I was now fifteen years and nine months old, and it was the first day of summer. Yesterday, my best friend Jamison and I had played Pac-Man late into the night, disrupting my delicate sleep schedule. Now, after my grueling year-and-a-half training montage in real life, I had realized the effectiveness of both of my talents.

My first talent, my peak healing talent, had taken me a whole six months to get the basics down, even with the tutelage of both my mom and sister. This was most likely a consequence of my inability to experiment on anyone except myself. However, that was beside the point.

After figuring out the basics, I began to test out my abilities. My most notable discovery was with my healing ability: when I worked out or strained my muscles in any way, I could flood my muscles with healing energy. Essentially, my muscles could fully recover and improve as long as my ether pool persisted. The healing would also, since my healing was so effective on my own body, slightly infuse anything I healed with ether. This is where my absorption ability came into play. Normal people, when eating food, would only absorb about one percent of the ether actually contained in their food. However, my ability let me absorb close to ninety percent of any ether that I consumed through food, rapidly refilling any ether I had spent healing myself. With my two rare talents working together, I experienced an absolutely crazy speed of physical improvement.

During the evening, I would work myself ragged, flooding my body with healing energy and slowly improving every aspect of my physical body. Throughout the past year and a half, I had improved my physical capabilities to the point where I was able to comfortably run a one-and-a-half-minute mile and dead-lift a staggering three thousand pounds. I also had grown to a massive 7'0", putting on 500 pounds of lean and extremely dense muscle. In fact, my muscles were so dense I actually looked like I was skinny, not at all what you would expect a 650-pound man to look like.

Throughout the past year, even with all of the gruesome training I had put my body through, my one singular goal was to become an adventurer, a hero for the people, and the day had finally come. It was finally time for my great debut.

Well, now that I saw what I would be doing, it wasn't so glamorous. As I looked at the job board at the local DOEA office, I was overwhelmed with absolutely nothing. The only jobs for my pitiful experience level were giant rat extermination and resource gathering jobs. So, of course, I took down one of the many rat extermination jobs and sauntered over to the front desk, plopping the paper next to Poppy, the nice older lady manning the front.

I handed her my DOEA ID card, issued when I had my talents registered, however Poppy did not instantly approve my rat extermination quest as I previously assumed. Instead she looked at me with a suspicious gaze,

"Have you been ranked, son?" she asked. Shit, he had completely forgotten the most crucial step to adventuring: ranking.

Unauthorized content usage: if you discover this narrative on Amazon, report the violation.

“Sorry Poppy I completely forgot”

“That's alright” she said in a pitying tone, “Mr. Shore just had a client cancel last minute, we can fit you in, how about you sit down in the waiting area, i'll call you up in just a few minutes alight” she said, a kind smile blooming on her aged face,

"Thanks, Poppy, you're the best." Sitting down in the waiting room, it only felt like seconds before he heard Poppy’s insistent voice, “Bradley, Mr. Shore is waiting in the back room.” Getting up from the black pleather armchair, he responded, thanking Poppy for being so helpful.

Walking through the door to the backroom almost felt as if he were in a museum; pictures of adventurers and valuable-looking trinkets lined the wall. Walking up to the door farthest down to the right, as it had "Mr. Shore's Office" engraved onto the semi see-through glass door, I knocked. Seeing Mr. Shore's blurry outline quickly open the door, I said hello before being ushered into his office.

"Well, what seems to be the reason for your visit today, Mr. Brookshaw?" Mr. Shore asked.

"I need to be ranked in order to work as an adventurer, and I would like to get that done today if it's not too much trouble."

"Of course not. Now, how about you sit down, and I will go fetch the testing device."

Not two minutes later, Mr. Shore came back with what looked to be a thumbprint reader.

"Place one of your thumbs on here, please," he instructed.

Doing as I was told, I felt a slight prick, and then it was all over. Mr. Shore quickly placed the device on his desk, proceeding to silently type on his computer for the better part of a minute. When he was done typing, he spun his chair around as a printer machine whirred to life behind him.

After the printer was finished, he picked up what looked to be an ID card and handed it to me.

"Alright, Mr. Brookshaw, you are free to leave," he said.

"Thank you, sir," I replied.

"Anytime. Say hi to your father for me, would you?"

"Of course. Until next time."

"Until next time."

Leaving Mr. Shore's office, I examined the card.

Timmothe Bradley Brookshaw

U90 Ether pool

T20 Strength

U5 Resilience

V15 Mind

Overall Rank U

He grinned, the rat extermination quest was a V rank quest, perfect for his first mission. Walking up to the counter Poppy wordlessly held out a hand and I obligingly put my brand new Id card in her palm. With a smile, Poppy pulled out the rat extermination quest he had given her earlier and stamped it with a bright red "approved," in bolded lettering

"Well kid, looks like you're going to be killing rats."

"Thanks, Poppy. I'll see you later to turn the quest in."

"You be safe then."

"Will do." Walking out of the DOEA office, a smile plastered on his face, he only had one more stop to go.