The capital of the Clover Kingdom rose before me like a monument carved from white marble and mortal ambition.
I had arrived three days ahead of the exam's official registration date, my inhuman sprint through the wilderness having cut the travel time by nearly two-thirds. The city gates towered above me as I approached—massive iron-bound doors flanked by guards in ceremonial armor, their grimoires floating at their belts and their eyes scanning the flow of incoming travelers with the practiced boredom of men who had seen every possible variation of humanity pass beneath their watch. When their gazes landed on me, the boredom vanished.
Six foot three inches of muscle wrapped in beast hides. Black hair falling past my shoulders like a dark river. Grey eyes that held no warmth and no welcome. And behind my head, visible to anyone with sufficient mana perception, the eight-spoked wheel rotated in its eternal, golden cycle.
The guards stiffened. One of them—a grizzled veteran with a Stage 5 mana signature and a scar running from temple to jaw—took an involuntary step backward as I passed through the gate. His companion, younger and less experienced, opened his mouth as if to challenge me, then closed it when the scarred guard shook his head.
"Not worth it," the veteran muttered, low enough that a normal human wouldn't have heard. "Look at that thing behind his head. Whatever he is, he's not a common traveler."
I filed the observation away. The guard had seen the wheel. His mana stage was Stage 5—above average, but not exceptional. That was useful data.
The capital's main thoroughfare stretched before me, a canyon of white stone buildings and cobbled streets crowded with merchants, nobles, commoners, and the occasional Magic Knight striding through the masses with the easy confidence of those who held power and knew it. The noise was overwhelming after a year of jungle silence—hawkers shouting their wares, children laughing and crying, hooves clattering on stone, a hundred conversations overlapping into a wall of sound. My enhanced senses catalogued it all and dismissed it as irrelevant.
I walked, and I watched.
A noblewoman in a silk dress glanced at me, her eyes sliding over my massive frame with mild curiosity before returning to her companion. She hadn't seen the wheel. Her mana signature was Stage 7—barely above a commoner's baseline. A merchant haggling over the price of spices did a double-take as I passed, his face paling, his hand instinctively moving to his grimoire. Stage 4. He had seen it. A street urchin tried to pick my pocket—a futile effort, given that I had no pockets and I could sense his approach from fifty meters away—and looked up at me with terrified eyes when I caught his wrist. Stage 9. He hadn't seen anything.
By the time I reached the inn district, I had confirmed the pattern. The threshold appeared to be Stage 5 or Stage 6 mana. Anyone below that saw only a very tall, very muscular fifteen-year-old with unsettling grey eyes. Anyone above saw the wheel in all its golden, rotating glory. The higher their mana stage, the more clearly they perceived it. A Stage 4 mage I'd passed had gone pale and crossed the street to avoid me. A Stage 3 mage—a Magic Knight in Crimson Lion robes—had stopped dead in his tracks and stared with open shock.
I didn't care. Visibility was a variable, and I had already accounted for it. The Binding Vow framework in my grimoire gave me a way to convert exposure into power. Let them see. Let them wonder. Let them fear. Their reactions were just another phenomenon to be catalogued and exploited.
I found lodging at a cheap inn on the city's eastern edge, paid for a week in advance with coins I'd saved from beast pelt sales, and settled in to wait. The exam registration was in three days. The exam itself was a week after that. I had time to acclimate, to observe the capital's rhythms, and to maintain the mask I would need for the social gauntlet ahead.
---
Three days passed in quiet observation.
I learned the city's layout—the Colosseum where the exam would be held, the floating squad headquarters that orbited the royal palace like metal moons, I learned the rhythms of the Magic Knight patrols, the schedules of the noble processions, the locations of the best vantage points for watching the city without being watched in return. I learned which taverns served decent food that I could pretend to eat while sustaining myself on mana alone. The mask required me to appear human. Humans ate. So I would eat.
On the fourth morning, I went for a walk through the merchant district, and I saw something I hadn't expected.
Asta's voice reached me before his body did. It always did.
"YUNO! Look at this! They have swords! REAL swords! Not the wooden ones we trained with! Can you imagine what I could do with a real sword? I'd be unstoppable! The Wizard King would have to step down early!"
"Put it down before you hurt yourself."
"That's cold, Yuno! Even for you! I've been training! I'm way stronger than I used to be!"
"Your arms are still the same length."
"WHAT'S THAT SUPPOSED TO MEAN?!"
I turned my head just enough to see them. Asta, the short, ash-blond whirlwind of enthusiasm, was bouncing in front of a weapons stall with a practice sword in each hand, his green eyes blazing with excitement. Yuno stood behind him, arms crossed, expression the same stoic mask I remembered from Hage. Neither of them had noticed me yet. The crowd was thick, and I was standing in the shadow of a potion shop's awning, my presence muted by years of jungle stealth training.
Annoying.
The word surfaced in my mind, cold and clinical. I had planned to reestablish contact with them at the exam, not before. An accidental encounter on the street introduced variables I hadn't accounted for. Asta would be loud. Yuno would be observant. And the wheel behind my head was not something I could hide from someone with Yuno's mana sensitivity. He had been suspicious of me in Hage. If he saw the wheel now, that suspicion would crystallize into certainty that I was not what I pretended to be.
I turned away, melting deeper into the shadows of the awning, and began to walk in the opposite direction. If I could slip away before they—
"Ouga?"
Yuno's voice cut through the crowd noise like a blade through silk.
I stopped. The mask settled over my features—warm smile, softened eyes, the gentle giant routine I'd perfected in Hage—and I turned back to face them. Yuno's amber eyes were fixed on me with that unnerving intensity I remembered so well. But he wasn't looking at my face. His gaze was locked on the air above my head, where the eight-spoked wheel rotated in its silent, golden rhythm. His expression, usually so carefully controlled, flickered with something that might have been shock.
Of course he could see it. Yuno's mana sensitivity was exceptional even before he bonded with a spirit. He was the kind of prodigy who could sense things others couldn't. The wheel, visible to anyone above Stage 5 or 6, would be blazingly obvious to him.
"OUGA!" Asta's voice shattered the moment, a foghorn of pure, unfiltered enthusiasm. He dropped the practice swords—the merchant yelped—and came barreling through the crowd toward me, his short legs pumping, his grin wide enough to split his face. "IT IS YOU! Where have you BEEN?! You just disappeared after the ceremony! We didn't see you for WEEKS! Months! We thought you got eaten by a mana beast or something!"
I let the smile widen, let the warmth infuse my voice. "Asta. Yuno. It's good to see you both. I've been training in the jungle. Lost track of time."
"Lost track of time?! It's been like a YEAR!" Asta skidded to a halt in front of me, craning his neck up, up, up. "And you got even TALLER! How is that possible?! You were already huge! This is so unfair! Yuno, look at him! He's like a mountain now! A really friendly mountain, but still a mountain!"
"Yuno's already looking," I said, my eyes shifting to the dark-haired boy who had followed Asta at a more measured pace. Yuno had stopped about ten feet away, his arms still crossed, his amber eyes still fixed on the wheel. He was ignoring Asta's shouting, which was unusual. Yuno usually at least acknowledged Asta's existence with a cutting remark or a dismissive glance. Now he was completely focused on me, his expression unreadable but his tension obvious.
"Yuno?" Asta waved a hand in front of his rival's face. "Hello? Earth to Yuno? What are you staring at? Ouga's tall, we get it. You don't have to be weird about it."
Yuno didn't answer. He was waiting for me to acknowledge what he was seeing.
I decided to make him work for it.
"You two are here for the exam, I assume," I said, keeping my tone light and conversational. "It's good to see familiar faces. The capital is... a lot."
"It's AMAZING!" Asta immediately launched into a breathless recounting of everything he'd seen since arriving—the castle, the Magic Knights he'd spotted, the food stalls, the training grounds, the floating squad headquarters that he insisted he would one day live in when he became Wizard King. I nodded along, making appropriate sounds of interest, while my attention remained on Yuno. He hadn't moved. He hadn't blinked. He was still staring at the wheel.
Finally, after what must have been ten minutes of Asta's uninterrupted monologue, Yuno spoke.
"Asta."
"—and then Sister Mary said I couldn't keep the goat in the church, but I told her it was a TRAINING goat, and—"
"Asta."
"—wait, what?" Asta paused mid-sentence, finally registering the flatness in Yuno's tone. "What is it?"
Yuno's eyes didn't leave the wheel. "What is that floating above your head?"
The question landed like a stone in still water. Asta looked up at the empty air above me, his brow furrowing in confusion. "Huh? Floating? What's floating? I don't see anything. Is this a magic thing? Because you know I can't see magic things, Yuno. That's just mean."
Yuno ignored him. His amber eyes met my grey ones, and in that moment, the mask and the observer reached an understanding. He knew I was hiding something. He had always known. And now he had concrete evidence—a visible, undeniable manifestation of whatever made me different.
I let the smile shift, just slightly. From warm to something more knowing. More honest, in its own way.
"It's part of my grimoire," I said.
Yuno's eyes narrowed. His mind was working—I could see the connections forming behind his stoic facade. The white grimoire with the wheel emblem. The eight-spoked symbol that matched the ghostly halo rotating behind my head. The mysterious orphan who had appeared from the jungle, stronger than any fifteen-year-old had a right to be, with a grimoire that defied the kingdom's clover-based tradition.
"The wheel on your grimoire," Yuno said slowly. "It's the same symbol."
"Yes."
"What does it do?"
Asta looked back and forth between us, his confusion deepening. "What are you guys talking about?! What wheel? What grimoire? Ouga has a grimoire too, right? We all got grimoires at the ceremony! Well, I got mine later, but it still counts! Why are you being all mysterious?"
I met Yuno's eyes and let the smile curl into something that wasn't quite warm. Something that was almost a challenge.
"You'll know," I said quietly, "when you face me."
The effect was immediate. Yuno's eyes widened—just a fraction, just for an instant—and then his expression shifted into something I hadn't seen before. Excitement. Real, genuine excitement, the kind that came from finding a worthy opponent after years of casual dominance. His mana flared, just slightly, The air around him picked up, ruffling his dark hair and sending a faint breeze through the crowded street.
"Are you challenging me?" Yuno asked.
"I'm stating a fact." I tilted my head, the wheel behind me rotating a fraction faster, its golden spokes catching the sunlight. "You'll find out what it does when we fight. Not before."
"THAT'S NOT FAIR!" Asta shouted, finally reaching the limit of his patience. "You guys are having some kind of secret conversation and I don't understand ANY of it! What's floating above Ouga's head?! Why can't I see it?! Why is Yuno making that face?! Someone EXPLAIN!"
"Nothing's floating, Asta," I said, my voice returning to its warm, reassuring register. "Yuno's just seeing things. The capital air doesn't agree with him."
"I am NOT seeing things—" Yuno started.
"See? He's fine. Come on, we should head to the registration. The exam is today, and we don't want to be late."
I started walking toward the Colosseum, and after a moment of sputtering confusion, Asta fell into step beside me. Yuno followed a beat later, his expression having returned to its usual stoic mask, but his eyes kept drifting toward the wheel. I could feel his gaze on it like a physical weight. He was analyzing it. Trying to understand it. Trying to figure out what kind of power would manifest as a visible, rotating halo behind its wielder's head.
He wouldn't figure it out. Not until he experienced it firsthand. And by then, it would be too late.
---
The Colosseum's registration hall was a cavernous chamber of white marble and soaring columns, already crowded with aspiring Magic Knights from every corner of the kingdom. Nobles in fine silks clustered together, their grimoires floating ostentatiously beside them, their noses tilted upward as if the very air around commoners was beneath them. Commoners in simpler clothes stood in nervous clusters, their grimoires clutched protectively to their chests, their eyes wide with the overwhelming scale of the capital's architecture. The division was stark, a visible line that no one crossed unless they had to.
I crossed it without hesitation. The mask required me to appear approachable, and approachable people didn't segregate themselves. Asta, of course, crossed it too—he didn't even seem to notice the line existed. Yuno followed with his usual quiet dignity, drawing stares from both sides of the divide. His four-leaf grimoire was visible now, floating at his hip, its cover gleaming with the unmistakable symbol of legendary potential.
We joined the registration line, and the stares intensified.
"Is that a four-leaf clover?"
"Who is that guy? I've never seen him before."
"A commoner with a four-leaf grimoire? That's impossible."
"Maybe it's a fake. Some kind of illusion magic."
Yuno ignored them all, his eyes fixed straight ahead. Asta, by contrast, was practically vibrating with excitement, his grimoire—a battered, dirt-stained book that looked like it had been dragged through a swamp—clutched under his arm. No one was staring at Asta's grimoire. It was too dirty, too worn, too utterly unremarkable. The five-leaf clover hidden beneath the grime went completely unnoticed. I wondered, idly, how many of these nobles would be choking on their own arrogance when they found out what that grimy book actually contained.
The line shuffled forward. The receptionist, a thin man with spectacles and a perpetually pinched expression, processed each applicant with mechanical efficiency. Name. Age. Village of origin. Grimoire verification. Next. Name. Age. Village of origin. Grimoire verification. Next.
When Yuno stepped up to the desk, the receptionist's pen stopped mid-word.
"A four-leaf grimoire," the man breathed, his spectacles fogging slightly as he leaned forward to examine the cover. "From Hage Village? That's... unprecedented. A four-leaf grimoire hasn't appeared in the Forsaken Realm in... in..."
"Can you just register me?" Yuno said flatly.
"Y-yes, of course. Right away." The receptionist scribbled furiously, his hands trembling slightly. "Name: Yuno. Age: fifteen. Grimoire: four-leaf clover. Origin: Hage. You're... you're registered. Please proceed to the waiting area."
Yuno walked through the archway without looking back. Asta bounced up to the desk next, slamming his grimoire onto the counter with enough force to rattle the receptionist's inkwell.
"Asta! From Hage Village! Age fifteen! And THIS is my grimoire!"
The receptionist squinted at the dirt-crusted book, his expression souring. "This is a grimoire? It looks like it's been used as a farming tool."
"It's real! I promise! It just... got a little dirty on the way here."
"A little dirty." The receptionist's tone was flat. He prodded the book with the tip of his pen, dislodging a small cloud of dust. "I can't even see the clover emblem. What leaf count is it?"
"Uh... I don't know? The important thing is that it WORKS!"
The receptionist sighed, the sigh of a man who had long ago given up on expecting competence from anyone under the age of thirty. "Fine. Name: Asta. Age: fifteen. Grimoire: unverified, presumed valid. Origin: Hage. Proceed."
"Yes!" Asta pumped his fist and ran through the archway, nearly colliding with a noble in the process. The noble's indignant squawk faded into the general noise of the hall.
Then it was my turn.
I stepped up to the desk. The receptionist looked up—and up, and up—and his pen clattered to the floor. He didn't pick it up. He was too busy staring at the white grimoire floating beside my shoulder, its wheel emblem gleaming in the marble-filtered sunlight.
"That's..." He swallowed hard. "That's not a clover."
"No," I agreed. "It's not."
"What... what is it? I've never seen a grimoire with a symbol like that. Is it... is it even a genuine grimoire? Some kind of forgery? A magical construct designed to mimic a grimoire's signature?" His voice was rising, panic edging into his professional skepticism. "I can't register a grimoire that doesn't have a clover emblem. That's against protocol. The clover is the sacred symbol of the kingdom. Every grimoire in recorded history—"
"It's genuine," I said, my voice calm and steady. I let a hint of mana leak into my words—not enough to be threatening, but enough to make the air around the desk feel heavier. The receptionist's mouth snapped shut. "Test it. Use whatever verification method you have. You'll find it's as real as any other grimoire in this hall."
The receptionist hesitated. Then, with trembling hands, he produced a small crystal device from beneath his desk—a grimoire authenticator, standard issue for exam registration. He held it up to my grimoire, and the crystal flared with brilliant white light. The reading was positive. The grimoire was real.
"I... I don't understand," the receptionist whispered. "How is this possible? A grimoire without a clover? The Magic Knights administration will need to be notified. The Wizard King himself might need to be consulted. This is completely unprecedented. This is—"
"My name is Hasegawa Ouga. Age fifteen. Grimoire: unique. Origin: unaffiliated." I leaned forward, just slightly, and the receptionist flinched back. "Is there a problem?"
"N-no. No problem. I'll just... I'll mark it as 'unclassified' and forward the details to the administration. You're registered. Please proceed."
I smiled—warm, reassuring, the gentle giant once more—and walked through the archway. Behind me, I heard the receptionist exhale a breath he'd apparently been holding for the past thirty seconds.
The waiting area beyond the registration desk was a wide courtyard filled with applicants. Some were practicing spells. Some were praying. Some were attempting to look confident while their knees trembled. Asta was doing push-ups in the middle of the courtyard for no apparent reason, while Yuno stood off to the side, his back against a pillar, his eyes tracking me the moment I entered.
I walked over to them, the wheel turning silently behind my head, invisible to some, unmistakable to others. A few of the nobles in the courtyard glanced at me with expressions ranging from confusion to alarm. They could see it. Their mana was strong enough. The commoners, for the most part, couldn't. They just saw a very tall, very muscular teenager with unsettling eyes and a white grimoire.
"You got through," Yuno observed.
"Was there any doubt?"
"The receptionist looked like he was going to faint."
"He'll recover." I leaned against the pillar beside Yuno, crossing my arms. "You're still thinking about the wheel."
"Yes."
"You'll get your answers in the exam."
Yuno was silent for a moment. Then, quietly, he said, "I'm looking forward to it."
I didn't respond. The mask smiled, the void remained silent, and the wheel turned its eternal cycle behind my head. The exam was in three days. The real battle was about to begin.