Lena Quinn was sitting in the master's office of the Artificer Guild, seeing through a number of recently received contracts from some powerful clients, most notably, the ones relating to the volatile monster situation that had been troubling everyone lately. She wore a tidy black vest today, her hair tied up in a top knot bun, her eyes moving from one side to the other behind a golden glass frame, a badge consisting of three interlocked triangles hung on her left collar, above which was a curve of five tiny stars. Her workplace wasn’t large but was still surprisingly spacious, thanks to her minimalist furniture design. Even more so when the morning sunshine brightened the room up through the closed windows on the left wall.

A knock came from the door as Lena was focusing on the paperwork.

“Come in,” she said without moving her eyes up.

A young man in a light gray uniform walked in, a stack of files in his hands. He wore the same badge as Lena, but with only two stars above.

“The profiles of candidates participating in the entrance examination have been gathered, ma’am,” he said, still standing away from the working desk.

Lena indifferently pointed at the empty part of the desk, signaling the young man to put the files there and quickly take his leave.

She didn’t start looking at it until a while later. The tediousness of the work could be seen in her pair of brown eyes. In her position, technically speaking, she shouldn’t have been bothered by this kind of task. However, as she had found out on her way climbing to this chair, among the thousands of annual applications, there were always those with “distinctive” backgrounds that she couldn’t afford to reject, no matter how bad the person was. Like many who had preceded her, her youthful fire of righteousness and integrity had slowly dwindled with reality. Nowadays, all she could do was to make it as hard as possible for the backdoor-takers to ensure the quality of the recruits into the guild.

As she scanned through and made special marks on the candidate's profiles that the examiners would be more “tolerant” toward, a familiar name and face caught her eyes.

Jack Corvus.

Even though his official paper profile was mediocre at best, Lena had high expectations for him, especially so, after the small conversation she had had with Dan Herring at Bastian’s celebration. The infamous Artificer had found Jack intriguing and expressed his regret of losing such a good seed to the swordsmith’s hand.

The master of Oxdale’s Artificer Guild grabbed her pen and marked a star above Jack’s image.

Unlike the previous marks, this one was the signal to give him the most challenging of tests.

“Let's see what you got, kid,” Lena said to herself.

It was this time of the year when students were spending their time testing their career opportunities, having recently returned from their trip to Mocester, that the Artificer Guild started organizing their entrance examination every two weeks for those who were interested in the faction, among them, Jack. It already took him a few days to prepare for his trip with Velia, around the same time the examination would take place. In the best-case scenario, with an early result, he could even use the official title of an Artificer to get access to some much-needed equipment, such as the Essence Tracer. Even with all those clues involving Soul Essence at the village, Jack still hadn’t had for himself an exact method to pinpoint the location of the material. Upgrading Identification Lens was one such possibility, but the requirement was too much for him to fulfill in a short time.

On the day of the examination, it was Abraham and Sophie who found themself restless instead of their adopted son, continuously checking on the boy’s preparation. Jack didn’t really enjoy this type of attention, but still, a part of him appreciated it, recalling two similarly tireless bygone faces on a Monday morning in another lifetime.

Holding in a few drops of joyful tears, Jack rebuked them.

“Are you seriously questioning my capability?”

Sophie put one hand on her hip, the other pointing at her son’s face.

“Two weeks after awakening from your two years coma, you got knocked out into the infirmary. Barely recovered from that, you proceeded to lose an arm and proudly show it to me. And don’t you think you sneaking out of the house a couple of days ago passed me. So yes, I don’t believe you at all!”

Seeing how Abraham helplessly put his hand on his mouth and shushed, all Jack could do was to keep his lips stuck together. That said, a strange delight filled his heart.

Then, with Sophie by his side, Jack was taken to the Artificer Guild while Abraham continued his work of restoring the family’s fortune.

The guild’s building was also in the central area, right behind the Bank of Omnivell. The five-story building was quite out of place compared to its neighbors, having a sense of techno-modern lucid look to it, as well as a bright blue color. The ground was covered with clear glass on all sides, revealing its inner workings to the public. Above the automatic sliding door was the symbol of the interlocked triangles radiating brightly under the sunlight. Its width was quite modest in comparison to its Adventurer Guild counterpart, but its optimization of space efficiency gave it a capacious feeling.

A line of candidates, usually accompanied by their parents or guardians, waited in front of the stairs leading up to the building’s entrance. Guild members, wearing their distinctive badges, could be seen walking around, instructing the test takers, or just doing their own business.

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Jack waved goodbye to Sophie and entered the building by himself to undergo the check-in procedure. After finishing his identity confirmation, he joined the other candidates in the waiting lobby. Surveying around the area, he couldn’t help but recall the years of Earth’s twenty-first century. The guild’s members and staff could easily be distinguished by their standardized office clothes with tidy vests and long-sleeved shirts. Of course, there were plenty of exceptions, as some of them prefer formality, others, comfortability. Understandable, Jack reckoned it was, for he couldn’t possibly imagine either Dan or Bastian blending into such a dressing culture.

Fifteen minutes later, a female staff approached the group and led them into a room on the eastern side of the building. Their name was called one by one and assigned to their designated seat.

Jack found the table with the number “twenty-one” on it and sat down. A tablet, much like the one at the school’s library, was placed before him. The rows of neatly arranged seats were all facing a large screen, on which the examination process and things to keep in mind were instructed.

After more than fifteen candidates had entered the room, the windows and doors were shut, isolating them from even the lights and sounds of the outside.

Four supervisors were standing at each corner of the room. For now, their job was to ensure the room’s silence as the guild master, Lena Quinn herself, made her welcoming speech through her projection on the screen.

“...I’m not here to sweet talk you. Some will succeed while others fail. However it may be, take this examination as an experience. Don’t let an unwelcome result get in the way of your future. In this guild, some inventors had to try hundreds, thousands of times to get their work to an acceptable outcome. Acceptable, not perfect. And if you spend your time asking around, you will learn that I am, in fact, one such person. So, younglings in this room, do you know what you want? Because only when you do, can you try your best to do it, and you will do it with greatness. Talented, you may be, but without effort, you’re a drop of sand in the desert. So, let us see what you truly are! Examiners, begin!”

Luna’s gaze was upon everyone and no one at the same time, Jack included. He raised one side of his lips at her reminder. After all, he wasn’t that good at all; he simply had an overpowered System on his side.

The supervisors went from table to table to check for any problems, then put their thumbs on the tablet’s surface to open the exam. A hologram screen projected out in front of the contestants, on which was a countdown of five minutes and a number of three digits rolling rapidly like in the slot machine.

Jack curiously watched the projection. After five minutes, the digits he was given were 999. He smiled, thinking it was a lucky number of some sort. Unbeknown to him, all four examiners gave him a frightened glance. The number indicated the different tests and their corresponding difficulties. For a beginner, a 99 was usually too much for one to pass. 100 and above were mostly preserved for standing members or veterans to reexamine themself. The four could only give Jack a silent shake of their head, thinking his name must be on the black list of one of the higher-ranking members.

The seemingly unfortunate Artificer candidate was all too eager to take the exam, oblivious to the sympathetic pair of eyes around him. The content of the test was divided into three parts. The first was questions of general knowledge such as mathematics, geometry, and the law of mana manipulation. The second was to test one’s identification skill of items and materials through their description and images. The last, as Jack had expected, required a comprehensive understanding of the previous parts and the mind for practical application. A number of situational simulations were given, demanding the candidates to suggest solutions to a variety of problems such as machinery and smithing failures or accidents and safety hazards.

Jack slowly realized the absurd difficulty of the test he was taking. The information in the first two levels of Artificer’s Basic Knowledge should have been more than sufficient for a beginner test. But during most of the examination time, he was forced to utilize the fifth level of it. Moreover, the test was extremely heavy on realistic and intricate applications, while the System only provided him with theoretical and raw information, pushing the pressure of logical thinking and reasoning on his mental capacity.

After three hours of highly intense focus, Jack finally lifted his eyes up, seeing a few early empty seats, a few distorted faces, reckoning they had a hard time with their test, and some with a self-satisfied smile on their lips, either having learned the exact problems or being given the exact problems they had learned.

As the test ended, the examiners informed the candidates that their results would be given tomorrow. Jack, his face dull and his hair a mess, stood up and left the room.

Later that day, in Lena’s office, a young examiner, the same one who had given her the files earlier, was reporting one of the more unusual cases of the day to Lena.

“The parts go, respectively, 66, 76, and… 77.” He said with a bizarre fascination in his voice.

“That high?” Lena raised her head up, asking. She, too, was amused by the result.

The man nodded; his eyes couldn't quite stay in one place.

“I was expecting him to get a 5 or 10 each,” Lena leaned her back onto the chair, talking while removing her glass. “Even that low of a score would confirm his true potential. I would comfortably pass him with that. But, who could have expected this.”

The assistant scratched his head, his lips twitching, trying to say something.

“Headmaster, that wasn’t everything.”

“What else?” Lena asked. “Did he cheat or something?”

“Yes, but no.”

The young Artificer walked forward and put his report on the desk.

“Since you have asked me to pay attention to him,” he said. “I have been keeping an eye on him during the whole test time. I figure there’re somethings you might wanna see.”

Lena curiously looked at Jack’s table of answers.

“Look at number 31,” the examiner pointed his finger. “A wrong answer, right?”

“Yes,” Lena responded.

With a wipe of his finger, another answer appeared. It was an answer recording function that Jack didn’t know about.

“A correct answer,” Lena exclaimed with a smile.

The young man continued.

“Here, and here,... and here.”

The number quickly added up to around thirty.

“If Jack hadn’t made his adjustments, the score for his test would be 99, 99, and 99 for the three parts of the test.” He concluded.

This time, even Lena couldn’t hide her excitement and confusion inside, letting out the same expression as her superior. The 900 to 999 tests were preserved for those who wanted to train for their ascension. The result was clear as day. Jack, at the very least, had the capability of a Herald Artificer, fully qualified to become a Crusader.

“You know what to do, right, Howard?” Lena asked with a stern face.

“I’ll keep this record hidden,” the young Artificer answered with a bow.

As for Jack, he was enjoying his chicken wings and hamburger at home, oblivious to how his low-profile actions were being scrutinized.