'So what if his Psychic Power is Grade B? If he can't beat his opponent, it's meaningless! That's right—Psychic Power doesn't matter at all!' Joden reassured himself. The most important stats were Planar, Strength, and Intelligence. Psychic Power mattered, sure, but not as much as those three. Jinyo's strongest points were Psychic Power and Charm—neither of which mattered. A Hunter's true value was always measured by their ability to hunt monsters!

  The aptitude exam concluded. Only those who met the baseline qualifications would advance to the final—and most critical—test: the Combat Power Test.

  Jinyo walked out of the testing grounds to find Rina and Gretel. Mother and son watched him with very different expressions. Gretel stared at his father without blinking, while Rina's eyes brimmed with questions—eager to uncover everything Jinyo kept hidden.

  "The harder Psychic Power hits a bottleneck, the harder it is to break through. How did you end up with that much?"

  "I just refined it every day and it built up to this level. It's the only thing I could do." Jinyo answered in an even tone. Rina knew Jinyo didn't like to lie, and he wouldn't lie to her. But it was still hard to believe. Daily meditation was nothing unusual—but what kind of discipline could hone a mind to this degree? It wasn't a matter of one or two years. It took far longer than that.

  Some grandmasters spent their entire lives and never reached the threshold where Jinyo stood. It finally made sense to Rina why someone with such low training levels and stats could display combat potential this high. There was likely nothing left that could shake Jinyo's mental state during a fight.

  "Big Bro Yo, that was amazing! Can you do that again? Lots of cheering! Lots of noise!" Gretel ran over and tugged on Jinyo's arm. The boy seemed hooked on the roar of the crowd when Jinyo had captured everyone's attention. Jinyo noticed Gretel's Affection Points bouncing upward in rapid succession—the opposite of the steady decline from before.

  "I'll try my best." Jinyo smiled at his son. If he wanted to earn Affection Points from Gretel, he had to push harder! Gretel's Affection was currently around 180. He was curious what would happen if it reached 200. He might even unlock a new Seed.

  "But before I can show off, we need to find out whether I even passed to the second round."

  "Why wouldn't you?"

  "Because... aside from Psychic Power and Charm, all my other stats are scraping the bottom of the barrel." Jinyo laughed—a eulogy for himself. Gretel froze and stared at his father's awkward smile. The boy turned to his mother, who stood shaking her head. The fire in his heart nearly went out!

  The afternoon exam wasn't about compiling stat data. It was a practical test. At the end of the day, a Hunter's duty was to kill monsters before they could harm civilians. Anyone who could kill monsters needed to be stronger than ordinary people—something measurable through the six core stats.

  If your stats weren't high enough, there was no point in even testing. If every single stat was Grade G, you had no chance against a monster. Every year, the number of Hunters who died in the field climbed higher, so the selection criteria grew stricter to match. In the old days, anyone could become a Hunter. Now, to prevent needless deaths, those who failed to meet the baseline weren't even allowed to sit for the exam.

  The aptitude exam was nothing more than a ticket to the real test.

  Jinyo brought Gretel and Rina to the food court and ordered cold vegetable smoothies to ease the tension. Jinyo and Gretel in particular barely said a word. Gretel looked like he was about to cry—more stressed than Jinyo, the actual examinee. Jinyo pulled out his phone and set it on the table, waiting for the results notification.

  A chime rang out with a message bubble—but it wasn't from the Training Center.

  "Naho says Ryse's fever has gone down. They're on their way to the Training Center." Jinyo read the message aloud for the two of them.

  "That's good. If it weren't for the fever, I wouldn't have wanted to leave that child at home either," Rina said. The distance from the manor to the Training Center was considerable, but if Jinyo's exam slot was toward the end, they should make it in time to watch him perform.

  "I was thinking the same thing."

  "Gretel really does worry about Ryse, doesn't he? You're so kind," Jinyo said with a smile, complimenting his son. Gretel blushed slightly.

  "I'm not a bad person or anything! It's just—Ryse gets lonely. Without me around, she'd cry for sure."

  Ding!

  Another message popped onto the screen. This time, from the Training Center. Jinyo quickly tapped in. A second later, he let out a sigh of relief.

  "I passed."

  "Whew—" Rina and Gretel exhaled together, a weight lifting from their chests.

  In truth, Jinyo's other stats fell between Grade F and E—within standard range. Advancing to the final round was all but guaranteed. What worried Jinyo was that the evaluator wasn't human—it was an AI from the central government's supercomputer. It calculated overall potential through pure addition and subtraction, with zero room for discretion.

  The part most likely to count against him was his 0% Cultivation Rate. Subtracted against stats that only barely exceeded average, there was a real chance the AI would reject him. But his standout Psychic Power and Charm likely tipped the overall score back into positive territory—just enough to pass.

  You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.

  In a place beyond human reach, orbs of light in every color drifted through a black ocean amid countless stars. They circled and blinked, communicating through pulses of light—like luminescent stones signaling one another.

  [We've lost more of our kin. The assassination failed.]

  [A Hunter arrived just in time. There was an unforeseen variable. What do we do now??]

  [We must eliminate the variable along with the target. We cannot allow the target to grow any further.]

  [Speaking of which—what's wrong with that one? Why won't he say anything?] Among the countless orbs, one floated motionless in their midst, unable to produce sound or flash its light any longer. It trembled. Everyone sensed its rage and sorrow, yet there was nothing they could do.

  [What happened to him?]

  [We don't know. He's still conscious, but he can't communicate with us anymore. It's as if he's... no longer one of us.]

  The orbs of light continued their council. The silent one waited until a conclusion was reached. When the others scattered, only it remained—mute as a stone. None of its kin paid attention to it anymore. It had become empty air, utterly insignificant—despite once holding a status higher than some of the others.

  'It's because of him. That damned Celestial Fiend!' The orb remembered the agony with perfect clarity. It had possessed a Chimera Wolf and encountered the Celestial Fiend. Though it had miraculously survived, it discovered its ability to communicate with its kin was gone. No one in its race considered it one of their own anymore.

  It had become an outcast. From this point on, its existence was meaningless. Only vengeance—dragging that Celestial Fiend down to hell—could cleanse the hatred that burned inside it.

  'Celestial Fiend.'

  'Celestial Fiend!!'

  'I will strip everything from you. You will pay dearly.'

  At the exam grounds, examinees whose names were called ascended the sparring stage. Before them stood the latest-model combat simulation dummies. Their designs were deceptively simple—like marionettes—but their appearances were not to be underestimated. They were engineered to replicate over a hundred movement models of both Hunters and monsters.

  Combat levels ranged from Level 1 to 30. The test was straightforward: defeat the combat dummy up to Level 5 and you passed. Since most monsters that F-Rank Hunters would hunt were around Level 5, examinees had to defeat the dummy continuously until reaching that threshold. Clear it within the time limit, and you passed.

  Jinyo stood beneath the stage, watching each examinee throw everything they had at the combat dummies. The dummies were made from a special alloy—incredibly durable yet unbelievably light. No matter how heavy the blows, they wouldn't crumple easily.

  Unfortunately, they were far too expensive for battlefield deployment. Their performance couldn't match a seasoned Hunter's anyway, so their usefulness stopped at serving as screening tools for exams. To prevent injury or permanent damage, all dummies used blunted weapons or fought barehanded—yet even that was enough to make nearly every examinee break a sweat.

  "Damn it! I only made it to Level 4."

  "I'm telling you, something's off. There's no way Level 4 should be this tough." An examinee trudged off the stage with slumped shoulders. The expression on his face—like he was about to cry—spoke of deeper disappointment and despair than a job rejection email. For people like them, failing the Hunter exam meant losing one more path to earn a living.

  'No—the dummy's level is correct. The examinees are just weak.' Jinyo used Sage's Eye to evaluate each fight. The combat dummies' levels matched the system's assessment exactly. Yet out of every hundred examinees, only seventy reached Level 5. A mere ten made it to Level 10.

  When a dummy's energy was depleted to a set threshold, it immediately jumped from Level 1 to 2, and kept climbing until time ran out. In theory, with enough skill, you could push the dummy all the way to its Level 30 combat output.

  For amateurs, that was impossible. But for those with real ability, it wasn't hard at all.

  BOOM!

  An explosion erupted, followed by scorching heat that seared the air. A red-haired young woman shaped her magic into a crimson rose. A Flame Thorn Whip lashed the combat dummy relentlessly, sealing its movements within her calculations. It showed no sign of resistance.

  "Rose Blaze—kill." Nephrin gave the command. The roses born from flame detonated in a continuous barrage against the dummy. The thorns that had locked down its movements only released once the dummy's energy hit zero.

  "Nephrin! Level 30! Time: 18 minutes, 59 seconds!"

  "Phew." Nephrin whistled in relief. With a thirty-minute limit, she'd conquered Level 30 in under twenty. A resounding success. She thought no one could possibly top that. However—

  "Theo! Level 30! Time: 17 minutes, 46 seconds!" The announcement came alongside a roar from the spectators on the sidelines. Nephrin turned toward a distant sparring stage. A young man in tattered clothes gripped twin swords, standing over a combat dummy whose arms had both been severed. She'd been so absorbed in her own test that she'd ignored everything around her. She had no idea how Theo had beaten her time by over a minute.

  'This man! Interesting.' A stranger from the countryside who didn't just have a higher Cultivation Rate than her—he'd outscored her on virtually every metric. No matter what, she wanted to speak with Theo after the exam. If she could recruit him to teach swordsmanship at her school, that would be incredible. Her school desperately lacked someone with his kind of talent.

  "Well, well—this is a little embarrassing." Theo grinned ear to ear at receiving so much attention. The moment he stepped off the stage, agents practically swarmed him. Theo's skill level was no beginner's. He was clearly a top-tier fighter who'd come down to test alongside novices.

  Joden and Noktis sat below the stage, stewing in anxiety. They'd had the miserable luck of testing in the same session as these two monsters. Level 30, both under twenty minutes—meanwhile, they'd used the full thirty and hadn't even cracked Level 20.

  "Why do people have to show off like that? Level 20 is more than enough to live comfortably as a Hunter."

  "Come on—you're only saying that because you can't flex harder than them, right?" Noktis clapped Joden on the shoulder. Joden's face soured like he had a stomachache.

  "It's just an exam. Fighting dummies is obviously harder than fighting real monsters. Against an actual Level 30 monster, I'd kill it no problem!"

  "Sure, sure. I believe you." Noktis shrugged. He didn't share Joden's obsession—clearing Level 20 already guaranteed an F-Rank license. There was even a chance of earning an E-Rank from the very first assessment. What actually interested him were the two people who hadn't tested yet: the young lady Luciria, and the Grade-B Psychic Power guy with a 0% Cultivation Rate. If not for those two, Noktis and Joden would have left already.

  Nephrin and Theo, having finished their exams, had no reason to stay at the testing grounds—yet neither left. Both found seats and settled in to watch the other examinees.

  They were looking for companions. Whether partners to adventure alongside or colleagues to work with at the same institution, there was no better place to scout than right here. Jinyo glanced around at the multiple concurrent exams taking place.

  'Nobody stands out.' Jinyo was disappointed. He possessed the power to see through anyone's potential and bloodline with perfect clarity. But in this exam, aside from well-known names like Theo, Nephrin, and Luciria, everyone was standard issue—nowhere near the word "genius" or "gifted."

  Jinyo sat at the edge of the grounds, tired from craning on tiptoe to watch the fights. He was waiting for his name to be called. At this pace, it would be another hour before his turn came. That was when he noticed a young man—dark brown hair, chestnut-colored eyes—standing at the edge of a stage, face pale, lips trembling. In front of him stood a man in a suit, likely a scout from some company.

  "I'm sorry, Chris, but your test results weren't good enough. What we discussed before—consider it null and void."

  "...I understand."

  "Well then... best of luck." The scout adjusted his glasses and walked away from the young man named Chris. Chris clenched his fists tight. His body shook before his knees buckled and hit the floor. Clear tears fell from his eyes, just like every other person here drowning in disappointment. Scenes like this were unfolding all across the exam grounds.

  Chris was a young man who'd always tested well. His strengths lay in raw power and swordsmanship. A scout from a certain company had been watching him since school. He'd been on the verge of signing a contract—if only he passed the Hunter exam. Securing that deal at a young age would have meant steady income and a company-backed loan to attend a prestigious academy.

  Chris had taken the exam three times now, yet his performance was consistently poor. The company's representative had assessed that with Chris's potential, passing should have been certain. But not once had Chris cleared above Level 3. After repeated failures, the company withdrew its offer. If he still wanted to work for a Hunter firm, he'd have to submit a regular application—and the benefits would be nothing like the deal that had been on the table.

  'It's over. My life... it's over.' The road ahead was hopeless. His family's finances were in shambles—crushed under debt and obligations. Without the contract, he couldn't afford tuition. Even working while studying would only get him into an ordinary school with no connection to the power-user industry.

  "Hey, you." A voice called out. Gentle—a man's voice—completely unlike the scout's cold detachment. Chris lifted his tear-streaked face and looked at the man.

  "Would you like to come be my disciple?"