“First things first. Your exam is going to be slightly different than your average adventurers. The vast majority of people join the Guild before they have started their Unique Path.” Owen said as he drew his blade and began drawing lines on the dirt floor of the basement room. “Ranks are as follows. Bronze, Silver, Gold, Platinum. Bronze is anyone leveled between 1 and 24. Silver is 25 through 99. Gold is 100 through 249, and platinum is 250 or above. Since you are joining in Silver rank rather than Bronze, I have come up with a challenge specific for your exam.”
Lisa chimed in next. “The other main difference is that we will not be conducting a knowledge-based portion of the exam. You would fail. Adventurers are expected to know common monsters and their abilities. As well as have access to several general skills that you may or may not currently possess. Do you have the Pain Tolerance, Poison Resistance, and Mental Resistance general skills, Kelsey?”
“I do have all three skills, yes. I unlocked the Mental Resistance skill yesterday.” she answered.
“Great, to remedy the knowledge-based portion of your evaluation, Owen and I will be mentoring you for three months following the exam, assuming you pass of course.” she said formally.
“In short, this exam will take exactly two hours starting now. Your only goal; Touch me with the palm of your hand without leaving this ring. No other body part will count. Fingers do not count either. I consider ‘me’ to be my armor, hair, or skin. Weapons and shields do not count.” Owen said as he motioned to the roughly 50-meter-wide ring he had scratched out in the dirt. “Use every trick, power, ability, skill, or idea that you have. You have two hours.”
No one moved for several seconds while Kelsey considered her options. This certainly isn’t the kind of test I was expecting. That doesn’t matter right now though. How can I touch him? He’s faster than me, certainly, and he didn’t say he was unable to use his skills. That means I need to slowly work my way up. He’s expecting me to come out full force in the beginning. He’s on his guard right now. I need to make him think he’s won so he’ll be more likely to underestimate me. The only problem is that he knows everything I can do, and I don’t know any of his abilities.
Before beginning in earnest, Kelsey decided to pull up her status screen and skills screen to do some quick guesswork on the difference in their attributes.
Name: Kelsey Kain
Primary Class: Mageblood Arcanist - lvl 28
Health: 3600/3600 [Regen %1 per minute]
Stamina: 3600/3600 [Regen %1 per second]
Mana: 4800/4800 [Regen %1.5 per second]
Constitution: 360
Endurance: 360
Strength: 310
Dexterity: 310
Intelligence: 480
Willpower: 480
Free Points: 3
Primary Class Skills - 8/10
Telekinesis - lvl 1
Telekinetic Creation - lvl 1
Telekinetic Enhancement - lvl 1
Teleport - lvl 1
Spatial Vault - lvl 1
Spatial Armory - lvl 1
Magesight - lvl 1
Spatial Domain - lvl 1
Mageblood Regeneration - lvl 1
General Skills - 6
Anouran language – lvl 10 (Maxed)
Identify – lvl 7
Meditation - lvl 9
Pain Tolerance - lvl 12
Poison Resistance - lvl 11
Mental Resistance - lvl 3
Based on some quick math, if he is level 80 he is likely about two or two and a half times faster than me. That means my normal speed won't work. I’ll bet anything that my mental speed is nearly equal to his, which means we should be reacting to things at nearly the same speed.
Increasing her mental speed as high as it would go, Kelsey felt like she was moving through syrup. She naturally kept her mental speed directly in line with her physical speed when fighting. From talking with Thadius the previous night she realized that instinct had been foolish. He explained what happened after receiving the note from Gregory about the ‘emergency’ at the Guild and this discussion is what helped Kelsey realize it was even possible. It was by instinct that her mental speed had sped up to match her body's speed, but it was possible to push it even further thanks to her high intelligence attribute.
Studying Owen with her new heightened mental speed, she began moving to attack. She decided that at first, she wasn’t going to bother with any skills, even her enhancement skill. She just wanted to see how he would react to things.
As she moved, Owen reacted and began moving away. Immediately she could tell that he was much faster than her. Kelsey cleared the 25-meter distance between them in less than a second but by time she arrived, he had already moved behind her and was standing where she lunged from. Things were not looking good, he was easily two or three times faster, at least physically.
She continued chasing Owen in this way for several minutes, watching his movements and tendencies, before she suddenly activated her Telekinetic Enhancement skill and launched herself at him again, trying to catch him off guard. Now, with her Enhancement activated, her mental speed and physical speed were much more closely matched though her mental speed was marginally higher. She was still thinking faster than she was moving, but it was a 30 to 50 percent difference instead of a 100 to 120 percent difference. This time she was nearly able to keep up with Owen. In fact, she was faster thanks to her mental speed.
She began chasing him around the ring faster and faster, pushing her body harder and harder until her hand was centimeters away from grabbing his arm. Then, just as she was about to touch him, his body exploded with light and rushed away faster than ever before. As he moved, she could see a trail of electricity being left behind him. He has a lightning-based Path. No wonder this is the kind of test he would choose.
Knowing that continuing to chase him as she had been doing was going to be pointless, Kelsey stopped in her tracks and watched Owen intently. I still don’t want to throw everything at him now, but I am starting to have an idea how to win this thing.
Deciding to turn up the pressure slightly, Kelsey went back on the attack, but this time, she began using her Telekinesis to help her move more quickly. She used it to launch herself, correct herself in the air, and increase the friction she had with the ground to give her more grip. All of these small benefits brought the gap between them lower and lower as Kelsey became used to using her powers in this way. There was certainly a learning curve using her skills like this, she hadn’t needed these kinds of micro adjustments in any fight before. There were several accidents over the next half hour as she experimented with her abilities. She would overshoot her target and have to slow herself down with Telekinesis to not accidentally leave the ring, then she would increase the friction at her feet too much and trip. Thankfully she did improve, and within that half hour the gap between them was back to mere centimeters.
Once she was again within centimeters of winning their little game, Owen did something that truly surprised her; His entire body was flooded with mana, and he began hovering. Not with wings or anything like that, but with electricity. He levitated just a few centimeters off the ground and with it gained an incredible amount of maneuverability. As Kelsey continued to chase after the hovering warrior, she felt like she was back at square one. No matter how hard she tried, he was always able to dodge her palm. He wasn’t any ‘faster’ while flying, he was just significantly more slippery. He could switch directions at full speed with seemingly no loss of momentum. It made him frustratingly evasive.
Seeing no other option, Kelsey added her teleportation skill to the mix. Ensuring to use her teleport every three seconds, she began chasing him. She did this while continuing to use every other trick she had learned over the past 45 minutes. She was using Telekinesis to launch herself, increase friction, and maneuver in the air. She maintained her enhancement with the maximum amount of mana it would take and used her teleport to try to cut him off or surprise him. I need to get him to use that shield to block my palm.
Stolen novel; please report.
Several minutes of this teleporting chase went by as she continued to get faster and faster, maintaining the use of her teleport every 3 seconds. She was waiting for the perfect opportunity to catch him off guard. She needed him near the edge of the arena so he would have less options when it came to dodging. Slowly, and carefully, she chased in such a way that forced him towards the side of the room.
Doing this took over 10 minutes of careful planning, and once he was in position, without hesitation, Kelsey acted. She dumped every bit of mana she could into Telekinesis and Telekinetic Creation and used them to create telekinetic wires around Owen to hold him in place for a brief moment. She could tell that her plan had worked by the shock written plainly on his face as he was temporarily tied down by her creations. The moment he was frozen, Kelsey lunged, her hand striking out as quickly as she could.
Not having any other option, Owen grabbed his shield from his back and blocked Kelsey’s palm with it. In that moment she used her final skill that was relevant for this test, Dimensional Vault, and stored Owen’s shield right off his arm. Unfortunately, he destroyed her telekinetic wires with a burst of lightning mana while she was in the process of storing the shield, so she was unable to catch him after taking it. She also knew that trying to hold him like that wouldn’t work again. He was now continuously leaking unstable lightning mana from his entire body now. If she tried to wrap him, the wires would simply be destroyed by his mana.
She still had one more plan, so she continued the chase for another 30 minutes, trying to make Owen drop his guard, even for a moment.
But she had a problem; she was starting to get extremely tired. It was becoming much harder to focus and continue moving at her maximum pace. A quick peek at her status screen showed that she was at less than 10 percent of her stamina. I need to get this over with now If I want to have any chance of winning.
Stamina: 290/3600
So, she put the final part of her plan into action. Without changing anything from her routine, she waited for the perfect opportunity, the single moment where he dodged and then changed directions. She continued using every telekinetic trick in the book, and continuously teleported once every 3 seconds, until... she didn’t. She found her opening and took it. She teleported to him, and just as he barely moved away, dodging her palm by less than a single hair’s length, she immediately teleported again less than a tenth of a second later. She moved her hand as fast as possible and slammed her palm into the back of his head.
The test was over. She saw Owen cancel his skills and fall gently back to the ground.
“I win.” she said as she collapsed on the ground gulping in air as fast as possible. “Doesn’t have… a cooldown.”
“I admit Kelsey, that was impressive.” Owen said breathing more heavily than normal himself. “You pass, obviously.”
“Nice job Kel! I was totally convinced you didn’t have any more tricks after you stored his shield.” Lisa said as she handed Kelsey a canteen filled with water.
Remembering that she had his shield, she summoned it from her vault and placed it on the ground next to her. She waited over a minute before answering, focusing on just catching her breath. “Yeah, trust me, it was hard to make it convincing. There were about a dozen times I thought I may have had an opportunity, but I didn’t want to play my last card in vain. If I had messed up and you knew my teleport didn’t have a cooldown, I thought you might have a way to beat it.”
“Good thinking, but no. I didn’t have any more tricks. The rest of my skills are all related directly to fighting and defending. You almost had me even without the extra teleport.” he said as he walked over and sat down next to her.
“So, when do we start the mentorship? I have a ton of questions.” she asked after she had caught her breath.
“Not so fast young lady. We’ve got to get your certification and paperwork done first. It will take at least a few days.” Lisa said as pulled out a small blue sphere that created water and refilled the canteen Kelsey was drinking from.
“What's that sphere?” Kelsey asked after noticing the small device. It looked like a monster core, but she had never seen one that could create water.
“A monster core. You’ll learn all about them during the mentorship. Don’t worry about it for now.” Lisa answered. “Meet up with your brother and get some rest for a couple days. We’ll send a messenger to you when everything is ready.”
Before she could leave, Owen stopped her and asked “Hey Kelsey, one last question. Had that test been to kill me. Would you have succeeded? Assuming there were no moral problems and that I didn’t attack back.”
Kelsey didn’t have to think too long about this question. She almost immediately answered. “Yes. I think I could have...” She paused before continuing as the idea of what she was about to say made her deeply uncomfortable. “I can generate Telekinetic Creations from anywhere inside my entire domain with no mana penalty. Monsters seem to have some sort of innate danger sense skill so it's not quite as effective against them. During the chase, I did some subtle things to test if you had one.” she paused before finishing “You don’t.”
She let the silence hang in the room for several long seconds before adding her next thoughts. “It’s the worst part about my skills to be honest with you. There are so many things about them that seem great, but they seem especially suited for someone wanting to do evil things. I can see through walls, read documents without opening them, steal things, like your shield, right off people’s bodies, and I can kill anyone that my Telekinesis can damage without ever getting close to them. They are the perfect skills for an assassin, thief, spy, or murderer. I hate to admit it, but my skills don’t seem suited for someone like me who just wants to wander the world and help people occasionally.”
To punctuate her point; without moving a muscle, she used her domain to generate a small blade of telekinetic energy underneath Owen’s chin and sliced off a single hair of his beard. She then gripped on to the hair with a telekinetic wire and lifted the hair in front of his eyes so he could see it. “I’m not stronger, faster, or more durable than you. But my skills are much more suited for killing than I would like.”
Owen seemed shocked at her bluntness, and it took him a second to gain his composure, but once he did, he said something that released all the anxiety Kelsey had been feeling for the past 24 hours. “Most Classers above level 80 or 90 have the same thoughts and feelings that you’re experiencing right now. There are hundreds of millions of men, women, and children across Anoura who are under level 100 and on Worker Paths. Any Classer with the right skills and nearing Gold rank, could simply walk into a village of their choosing and wipe it off the face of the planet. But it almost never happens. The Adventurers Guild, governments, and Immortal Guilds, are responsible for scouting out potentially dangerous individuals and doing thorough checks into their abilities and psyche.”
He moved to sit closer to Kelsey and looked her in the eye as he said the next part. “You passed that part of your test two days ago when we met on the bridge. We met when you were at your most vulnerable and your emotions were still raw. Lisa and I had a decent guess about your skills and realized then that they would be problematic if you were unstable, but we also both agreed by the end of that evening that there was nothing to worry about. That’s why I gave you the letter of introduction.” He patted Kelsey on the shoulder and finished his thoughts. “I only asked your thoughts about your ability to kill me for two reasons. The first was genuine curiosity. The second was to see if you had begun to consider the true implications of what having power means in this world. Not every Otherworlder does...”
Kelsey was floored that he had such a seemingly prepared answer for her response. She almost wanted to ask what his answer would have been if she had said no. Instead, she asked, “Did you think I was going to say yes when you asked?
“I had a feeling,” He chuckled as he stood up and began to walk away. “What I didn’t know was that your domain lets you create from anywhere inside it. Thats absolutely fucking nuts Kel. I can’t even describe to you how insane that is to me. I’ve never even heard of something like that, and you’re only what, level 30?” He rubbed his hands on his face “I need a drink.”
“Honestly it makes me feel a lot better that I’m not the only one who realized the kinds of things my abilities could be used for.” Kelsey said as they began walking towards the door. “I hope I can count on my mentors to keep me in check.” she said a bit cheekily.
“Don’t you worry, we’ll put a boot in your ass if you step out of line. Now, go find Thadius and rest up. Also, ask Thadius if he’d like to be your sponsor. I’d offer, but I don’t want to step on his toes if he wants to do it.” Lisa said as they began walking up the stairs.
“Sponsor?” Kelsey asked.
“Yeah, you don’t have any money for food, water, clothes, equipment, or cores. You also can’t pay us for the mentorship. That means you need someone to pay your way for a while until you can pay us out of your contracts or from monster parts.” Lisa answered easily.
“Like I said, I will obviously be your sponsor if Thadius doesn’t want to. Owen, Gregory and I already talked about it. Honestly, we all wanted to do it, but I won rock-paper-scissors.” she said, smiling mischievously. “My guess is that Thadius will want too though. Sponsoring someone who ends up being successful offers a massive reward from the Guild. All of us are assuming that anything we invest now will not only be paid back from contracts, but multiplied dozens of times over when you become an Immortal.”
“Oh, so you’re all just assuming I’m going to become an Immortal?” she said, grinning slightly.
“Duh. Listen Kel, you may think you’re hiding it well, but during that simple chase with Owen, we could tell that you were thrilled at the challenge. It was written all over your face.” Lisa answered nonchalantly. “You’re going to become an Immortal or die trying. Honestly, Owen and I have been talking about something since we met you. We think we’re going to continue our push for Immortality too. We lost a friend about 10 years back while on a contract and after that we slowed down. I think that time is over. We need to get back out there. We don’t want to get too old and miss our chances.”
“That’s awesome to hear. It would be awesome to see you two in action.” Kelsey said excitedly.
“We’ll have plenty of time for stuff like that after the mentorship is over, now get out of here and go rest up.” Lisa said as they finished their journey up the stairs.
As they entered the 1st floor of the Guild, Lisa, Owen, and Kelsey said their goodbyes and Kelsey began making her way to Thadius’ house.
She was quite tired after exerting herself so much for so long. It was nearly two hours of moving and thinking at her maximum speed. I feel like I just ran a marathon, except none of my muscles are actually sore.
Kelsey decided to take some time before making her way to her brother’s place to explore the town a bit. She had been here for a little under a day now but had really only been to two places. I wonder where Claire’s alchemy shop is. I know she said it was near the town square...