The sun had just set, and inside the living quarters, a certain room sounded awfully quiet.
A brown-haired, green-eyed young man was staring at a black-haired, golden-eyed young man in a daze.
"Did you hear something bizarre?" Pevon asked, fixing his messy bed head.
"Yeah, I think I hear something," said Raven, rubbing his eyes. "I don't even feel the drowsiness anymore."
Pevon nodded in agreement.
"Me too," He said, getting out of his bed. "What even was that?"
As Pevon turned around, Raven quickly snapped his fingers, and his eyes changed colors.
He looked at Pevon, wondering if he suspected anything, but from the looks of it, he didn't.
…
In complete honesty, he couldn't sleep after arriving back from the tests.
He had already spent a lot of hours sleeping in the last 2 days.
But Pevon could, somehow.
A true Sleepaholic.
So he decided just to train a bit more.
He started fiddling with his [Trace Vision], trying to analyze those faint blue lines all over the room.
And this time, he seemed to have figured out a bit of it.
He felt stupid now that he actually understood it.
Previously, he was trying to overcomplicate and overengineer this skill of his, but it was something much simpler all along.
The faint blue lines all over highlighted microfractures, weak joints, unstable structural areas, and faulty areas in general.
It was the point where the material or the structure was most vulnerable.
It was like revealing dirty little secrets of things.
This took him around 5 hours of sniffing around.
After that, he looked at Pevon, his eyes focusing really hard on him.
He wondered if the revelation of weak and vulnerable areas only applied to non-living beings.
And his body seemed perfectly fine.
No blue streaks at all.
But this could also mean that Pevon's body was just that perfect and healthy.
But then, he noticed a blue spot on him.
Specifically, above his forehead.
Phew!
At least, his theory was correct, and this ability felt 10 times better now.
But he wondered what that blue spot meant.
He slowly snuck up to him and took a closer look.
There were two layers of blue spots.
A few millimeters in dark blue and a few millimeters in light blue.
"Ooh!" He was shocked in realization.
His flabbers were gasted completely.
The dark blue spot above his forehead was the receded portion of his hairline.
And the light blue spot was probably what was currently happening to his hairline.
Maybe this is what it meant by, {The ability would let your eyes see the frail lines of events.}
Wow!
He was at a loss for words.
But then, a horrifying thought dawned on him.
He quickly ran towards the mirror.
His heartbeat raced faster than a jet engine.
What if?
What if?
In hindsight, Pevon's receding hairline wasn't visible to anyone.
It was only after his [Trace Vision] revealed it that it became obvious.
Then, what if?
'No. No, no, no.' His footsteps halted with a screech in front of the mirror, and he stared into his own reflection with focus even he didn't think was possible for him.
His eyes darted towards his own forehead, and…
Nothing.
"YES!" He shouted, his voice loud, which he quickly realized was wrong.
He ran back to his bed and immediately lay down to make it look like he was sleeping.
Pevon woke up slowly, with some incoherent mumbling.
"What happened?" Raven intentionally made it seem like he just woke up, too.
His voice was masked.
Pevon looked around, blinking in confusion, "Did you hear something bizarre?"
…
"What now?" Pevon asked, and his drowsiness completely vanished.
"I guess, we should train?" Raven suggested getting up as well.
Urgh!
"Sure!" He sounded like he was forcing him to do it.
Raven wondered how he was so powerful without training at all.
Was he so talented that he could achieve this level without training much?
Was he favored by the heavens?
He, on the other hand, had to use his brains and had to practice and experiment all day to achieve such results.
"Can you help me practice as well?" Raven asked, exiting the living quarters. "Despite being a mage, my sister did teach me warrior combat for emergencies."
"Sure thing," Pevon agreed in a heartbeat, "Helping others is a good method to recall, after all."
They gradually made their way to the training ground provided to the candidates.
Being in the Holy State did come with a lot of benefits for church workers.
Since technically everything that was not owned by private origanizations or people, it belonged to the State, including land.
So that was a thing they didn't lack at all.
There were four massive training arenas not very far from there that every candidate had access to.
They made their way to the farthest one, the one with the least amount of people training to avoid any unnecessary attention.
But even there, they attracted a few stares here and there.
Raven turned on his [Trace Vision] to see what 'problems' or weaknesses other trainees had.
And sure enough, it did work.
Focusing on them revealed several problems in many.
Some had cuts that needed to be healed.
Some had the blue streaks in the same spot as Pevon.
But the most amount of blue lines were concentrated in their joints.
Which made sense, since this was such a profession.
Strain on the joints was always a problem that they would go through.
But suddenly, he noticed something.
The shade of the blue was fluctuating as they moved and attacked.
'Huh!?'
He took a closer look at their bodies, and he found more blue lines.
The more focused he was, the more blue lines appeared on them.
He could see their muscles contracting and expanding as they moved.
The tendons and muscles flexed, and the blue streaks changed their hue.
His brain immediately started rummaging through ideas on how he could use this information to his advantage.
And he immediately had ideas.
"Raven," Pevon called, and he looked at him.
"What?"
"Your eyes," He pointed out, "They are silver."