Top Ranked

After the evening meal, every student in the place save for the Inner Court class gathered in the front hall of the classroom building where the results would be displayed. Not even the slackers could resist, and even the senior classes had gathered. There were two screens in each corner of the main hall, each pair of which displayed the rank and exam results for each respective year. Until now, the screens for the freshman class had been blank. 

Jue Zhu picked me out almost as soon as I arrived at the freshman rank display. "So, how do you think you did?"

"I have high hopes for second place," I said, "though if I missed anything in History and Politics I might not get it."

"Seriously? I think I probably lost at least a point on every question that wasn't multiple choice. I've never been good at writing things out like that. I think you might get first place."

"Hmm...on the exam, anyway. No one's going to bump you in the actual rank, with your monster talents. Though writing isn't one of them, huh?"

With this revelation, I anticipated the moment for scores to appear even harder. I'd never been first in anything before. I'd been getting closer in some ways in my Dive Gaming career—I'd made it to the grand final duel in a pro league feeder bracket in the MMO I was most recently playing—but I was still eager for my first taste...if I could get it.

The board, it seemed, had a sense of the dramatic. It displayed names and midterm exam scores (which were out of 500) ten at a time, starting from the bottom. Those present were given about a minute to find their name and digest the news before the next set appeared. People groaned as they spotted their names at first. Around #60 to #51, those around me were more quiet, wondering when they'd appear and crossing their fingers that they'd be even further up the list.

When it reached the top 10, only 5 more names appeared. Neither my nor Jue Zhu's names had appeared yet. However…

[5: 490p—Jue Zhu]

A collective cry went up at the realization that Mr. Talent had actually lost at something. That didn't last long, because only 10 seconds passed before the next name appeared:

[4: 493p—Kai Shokoya]

That one was the tallest in our year and a former semi-pro level Dive Gamer like me. I hadn't matched up against him in training yet.

[3: 495p—Qingling Mei]

She had a circle of friends but kept to herself among them. I didn't know much else about her. 

The last 2 names appeared at the same time.

[2: 498p—Kunlun Jong]

[1: 500p—Xu Zuhui]

"I lost to you in the final match of the Combat exam, so how'd I get a perfect score?"

"They probably gave me bonus points from the Combat exam," said Jue Zhu, "about 10 less points and my score would be about what I expected."

I had finally come first in something, even though I was #2 in the actual rankings…and I didn't enjoy it very much. Now, people tried to cozy up to me just like Jue Zhu. At lunch periods, the both of us ended up metaphorically throwing up our hands, and we started sitting with different groups every day. Fortunately, other than lunch, mostly the others respected my desire to keep to myself. It helped that everyone spent most spare moments they possibly could cultivating. Of course, thanks to this, it became more and more difficult to stay ahead of the class in cultivation base. Levels in the 4th Earth Realm required millions of Qi to advance through, so once someone who started cultivating after me caught up, they'd stay caught up for a while. Too, a few others in the year turned out to have physical stat talents, and they'd really started coming into their own by this level. Slowly but inexorably, my ranking deflated until I was Rank #6 by the time of the first year's final exam.

As the "Comprehension Genius" I was at least popular as a study buddy, so more people were friendly to me than in my old world. Neither was there such a disparity between my strength and those now ahead of me in the ranks that I was as guaranteed to lose as to Jue Zhu in a fight.

In the end, I got a little lucky in the year's Combat final. My last bout in the dueling portion of the final was against Mei, whose talent was in Agility. However, that didn't mean she was amazing at dodging—you needed Reaction for that, and a substantial portion of my assigned combat training was to hit fast targets. She gave me trouble, but ultimately I won untouched.

After that, the Elder in charge of the exam called for myself, Jue Zhu, and Kunlun Jong. We'd all gone undefeated in the duels and otherwise done perfectly in the exam, so we were invited back after the rest of the exams were done to contest each other for overall ranking purposes.

Jong was another student with more than one talent—in his case, his talent stats were Strength and Resilience. They were both "medium" talents that increased those stats by twice as much as normal with each breakthrough. For that reason, there had been a lot of debate in the year and especially Class B and Class D, where we actually were, which of us was the more talented since we both had two talents, but I was the only one to have a Major talent besides Jue Zhu and my other talent was a Minor, 1.5x boosting one, while both of his were x2.

In the end, the simple fact was that Jong's talents were the ones that were useful this early on into our cultivation. Once our Cores were formed enough to function, mine should allow me to wield truly devastating powers, but before I reached that point and got access to techniques, I didn't have that much going for me besides technical skill, and by now Jong didn't lack that. I still had better technique than him, but his raw power meant he didn't really need much better technique than he already had. I managed to last and somewhat retaliate though, but his talent combination made him a simply monstrous melee fighter. When he managed to close, he was just too punishing, though I tricked him into knocking me away at one point. In spite of that, I lost handily.