Chapter 67 - Test - I

After entering the building, Aryan took me to a room which quite close to the entrance in the same floor. The inside of the Elders building was not as grand as the outside. It was quite simple and which was a good thing in my books. Aryan knocked on the door and we heard someone from inside giving permission to enter.

Inside the room I found an old man waiting for me. He looked similar to Dumbledore with a similar beard and long rain but thankfully he did not wear those hideous clothes. Instead he was wearing clothes that were similar in design to those that Aryan wore but were completely white. His overall look and feel was the closest thing to a sage in my mind.

Since my mage sight was active, I saw the same weird magic core on him. by now i knew that most probably everyone will have a similar magical core they must have achieved it using some means. The aura of strength he was giving out was quite close to that of what I felt from Dumbledore. My guess is that he has similar strength to that of Dumbledore without the Elder wand.

The room itself was ordinary. It had a big table and chair for the Elder along with bookshelves were huge registers were stored. For guests there were some wooden chairs. There was a fire pit for heating the room and that was it.

When we entered the room Aryan bowed to the elder in respect which I imitated.

Aryan spoke first "Elder Atulya, I have bought the guest as you instructed."

The old man stared at me for a few second before saying "What is your name child?"

I replied in a very respectful manner "My name is Charles Daniel Falken, Elder."

Elder Atulya said "The Falken family, hmm. You are strong for someone your age. I have great expectations from you. Now lets move to your test grounds. We will continue the conversation after you pass the test. Aryan you are welcome to watch the test."

He then walked towards the fire pit inside the room and said "We will travel via what you call floo travel in Britain. Here we call it Fire travel. The different places are too far to walk every time so we use fire travel to move from one place to another. I am ȧssuming you know how to use the floo. The address is training ground 1. I will wait for you there."

After walking outside, I was met with the sight of a large field surrounded on all sides by mountains. The only way out from here was to either use the floo or fly out. Other than that there was nothing special about the ground. I saw that there were some people already waiting for me inside the training ground. There were two other elders that wore clothes similar to that of Elder Atulya and also some five other people who wore similar clothes to that of Aryan's. I ȧssumed they were the apprentices of the Elders. They were all older than me and had gone through magical maturity from the looks of it. I think I will have to duel one of those people for the test.

When Elder Atulya saw me, he said "Welcome Charles. These are Elder Akash and Elder Nainesh and some students of theirs. They are going to judge you along with me. For the test you have to duel Rohit here who joined the academy 2 years back and survive for 10 minutes. If you are able to do that, you pass."

Elder Akash was a bald guy with a long white beard while Elder Nainesh had long white hair with a short beard and mustache. Elder Nainesh's eyes were twinkling at me which reminded me of Dumbledore but he did not wear glasses. They both had magical strengths similar to that of Elder Atulya. Now coming to my opponent Rohit, he was a well built guy. He looked to be about 20 years old and stood at a height of 6 feet which made him the tallest Indian in the training ground. He gave me wrestler like feeling. Magically he looked like he was weaker than me but not by much.

I bowed in front of the elders to show respect and moved towards my position in the opposite side of the training ground. Rohit took his place on the other side. The others including Aryan who had just joined them moved towards the sidelines so has to not come between our duel.

Rohit spoke "You are the first European wizard I have seen in my life. I wish you luck and hope you can provide a good challenge for me."

I said "This is the first time I am duelling against someone. Hope my hard work pays off and I pass this test."

Rohit "First Duel huh. Then I am going to finish this duel in a single hit."

I shot back "We will see."

I summoned my wand from the holster and became ready.

Seeing my wand Rohit laughed and said "Wizards in Europe still use those sticks for performing spells? You guys are still in the old ages. We moved on years to other means years ago. This Duel is going to be easy."

With my mage sight I saw that he was wearing one ring each on both of his hands which glowed in a similar way to that of my wand. This showed that he used those rings as magical foci instead of a wand which meant that he could dual cast easily. This was going to be a tough fight.

Elder Atulya spoke from the sidelines "Lethal spells are not allowed and take care that you do not cause permanent harm to your opponent. You will begin on the count of three. Get ready. One. Two. Three." And the duel began.

I trained my mage sight on him and waited for him to act first. I did not have to win and just had to survive for 10 minutes which meant that the Elders were not expecting a non-academy wizard like me to win. So Rohit was a tough opponent and more experienced than me. He will also not follow the European style of dueling which meant that I don't know how he was going to fight.

My first duel was going to be hard. So for now I am going to wait and observe how he fights before making a plan and retaliating.