Tom switched his focus back to his current bracelet and only half listened as she went into increasing amounts of detail. Her current lecture concerned around half a percent of the entire ritual. It was clear she was probably going to be doing this for months. He guessed at worse her voice was nice to listen to though how she could be so animated about such a dry subject was a mystery.
His time in the trial ended with him having chipped away at his target number of bracelets and having progressed to more complicated monsters surprisingly quickly. He might not have known how to swing the hammer, but his footwork improvement carried him through the fights.
Another week and a half passed, and the class was just finishing the compulsory reading and writing session when Dimitri broke the monotony of the routine by barging into the class with a youngish-looking Asian couple accompanying him.
“Right,” Dimitri said. “Today, we’ve got something different for you. This is Kaamil and his wife Yukia. They’ve just come back from a trial that gave them crystals that can raise someone’s magic affinity.”
“Only by a little, one or two points at the most.” Yukia interrupted.
“Only by a little,” Dimitri agreed.
“And probably not at all, if your affinity is already too high.”
Dimitri ignored the additional clarification. “Even with their restrictions, these stones would normally be too valuable for children, but a lot of the stones are cracked. Our assessors told us they may not work at all, and, like with many things in this state, the older the recipient is, the more likely they are to fail. So, as you are the youngest group with known affinities, we’ve decided to give you all a chance to win them as a reward.”
Xinyue, a girl that Tom was sure was also reincarnated, but one he hadn’t manage to confirm personally, waved her arm in the air.
With a slight incline of his head, Dimitri gave her permission to speak.
“Is that normal?”
“Are you asking if child-specific treasures are common? Then yes. They’re far more frequent than you would expect. There are major discoveries like this every other year, and minor treasures turn up regularly. They are generally directed to be the prize pool for the annual tournament. These particular affinity stones are more fragile than usual, so we’re using them straight away.”
“And I’ll be the judge of who gets them,” Yukia said happily. “Talent is vital, but I’ll mainly be looking at the attitude.”
Dimitri nodded. “Exactly that. Attitude, striving to get better, is the fundamental cornerstone of success. In Existentia, anyone can be anything if they strive hard. Now, on to particulars. Kaamil and Yukia will supervise you until lunch, and they’ll pick the most exceptional one to receive the treasures. A word of warning: your affinities have to be between seventy and eighty to qualify, and we’ll be checking before letting you use the stone.”
Tom and Kang looked at each other. A chance to raise his affinities was not something either of them could afford to pass up, and, if success was based on attitude, then they were in the running.
Three minutes later, after Yukia explained the rules and what they were doing, they were escorted to the dodge room. Tom couldn’t be happier about the format and the opportunity. Conscious of how valuable raising his healing affinity by even one point was, he decided to push himself harder than he usually would in these situations. This was a reward worth trying to seize. He blew through his previous best results and completed not one, but two more dodge challenges further than his previous best.
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The question was how much to show. Kang was two fighting rings ahead of him. Briana, who also wanted the prize, had ‘cheated’ by using her fate to boost performance, and was equal to first at four rings ahead of him. Five of his peers were beating him, and Tom decided that this was as far as he was willing to go.
All that was left was to show a go-getter attitude; the fact that he would strive to do better even if his talent didn’t let him. He suppressed Danger Sense, and used his ring to send invisible electricity through his limbs to destroy his coordination. Then he leapt onto the packed sand floor, ready to fight. A traitorous release of electricity caused his leg to spasm at the wrong moment, and he missed the third dodge and was pummelled into submission.
Without retreating to the healing crystal, like most of the kids were doing, he lined up to go again. He repeated his determined attempts after that loss. If this was about attitude, he would show he couldn’t be beaten down. A small part of him wondered if this was a subtle way to boost the reincarnators up. If it was, Tom didn’t care; he wouldn’t do anything to expose himself. He was only the fifth in the class, and he would keep himself in a similar position through the remaining events. It was his choice, because, if he went all out, Tom knew he could jump up multiple levels. He hadn’t tested it, but he suspected that, with Danger Sense helping him and his ring not hindering him, extra dodge pits would be trivial to complete. Not just up to where Briana was four steps ahead of him, either; he would instead be able to push himself five or six spots beyond her, and, if he used fate, then seven or eight.
However, he entered injured and suffered the blows once more, until the bout finished with him getting punched out of the ring. After a not-so-fun hour, they moved to the obstacle course.
Once more, the amount of practice the three of them had done in this very room put them well ahead of the rest of the class.
Tom pushed hard with his standard handicaps. Occasionally, he fell, or was knocked flying, and once he jumped so far that only the magic and community fate stopped him from hurting himself badly. He didn’t allow any of that to faze him; he got up and did it again. Then, in the second-last run, he dropped the restrictions, and unsurprisingly, had everything go right for him as he ran the course. It propelled him ahead of Briana and Kang to equal first in the class. Tom could tell that Kang was eager to do the same, but he restrained himself for the same reasons that Tom had done in the dodge pits.
Briana, of course, didn’t share the same sentiments. She, as always, was determined not to lose. A third of her fate vanished, and, while she failed to match Tom’s time, she completed the course successfully, putting her at the same level as him.
They moved on to their final contest. It was a series of one-on-one fights, and Tom decided that, for this, he would drop to the middle of the field. The fights were set up, and it felt weird to be instructed to hit another kid with the wooden practice hammer, even if he knew no one was going to get hurt. Four adults Tom didn’t recognise came in to supervise the bouts. They were clearly healers with skills more than capable of stopping any lethal blows. With no need to hold back, Tom handicapped himself with Electricity, Gravity and Dampen Senses, then threw himself into the battle.
He allowed himself to use Danger Sense sporadically, but against such weak opponents, it added little to his survivability. The simple fact was that the ability was unneeded, because he could read the attacks that came his way perfectly anyway. He was fighting five-year-olds. It didn’t take magical abilities to predict what they were planning on doing. That was until he ramped up Dampen Senses - then Danger Sense showed its true worth. While it was active, he could predict the opponent’s attacks easily, and the difference it made was extraordinary. He was already heavily handicapped, but he was fighting children. Despite the restriction he had placed on himself, it was clear that, if he permitted Danger Sense to guide him fully, the battles would become too easy. He gave himself another handicap.
With twenty minutes to go, the random bouts were stopped, and they were organised into a knockout tournament. He figured he was placed right where he had wanted to be, firmly in the average category.
Tom won the first, and, given that it was against someone at his level, he figured they had been seeded based on their performance in practice. Everyone had been given a competitive first round, with exceptional performers in the dodge and obstacle courses being pitted against opponents slightly weaker than them. After that, his assigned opponent was Briana, which was good because he had been planning on losing this fight no matter who he ended up against. She was clearly still smarting from being almost beaten at the obstacle course, so she made a point of grabbing a glass of water.
He knew exactly what was coming.