Afraid that if they were the first and failed, none of the children present including Lance wanted to begin their test. Seeing this, the mystic felt a sense of dread as well, because it showed a lack of confidence in these children to pass.

"Alright, then I shall choose you all one by one. You with the blonde hair, come over to start us off." the mystic told the group while pointing at one of the children. This child was dressed fairly nice compared to the rest of the normal children around him.

There was no telling what the child was thinking since it took him a moment before he realized that he was chosen. He only looked at an adult near him that seemed to be his father before walking up to the mystic.

"Now, all you need to do, is to place one hand onto this crystal. If the crystal shows a faint glow it means that you have failed, if it shows a big glow it means you can move past this round of testing, and if it nearly blinds all of us here, you have passed and our school will make arrangements to take you in immediately." the mystic told the child in a friendly manner.

Hearing these instructions, the child took a deep breath before reaching out and placing his hand onto the crystal in front of him. Unfortunately, the crystal had a faint glow. Seeing this was not surprising to Thomas, but he still felt rather bad.

"I am sorry little one, but you did not pass the test. You might be able to get your battle qi test to see if you have what it takes to at least go down the path of a warrior." Thomas told the child before gesturing for him to leave the area.

If Thomas's school back in Bitter Falls had a program for warriors, it would be possible for him to bring along someone else to conduct a test and to potentially select more students. However, some schools such as his chose to specialize in one path.

This did not necessarily mean that a school would be better by focusing on training their students in one path instead of two, rather, it was so that more schools could actually exist making the balance of powers within the city easier to manage.

If a school within Sun Dynasty or any other empire around the world were to both train students in the mystic path and the warrior path and became the most renowned school, it would make it harder for other schools to be created, and it would make it much harder for the royal families to control their population.

"Alright, you there with the red ponytail, please come up to take your test." Thomas called out after the child made his way back to his parents. Hope for the child was not lost, but if possible many commoners if given a choice, would rather walk the path as a mystic rather than the path of a warrior.

The girl which Thomas chose this time looked like it was the opposite of the child before her. The child who had just failed the test was clearly better dressed and more put together, while this girl's face still had some dirt on it.

What Thomas did not know, was this girl's name was Samantha and her life up until this point had been very tragic. After losing her father before she could even walk, her mother fell into a drunken state and barely had any left over money to feed her and Samantha. It wasn't clear to Thomas, but deep down everyone including Lance in the crowd wanted Samantha to pass so that she at least had the chance to change her life for the better.

After getting over the shock of being picked, Samantha quickly walked up to the testing table, but tripped on her way there. Now embarrassed, Samantha could only wipe her face off before finally appearing before Thomas and the test crystal.

Placing her hand onto the crystal, it started to emit a big blue glow. An excited expression appeared on everyone's faces including Thomas'. "I see, let me explain something to you before I send you off." he told her as he handed Samantha a bronze token.