I went back down to my seat and waited for the judges to finish rating the other contestants. They finally finished and they announced that only 10 people had passed. The list included me and 9 other people who I didn’t know. One of the judges said that the next round is a fantasy novel and we have 2 weeks to write the story. I started to write the first novel I thought of. Which was Lord of the Rings. I have gained eidetic memory because of my race and high intelligence stat. I started copying down the epic fantasy that was Lord of the Rings. I took me around 3 days to fully write it by hand. After I finished I just sat down and started to meditate to increase my mana.
***
The 2 weeks have finally past and the judges said there was a 1-3 week evaluation period. So I continued to meditate.
***
The evaluation period lasted around 3 weeks. They rated mine and 1 other persons a 10/10. They announced that me and the other person advanced to the final round. On the final round I was supposed to create any form of literature and we had 3 days to write it. I decided on writing a portion of a poem. The poem that I edited was A Tribute to Tyrone by Kily Dunbar. It only took me a minute to write down.
***
The 3 days came to an end and I was called up first.
“A thousand words won’t bring you back;
I know because I’ve tried.
Neither will a thousand tears;
I know because I’ve tried.”
The judges were surprised and rated mine a 10/10. The other person got a 9/10 and the judges declared me the winner. A man carried a black box and handed it to me and said “This is the reward for 1st place.”
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“Thank you very much.”
I opened up the box and saw an amulet. It had an azure blue sapphire hanging off of it. I put it around my neck and once it surrounded my neck I felt like I was handicapped before I put this amulet on. It is sort of hard to explain what being focused to this extent feels like. When I have this amulet is on I feel like I can focus at will and still be somewhat aware of my surroundings but my sense of time while in this hyperfocus is terrible. I feel like I could be focused on something for 1 week and feel like it was a second. I put some mana into the object and I suddenly feel even more focused but lose all sense of my surroundings. I put some aura into it and I suddenly felt not focused but calm. I had a complete sense of my surroundings and I felt like the heavens could fall and I still couldn’t panic. I then put some Divine Energy into the amulet and I feel diligent. I could work eternity and still not think about lazing around. I pondered about putting Infernal Energy into it and decided to test it. The second I put Infernal Energy into the amulet I had an urge to do nothing. I only snapped out of the urge to do nothing after Emma screamed at me to snap out of it.
“Emma do you know what that item?”
(Yeah its called the Amulet of Diligence by some and the Amulet of Sloth by others.)
“Is there any other functions that I don’t know about from testing?”
(Yeah, if you put a contracted spirit in there it will train faster.)
“Oh that’s useful.”
(And just so you know there is another 6 of these items and they form either the 7 Divine Virtues or the 7 Deadly Sins.)
“What is the use of the sloth function of this amulet?”
(I can’t tell you.)
“Why not?”
(Because you’re not ready for the power of sloth.)
“Power of laziness? Seems pretty useless to me.”
(Sloth does not equal being lazy.)
“Anyways is SSS the true rank of this amulet?”
(Absolutely not. It’s ranked at XXX.)
“Wait after S its X?”
(After X its legend.)
“XXX huh.”
(If anybody from this world knew what you were thinking right now people would think you are defiling the name of a XXX ranked artifact.)
“Anyways I need to get out of here.”
I walked out of the tournament area and found Joseph waiting for me.