thorn was not impressed, at first.

Their so-called ntor was a plainroot mage like them. Thorn had heard rumors of this Cale Cadwell Cobbs from ti to ti, but he dismissed them out of hand; the Headmaster acquired new favorites all the ti, and this was doubtless more of the sa. After all, the supposed feats attributed to Cale were absurd and hardly believable.

More likely this was so sort of trickster mage that specialized in illusion magic, and that was how he'd gathered those four more talented mages to him. Unlike his "apprentices