Lariel woke up to yelling. Another typical day here in the orphanage. Instantly, he disregarded the sound, recognizing that it was coming from two of his roommates shouting at each other. Helen and Carla, two red-headed fifteen-year-olds that could be called twins with their almost identical, pleasant faces, their similar dark brown eyes, and most importantly, their exactly equal attitude.
He got up and looked around. Everyone was here, ready--or readying--for another day. But this was not your normal day here. This was the day of the test.
Not a written test, no. This was a practical test in which you were evaluated according to your physical and, if you had it, magical prowess.
It was the test that would decide in which rank they started as adventurers. The only reason they even needed to take the test was that they were minors. Here in the kingdom of Faler, the age in which you enterws adulthood was sixteen, and all the members from their room were fifteen or under.
Usually, adventurers started after becoming adults, but their orphanage had some shady kind of slavery deal with some orphans that forced them to earn money to stay in this institution.
But it was a nice institution at least. You had your personal space. A bed, a desk, and a chair, along with some kind of writing material, and two personal chests.
Almost no one here used their two chests. But Lariel used them. One of them was to keep the armor that his parents were using when they died, and the other kept magic books that were his inheritance.
His parents were adventurers, and good ones actually. Platinum ranked ones. They had died down in the dungeon, facing against a Slime King over level 500 in a rescue mission that had gone sideways. Sacrificing themselves for the survival of their party's members who managed to bring their corpses.
Lariel had cried. And not only a few tears. No. Crying for your late parents was kind of a genetic thing. You cried when your progenitors died. It was nature. And although they were not that good of parents to Lariel, he had cried. They had educated and cared for him when he was young, teaching him how to maneuver weapons and how to train for more efficiency in skill levels.
He liked them, and their final job before they became dedicated to their son was that rescue mission. He had waited for them to come back home, but it was their party members that picked Lariel up and paid for his stay in this orphanage until he was close to 16.
The noise eventually got so loud that Lariel forced himself to come back to reality and look at the two girls. As soon as they noticed that his gaze was on them, they stopped. One of the perks of being strong was that people respected you. And out of everyone in his room, he was the strongest.
He recalled what they had been discussing. The adventurer plate. That was what you would gain after you passed the test. It would allow you to complete quests for the Adventurer Guild and enter dungeons.
Lariel was certain that no one would fail this test.
They had begun training at the tender age of six, first, just physical training to gain some skills that would empower you as you move on in life and improved your capabilities. And then with wooden weapons. Lariel was good at most of the weapons since he had the basic skill of most weapons mastery at a decent level. Sword, axe, bow, dagger, shield, mace, everything. But his weapon of choice was the spear, not the normal small spear but a long spear--longer than himself even--or close to his own 176 centimeter height. Lariel had mastered the spear to a degree where he could face five of his weakest roommates at the same time without losing. Namely, he had achieved Spear Mastery Level 31. The 'Basic' prefix had disappeared after he had reached level 25 in the skill, increasing his proficiency with it to another degree.
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At ten years of age, they had begun incorporating a different type of training. Magic. After ingesting a mana potion, only the selected few of them had gained the Basic Mana Sense and Basic Mana Manipulation skill and continued the training on that front. Of the ten in his room, only two managed to do so. He was one of them, the other being the weakest who used weapons. Lariel was walking towards the path of the magical spearman, while Helen and Carla were both going for the bow and short-blade, and Kan, the other that managed to control magic was going for a full mage path.
Lariel was the best in his room, while Kan was third, which just proved that magic really gave an advantage. Helen and Carla were fifth and sixth, always changing between those two ranks. The second best was a sword and shield user who was the only one that could face Lariel on a one-on-one without magic. Still losing though. The rest weren't really of note.
While musing about his room rankings, he sensed someone coming for their door. One second later, Hilda, their room caretaker, entered.
She was a middle-aged woman. Having been the caretaker of many other kids before them. Her grey-white hair signaled that this was a stressful job. Taking care of teens at their rebellious age was not an easy thing. Her brown eyes seemed tired and ready to take a break, but her retirement was still a couple of years away. She was wearing a brown dress with lots of flowers decorating it. She wasn't particularly good-looking, but that might be the fact that Lariel was not interested in old ladies in their late fifties.
"Quiet down kids, quiet down. I have news for you," she said after looking around to the kids talking. "The guild has finally called the instructor over from the capital, so we can begin the test soon. Get ready. We are leaving in five minutes." And then she left, leaving the kids to get ready and go downstairs to meet up with her so that they could go to the guild to perform the test.
The test was not mandatory for the adults. They entered without a test since it was not the responsibility of the guild to take care of them. The kids, however? They needed to prove their abilities. It was bad when the next generation died.
The adults entered at Bronze rank. Only if you took the test could you enter as rank above, but nobody took the effort to do that. The only person that had managed to become an adventurer directly as Steel rank was the current Central Guild Headmaster, who had training far more intense than the normal person.
There were, of course, individuals that could do the same, but they did not worry about the test. Instead, they grew strong enough that they isolated themselves from the political strings of being strong, and decided to fight monsters beyond the imagination of common people, keeping at bay threats powerful enough to wipe out kingdoms from the face of the world, or going deep into the so-called Infinite Dungeons to try and chase its end.
But since the Headmaster had been the only one and the sole politically active member, he was considered the second strongest man in the world.
There were also the overly powerful irregulars that did not become adventurers, but those were not important.
Most people stagnated at Gold rank but not Lariel. He wanted to become the most powerful possible and wipe that Slime King out of the dungeon with a single strike. But for that, he needed to train. And train he did. Day after day after day. Every day, every available hour of training. When he was too tired to move his spear, he trained magic. When his mind ached from the mental stress of performing magic he went back to the spear, or the bow, or the sword, or the axe, or anything. He just trained. And it had borne fruit. He was getting better by the day.
His Basic Mana Manipulation was now Mana Manipulation Level 27, his highest skill apart from Physical Fitness Level 32. He had Basic Mana Sense Level 8 because it was hard to level when people weren't throwing spells at you. He basically only leveled that when sparing against Kan.
But that wasn't enough. And he knew it. He needed to train against real opponents in a dangerous situation, and to do that, he needed to take the test and get both his adventurer plate and his class. As such, he got ready as quickly as possible and urged his roommates to do the same.
He wanted to train. He wanted to improve.
But most importantly, he wanted revenge.