After getting complettely lost and having to stay camped out in a random alley way for the night.
We finally made it!!!
The Level Evolutions facility was not what I expected.
I had pictured something more clinical looking..
What It actually looked liked though was a long queue of people stretching out from a door set into the side of what looked like a warehouse that got turned into a evaluation centre that had a sign above it that said [EVALUATION CENTRE — GUILD REGISTERED ONLY] in letters that looked like someone had repainted recently.
It looked ghetto as shit.
The queue was maybe thirty people long. There was Adventurers mostly and a few people who looked like mages in robes. There was also this very large man near the back carrying an axe.
Gutter Intuition did a full on threat assessment.
It came back with a mix of tired people, competitive people and a few nervous ones.
About eight people were ahead of us which was suprising since I expected hundreds.
[ GUTTER INTUITION: Individual detected. High magical output. Confidence index: extreme. Social threat level: high. Assessment: This person has already decided they don't like you. ]
I looked up.
It was a dude near the front. He was tall and looked maybe a few years older than me. He had dark hair arranged to look effortless. His clothes looked expensive to. But they were expensive in the way that was supposed to look casual, and they didn't.
He was standing with his arms crossed and his chin tilted up at an angle that gave the idea that he considered himself the most important person in this queue.
He was staring directly at me.
Not the types of stares from the guild
This was different.
The kind of look that had already run you through some internal system, filed you under irrelevant and was now annoyed anyway.
Sable went still.
I noticed immediately.
"You know him??" I said.
"Yes," she said. "Unfortunately."
She did not sound to pleased.
Before I could say anything,
He stepped out of his spot in the queue
No hesitation.
"Sable Vorn..." He said her name like he was reading it off a disappointing report. "Still Third Class ehhh?.. You should have joined me."
"Seph, leave us alone," she said.
Sable looked like she was about to puke.
He didn't go away.
His eyes did a full on scan as he looked me up and down slowly. The thin clothes, the battered cup tucked under my arm and the general energy of someone who had spent the night in an alley.
Something shifted in his expression.
"This is the one everyone's losing their minds over???" he said it loud enough that the people around us in the queue heard it clearly, which I was pretty sure was intentional. "This is genuinely what all the fuss is about??"
"Rymur Kaito," I said.
"Right..."
He laughed,
But it wasn't genuine at all. It was the kind that comes out when someone is truly pissed off and trying very hard to look like they aren't.
"You look like you slept in a ditch."
He said with a huge smile.
"Alley actually," I said. "There's a difference."
His jaw tightened.
"The stone turned red. That's what they're all saying and its spreading like a wildfire as if it's the most important thing that's ever happened, because some vagrant made a registration rock light up."
He stepped closer, his voice dropping but sharpening at the same time.
"Do you have any idea how much shit I have put in to get where I am???? YEARS!!! Actual years of training! Discipline! STUDYING!! While you were doing whatever the hell it is you were doing before you showed up here looking like that. Now because of your silly stone colour, everyone now thinks you're the Celestial bloody Hero because of one dramatic moment with a stone."
"Okay," I said.
He blinked.
"Okay?"
"Yeah. Okay."
That stopped him completely.
He had walked over here looking with all this energy to start an argument.
And.
I had just refused to have one.
Now he was standing in the middle of it, with nowhere to put any of it.
The silence stretched for just long enough to be uncomfortable.
"I have been assessed by three divination scholars buddy!!!
He said, pulling his voice back under control with visible effort.
"I have had Three separate evaluations.!!! Every single indicator points the same direction as me being the one to defeat the Demon Lord.The seers have been talking about a Celestial Hero from this city for months and everyone just assumes it's going to be some classless, homeless nobody with no history and no house."
His voice filled with anger.
"FUCK SAKES, YOU DONT EVEN HAVE A HOUSE!"
"I'm aware,"
I said calmly.
"This is a joke!"
He turned to Sable.
"Tell me you see how completely insane this is??"
Sable looked at him the way you look at something you have already decided not to engage with.
"Go back to your place in line, Seph."
"I'M MAKING A POINT HERE—!"
He said as blood shot out of his nose.
"You're making a scene.."
She said calmly.
"Go back to your place in line."
His face turned bright red.
He looked back at me and past all the noise he was making, past the performance, Gutter Intuition told me what was actually underneath.
He wasn't scared of me exactly.
He was scared of what I represented.
The possibility that all those years.
All that work and the time.
If it was all for nothing.
I almost felt bad for him.
Almost.
"When we're inside, and the results from our tests come out, we'll see exactly who this city should really be paying attention to."
"Sure," I said.
He held my gaze one second longer than necessary and he turned and walked back to his spot in the queue, shoulders rigid, not looking back.
The people in line quickly found somewhere else to look as if nothing happened.
Sable exhaled slowly.
"He asked you to work with him and you said no?" I said sarcastically.
She looked at me sideways.
"You got that from all of that?"
"I have a skill for reading situatiions."
"I told him I had no interest in working with pathetic arrogant fools such as himself," she said.
"Those were the exact words. Directly to his face and he did not take it well."
"Shocking," I said.
"He's talented..."
She sounded genuinely irritated
"That's the part that makes it worse. He has every reason to be confident."
She watched him at the front of the queue, back straight, chin up.
"Whatever the evaluation results are today, he is going to have alot to say about it."
I turned to the facility.
"Not bad for day two,"
I then adjusted the cup under my arm and followed the line into the facility.