Controlling Destiny

A soft glow was emitting from one of the dormitory rooms. Ultrix was hard at work trying to study up on different magic circle inscriptions. Yet, all of this was to no avail.

With no affinity for magic, Ultrix naturally could not comprehend what the runic symbols meant. It was like describing color to a person who was born blind.

A soft breeze blew through Ultrix's open window and put out his candles.

"Damn it!" Ultrix cursed silently. Naturally, this was no big deal as he could easily just relight his candles. However, it still felt good to let out his caged up frustrations.

Reaching for his matchstick box, Ultrix suddenly felt a weird sensation, almost like the tip of his fingers were being drawn towards the box.

Retracting his hand instantly, Ultrix tried to reach for the box again. This time, the sensation was even greater.

Ultrix did not try to fight back the sensation, after all, it kind of felt like it was the right thing to do. Almost like it was something that was completely natural to him.

Upon grabbing the matchbox, the entire box combusted into flames.

"Oh, crap!" Ultrix immediately dropped the box in fear and surprise, but tentatively reached out for it again upon realizing he felt no discomfort from the fire.

What should have been a flesh burning experience did not seem to affect Ultrix at all. The fire was warm to the touch, but not warm enough to be uncomfortable.

While still in a bit of a daze, Ultrix pinched himself to make sure that he was not dreaming. And then, he laughed in delight!

[Finally!] Ultrix thought to himself. [Finally, I have achieved affinity with a magical element!]

[Those damn rascals will finally know who is the real boss!] Ultrix thought. The fire within his heart burned with even greater passion and small ember sparks combusted from his clenched fists.

Not wasting any more time, Ultrix quickly tried to calm himself down enough that he could control his new magic more appropriately.

As he calmed down, he felt the raging fire within his heart calm down a lot more. However, although the fire was not raging like before, it was definitely still there.

The sensation was not different from that of knowing that your lungs are still working when you can not see them.

Although Ultrix could not necessarily feel the fire affinity, he could sense it.

[Hmm,] Ultrix thought to himself, [This affinity for fire magic sure became natural really quickly.]

Of course, this should have been obvious to Ultrix because most people that he knew all were mostly born with magic affinity or developed it during infancy.

Ultrix probably already had such an affinity within him for a long time, it was just that he never truly realized such an affinity as he was studying the wrong type.

Quickly realizing such, Ultrix wrote a letter of resignation from the department of growth magic and wrote a new form of application for the department of combustion.

However, he could not change his department yet as it was still quite early and the sun had not even risen yet.

While waiting for the departments to open, Ultrix decided to cultivate his fire affinity to see what he could do with it.

Like a chemist tossing together random elements, Ultrix wrote random lines of runes in hopes that something interesting would happen. Naturally, nothing happened and all of the magic circles failed to ignite.

Knowing that he would not get anywhere by simply making up random circles, Ultrix started making his way to the department office.

At this point, the sun was finally starting to shine up from behind the mountain. Unbeknownst to Ultrix though, as the sunrise flooded his room, one of his magic circles slowly started to glow.