Bond Master

Constrained Choices

I remember a mage candidate who couldn't muster enough Mana to light a candle until the end of his first semester. He ended up fleeing the Academy to live as a commoner. We don't have time to coddle outliers."

The General turned his gaze back to the window, watching the passing wilderness. The Divine Serum was the culmination of decades of desperate, top-secret reverse-engineering. Deep beneath the ancient World Dragon Cathedral, archaeological teams have unearthed the fractured remains of a prehistoric Divine Device known as the System Stones. Though the device itself was shattered beyond repair, its lingering, celestial radiation became the blueprint for the modern Serum.

It was a vital, cutthroat race for survival. The Ocean People have already used their devastating water magic to blockade the Golden Dragon Nation's trading fleets, and the wild, savage monsters of the Beast Lands pressed harder against their borders with every passing season. The nation desperately needed mages, frontline berserkers, and healers who could rewrite the battlefield. It didn't have room for a kid who couldn't even decode his own skin.

Back in his plush compartment, Ren was entirely unaware that the high-ranking officers up front were already writing him off as a potential failure. He traced the smooth, deep-crimson lines of the chain mark on his arm, deeply frustrated by his inability to fill out the assignment sheet.

The heavy, rhythmic thud of combat boots echoed outside his door. Seizing the opportunity to find answers, Ren slid the compartment door open, intercepting a passing uniform-clad guard.

"Sir? Excuse me," Ren said, holding his forearm up slightly, so the mark was visible. "My class mark... it isn't listed anywhere in the introductory handbook. Is it possible my copy is missing an index page?"

The guard stopped, looking down at Ren's arm with a mix of professional curiosity and mild pity. "An unlisted mark, huh? Tough break, kid. The handbook only covers the common affinities—the elementalists, the frontline brawlers, the shield guardians. The injection draws from an ancient, unpredictable force. Sometimes it spits out a mutation the archives haven't categorized yet."

"What am I supposed to do when we reach the Academy?" Ren asked, his jaw tight. "The book says we start at the absolute bottom of the rank list if we haven't triggered a primary skill."

The guard sighed, pulling up his own sleeve to reveal a glowing geometric sigil shaped like a heavy kite shield—the mark of a Guardian class, specialized in kinetic barriers.

"The best advice I can give you is to try everything that feels even remotely connected to what you're wearing. My shield mark didn't spark just by meditating in a quiet room. I couldn't activate a single drop of Mana on this train.

It wasn't until I stepped off the transport and felt the crushing, simulated pressure of the Academy's defensive gates that my barrier finally snapped into existence out of sheer survival instinct."

The guard tapped the metal frame of Ren's door. "Your mark looks like a restraint. Think about what chains do. They bind, they hold, they lock things down. When you get a chance, test your focus on something that needs to be contained. Don't force it to happen here in a luxury car. Let the environment push you."

"Thank you, sir," Ren said as the guard nodded and continued his patrol down the corridor.

Ren retreated back into his room, locking the door behind him. He stared down at his palm, turning the guard's words over in his mind. Bind, hold, lock down. If his power required something to restrain, he wasn't going to find it inside a luxury train compartment. He was going to need a target.

Ren Barrett collapsed backward onto the plush, velvet-trimmed mattress of his private compartment, staring intensely at the polished mahogany panels of the ceiling.

The contrast between this room and his reality was jarring. Back in the Soot stone District, he shared a cramped, draft-ridden basement barracks with three older brothers, where the air was permanently thick with the sulfurous burr of the smelting furnaces and the floorboards vibrated whenever the heavy steam-hammers struck the anvil lines. Here, the only sound was the muted, rhythmic purr of the train’s underlying magical engine, an expensive piece of high-tier engineering running on purified Mana crystals.

He raised his left arm, letting the ambient light from the brass wall sconce catch the deep-crimson lines of his marking. The interlocking iron chains looked less like a tattoo and more like a brand seared directly into his muscle tissue.

The guard’s parting words echoed through his mind: Think about what chains do. They bind, they hold, they lock things down

If this mark truly represented a class that operated on the principles of restraint and containment, there had to be a way to manifest those principles. Humans didn't naturally grow iron links under their skin. Steeling his resolve, Ren stood up, planting his feet firmly on the thick woven carpet. He extended his right hand toward the locked closet door, focusing every ounce of his intent on the crimson brand.

"Bind!" he commanded aloud, his voice dropping into a tense whisper.

Nothing happened. The air remained completely still.

"Chain! Manifest! Lock!" He tried varying the commands, shifting his stance, and even throwing his hand forward in a casting motion he had seen standard elemental mages perform on the café televisions back home.

Outside his awareness, in the heavily reinforced command car at the front of the transport, two bored military supervisors sat before a wall of flickering monitoring screens.

They watched Ren’s frantic gesturing through a concealed pinhole camera embedded in his compartment's light fixture, softly chuckling into their tin mugs of chicory coffee. It was a time-honored tradition among the train crews to watch the low-tier commoner kids completely embarrass themselves trying to trigger their powers through sheer willpower on the first day of transit.

Frustrated and breaking into a light sweat, Ren abandoned the verbal shouting. He remembered the introductory textbook sitting on the desk. He flipped past the standard class descriptions to the practical section detailing the physical equipment provided to the newly awakened recruits.