The Elements

The crystal ball on Minerva's hand floated and then flew toward the young boy in the first row who was the closest to her. It hovered above him and shot a ray of light. The crystal ball then mixed the colors inside it until it finally settled on a single color.

[Scan complete. Yellow. Earth Affinity.]

It spoke! Almost everyone was baffled. How could an object speak? Minerva didn't bother explaining as the crystal ball selected its new target and went above the mysterious young girl wearing a large veil with her long hair peeking on its edges and snowish-white skin. It didn't take long for the ball to turn to glow green.

[Scan complete. Green. Plant Affinity.]

The others who didn't understand started muttering. Minerva then started explaining while the crystal ball flew around, "A lot of you must be wondering. Let me explain here. The whole universe was nothing but darkness in its infancy. And from that darkness, gods and goddesses emerged. The gods and goddesses, however, were split in what they wanted to accomplish. Some wanted to fill the worlds with life, some wanted eternal emptiness. It was inevitable that a battle would erupt between the gods and goddesses and it did.

"Aeons have passed and the gods and goddesses battles ended. Those who have wanted life won, obviously. The primordial energies that erupted from the battle from the gods and goddesses birthed uncountable galaxies and one of them is ours. These energies are what we call the Ten Elements.

"The Ten Elements are divided into four main elements namely the fire, wind, water, and earth. While the four sub-elements are the lightning, ice, plant, and metal. These are the eight elements that are the most abundant in the whole universe, but the last two elements are the ties that hold everything together. They are also the rarest to appear in a person, the darkness and light."

As soon as Minerva finished explaining, the crystal ball hovering over a bald and modestly clothed boy shone white.

[Scan complete. White. Light Affinity.]

Minerva turned slightly red, whether it was because of excitement or embarrassment only she knew. "As I've said, it is quite rare that we have an acolyte with light or dark elements every year."

The crystal ball selected people at random and it finally came back to the group of youths from Kalios, a magus world. Another young boy from their world was scanned and the crystal glowed red before its half turned purple.

[Scan complete. Red and purple. Dual affinity. Fire and wind.]

"Having multiple elemental affinities is like having a double-edged sword. It is both fortune and curse," Minerva commented at the young boy who had a smug look on his face at first.

A couple of minutes had passed and the crystal ball was almost finished scanning everyone. The 18 youths from Kalios had mostly single elemental affinity but five of them had dual elements.

Minerva wasn't surprised, however. After all, she knew that the average person who grew up in a magus world learned how to cultivate whatever elemental affinity they had from an early age.

Not long after, the crystal ball floated over Emery's group. They were the last people to be scanned. It first approached Julian and shot its beam. It turned yellow before being split in half with red.

[Yellow and red. Dual affinity. Earth and fire.]

Julian whistled with a smile on his face.

Thrax was the next to be scanned.

[Red. Fire affinity.]

Julian had half a smile as he watched Thrax trying to argue at the crystal ball why he had less elemental affinity compared to the Roman pig. But Julian's cheeky smile turned into awe as he watched crystal divide itself into three above Klea. The colors inside the ball showed three distinct shades.

[Scan complete. Purple, blue, and indigo. Triple affinity. Wind, water, and lightning.]

"Hmm. Out of the hundred youths in this class, so far you're the only acolyte who has three elements," Minerva commented with a knowing look.

The class started a slight uproar and faces of slight admiration, especially the boys. Indeed there were many of them and this beautiful, sexy, bronze-skinned woman had three affinities. The other girls' faces, however, told a different story. That showed how rare it was for a person to have three of the elements.

"Truly an extraordinary lady!" exclaimed Julian.

"It wasn't much," replied Klea, flicking her hair.

"Congratulations, Klea," said Emery with a grin.

"Thank you, cutie," smiled Klea with a wink.

Next, the crystal moved toward Chumo and showed a single color.

[Black. Darkness Affinity.]

Emery didn't have time to congratulate Chumo for the rare element because he was blinded by the light rays coming from the crystal ball.

He closed his eyes, slightly afraid of what he was about to hear and see. Since childhood, Emery believed he had never had success. The people around him always had low expectations of him. Even his father who had always treated him like a little boy. He never felt special nor a protagonist of the stories he had read in his father's library.

The crystal ball shone bright before becoming dark and then transparent. It was quiet. The crystal ball only needed only a few seconds to finish a scan but this was a bit too long.

Emery opened his eyes and stared at the transparent crystal ball. He sighed, it was just as he had thought. He was nothing. He wasn't special. But why was he even here? Did someone or something make a mistake? He was about to sit down when Klea muttered his name.

"Emery..."

[Scan complete.]

[Blue]

The crystal ball showed blue. That meant he had water affinity. Emery's heart issued a slight jump. He may be special after all. But then the crystal ball halved itself and showed another color.

[Yellow, Green]

Yellow, Earth affinity, and then a third color! Green, Plant affinity, a triple affinity!

Emery could feel everyone's eyes staring at him. He felt his breath shortening; he somewhat wanted to lower his head and hide underneath the desk. This was the first time he had everyone's attention solely on himself. It actually felt suffocating.

Then his ears piqued as he heard gasps of the others. He had his eyes on the floor, but when he looked at them before casting his gaze at the crystal ball. He was as surprised as them.

[Black]

"..."

[Blue, Yellow, Green, and Black. Quadruple affinity. Water, Earth, Plant, and Darkness.]

"A quadruple acolyte! Only one in every thousand acolytes have this!" Minerva exclaimed with a slight smile. She flew toward Emery and asked, "What's your name boy?"

"E—Emery," Emery stuttered.

Minerva recalled the crystal ball since everyone had finished being scanned. "You better work hard, boy. It looks like everyone's done but don't you guys get excited just yet. Having an affinity for an element isn't enough. Next, we'll see how much your aptitude is."