“Assemble in a single line and advise a friendly Lich on standby whether you’ve already unlocked an ability of one sort of another. If not, you’ll just have to release your mana into one of the affinity stones to see if you match up or not.” I said.

A guy in the front nervously stammered “how do we release mana?” he was one of the weirdos in an orange jumpsuit.

I sighed. Of course it wouldn’t be that simple. “If you aren’t able to release your mana right now, you’ll just need to bleed on each of the stones until you find a match.”

The crowd looked less than enthused by that news. “You only need to prick your finger as the stones only need a single drop of blood to resonate. It’s a minor inconvenience compared to some other options that could be tried.”

Surprisingly I found support in an unexpected source. The former scoliosis sufferer strode forth confidently if not smoothly “I’m not afraid. I’ll do whatever it takes to become powerful.”

“Excellent you can demonstrate how simple the process is.”

I led him to the table that had the affinity stones lined up in a row with small cards in front of them written in kanji noting the affinity for simplicity’s sake. We were followed at a distance by a nervous and anxious crowd of onlookers.

“So what do I do now?” He asked, his hands clenching and unclenching erratically as he waited for me to answer.

I broke off the tip of my finger bone, reshaping it into several small bone needles. He looked at me in shock for a moment. “Take one, prick your finger and bleed on the first stone.”

“I will do IT!” He stabbed himself with the bone needle, grimacing at the pain but continuing on. He bled on the first stone, labelled air, which didn’t respond. He looked at me for an answer.

“This means you’re not naturally gifted with air magic, proceed down the line until you find something that responds with your blood. The reaction should be a glow or a sound depending on the stone that’s triggered.”

“Yes.” He scurried from one stone to the next smearing his bleeding finger against each one without a reaction.

He looked heartbroken. “Nothing happened.”

“There is no need to be upset, these are the most common affinities to which I have found a way to replicate affinity stones for, there are other affinities for which I don’t have a way of easily measuring. Even if you don’t have any affinities at all, you can still learn magic, it’ll just take a little more time and effort.”

“I’ll work hard then to learn.”

“That’s the spirit, come on, who’s next.”

There’s a pause as the crowd that followed behind us takes a moment to think about whether they want to go next.

The man’s friend is next to try his luck and I hand him a fresh bone needle.

“What about the blood on the stones?”

“Oh yes. That should get cleaned up so as not to contaminate the results.” I gestured to one of the liches loitering about watching the crowd. He used blood magic and drew out the blood from off each of the stones, gathering it into a single point above his palm which abruptly hardened then crystallised into a blood crystal. It’d be useful for later experiments. He pocketed it at my command and we were ready to proceed.

Since the affinity stones were clean, the friend worked his way through the stones and got a match for both fire and water. Low affinity for fire, middling affinity for water. Dual affinities is unusual but not unwelcome.

“Now you stand over there to form a second group for those who’ve tested positive for an affinity.”

I sent through a message telepathically to the other liches to create more stones and get more tables set up to process more people at a time.

Now that some of the concern had worn off about the level of blood loss involved in the process, there was practically a rush to be next in line.

“What if you can already do magic?” A woman in her mid teens asked. She dressed in a school girls outfit, with a large metallic rod in hand.

“Show me.”

She created a small flame above her open palm. “See I can create fire.”

“Hmm.”

“Can you teach me how to do more than this?”

“Obviously, you’ll be introduced to a fire mage for more specialized training later. For now I’d suggest going through the routine with the rest of the group.”

“Why?”

“You don’t want to limit yourself to just the one thing if you’re capable of more do you?”

“No, you’re right, this could be just the beginning of my talents.” She said before going through the same process and finding no additional talents. It wasn’t that surprising, having more affinities was unusual. People were lucky to have one affinity in my world.

“You can start a third group for prodigies like yourself.”

She smiled and blushed appealingly, or at least it seemed that way judging by the reactions of the other males. Her disappointment at being only a fire mage wiped away with the meaningless compliment.

And so the testing continued with each person either finding out they had no particular talent with magic, after going through the ‘affinity stone gauntlet’ or learning they had one or more affinities. Others simply demonstrated the abilities gained from the Soul Virus to one of the attending Liches in order to show what they could already do then took the test to see if they had any other affinities.

Three groups grew in size, loosely labelled the Unaffiliated, the Gifted and the Prodigies.

When the groups grew too sizeable, I had one of the many Liches nearby escort a group of twenty or thirty prospective students upstairs to one of the waiting rooms to be processed later.

I had a lot of Liches available to help with the assessing process thanks to the retreat from China. They recorded the results to make the processing easier and gave the prospective students cards with their name and affinity on them. They also collected the many blood crystals to be used later.

There were thousands of hopefuls lured in by the promise of magic power so I needed quite a bit of help to maintain order.

There were many eager to get tested as soon as possible if not before. Some of the death knights had to settle some disputes from some eager young men wanting to show off in front of the ladies.

A few hours later and thousands of testings later, (more and more people showed up as the morning progressed) we had our results.

Of the potential students, roughly ten percent were Prodigies, thirty percent were Gifted to some degree and the rest were Unaffiliated.

Each category of student required a specific form of interaction to better make use of their particular talents.

Both the Gifted and Prodigies were set up in classes aligned to their particular affinities and given teachers with similar affinities to learn from. The Gifted would learn the basics of spell craft while the prodigies worked on honing their existing skills. The Prodigies should serve as role models to the gifted students, giving them something to aspire to.

As for the Unaffiliated, I would give them a choice of what to do now.

I met up with the first batch of Unaffiliated along with my dracolich bodyguard who had been unnervingly quiet as of late, which worried me somewhat but I didn’t really have the time to question it. I had so much to do and so little time left. This office floor was emptied of all it’s furniture to make room for several hundred people.

“Hello as you’re probably aware by now, I tested you in the easiest way possible to determine if you had any specific talent for magic. Now I offer you a choice between four options. Option one you can go home and forget about the thought of gaining control over the powers of the universe. Option Two I can give you a soft introduction to the world of magic, which will probably allow you to gain some magic within the next week or so but it won’t be anything worth writing home about for a long while if ever. Option three is I subject you to life threatening danger in the hopes of triggering some kind of talent. Option four is probably the most extreme, I simply give you magic power.”

“Why would anyone choose anything other than number four?” Someone asked.

“Well it’s not as simple as me waving my hand and you all having magic powers. It’s far more complicated and painful, essentially I’d have to kill you, capture your soul, recreate a body for you with some kind of magical affinity, reensoul the body and teach you magic. Whereas if you had a super rare talent like spatial or temporal magic, I wouldn’t necessarily know unless you chose option three. Sometimes magic triggers in very subtle ways, for instance if you had time magic, you might experience something happen in slow motion under extreme stress. Or if you had space magic, you might think you’ve sleptwalk somewhere when you’ve actually teleported.”

“How do we know what to choose?” Someone else asked.

“Well you could just take the laziest option, which is to choose option two to start off with, then option three then four over the next few weeks based on how desperate you are to advance.”

“Well I want to risk option three. I want to know now if I have any cool time bending powers now.”

“Raise your hand, with your option decided by how many fingers you hold up and I’ll start splitting you up for further processing.”

There were a variety of answers, with some people holding out two hands with two different answers, just to be difficult.

I telepathically said to Cucumber “Bone spear the ceiling lightly for me, I need a lot of bones.

Cucumber nodded, shooting out his entire arm, which exploded upwards into a panoply of bone spears.

There were cries of confusion and shouting which I mostly ignored as I shattered the bones spears and while they fell down reshaped them into bone bracelets that I snapped around their wrists. Depending on their choices, they’d either get one to four bracelets around their wrists indicating their choices for the Liches that would separate them further on my behalf.

Interestingly one of the participants disappeared from sight during the confusion. A quick run through of the area with a bone shard, demonstrated that he hadn’t simply used an illusion to evade detection.

Mmmm space magic. I sent a message to the Lich network to be on the lookout for a weirdo with a blue wig, and report his location to me immediately. I wanted that man’s blood or his corpse in a pinch. I haven’t tasted space magic before. Teleportation powers would make my army so much more effective.

Those who chose option one were escorted out of the building.

Those who chose option two were sent to remedial classes with a physical manifestation of Lex. I had allowed him to have a body distinct from my own so he could help manage the liches in my absence in case of setbacks. His body wasn’t particularly powerful considering how recently he was incarnated but he was more than knowledgable enough to run remedial classes and help administrate my new empire for me.

Those who chose option three would be put through serious suffering under the ministrations of skeletal sorcerors, who would subject them to elemental bombardments. If they had any hidden talents, they should trigger sooner or later.

The small selection who chose option four were sent up to my throne room to be remade. I would give them the option of what magical talent they wanted however they’d have to wait a while, I had higher priorities.

One greedy guy asked if he could have all the powers to which I answered simply with a “NO!”

More than three affinities for those not dragon born tends to result in messy explosions of blood and viscera. I’ve tried it before. Failed experiment.