Across from me sat Darian Dusk, the most wanted man in the Trestian empire, and the leader of the rebellion against the emperor.

  “Why did you accept me into your cause?” I asked him.

  He chuckled and straightened his tie.

  “Why, it’s obvious, isn’t it? You have some of the greatest magic potential I have ever seen. You have the potential to achieve the S rank, or even higher.”

  “Huh? What do you mean? My potential is terrible. I was kicked out of the army because of it.”

  “No, no, you don’t seem to understand. Your potential is insane. Way higher than mine.”

  “But, then, why…”

  “What rank was the officer who tested your potential?”

  “What rank?”

  “Yes.”

  I pondered for a moment. It had been four years ago, and the officer had been wearing a white uniform…

  “He was C rank.”

  “C rank, I see…”

  Darian slouched in his chair, and a small trickle of water materialized around his head and started circling him lazily.

  “Um…-“

  “Yes! Your officer was too low-level, that’s it. He couldn’t exactly see anything wrong about you, except for the fact that you had ‘low potential’, right?”

  “I’m… yes? But-“

  “Exactly! He was blind! Your potential is hotter than lava! Just looking at you is almost burning my retinas!”

  “O-ok, but then, why did he say that my potential was so terrible?”

  “Well, obviously because your meridians are blocked.”

  “Meridians? What’s that?”

  His eyes widened almost comically.

  “You don’t know what meridians are!?”

  “Uh, no?”

  “Goodness gracious, did they teach you nothing at school?”

  “I never went to school.”

  “Huh. Makes sense. Anyways, a brief rundown goes like this: in your body, you have this thing called a mana core, which is a part of your soul that stores all of the mana that you suck up into yourself. Most people envision it as a ball of light. Now, connected to this ball of light are these little vein-looking things. These are your meridians. They are the pathway between your mana core and the world outside of your body. You use them to refill your mana core and eject mana out of it. Without meridians, you can’t be a mage. Every 1 in one hundred people is born with meridians, which makes them automatically as a child suck in ambient mana from their surroundings, and create a mana core. That’s how you become a mage.”

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  ‘That seemed like a bit of a crude explanation, but I understood most of it.’

  “Ok, so if that’s how it works, then what does it mean when your meridians are blocked?”

  “Well, you just said it, didn’t you? Something is blocking the mana from traveling through your meridians. You see, the way mages usually check your potential is by seeing how fast ambient mana naturally travels through your meridians. In your case, because you have such incredible potential, even with a complete blockage, some small sliver of mana trickles through the gaps, making you Barry qualified to be a mage. But if the blockage is removed, you can absorb mana at a pace equal to that of a B rank mage, even though you’re F rank!”

  “Wait, does that mean that you can increase your potential the more powerful of a mage you become?”

  He cocked his head to the side.

  “No, of course not, don’t be silly. No one can increase their own potential, it’s decided at birth, it’s genetic. Whenever someone goes up a rank, they automatically gain more mana faster, because their mana core is much larger. It’s like planets; the larger they are, the more gravitational pull they have. For example, an X rank’s mana core would be equivalent to a black hole!”

  “I’m not quite sure what a black hole is, but I get the gist. The more powerful you get, the more mana you need to get even more powerful. I was never told, but how do you get more powerful? How do you increase your rank?”

  “Man, you really don’t know anything do you? Don’t they explain this kind of stuff to you in the army? I’m sure there are plenty of army kids who never went to school.”

  I frowned. “Maybe they taught the others, but not to me. They claimed that my talent was too trash for me to actually use any of that knowledge and that it was better if I just focused on following orders and not trying to get somewhere I can’t reach.”

  “Huh. What idiots. Glad you’re not with them anymore. Anyways, the most basic way to make your mana core larger, and by doing that, increase your rank, is to just absorb more mana than is currently possible for you to absorb. Let’s say, for instance, that your mana core can hold a cup-sized amount of mana, and you want it to be bigger, all you have to do is try to force more than a cup's worth of mana into your mana core. If you succeed, the size of your mana core increases. If you fail, you’re just gonna have to try again. Usually without the proper technique, it could take quite a while to increase the size of your mana core, but if you have a good technique and good talent, then you can increase it quite quickly. That’s why the poor usually can’t get past the D rank, and the rich usually get to the C or B rank within their lifetimes. Of course, if you have talent as mind-breaking as yours, you could just force a torrent of mana into your mana core at great speeds, and just force it to grow. With your talent, you can reach D rank in maybe a day!”

  ‘Ok, I think I understand it now. But there are still two things that are bugging me.’

  “I have two more questions. One, what exactly is blocking my meridians, and two, how did you know about my potential before even meeting me?”

  He crossed his fingers together, and the small ball of water that was floating around him disappeared into a puff of spray.

  “Well, one is quite easy: I have absolutely no idea. Two is also easy. Pallock told me. He’s an A rank you know.”

  ‘Pallock is an A-rank mage! How many powerful mages are in this rebellion?’

  “I-I see. But wait, what do you mean you don’t know what’s blocking my meridians? Do you not want to tell me?”

  “No, I would be glad to. I seriously have no idea. But that’s why I accepted you. If we can somehow figure out how to unclog your blockage, then we can sharpen you into a blade as sharp as me, if not sharper! With two S ranks, we can finally overturn the empire and kill the emperor for good!”

  ‘This guy is a real liberalist.’

  “Anyways, the point is, you’re a diamond in the rough, and the empire did us a favor in letting you go. Now we just have to awaken your secret potential, and we’ll be able to save the empire from the emperor's tyranny!”

  “That sounds great. So… what do I do next?”

  He smiled, and I felt as if perhaps I shouldn’t have asked that question.

  “Training.”