This led to the All-Student Praxis, where Will was recruited by Lyanna Ovenshould, one of the academy's top three, to join a stacked party including Sion, Julius, and Wignall.
Will quickly became essential to the group, since most mages use the search spell for mana detection, and demons cannot be detected by it. However, Will has been leveling up his instincts since he was a child. So he was the first to notice when they encountered them, including a grand duke monster, far beyond the exam's intended difficulty.
The academy ranks monsters in the dungeons using credit, where higher values scale exponentially. Anything worth hundreds of credits is far beyond what students are meant to handle. This evil grand duke is a two-hundred-plus credit monster, which normally requires an elite mage to defeat.
So the group was cooked. They were decimated and separated on the eleventh floor.
During all of the chaos, Will began bonding with Wignall Lindor as they realized they shared the same drive, both having someone precious who had ascended the tower and become a Magia Vander, leaving them behind as failures in their own way. That mutual understanding helped Wignall see that Will was far more than just a reckless swordsman.
The group eventually reunited to face the Grand Duke, but one by one Lyanna, Sion, and even Wignall were defeated, leaving Will, who had been fighting without relying on magic, to naturally take command and prove for the first time that he was not dead weight.
However, the fight took an emotional turn when Elfaria's goggles were destroyed. It was a huge moment, and it broke Will's spirit, causing him to freeze.
That was until Sion stepped in, telling him to keep moving forward, making it clear that everyone was counting on him, a true rival and friend, and snapping Will back into the fight.
It was here that Colette delivered one of the best explanations of Will's character in the entire story, because she explained that Will isn't fearless. He's terrified all the time. The difference is that the thought of losing the people he cares about frightens him more than the monster standing in front of him.
His magic is courage.
So with everybody on the verge of death, Colette used her earth magic to strengthen Will's sword. But even that wasn't enough. The Grand Duke was just too powerful. And so there was only one thing left that Will could use to defeat it.
He experienced fragmented flashback memories connected to his true origin, along with a glimpse of the incident in the woods with Elfie. He saw Queen Mercedes with a baby and a young boy, talking about uniting wand and sword. Those words gave Will the idea of combining them. So he told Sion to cast his fire spell, which he caught with his sword, absorbing it.
Will finally used Wis for the second time, but instead of ice, it was a fire mage blade. Priming doesn't just affect his blade. It affects his body too. Instead of white icy eyes, he now had fiery red ones. Without realizing it, Will mumbled the words of the spell. "Fully charged." And then he shot out a ridiculous fire slash.
This is his Ignis Wis, a level up that makes him completely broken. With one attack, the Grand Duke demon burned to a crisp.
But even so, they weren't saved, as a horde of sentinels charged at them. Just as everyone was about to die, the demons were purged, destroyed by a pillar of light. It was because the most powerful mage in the land, the king and leader of the Magia Vander, Adam, a mysterious old king, had arrived.
Alongside him was a little boy named Finn.
Finn belongs to the Finn tribe, a group of people born without magic. But instead of being weak, they evolved differently. These people are naturally the greatest dungeon explorers in the world. Their bodies, their instincts, their perception, their adaptability, all of it is developed to survive environments that mages struggle in.
He would go on to become a very important person in Will's life, and he took a very keen interest in Will from that first meeting.
But despite everything Will accomplished during the praxis, his academy life still refused to get easier. Because even after surviving monsters and near-apocalyptic threats, he still failed his final exam.
That tells you everything you need to know about how brutal the academy system is. Even after proving Professor Edward wrong, Edward still created a test that was impossible for Will to pass. And so he was denied access to the tower.