The old-fashioned approach dispensed with the Ascension Ritual, relying entirely on one's own accumulated power to advance. Naturally, it placed extremely high demands on Wizard Apprentices, including talent and even luck. Their condition at the moment of advancement was especially crucial. Supposedly, there were also several key traits that made apprentices more likely to succeed, each with a corresponding minor spell to test for it. One was overflowing mental power, which manifested as glowing eyes under the testing spell. These were practices and standards belonging to that era. Back then, to ensure they remained in good condition, some Wizard Apprentices also pursued a little training on the transcendent knight's path, supplementing it with potions to maintain a physical and mental state suitable for advancement even in old age.
Ruger even suspected that the fighter's path was a substitute devised during that period by Wizards who could not be bothered with knight training.
The experiment in the book did not progress smoothly. Or rather, everything was part of the experiment. The so-called luck did not refer merely to success or failure during advancement, but more to whether the apprentices encountered anything along their journey that could affect their chances. Among them was a pair of brothers. One had suffered an injury that affected his mental power space, while the other had been afflicted with a troublesome curse. Although both problems were eventually resolved with the experimenter's help, and they attempted advancement after recovering-one using the Ascension Ritual and the other the old-fashioned method-both ultimately failed.
Interestingly, rather than take their payment and withdraw from the experiment as stipulated in their contracts, the brothers chose to stay. A year later, both used the Ascension Ritual for a second attempt. The elder brother finally succeeded, while the younger brother, whose mental power space