After a moment of thought, Dawuro the door they had ehrough, extending a tendril of mana and sweeping it through the area bit by bit. She could faintly feel the differeween the door and the rest of the wall, and could trace the e to the opening meism if she focused.

  Ign the trio snickering behind her, she tinued her examination for a few more moments before moving to the side a few feet and beginning to examihat se of wall. She couldn’t be certain, but it felt like nothing abnormal was there. Once again she shifted to the side and began again.

  After repeating the process several times, she was certain she had found two more doors, though one was found by act; it had no differeween itself and the wall except for the meism to open it buried behind the stone. She stopped for a moment to think, then decided to check the floor and ceiling as well.

  Her decision soon paid off as she spotted another much rger opening in the middle of the chamber, with a far more plex meism that she could not figure out. She decided she was not likely to find anything else even if she spent more time, and thus pointed out the three she had found to the examiners.

  Following this, the woman from before turo the trio and stated, “You have two choices here. You choose to allow me to erase your memory of where those doors are, or you have the doors Dawn spotted not qualify when you take this test iure. The former choice is obviously much easier for you ter on.”

  Two of them accepted immediately, while the third looked like he was going to refuse until getting jabbed in the side by one and spped on the side of the head by the other. After sheepishly agreeing, he joihe others in a line before the woman, who added, “We will o finish up ter, as we o travel down into the dungeon, but the other two I will take care of now.”

  Ohey were finished, Morris approached the ter of the room before kneeling doressing a metal sigil he pulled from his robe against the floor. As he khere, the stone floor slowly dispersed, revealing that a spiral staircase had been buried beh three feet of solid stone. Morris ended up atop the tral pilr, and stood, gesturing for them to proceed dowairs as he began down them himself.

  After making it to the bottom of the stairs, they reached a corridor lined with cells. Morris held up his hand, signaling for them to wait, and a moment ter, a woman walked out of a hidden room and o him. Uhe others, this woman was wearing armor, and had both a mad a short sword at her sides, both clearly having seen use in battle, though they appeared well maintained.

  As the proached, Morris owards her as well before asking, “Which cell was it that Samson ced in? We are here to do a drai.”

  The oio the fifth cell on the right before turning and leading the group there. Within was a miserable-looking man sitting on a cot with his leg ed to the ter of the cell. Without pausing, the door ened, having not even been locked to begin with, and they entered. The woman stated, “Samson, 29 years of age, two ts of rape, oempted but failed murder. Verified by two mind mages as guilty, senteo death. You worry about his dition.”

  Having said her piece, she exited the cell and walked back out of sight. Dawn, meanwhile, was shocked at the idea the man before her was simply dismissed like trash. She struggled with the idea for a few moments as Morris watched, nodding as she steeled herself to the idea. He had done great harm to at least two, and tried to kill someone else, after all.

  As she looked back up and faced the restrained man, Morris spoke up, “This is one of the many unfortunate realities of life, Dawn. Fortunately, it is much less on now than it used to be, and most crimes that do occur are nowhere near as bad. We keep the worst for cases like this, where we o test something that carries risk. You o prove yourself capable of successfully draining this man’s mana without causing harm to him. Should you harm, or even kill him, there is no sequence, as he is sted for death.”

  Meanwhile, Samson simply tinued gloomily staring at the ground as if he hadn’t noticed them.

  After a few moments to calm herself, Dawn reached out with her mana. She was unsure how to do this, as she had ried before, but she assumed that her beginning knowledge and experieh healing would help. And it couldn’t be too different from draining a mana stone, right?

  When she had been healing, however, she had not been paying close attention to their mana, and as such, she was surprised by how active it was now. While she expected a little activity, it was closer ting storm, thrashing about wildly. She tried to grab hold of the chaotic mass, only for the man to scream in pain and curl into a fetal position as she pulled on the mana.

  Jumping in shock, then frowning, she stopped immediately, and began to heal the man. Even if he was to be killed, she felt that it was wrong to cause pain, and that she should relieve it if possible.

  Snickering began behind her back again, but she ig. Having ried this before, of course she would enter difficulties doing it. Since her first idea had failed, she decided to spend more time studying the problem, and found that there seemed to be a pattern to how the man’s mana moved. Realizing she was being foolish, she began examining herself, using a mana tendril to try to sense from aernal perspective.

  As the troublesome trio taunted her about how she couldn’t do it and was a failure, she tried creating balls of light and fire, how the flow ged. While there were differences, she could spot several simirities between herself and the man before her. To test an idea she had, she used her mana tendril to grasp a se of mana in herself and pulled gently. Hissing in pain, she stopped, waited tain her focus, and tried elsewhere.

  Several tries ter, and muickering behind her back, she had found several locations she could pull at without pain. Fog ba Samson, she traced his mana flows until she found simir locations, very gently pulling at eabsp; The first few caused pain, but eventually she found a handful that didn’t seem to cause the man any disfort.

  Nodding to herself, she began to extract rger amounts of mana, slowly increasing in speed until she had draihe majority from him. Turning back to the trio, she smugly remarked that they could shut up now, then annouhat she had succeeded.

  The third mage who had e with them stepped forward to verify her cim, then nodded a.

  “gratutions, Dawn,” Morris said, “how about we get out of here? I know this wasn’t easy for you.”

  Silently nodding, she followed him back out until they reached the entry to the spire. Here the mind mage they had been with split off from them to finish with the trio they had finished proving wrong, while the two of them tinued bato the spire itself.