Lariel walked out of the testing room. He walked with confident steps, no hesitation whatsoever showing.

Ivan envied him. He always did. Ever since they had started training he had always been better than him. Running, either endurance or sprints, pushups, sit-ups, pull-ups, everything that Ivan did that beat all of the remaining kids, Lariel did better. With weapons, axe, sword, spear, bow, dagger, bare-handed even, Lariel always won. Even when he was one of the two that managed to perform magic, he always outperformed him.

Now that he had focused on the spear it had allowed Ivan to catch up with the sword and shield. If the weapons were the same Lariel would always win, except when it was sword and shield. That would normally be a tie or loss for Lariel. And this was only when Lariel did not use magic because when he did, he could sometimes take out all nine of them at the same time. It was unfair.

After watching Lariel sit down on one of the chairs in the guild, Ivan looked around. There were only other two people already waiting there. Kan, the other magic user, was eyeing Lariel with such intensity that if looking could cause a shock, Lariel would have been hit by lightning. He, like Ivan, hated the fact that Lariel bested him in everything. At least he was someone that Ivan wouldn't mind having on his team.

The other person was Ezekiel, a blonde, slender guy, the seventh-best in their ten-person gather-up. He wasn't very good at anything, but on average, he was pretty decent. He had been focusing on the bow and dagger lately, along with scouting. His green eyes were one of the best in their group, allowing him to see with more precision and farther away, but of course, Lariel could see even better. If he ended up in Ivan's team he would be sure to put Ezekiel as the tracker and scout of the party.

Like everyone else here, Ivan's parents had died. He was in an orphanage after all. But unlike the rest, his parents were nobles. Barons, the lowest in the ranks of the nobles, but still nobles. He was the seventh son, and as such, did not have any political power. So, in a show of good grace, his eldest brother, the heir, decided to put Ivan in the orphanage. All things paid of course. Ivan planned on staying in this orphanage until he reached sixteen and was thrown out.

Also, like everyone else here, he did not remember his test. He did not know how it went or what he did, he knew nothing. Except what class he had chosen because he could see it in the status. But now he did not know if he had made the best choice. The last thing he remembered was the Guild worker giving them information on how you could progress your adventure rank and have your plate updated. It was required that you did at least ten missions of your current rank and two missions of the rank above. After doing that you would be qualified as may be passing to the next rank. The Guild might ask you to do something to prove your worth, sometimes even show your status (which you could refuse), but generally, they only bothered to do that when you went to the Silver rank and above.

With his performance in mind, Ivan waited. And waited. And waited for the test to finish so that he could earn his keep in the dungeon. He would be the tank of the party, the one to protect them, and the one at the front, guiding them ever onward. After all, his class spoke for himself.

Name: Ivan Geldian

Class: [Warrior (Shield Of Pride)]

Level: 1

Health: 196/196 (Regen: 0.2/sec)

Stamina: 258/258(Regen: 0.3/sec)

Mana: 239/239 (Regen: 0.24/sec)

Strength: 14

Vitality: 13

Endurance: 12

Dexterity: 7

Agility: 6

Intelligence: 9

Willpower: 7

Perception: 7

Free Stats: 5

Bonus Stats per level: +2 Vit, Str | +1 End, Per | +1 Free Stat | (7 Total Stats)

Skills: (199 Total Skill Levels)

Weapon Related:

One-Handed Sword Mastery Level 29 | Sword Mastery Level 25 | Weapon Proficiency Level 28 | Basic Two-Handed Sword Mastery Level 22 | Basic Mace Mastery Level 8 | Basic Spear Mastery Level 8 | Basic Axe Mastery Level 8 | Basic Dagger Mastery Level 7 | Basic Bow Mastery Level 6

Shield Mastery Level 26

Miscellaneous:

Physical Fitness Level 32

He had those five free stat points to spend, but he wanted to wait. And so, that's all he did.

------

Lariel was bored. He had been the fourth to arrive after completing the test, and he had been waiting ever since. It had already passed one hour, and now only Helen was still doing it. He might have not been so bored had he knew how his test went. But he didn't. He could only resign himself to wait for his plate to arrive.

They would be receiving their rank after the last one finished the test. And the only thing that Lariel wanted was to go train. He had been lucky until now. He had shown high capability with all weapons, and he managed to get a headstart on magic due to the books that his parents had left him. They talked about the very basic, after all, most of them had Basic in their name, but that was not what gave him the edge, they only gave him a slightly above average understanding, which in turn gave him some levels. Had he only read those books he would only be slightly more advanced than Kan. No, what gave him that massive advantage was one simple book. "Mana Control Exercises". It talked about exercises that you should do to improve your mana control and mana awareness. All of them you needed to do while not creating any construct. In the beginning, it was very hard, but they certainly gave him profits.

This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.

Using only his will to make a non-construct spell to levitate a quill over his hand. It was hard. In the end, he just forced mana to create pressure below the quill and above his palm. Someone that could see mana would see a dense ball of that force making the quill levitate.

The second exercise was to make the quill spin. Due to the previous exercise, Lariel had some idea of what to do. He just created a dense ball and pushed it against the tip of the quill constantly, forcing it to accompany its movements. After a while, he realized that a wall would be better.

Some of the other exercises included another magic user throwing non-constructed balls of mana at him for him to dodge with eyes closed. He didn't do those, but he did finish the book. Well, he hadn't finished it yet, he had one more exercise to do, the last one. Make it so that you could do all the previous exercises without showing to anyone that could see mana how you did it. The book explained that you needed to move the mana close enough to the object that it would eclipse it and be hidden from the ones that could see mana. Another way to do it was to create a series of rapid mana bursts, so quick that the other person could not see it. That technique he had mastered. Not the part of performing the exercises with it. It was extremely difficult to maintain a floating quill with the bursts of mana.

What he had mastered was to move mana so quickly that it seemed like it had already been there before. That was what he used for his spells. He created three protective layers and every time that one was destroyed he immediately constructed another one. While maintaining a strong uniform protective layer was mentally tiring, creating flimsy layers was extremely non-exhaustive. The only way to pass this method was to just destroy all three in a single moment and get a grip on the main structure. Kan had almost done that in the end, right before the Rock Bullet hit him, but he wasn't able to. And Lariel was glad for it. Hitting another person with that skill gave him 3 levels in it.

Lariel had been training it every single time that Kan was not around, and he was getting good at it. Besides that, he had learned the basic constructs and was now learning to create his own construct by his own methods. Not only that but he had another book. "Mana Compression". It was a complex book, but Lariel had already started reading and was understanding more the more he read.

It talked about compressing the layers of mana into one another without affecting each other. Lariel had tried. It had not gone well. The construct had exploded in his face. Turns out that compressing the spell into one layer really decreased its stability. Although he couldn't put it all in one line, he could already make it so that they were closer to each other. It left more space for him to work with, so everything was good. Except that it did not. He needed to learn it. He needed to train. He had this feeling that when he managed to put all layers together, he would get the Basic Mana Compression Skill.

One thing that he had been aware of was the fact that he couldn't really feel mana. He could see it and feel it when it was flowing naturally, but when others created constructs he couldn't really figure out what type of construct it was without seeing it with his eyes. There was a solution for it, and he would do it once he got at least once inside the dungeon.

The last of the important books was called "Creating Constructs". In the beginning, Lariel had given zero importance to this book, but once he had read the majority of the remaining, he had given this one a try. It didn't talk about how to simply make constructs, no, it talked about creating your constructs. Understand how mana flowed and create things that did not exist before but that.

In the book, there was only one example, the Rock Bullet. Usually, rock constructs function in only one way. The first layer gathered dust at extremely high speeds, almost instant. The second layer made the dust settle into a rock. Third makes it so that the construct lasts longer and the dust just doesn't dissipate. The remaining layers decide the shape and if it flys or not along with a variety of things.

The Rock Bullet functioned differently. You created rock out of mana in the first layer. The second gave it shape and the rest are just the basic throw or not throw, spin, etc. That example gave place to a whole grimoire of possibilities. Because someone somewhere had the idea that mana could create something. So he just tested the other constructs and came up with that idea. The more mana you pour into the creation layer, the more material you will have to work with. Of course the more stable the construct, the less mana it cost to create the material. You could even make the create material to construct and then add the mana optimization one, but since Lariel did not know how to do the second one, he didn't bother to try. Luckily, even without that optimization layer, after Lariel tried that spell, he had been rewarded with the Skill, so now, he did not even need to think to create the rock bullet.

A door opening took Lariel out of his thoughts and revealed Helen following a Guild worker. After she sat down everyone remained quiet. Luckily another Guild worker came up and started speaking.

"Unfortunately the creation of the plates will require a couple of minutes of waiting, luckily there are only two remaining to be made. To ease your waiting, I will announce the rank and the party of each one of you."

There was a pause and more silence by everyone. They didn't want to wait, they wanted to know. The Guild worker seemed to realize this fact and resumed speaking.

"In the probationary plate, we have Jean, Ezekiel, Fila, Carla, and Lavi. To improve to Bronze rank you will need to complete a couple of tasks, but it should not be hard for someone of your caliber."

Another pause. All the mentioned ones just looked at each other. To be fair, they were in the bottom half of the ten of them, so it was kind of expected. The only problem was that they would be limited in their range of quests. With enough luck, they would end up at a decent party.

Lariel on the other side didn't want to stick with a party, so he would speak up once the Guild assistant was decreeing the parties. The main reason for this was that he didn't want to be slowed down. He wanted to progress. He wanted to improve. His class spoke of it because he was a Seeker. He did not know what compelled him to choose that class, but the rewards weren't bad, so he was ok with it.

"At Bronze rank, we have Ivan, Helen, Kan, and Nadir. Some of you were in the line between the probationary and the Bronze rank, we just want to see how well you can perform under pressure, and how well you will adapt once you have a couple of levels under your belt."

Lariel's immediate thought was that he hadn't passed the test, but it shouldn't be possible. He could win against the remaining nine together. The second thought was that he had done so bad in the test that they had deemed him incapable. That would be the worst scen-

"At the line between Bronze and Steel, we have Lariel. Unfortunately, you were not deemed yet fit to become a Steel adventurer, but you are very close to becoming one. We just need to gauge the extent of your power with a couple of missions to see if you can improve your rank, but you are very close."

After his thoughts had been interrupted by the worker Lariel was almost beaming, but he was able to control himself. Better not to show his colleagues how happy he was. It would only make them angrier because they would think that the only reason he was happy was that he was specifically told he was better than the remaining.

No. Better to hide your emotions. The only thing he needed now was his plate so that he could go train. But parties came first. He still needed to reject his party members, and his although not superior rank, but still better than others in that rank, just gave him a reason to do so. After all, according to his status, he was the Seeker of Power.

Status:

Name: Lariel

Class: [Rogue (Seeker Of Power)]

Level: 1

Health: 136/136 (Regen: 0.14/sec)

Stamina: 224/224 (Regen: 0.25/sec)

Mana: 374/374 (Regen: 0.38/sec)

Strength: 12

Vitality: 9

Endurance: 1

Dexterity: 7

Agility: 8

Intelligence: 14

Willpower: 12

Perception: 9

Free Stats: 10

Bonus Stats per level: +2 End, Int | +1 Will, Per, Vit | +1 Free Stat | (8 Total Stats)

Skills: (211 Total Skill Levels)

Weapon Related:

Spear Mastery Level 31 | Basic Bow Mastery Level 13 | Basic Sword Mastery Level 11 | Basic Mace Mastery Level 9 | Basic Axe Mastery Level 8 | Basic Dagger Mastery Level 6

Weapon Proficiency Level 33 | Basic Unarmed Combat Proficiency Level 5

Basic Shield Mastery Level 12

Spells:

Basic Rock Bullet Level 14

Miscellaneous:

-Magic:

Mana Manipulation Level 27 | Mana Sense Level 8

Physical:

Physical Fitness 34