The group of four now stood in a small coliseum-like structure that sat further into the grounds of the keep. The round sandy arena was surrounded by a tall heavily enchanted wall, above which rows of seats rose up in ascending tiers.
"Unlike the other two, I have both the vitality and resilience attributes linked to one of my classes. This means I'm significantly harder to kill than them. Vitality is a measure of both your health and stamina. Resilience is a measure of your body's ability to ignore damage or be simply undamaged at all. It's also thought that a mixture of the two contribute to how fast a person heals. Personally, I believe these two to be the most important stats anyone can have. I know plenty of people who might have lived otherwise if they had them. Unfortunately, which attributes are chosen depend on the mindset of the person and not everyone shares my views, especially when they take their class and specialisation at a young age. Once these are locked in, they can't be changed. Strength and dexterity are relatively simple being the potency and speed of a body respectively. Wisdom and intellect are the same, being the potency and speed of a mind respectively, with wisdom also granting increased mana capacity. Reacting to simple attacks requires only dexterity but reacting to something more complex in a quick manner requires wisdom, intellect and dexterity working in tandem," Hildebrandt explained.
"Haven't even joined and I'm already learning a lot," Zalia thought.
"Shouldn't be an issue for me, I've got all six," Zalia said.
She watched Matthias' entire body visibly twitch at that.
"What's that guy's issue," she thought.
"As you rank you'll become exponentially stronger than the rest of humanity then. The two unlinked attributes do increase very slightly as you increase rank but nowhere near to the degree that a linked one does," Hildebrandt said.
"Some people get confused about how both wisdom and intellect relate but the way I've found easiest is to think of wisdom as the depth at which you can think and learn and intellect the speed at which you can think and learn," Hildebrandt continued.
"Now, I want you to attack me," Hildebrandt said.
"No holds?" Zalia asked.
"No holds," she replied, giving Zalia a scary smile.
For the first time Zalia was able to see the woman's rank,
Hildebrandt - Gold rank
"No holds it is," she thought.
Zalia strung her bow and nocked an arrow after dipping it in the silver rank poison she had. It might have been reckless but this was a gold ranked resilience and vitality user. She drew and released in a smooth movement as she exhaled, applying hunter's mark in the same moment. The arrow almost teleported the distance, swerving in the air a little and slamming into the joint between shoulder plate and chest plate. It only got about a third of the arrowtip in before it stopped.
_______________________________________
"Actually managed to harm me," Hildebrandt thought, pulling the arrow out and feeling the slight wound close.
Within the wound she felt a poison striving to destroy her body but it was also quickly dealt with. It took enough time however that she suspected it was at least bronze rank, maybe silver.
"Now that is impressive," she thought.
She hadn't expected the Tin rank Zalia to get even close to injuring her, though she suspected the woman probably had a few skills in the Iron rank already. Obviously if she was moving the arrows would have just bounced off her armour but she didn't expect the woman to measure up to gold rank standards.
_______________________________________
"Very impressive," Hildebrandt said.
Zalia smiled, glad that she hadn't been eliminated on the first test.
"Now let us test your ability to attack large numbers of targets," she continued.
This was the one she was most concerned about but hoped Nature's wrath would help her out here.
Matthias made some gestures and ten sandy soldiers formed out of the ground, taking a stance around her. She steadily but quickly drew and fired at the soldiers, aiming for the head each time and took them out in good order. However, it did take much longer than she was sure some others managed.
"Not so impressive but still adequate for someone of your rank," Matthias said.
"Make as many as you can within about twenty metres of me," Zalia replied, seething a little.
A huge mass of the soldiers appeared and Zalia activated Nature's wrath. Sandstone spikes shot out of the ground, several impaling each soldier as a light fire started spreading across the spikes and soldiers. They all soon lost form, crumbling to blacked sand and ash on the coliseum floor.
"Better," Zalia asked, looking at Matthias.
"Better," he agreed unwillingly.
The Hidden laughed and Hildebrandt smirked a little, obviously finding enjoyment in Matthias being annoyed.
"I will pass you on both accounts for the damage section of the testing," Hildebrandt said, "is there any other ability you wished to display before we move on to the hiding section of things?"
Zalia thought for a moment,
"Yes, one of my classes is herbalist and won't be much help in the next part. Essentially it gives me the instinctual ability to harvest and use herbs of my rank, keep them in a form of stasis, makes them more potent and the kind. The most important part of the class in my mind is the instinctual ability to enact rituals with herbs of my rank. One such is Dodge-vine, as I've named it, which allows me to give some increased defense to anyone I apply it to," she explained, "as I go up ranks I believe the class will become incredibly strong."
"Oh! And I also have a passive healing aura," she added, focusing the healing on each of them in turn so they would feel it more strongly.
"Wonderful, all of that will be taken into account. A healing ability and a good chunk of utility will make you very useful indeed to anyone you work with," Hildebrandt replied.
"Now, for your next test," Matthias said.
What followed was a series of different environments and landscapes appearing and disappearing as Zalia was tested in each one. The sand rose up and formed each scenario, even going so far as to colour itself the correct colour as Matthias controlled it. She was very quickly found each time, despite her every effort to not be. The man was incredibly perceptive, unbelievably so. She almost wondered if he was cheating and finding her through the sand somehow but if there was such obvious corruption like that here she probably didn't want to stay anyways.
She desperately looked for anything that could help her out as the tests continued but didn't make any breakthroughs before he called an end to the tests describing her ability as, "lacking but adequate". She actually agreed with the man for once but wanted to figure out how to do better during the next section of the test. It would be the section that would have multiple people searching for her. Her breakthrough came when she was thinking about the nature of her ritual magic. She had already come to the realisation that each component she used in a ritual would provide an essence or type of magic to the ritual. It was the will of the ritualist or more accurately, the runes and forms that they used, that shaped the result. Dodge-vine gave her a feeling of protection or protectiveness and she had taken that as physical protection. She wondered however, if it could also encompass protection from sight or being found.
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During one of the last tests, Zalia used Dodge-vine and Manifest in a ritual to embody a physical manifestation of protection from sight. A light layer of shifting material encompassed her. The material changed colour and shape to hide her wherever she chose to hide. She also added the same ritual without Manifest and felt it take effect. It was a more ephemeral effect more akin to what she suspected the Hidden did but in an obviously less strong effect. She felt each would last about an hour, probably longer since it wasn't physically defending her in any way.
After this discovery, despite the fact she now had three people searching for her, she actually lasted longer. The longest she managed to hide was a full minute in snow-like terrain, her most practiced type. The test soon came to an end, Zalia finding herself standing in front of the trio once more.
"What did you change," Matthias asked, genuinely curious.
"Just discovered some experimental ritual magic, exploring the bounds of my abilities. Something like that," she responded, looking at the notification,
Congratulations! Herbal magic has reached Tin 19.
He nodded,
"I will also pass you in these tests. While you lack strength in any form, you have an extremely good ability to evaluate a situation and adapt. Strength will come with time and ranks," he said.
Zalia nodded her thanks, taking the insulting compliment in stride,
"What next then?" She asked.
⪼ ⪢ ℋ 𝒶𝓃𝒹 ℋ ⪡ ⪻
Zalia sat in a small dorm-like room. It had a small bed she now sat on, desk, chair and a chest at the foot of the bed. It wasn't anything much and she preferred sleeping in the wilds anyways but it would do for now. What she liked most about it was that she couldn't hear the city outside whatsoever.
After the tests, the Hidden had taken her and given her a tiny little badge in the shape of a flat shadowy keep in a sun's halo. He had also led her through some kind of ritual that linked her essence to the item. It basically meant someone inspecting it could tell it was hers and prevented it from being stolen and used by another. He had also informed her of a few things. In her first year here she would be required to take one guard duty each day unless on a contract. Guard duties were basically two hours spent guarding an entrance or gate within the keep or city or patrolling up and down a street. That wasn't an issue for her, some time guarding people was something she could do to help and might have done anyway. There were a few different opportunities available to her as well. There were trainers for all sorts of things from advanced magical theory to baking but there were a few that interested her. She didn't take the archery one, she had been doing that for more than half her life and didn't need any training but there was a swordsmanship one she would definitely take. There was another about the common herbs of the world but she had a feeling that relying on her own skills and abilities would allow her to learn the ability to determine those things on her own. If she learnt the common herbs through study her progress might be crippled when it came to new ones outside of her knowledge base.
She would be paid a weekly wage for acting as a guard as well as a percentage of any contracts fulfilled depending on how many team members she ended up with. She also learnt she could willingly take contracts but most teams had them given as well. She would be assigned to a team the next day and would always have the rights to request a change of team, which she appreciated. They tried their best to assign members based on their skill sets to provide a versatile team ready to deal with most situations. She had been classified by the organisation with a few keywords. Back-line, Support-healer, Utility, Tracker and Damage dealer. After telling them about her Protection of the Wilds skill they had given her the Support-healer tag saying she had enough healing to help out in a crucial moment but not enough to act as a main healer. She agreed with the assessment. Despite the fact everyone had to be able to deal a certain amount of damage, be at a certain skill of tracking and perceptiveness the fact that she had a dedicated skill and years of practice meant she would most likely be the teams main tracker. That was fine by her, it meant she could spend most of her time ahead and not around the others. Her team would most likely be all Iron rank people, the usual minimum for entry. She had been let in based on her extra class and the firm support of the Hidden. She didn't know why the man was so supportive of her joining but she'd take the help.
It was about midday and Zalia was bored, so she decided to go find something to do. She kept her bow in the spatial bag she had but left her sword sheathed at her side and dagger sheathed behind her back at her tailbone. She wanted to push her Herbal magic to the next rank so she went back to the arena and started experimenting.
She used a couple of her normal rituals finding them not advancing her until she decided to experiment with her last bit of Frozen Heart. It was Bronze rank so she hoped it would push her ability over if she managed a ritual with it. She thought about her Protection of the Wilds ability and its similarity to a Dodge-vine and Manifest ritual focused in normal protection. The only difference was in the healing over time effect and she knew Frozen Heart to have healing related elements to it. She made the normal ritual and then overlaid the form carefully with powdered Frozen Heart leaves, using her last bit. Activating the ritual, she found it to emulate almost exactly the effects of her ability, on herself only of course. To her delight, she saw the message pop up that she was looking for,
Congratulations! Herbal magic has reached Tin 20.
Congratulations! Herbal magic has reached Iron 1.
Herbal magic - passive - varied
Tin - Minor herbal based rituals are a keystone of magical herbalists. You gain an instinctual understanding of herbal rituals of your rank or lower. Herbal magic you use of your rank and lower has slightly increased potency.
Iron - you may emulate the effects of herbs you have used in rituals of a rank lower than this ability.
"Ohhhh hell yeah!" She thought.
Excited at the possibilities of what she had gotten, she also realised she would be able to determine effects of Iron ranked herbs now too as well in rituals. She looked over her herbs of Iron rank noticing another bit of information popping up in the messages,
Snow-leaf (Ice element) - Iron rank
Bitterbalm (Curse element) - Iron rank
Her old Tin rank herbs also started showing the same information,
Dodge-vine (Protection element) - Tin rank
Manifest (Physical element) - Tin rank
When she thought about the Bitterbalm a bit more, she could feel what was meant by the curse element. It would essentially make the ritual a harmful lingering effect of whatever else she added to it. A combination of Bitterbalm and Snow-leaf would create a harmful ice related lingering effect. She was quite excited to explore the effects of the Bitterbalm with some of the other herbs, though she knew what it did with the Dodge-vine. She also realised that she had been going about using it in a very inefficient manner. Previously she had been overlaying it onto the whole ritual, essentially recreating the whole thing with the Bitterbalm. While that would work all she really had to do was add a bit of the Bitterbalm more as an addendum rather than an entire ritual. One could say she was very, very excited to test it out. She could also practice with her Tin rank herbs as much as she wanted now that they could be essentially manifested from her ability and no longer needed to be present. She recognised that herbal magic was becoming her most versatile skill.
She spent most of the rest of the day doing rituals, practicing doing them while at a full sprint, using her sword, her bow and all sorts of activities. The magic would create the correct symbols and shapes so she didn't need to actually physically place it herself. Now that she could create it all the time, she basically kept using the basic Dodge-vine ritual to have it up constantly. She would use it all day and night until it was second nature to her, something she wouldn't need to think about but could rely on permanently. She kept practicing late into the day, stopping only to run out of the city, catch a small scaled creature with a single eye, eat it and then run back in to continue her practice. As she fell asleep that night she checked over her day of practices gains,
Congratulations! Mobility has gained three levels reaching Tin 5.
Congratulations! Sword - Weapon proficiency has reached Tin 2.
It wasn't a lot but daily progression was her goal for now, trying to reach a point where survival was easier in a world of powerful creatures.
⪼ ⪢ ℋ 𝒶𝓃𝒹 ℋ ⪡ ⪻
She awoke feeling alright, not happy with having to sleep inside but dealing with it. In future she considered going back to the park to sleep, the tree much more comfortable to her then this room was. She dreaded meeting her group a little bit. It was bad enough to her that she would have to work with them to get what she wanted but knew it would lead to more independence in the future as she gained knowledge and power.
She walked out of her room to find the Hidden waiting for her,
"Good morning, is there something I can actually call you other than 'the Hidden'," she asked, sighing.
"Yes," he replied.
"... And that would be?" She asked.
"That would be none of your business," he said, smiling brightly at her.
This day was going to be hell.
She followed the shadow of a man through the confusing path of bridges and stairs until they arrived at a door to a large room,
"Ready to meet your team?" He asked.
"Not really," she said glumly.
"Let's get started then!" He said energetically.