Inheritor Of Magic: The Magi King

Chapter 876 876 Progress

Two weeks after the spells were cast, Wolfe found himself stuck in an office, processing reports from the witches of Forest Grove on the first batch of volunteers that would be sent to the trial zone, as they had chosen to call it.

They had three times as many applications to go as they had people in town, and each of them was for a party of ten. That was the group size that they had decided on so that they could have a proper mix of skills, and to make sure that they had enough support to deal with the threats that they were likely to find.

The strange thing about it was that he had required them to turn in the applications in person. So, someone from each of these groups had been here, in Forest Grove, in the last two weeks to drop the application off.

They had seriously underestimated the tourism potential of the city if they were tripling their population with tourists so rapidly. All travellers needed supplies, that was just part of being away from home. So, he should likely see if the city could expand their options even further, and ensure that nobody left with full pockets.

Legally, of course.

Cassie came in and sat on his lap with a smile. "It's late, what are you still doing in the office?"

Wolfe gestured at the pile of papers, the applications to go through the portal to train.

"It seems that we're a rather popular tourist destination for adventuring groups, and we've got more applications than we have time slots. By quite a lot, actually. After we set aside the times for the guard to train, we've only got sixty spots for the month, and we've got roughly four thousand applications to go through." He explained.

Cassie looked at the pile with annoyance. "I thought that making everyone hand them in personally and checking that they were on the list would have worked, but it looks like it didn't. Who collected them all?"

Wolfe chuckled. "The bunnies, mostly. We accepted them at the cafeteria in the spire, as it was the easiest spot to get everyone to, and we didn't have an office ready for the team yet. But it appears that everyone sent them in when they went for a meal.

But that might mean that a lot of these are invalid. It's one application per group, so if there are duplicates, the number will go down quickly."

Cassie thought for a second, and then began folding one of the pages from the rejected pile.

"I know a spell for this. It's made for collating pages when you're making books, but in this case, it will effectively sort the duplicates." She explained.

Once she had the small shrine to the folded paper swan made, Cassie drew a set of witch runes and sent a trickle of mana into the spell. The pages began to move, forming a dozen roughly equal sized stacks, and then two shorter stacks.

"These are the ones that only applied once, and that very small stack are the ones that messed up the application and didn't fill in all the fields for the spell to properly sort them. I will go through that one looking to see if any are salvageable. Do you want to take one of the others and sort them?" Cassie asked, while tying her long brown hair back to keep it away from her face while she worked.

"I think that I will prioritize the ones that followed directions and only applied once. From what I can tell, everyone else applied twice a day every day that we were taking applications. From there, I will see who has locals in the group, and who travelled to apply here. The merchants will need trained guards, so I don't want to lock them out accidentally." Wolfe explained.

"Should we remind them when we make the decision that multiple applications won't help you because we're eliminating the duplicates before we start the sorting process?" Cassie asked.

"Yeah, it would be best to remind them so that we don't have to sort through all this every month. With that spell, it's pretty easy, but who knows how many of those that are left are serious about training and how many are just excited about the novelty.

I suppose that they will sort themselves if they have a horrible experience the first time in, but I'd rather that wasn't the experience that everyone was talking about after the first draw." Wolfe agreed.

Cassie nodded. "That makes sense. We want the best possible reviews, but we don't know what's going to happen to them in there. There isn't even any way to check, since it's a time loop, and the Tribulation spell will increase or decrease the danger for the groups on its own, as well as adding new elements to the challenge.

It might be in our territory, and only a short flight from here, but it might as well be another world."

Wolfe extended out his mana sense and found that he could track the events in the area well enough, but that wouldn't help anyone who went in to train, it would only give him updates on what was happening.

Unnecessary updates, as there was already a spell to track them and show those with access what was going on inside. Once they had a better idea what it was going to be like, they might make it reality television as planned, but Wolfe was hesitant to show it the first time, in case they ended up broadcasting a massacre.

"Alright, this stack is small enough that we can just take all of them. Then we just need a few more from the other stacks. Are there any good ones in the reject pile?" Wolfe asked.

Cassie chuckled and showed him one of the papers.

"There are ten just like this. Her handwriting is so bad that the spell couldn't determine what language it was in. We can likely put them in the list, and then pick a few from the duplicates so that they're not left out entirely for not following instructions." She replied, then grabbed a few random papers from the nearest stack.

"Alright, let's carry these upstairs and make the announcement. Can you read that page well enough to call them, or should we just show them and let them come up? I don't want to embarrass anyone over their writing." Wolfe suggested.

"It's one of the werewolves. I recognize the name, now that I've had a chance to decipher it. I'm not sure about the rest, but we can call out the team leaders and have them bring their teams. Some people might be on multiple lists, so if they're called twice, we will need to make adjustments." Cassie replied with a weary frown.