Next, Arel heads to the Yellow Magic Institute to take the promotion exam—only to discover the registration period has just ended. He’s devastated, mostly because waiting a few months for the next assembly sounds like torture. Desperate, he asks the receptionist if she can make an exception since he even built a brand-new golem for this. Unfortunately, rules are rules… and she’s not about to break them.
But then, plot twist! A passing man overhears Arel bragging about his new golem and immediately becomes interested. He offers to register as Arel’s assistant, which would allow him to enter the current assembly. Arel agrees instantly, because when life hands you a loophole, you take it.
The receptionist, however, nearly faints. She tells Arel she can’t believe he agreed to be Rogwell’s assistant. Arel asks what’s wrong with him—is he cursed? Does he eat students? Turns out, Rogwell isn’t evil… just terrifying. He’s the top instructor in golem control, famous for going all-out in every match and absolutely demolishing his students’ hopes, dreams, and self-esteem. Oh, and he acts like a smug jerk about it, which is why everyone avoids him like a cursed artifact.
But Arel, being Arel, decides that as long as he gets into the assembly, he can deal with the “slightly soul-crushing” personality of Rogwell. Promotion is promotion!
The day of the assembly arrives, and after a parade of brilliant presentations, it’s finally Rogwell and Errol’s turn. Rogwell proudly announces that he’ll be showing off the “true might” of his golems—aka, he’s about to smash another poor student in a mock battle. The crowd immediately feels bad for whichever unlucky soul got tricked into assisting him.
Ragwell summons his battle golems and tells Arel to bring out his own. So Arel casually calls out Alpha, like he’s summoning a pet dog that knows it’s about to steal the show.
Then Arel’s golem walks into the arena—metallic, shiny, and absolutely not normal. Everyone gasps because nobody has ever seen a metal golem before. Ragwell looks at it like it personally insulted his bloodline. In his mind, metal is far too heavy to control with earth magic, so his genius explanation is: “This brat definitely stuffed a person inside it!”
He marches over, pops the golem’s head off like opening a cookie jar, and freezes when he sees it’s completely hollow. Arel casually mentions that he alchemized the metal himself. Rogwell, of course, assumes that means the metal is super light but also super flimsy. He smugly decides his Earth Golems will crush it with one punch.
He orders the first golem to attack Alpha, expecting it to explode like cheap pottery. Instead, Alpha blocks the punch effortlessly—and Ragwell’s golem’s entire arm disintegrates into dust. The whole arena goes silent, jaws drop, and Rogwell briefly reconsiders his entire career path.
Ragwell cannot believe Alpha actually tanked a hit from his golem. But to him, losing an arm is nothing—his giant mana pool lets him regenerate and reinforce his golems like he’s playing with premium DLC. So he commands all of them to dog-pile Arel’s golem at once.
Realizing he can’t handle four golems simultaneously, Arel activates Alpha’s special feature and pulls two swords out of her back like she’s a budget action figure with hidden accessories. Ragwell sees this and scoffs, certain it’s useless—after all, golems are famously about as flexible as a brick.
But in the very next heartbeat, Alpha dashes forward and slices all four golems to pieces in one clean, elegant blur. The arena falls silent. And just like that, Arel is the undisputed winner of the mock battle.
Ragwell, still processing the emotional damage, asks how this is even possible. Arel helps him up and calmly explains that he designed Alpha using lightweight, alchemized metal and built flexible joints so she can move freely. Then, by combining that with Arel’s own swordsmanship, teaching her sword techniques was a breeze.
Ragwell finally admits that Arel’s golem is undeniably superior. So Arel asks if this means he can finally take the promotion exam. Unfortunately, Ragwell breaks the news that an instructor’s assistant isn’t eligible for early promotion. However, if Arel joins his research team, he’ll “put in a good word with the headmaster.”
Arel, who mainly wants to level up, agrees. After wrapping things up, he heads to the White School and requests the official promotion exam. The process here is much simpler, so the staff immediately arrange the test and introduce him to Kay Day, who will oversee his evaluation.
Arel quickly notices that Kay appears to be blind, so he politely asks if she needs help walking around. She appreciates the concern, but confidently tells him she’s completely fine. Even without sight, she can sense the magic around her—and apparently even read a person’s personality through it.
However, when she “looks” at Arel, she’s stunned. Not only does he have a bottomless pool of mana, but he also has several different types of magic spinning inside him at once. It’s the first time she’s ever sensed something this bizarre.
She leads him to the exam location: an underground dungeon crawling with undead. Kay warns him to be careful because the undead will attack on sight. But the moment Arel encounters his first group, he just starts casually spamming Holy Light like he’s speed-running the place.
As he strolls deeper into the dungeon, Kay hurriedly tells him to stop—because the test was literally just to defeat the undead near the entrance. He already passed ages ago. She even warns him not to waste magic like that or he’ll run out eventually.
But Arel casually replies that he’s only used about… 1% of his mana. That shuts down the concern pretty fast.
On their way back, Arel senses something lurking in a corner and shoots a ray of Holy Light at it. Sure enough, an undead was hiding there. Kay realizes it must be a high-level one if it managed to hide its presence—but Arel doesn’t care in the slightest. He interrupts the undead mid-speech and blasts it with a Holy Cross spell like he’s skipping dialogue in a video game.
After finishing the test, Arel tells Kay to hurry so they can start the paperwork for his promotion. But Kay is still mentally rebooting because she cannot believe what he just did. From what she sensed, that undead creature he casually deleted earlier was actually an Undead Wight—an advanced monster.
Arel admits it felt a little different since it could talk, but he didn’t think too deeply about it. This only makes Kay more confused, so she asks where he learned the Holy Cross spell. It’s a high-level technique that only elite exorcists with insane talent can use.
But Arel, being Arel, simply says he always thought of it as a “slightly stronger Holy Ray,” as if it’s just the deluxe version of a basic spell.
With the White Institute finished, the last one left is the Black Magic Institute. But surprisingly, they don’t even have a promotion exam. So Arel just wanders around reading books until Latalia eventually shows up. He asks her why there’s no exam, and she explains that the system collapsed because… well, almost no one attends the Black Institute anymore.
Looking around, Arel has to admit the place is emptier than his motivation to study math. Then he notices a huge room nearby—the one he’s been curious about since the start. When he asks Latalia about it, she explains that it’s a reinforced testing room.
The other institutes test magic outdoors, but dark magic is a bit more “accidentally blow up the campus” prone. So she had a special room built so students can safely practice their spells without turning the school into rubble.
Since that’s the case, Arel decides to step inside the testing room to try out a few of the complicated spells he found in the books. While flipping through them, he notices one he’s never seen before. The moment he opens it, a burst of ominous mana blasts out—like the book just sneezed evil all over the place.
Normally, the room’s reinforcement should keep everything sealed inside, so Arel looks around to see where that creepy magic went. That’s when he notices someone floating in the air… and whatever it is, it definitely isn’t human.
He asks if it’s a demon, and the creature casually confirms it—as if they’re discussing the weather. It explains that it had been sealed inside that book for years, and no black mage had ever been foolish enough to open it without checking first. So, the demon kindly “thanks” Arel… and then immediately announces it needs a lot of human flesh and blood to return to the demon world.
In short: dinner is served, and Arel is the main course.
But Arel has no intention of being snack food. He shrugs off the demon’s first attack and prepares to fire an Explosion spell—only to find out it doesn’t work. The demon laughs and proudly reveals it already set up an anti-magic barrier in the room. No spells allowed.
Too bad for him… Arel isn’t a “normal mage.”
Before the demon can finish bragging, Arel charges at it. The demon assumes he’s insane because what mage fights hand-to-hand? But before it can even finish its sentence—
Arel has already sliced off its head using his wand.
Because who needs spells when your wand doubles as a very stylish sword?
The demon stares in disbelief, then calmly reattaches its own head like it’s fixing a loose helmet. After thinking it over, it decides Arel must be a magic swordsman. Even so, it confidently declares that Arel can’t win because it possesses the Blessing of Immortality. No matter how many times Arel hits it, it won’t die.
Annoying? Yes. Impossible? Not for Arel.
He remembers that demons need mana to maintain their physical form. Immortal or not, taking repeated damage will eventually drain its mana reserves. So Arel picks the simplest, most reliable strategy:
Hit it. A lot. Repeatedly. Forever if necessary.
At first, the demon laughs, saying Arel’s attacks are useless. But soon it notices its body shrinking—dramatically. Its tone instantly switches from arrogant to terrified. After a few hours of nonstop beating (and maybe a little emotional damage), the demon has shrunk down to action-figure size and is begging Arel for mercy. If it gets any smaller, it might disappear completely.
Satisfied that he’s “tenderized” the demon enough for one day, Arel agrees to stop… but only after carving a Seal of Servitude onto its tiny chest. The demon protests, insisting it refuses to serve a “lowly human,” but the seal activates immediately and blasts it with pain every time it tries to rebel. With no other choice, it submits.
Six months later, the headmasters of all six institutes gather to discuss the new yearly budget. That peaceful atmosphere lasts about two seconds before the headmaster of the Black Institute stands up furious—his budget has been slashed by 60%. With that amount, he won’t even be able to do proper research, let alone fix the giant magical messes his students tend to create.
The representative tells Blag that his institute has failed to produce anything useful for the magic city, so naturally its budget is being cut. The other headmasters immediately start mocking Blag, calling him a weirdo for spending so much time on black magic. The headmaster of the White Institute even suggests banning black magic entirely, but the representative shuts that down—he’s only here for budget allocation, not magical politics.
He asks if anyone has objections, but everyone stays quiet (probably because they’re too busy celebrating Blag’s misery inside their heads). He then announces that the final budget will be decided after the Magic Tournament.
All the headmasters leave, but Blag remains frozen in shock, unable to believe how much funding he just lost. The representative tells him that glaring won’t magically fix his finances. If Blag wants his budget back, he needs to prove the value of black magic by winning the Magic Tournament. In fact, if the Black Institute wins, the representative promises not to cut their budget at all—but only if they actually manage to win.
That same day, Errol and his friends are walking through the streets, wondering why the city suddenly looks like it’s preparing for a magical wedding. Kuufa is shocked that Errol hasn’t heard about the upcoming festival, especially since it’s one of the biggest annual events in the Magic City. Errol never cared much about festivals, but he has heard of the Institute Tournament—the main highlight.
All the headmasters have invited him to join the rookie division, but since he still hasn’t decided which school to represent, he plans to meet them the next morning.
Meanwhile, that night, Blag, in a desperate attempt to secure victory, spends hours crafting a magic circle connected to the demon realm. From it, he summons a high-level demon known as Gluttony, hoping the creature will prove just how “amazing” black magic is.
Unfortunately for him, the demon has other plans. The moment it appears, the slime-like creature turns on him and swallows him whole—so much for showing off.
