The air within the building was cool on my face, the temperature undoubtedly somehow artificially cooled. I was shocked for a second, but the reaction passed quickly. AC may have been an Earthen thing, but with everything else I’d seen Artes accomplish, a little weather control was hardly an incredible feat.

The building itself was as palatial as I imagined it would be, all white tile and gold highlights, modern shapes and spotlessly clean. There was a long desk on the far end of the hall, with uniformed people sitting behind them. People lined up in front of the desk, most of them armored and carrying some sort of weapon or another. There was a clear difference, though, in the appearance of the more Arte-focused mages and the melee ones, both their styles suited to the differences in their fighting styles.

Ren and I joined the line with a mirrored smile, our shared feeling beyond what we could put into words, beyond what we needed to put into words. Having spent almost a year in the woods, so far removed from society, something so mundane as standing in line sparked a strange concoction of emotion in me.

It wasn’t long before I reached the desk, greeted by a cheery woman of small stature. Her bright pink hair was tied up into pigtails, completing her child-like look.

“Hello there!” the woman said, smiling wide. “How can I help you today?”

I smiled back at her. “I was looking to get registered as an adventurer with the guild. How do I do that?”

The woman seemed slightly surprised, and I assumed it was because I was dressed like I already was one, but…

“Oh? So young? Have you even graduated from an academy yet?”

…I quickly realized that assumption was wrong.

The first question that popped in my head was Do people usually become adventurer’s after graduating, but I caught myself before I could ask the question. A question like that would out me as an outsider immediately, and I could figure out the answer for it myself, anyway, based on the way she asked the question.

“Ah, yeah, I guess,” I said instead. “I actually wanted to get one before I went to school. I’m a bit stronger than the average person my age, I think, so I don’t think it’ll be much of a problem.”

The tiny woman arched an eyebrow with a comical amount of suspicion, but she relented and began to gather some forms nonetheless. “Alright, then, if you’re sure. Just don’t get yourself killed before you grow up, ok? I don’t want that kind of karma on my hands. Make sure you stick close to your guardian or teacher or whoever, ok?”

I smiled at the woman, appreciating the well-meaning advice, even if it didn’t quite apply to me. And I didn’t bother trying to correct her assumption, either, content to let her believe whatever reasoning she’d arrived at for my strange request.

“Here, take these, fill them out, and then we’ll get you your ranking, ok?” the lady said, handing me a small stack of papers and a pen.

With a happy word of gratitude, I made my way to a small corner they’d placed a desk in, leaving the lady to deal with Ren. I gave the papers a quick glance over as I sat down and cringed a little, finding a total of only two answers I wouldn’t have to make up – my name and age. I hoped they weren’t too strict on their background checks, even though I’d worked out a solid backstory for myself with the help of Tampter and Evelyn.

We’d settled on calling the two of us mountain villagers, originating from a semi-famous mountain range in the far East. The villagers from there were known to the people of the kingdom here only in rumor, so it would be difficult for anyone to call out our lie, but it was still a name common enough that most people would have heard of it. And, best of all, mountain people wouldn’t have a lot of the official identity markers that Ren and I lacked, which was a massive help in explaining the missing information.

I finished my papers just a bit before Ren, and the two of us approached the lady together. She took in our papers and shelved them away with a comforting amount of disregard.

“Alright then, follow me,” the woman chirped cheerily, shuffling out of her seat to lead us down to a set of doors built into the side of the lobby. Past the doors was a maze of hallways that the woman led us down with confident little steps. She stopped soon enough, at a doorway with the number three engraved into the top, and glanced down at the clipboard she held in her hands.

“Hmm, I think this one should be free,” she said, before ushering us in.

Inside was a training room not unlike the one Leonard had shown me on board the spaceship we’d traveled on. Every inch of the room was padded with stark white squares, just like that one, except this one also had wooden mannequin dummies set up standing in the center, six of them total.

“Alright, Redhead, let’s start with you first,” the woman continued, walking off to the side of the room. “See these dummies?” she pointed at them with a pen, “they’ll be determining you’re ranking. They're ranked F to A, left to right. Pick whichever one you think you can handle. If you beat it, you move on to the next one, and you keep going until you can’t handle one. You get ranked as the highest you beat. If you can’t beat the first you pick, then you go down until you win a fight, and you get ranked as that. Any questions?”

I thought for a moment, going through the deluge of information in my head, then asked, “What if I get like, really, really close to beating one, but then can’t?”

The woman smiled. “How long you last against the rank above you determines your position in your actual rank,” she explained. “Each rank is split into lower, middle, upper, and top tiers. The ranking of the tiers is at the discretion of the Guild Branch employee in charge of the ranking – so, me!” The woman flashed me a grin, and I returned it, a rising excitement in my gut as I felt my competitiveness flair up. Ren and I were too similar at the moment in strength for us to have different letter ranks, but if there were ranks within those ranks, then getting a higher one than Ren wasn’t impossible.

With that thought in my head, I smiled and addressed the woman. “I want to challenge the B-rank dummy, please.”

The lady’s eyebrows shot up. “Oh? Are you sure? The dummies can’t kill you, but they’ll still hurt you. A lot, if you’re much weaker than them. Are you sure you want to take the risk?”

I nodded, my face resolute. I’d already given the idea much thought, and I’d settled on going for B at the moment. I’d been almost helpless against Gyda in our spar, but I’d grown much since that day, and I was confident in my ability to handle the rank now. And with Explosion, I was sure I’d be able to deal some serious damage to an A rank too.

The lady shrugged in the face of my stubbornness. “Alright, if you say so. Just don’t complain about me to your teacher later, ok?”

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I nodded again, a wry smile on my face.

The woman walked up to the row of dummies and tapped the one designated as ‘B’ on the head. Immediately, the other five stepped back almost a dozen meters, lining up against the far wall of the room.

I stretched and limbered up quickly, feeling a little stiff from the long walk that had made up most of the previous days. The dummy gave me a good minute to warm up before it finally rushed at me. It was quick, impressively quick for an inanimate block of wood.

I tanked its first punch with a palm, wanting to gauge how powerful a B-ranked dummy would be. The force rattled me a little, but it wasn’t anything I couldn’t handle. A grin stretched over my face, confidence settling over me as I realized that I’d actually overestimated the dummy’s strength. Maybe the experience with Gyda made me more afraid than I should have been.

A feeling of gratification spread inside me as I slipped into the fight, stepping back into the familiar dance of close combat as I ducked and weaved through the dummy’s blows. I fought back with flame-covered fists – though without pain receptors, the dummy didn’t have the same reaction to the heat as most everything else I’d ever fought did.

Still, my blows left scorched marks on its wooden grain, and I could tell by the way the thing rattled that I was getting good damage in.

Eventually, I managed to create a bit of distance between us by throwing enough flame at it to make it back up. Another advantage the dummy held over living beings, I realized, was the lack of exhaustion. Close combat was a draining thing, requiring constant concentration and quick reaction, both of which were mentally taxing. But for a dummy undoubtedly powered by an inexhaustible source of magic, such a hindrance was immaterial.

So the only way for me to get a break was by forcing the thing to step away from me, but that meant exhausting a relatively large amount of my limited Flux reserve, so I couldn’t keep it up for long. Which meant that a battle of attrition was not an option.

Thinking up to there, I unstrung the pole from my back and clutched it in my hand, covering its length in a brilliant orange flame.

The dummy was on me not a moment later, but I was faster than it. I jabbed at its chest with my pole, pushing the flame off the tip to throw the thing just a bit further. The wooden mannequin landed a meter away – on its feet, but just slightly off balance for half a second. It wasn't much, but it was enough for me to get into range and smack the joint between its chest and head as hard as I could.

The blow sent the dummy reeling, off balance long enough for me to follow up again. I put to use my months of practice with the ‘blade’ I used the pole as. I’d taken to copying Ren’s style as best I could, though, of course, his grace yet eluded my movements. Still, I’d improved by leaps and bounds as compared to when I’d raided the dungeon with Najam and his crew. And the more I used it, the more certain I became that I had chosen the right path. The style of the sword simply felt more natural to my body than the style of the staff did.

The dummy was all but helpless against my attacks, attacks backed by the experience of countless battles against all types of monsters, but its durability was impressive. It took almost half an hour for the first joint to finally pop out, leaving the thing one-armed and barely standing. Still, the thing was tenacious, keeping up a ferocious fight until I finally snapped its neck joint. With the head severed, the body simply fell to the ground, like a puppet with its strings cut.

I stopped there, breathing hard as I called off the flames around my pole and body. Ren’s clapping brought me out of my trance, guiding me back to the outside world that I had entirely forgotten about. I quickly straightened up and tied my pole back in its place, taking stock of the room as I did.

The floor was a charred painting of wild strokes, blackened scars marring the once pristine white floor. The damage traced the general path that my fight had taken, zigzagging across the room until it finally stopped at my feet.

Standing against the wall at the far end of the room were Ren and the little lady, the former of which was clapping with a small smile on his face, the latter of which had utter shock painted over her face.

I made my way over to the pair, a sheepish smile on my face. “Sorry about the damage,” I apologized to the entranced woman, “I honestly didn’t even realize it. Do you need me to pay for it?”

My question finally knocked the woman out of her stupor. “Huh? Oh, no, no, not at all, silly girl. These rooms are made to handle fights of such calibre, of course. The damage will be repaired on its own in a few days.”

I sighed in relief at the information. I had some gold from all the dungeon farming I’d done, but I hadn't really focused on collecting it since it was of no use to me then. And since I had no idea how much gold was worth here, I had no idea if what I had would be enough to pay off the Guild.

“More importantly,” the woman continued, “how old are you, girl?”

I was confused by the question, but I answered nonetheless. “Uhh…I think I’m eighteen this year?” As best as I could answer, anyway.

The lady nodded to herself. “As I expected,” she mumbled to herself. Then she looked to me and asked, “Do you not realize how amazing that is?”

My expression must’ve answered the woman’s question, since she didn’t wait for a response. “That’s amazing!” she exclaimed. “B ranked adventurers under twenty-five are celebrities, all of them. And all of them are from big families or schools, some kind of behemoth backing them.” Something seemed to occur to the woman then, as she exclaimed again.

“Wait, are the two of you from some kind of big name, too?” she asked, but she continued on without waiting for an answer. “No, that doesn’t make sense. Someone from a big name wouldn’t hold such a low-key ranking exam.” The woman cocked her head then, finally looking up at me. “Wait, so who are you?”

“Uhh,” I mumbled, scrounging up the story from my brain. “We’re mountain villagers, from the Hellinous mountain range. We came up this way on our way to the capital. We’re going to try our luck with Karmore.”

The woman took a minute to digest the information, thinking deeply. “I see, I see. So you’re Mountain Devils,” she said quietly, mostly to herself. “That explains the intense fighting style, I suppose, and the incredible strength.”

“I’m sorry, Mountain Devil?” I asked, interrupting her musing.

“Ah! I’m so sorry; I didn’t mean to be insulting. That’s simply the common way the people of the kingdom refer to your people.”

I waved off the woman’s apology. Tampter had danced around it, but he’d heavily implied that the origin I’d chosen would earn me my fair share of discrimination, and I’d accepted it already. I didn’t mind – strength was what earned true respect, not background. And anyone who didn’t see that was ignorant of the real world, which meant I didn’t need to care about them.

“It’s not a problem,” I said to the woman. “More importantly, the two of us are a bit unsure of the strength scaling here. Where would we fit in around these parts? In terms of strength, I mean.”

The woman nodded in understanding. “Of course, I get it. Well, don’t you worry, you at least will have no trouble with the people here. The adventurers around here are stronger on average than most in the kingdom, what with us being so close to the border and all, but even then we average around E to D in ranks. We have a few C ranks around here, too, but they’re more rare and pretty famous – at least, in their cities. There are five in this city, I think, and no B ranks as far as I’m aware. Though, I did hear rumor that the Blood Palace’s third prince would be coming through on his royal tour of the countryside. He’s among the strongest of those ranked B and under twenty-five. Which, of course, only makes sense, considering the behemoth that backs him.”

I looked to Ren as the woman spoke, a sense of newfound confidence spreading through me at her words. Ren and I weren’t at the top of the ladder, of course, nowhere close to it, but we were starting at above average, which was a comforting thought.

The woman clapped her hands then, pulling my attention again. “Anyway! We can talk about all this later, if you still have questions. For now, let’s continue with the testing, shall we?”

I nodded. “Sure, yeah. Let’s do it.”

I was already certified as a B rank, but I’d been fairly confident in getting that rank from the start. Now was the moment where I actually had to go all out, especially if I wanted to ensure I got a better rank than Ren and prove once and for all that I was stronger.

With that thought in mind, and a blazing competitive spirit writhing under my skin, I stood before the A-ranked dummy and readied myself for a fight.