I paused just inside the threshold.
Nothing happened.
No barrier. No scan. No invisible pressure brushing across my skin.
I waited another second anyway.
Still nothing.
The building didn't acknowledge me at all, and for some reason that bothered me more than if it had.
You would expect possibly the most important building in the country to have high tech, futuristic protections but no. You simply walked in and that was that. You didn't need verification, ID, anything.
That did end up leading to a few terrorist attacks before they finally decided to fix the security, but that wasn't for around 3 years now.
The clerk at the counter had just finished working with a previous applicant.
From the look of the applicant and the way he walked away, I assumed something had gone wrong, most likely some sort of invalid ID or disagreement with the systems.
"Name and age please." A tired woman asked.
She didn't look up when she asked. Fingers still moving, eyes fixed on the screen.
It wasn't boredom.
It was the kind of tired that comes from doing the same thing correctly for too many years.
She had dark brown hair, and was maybe in her early thirties with breath that smelt of coffee, and rounded square glasses that reminded you of fictional nerds.
"Aren Vale, 16." I responded.
I didn't actually remember what time I had obtained my ID in my last life, or what the requirements are. It had never been a relevant enough memory for me.
[Skill: Memory (B) Activated]
[Skill: Memory (B) Failed]
Yeah wasn't expecting much from that.
"Are you sure you want the ID?" She said "I don't mean to demotivate you or anything, and I definitely can't stop you, but I wouldn't recommend going into a dungeon at your age. It's a dangerous place y'know?"
She had perked up slightly, probably at the thought of helping to save a young soul instead of the boring work she did here all day.
"I'll be fine. Thank you for your help though." I knew where I was going, so I wasn't too worried.
"Alright. Come this way to do your test." She stood up and placed a 'Test in progress' sign on where she had been sitting, a little bit more visibly depressed.
We walked through a long, winding corridor.
I started counting steps without meaning to.
Stopped at twelve.
Started again.
The tiles weren't just uneven—they were almost uniform, like someone had tried and given up halfway through. It made my teeth itch.
What kind of building can afford marble but not to make them the same size?
Just when I wanted to forcefully renovate the building at the cost of some jail time, the clerk turned around to me.
"We're here"
I remembered it being large.
I didn't remember it being this large.
I tilted my head back before I realized I was doing it.
And Infront of me was a huge, wooden door, standing at four or so metres high.
I didn't even know what to say.
I knew it was big in my last life, but who would need a door to be that high to walk through?
As far as I was aware giants didn't sign up to be hunters particularly often.
"Knock before you enter." The clerk advised.
It didn't make much sense that I would be walked here and have to knock anyway, but I obliged regardless.
Knock knock knock.
If you put your ears to the door, you would be able to faintly hear the knock echoing, giving a little bit of an idea how huge the building really was.
"Enter!" A voice boomed out. I couldn't quite tell if it was a person or a speaker somewhere, but frankly it was basically irrelevant to me.
I slowly creaked the door open. The sound it made was similar to rolling stone, which made me question for a brief moment what material the door was really made of.
When the door was about 50% open, I decided to peer into it, to at least get some grasp of what exactly I was getting into.
It was dark.
I waited for something to happen.
A pressure. A warning. A presence.
My experience with dark, suspicious rooms was usually fatal.
But nothing came.
The darkness didn't react to me at all, and that felt… wrong. Like stepping onto ice and not hearing it crack.
I almost turned around and ran, but the clerk gave me an expecting look. And something in my body cemented me to the spot.
I thought I was going to die for the thought.
She stepped behind me, trying to prevent me from making a run for it.
"You may enter." It felt less like an offer, and more like a command with consequences if I disagreed. So I did.
"There's a mana ball in the centre there. Give me a moment to set it up, and I'll instruct you on what to do next when I'm ready." After saying this, she walked away.
She walks surprisingly fast.
The whirring of the machine felt too loud in the enclosed space. Every click echoed longer than it should have.
I watched her hands instead of the machine.
They shook. Just slightly.
She walked back over, slower than she had left, but still faster than the average person would walk.
She wiped her forehead of sweat and said
"You may begin."
I vaguely remembered the process of using these, it was almost impossible to forget.
You just placed your dominant hand on the ball and waited.
It would absorb a slight bit of your mana to power itself, but otherwise was fine.
"What if I'm ambidextrous." I had been working on that since my fight with the instructor, because had I been able to use both hands, I probably wouldn't have lost so embarrassingly.
I hadn't lost only because I was weaker.
I'd lost because I was predictable.
I didn't intend to repeat that mistake.
"Then use either."
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"First measurement will be mana," She explained "this can be done very simply by the crystal ball."
I was aware of all of this already, maybe even moreso than she was, but it would be rude to interrupt her so I let her continue.
"Please go ahead and place your dominant hand on the ball. Well either in your case." She said, a slight smirk creeping up her face accompanied with a light chuckle.
"I'll go with my left then." I decided. Why not?
"Alright."
I placed my hand on the sphere.
It was warmer than I expected.
Not alive. Just… occupied.
The ball dimmed.
Brightened.
Dimmed again.
A thin line of text appeared on the side of the casing.
[Processing…]
It stayed there.
The mark on my hand cooled slightly but not by tremendous amounts.
It was expected so I didn't let signs of concern appear on my face.
After somewhere in the range of 20 seconds of almost silence, she looked up from the screen with a concerned expression on her face.
"Are you doing anything?" She questioned.
"No?" I wasn't sure what she was referring to so I assumed I wasn't the culprit.
"Please remove your hand and try again."
I did as she asked, only to be met with an identical response.
"Oh." She seemed to have realised something.
"There are one of two ways this can go," she started, "either, you're S-Rank, in which case that'll be documented publicly and I'll get the chief of the association right now. Or two, the machine is broken. Do you believe you're an S-Rank?"
It would've been great to say I was S-Rank, but realistically, there was no way I would get away with a lie like that.
"Machine." I responded downheartedly.
She seemed to have picked up on my grief and walked over to try and comfort me.
"It's fine, don't expect to be an S-Rank, there's only 5 or so in the country."
That was the most horrible attempt at comforting a person I'd ever heard.
I laughed so hard I forgot about the disappointment I had experienced moments before.
"Wait, did I do something wrong?" She asked, waving her hands around in concern.
"No, it's fine." I managed to squeeze out through tears.
Shit.
In my whimsy I had forgotten that my test had failed. In my previous life, the machine had never failed to work under any circumstances. So I doubted that was it.
So it was me.
I looked down at my left hand, trying to figure out the problem.
The black mark on my hand seemed to smile. It was as if it mocked me for not realising earlier.
"Can I try my right hand?"
"Yeah, sure." At my seriousness, she seemed to have recovered her composure.
She fixed her glasses and returned to her seat behind the computer.
I placed my right hand on the ball. And after a few seconds, a successful beep played out from somewhere behind her.
"Mana seems to have a level of variability. It is flickering between 9.2 and 7.9."
Probably the mark.
"Which one will you put down." I asked, not intending to sound as rude as I did.
She placed her hands on her chin for a moment before responding.
"9.2 probably, you seem pretty cool."
Was she allowed to be biased?
I wasn't going to stop her.
"Thanks." I muttered, barely above a whisper.
"Don't thank me yet, we have a few more tests to run." She alerted me to reality.
"Okay." I was more confident in the physical tests.
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"Starting with physical strength." She had walked me over to a wall sticking out of the ground, much to my surprise.
"Punch it." She requested.
"What?"
"I said punch it."
She doubled down?
Alright if you say so.
I concentrated mana into my arm.
It would be better to use aura but this body couldn't handle it yet, so I would have to make do.
I flung my arm at the wall, expecting to cause some level of damage.
My fist connected with a foam like substance instead.
"Huh?"
The force of my punch almost sent me flying into the wall along with my fist.
Luckily, I managed to stop myself just intime.
It was her turn to laugh at me instead.
I couldn't defend myself so I just let it happen.
She pulled a clipboard out of her pocket.
What?
How did she-
Nevermind.
"Strength roughly 5.7."
Her accuracy surprised me.
The physical tests were known to be wildly inaccurate.
"Agility next. First I want you to run from here to that wall when I say go."
"What wall?" From where I was stood the room seemed to go on infinitely.
"Just run, you'll see it."
If I listened to that advice wouldn't I become a red paste splattered on the wall?
"Alright." She felt trustable, so I hoped the wall on the other side would be made out fo the same material I had just experienced.
I got into the four-point start position.
For running like this, it was probably the most efficient I could think of.
"On your marks."
So she was reading it out like an actual race.
"Set."
I lifted myself into a set.
This would be better with blocks but I didn't have the energy to ask for them.
"Go."
I sprinted as hard as I could, I wanted at least a decent score on this.
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"Agility 14.53."
I started off and almost tripped at the start, lowering my stats by around 0.5.
The threshold for C rank speed was 14.85, meaning I had just missed it.
Really?
Fuck.
"The rest of the tests will have to be done at a later date. Does the first of September sound good."
"Sure, it's our date then." I responded.
Although I had school that day, I was confident I could either miss school, or leave early if need be.
I looked up, the clerk's face had gone a little red.
She cleared her throat and looked away from me.
It was a little hot in here.
Was that my fault?
Probably not.
Hopefully.
The sound of a pen clicking frantically started suddenly.
"Bye!" She shouted, exasperated, as she basically pushed me out of the room.
"See you later!" She had pushed me outside the room by this point.
"Bye." I responded.
She really wanted me gone, huh?