Finishing Up Appraisals

While Alesha was distracted with her Status, the group where she stood was joined by a few new faces. Keenan, a dark elf who was shorter than you might expect for his race, introduced himself as a necromancer. The woman clad in white gave him a particularly steely gaze and he gulped nervously. Before that could develop further, however, a well-muscled redhead sauntered over, introducing himself as "Max, the Incarnation of Fire" and looking like he expected to be praised. When no one did so, he huffed and proclaimed, "I'll show you how awesome I am! Just you wait!"

Shortly after that, an overweight kid with wolf ears approached, shyly wringing his hands. He had to introduce himself twice because he spoke too quietly the first time. His name was Sheldon; his class, Holy Knight. Almost before his introduction was finished, everyone turned their attention away from him and looked towards the elven beauty who had just walked up. Just like the rest of the female "Heroes," she wore a sailor-esque school uniform with a short black skirt, red sash and long, white socks with mary jane style shoes. 

Smiling broadly, she introduced herself as Kennedy, a "Sword Saintess." Arlo, the "Great Sage," tried to hide a fierce blush by shaking his long hair in front of his face and covering his mouth with his hand, but Max noticed and punched him in the shoulder teasingly. His laughter was obnoxiously loud. Jake, the too-handsome "Dragon Knight," ignored the two boys and walked right up to Kennedy, striking up a conversation.

Baby-faced Rino was the only one who noticed as a skinny teen with small antlers joined them quietly. After being asked, the newcomer introduced himself as Han, with the class "God's Chef." Rino's speech was halting and had somewhat of a stutter, which seemed to make Han feel at ease. The two chatted softly with one another after that.

Another person, this one a teenage girl with red hair, fox ears and tail, walked up to the group. She introduced herself as Natalia, a third Symbiotic Mage.

It wasn't much longer before all the Heroes had been Appraised and assigned to one of the various groups. In the end, there were four groups; the group Alesha and the others were in was the second smallest. She was, however, too absorbed in trying to figure out how to deal with all the permanent debuffs she'd been given to notice this. In every "Hero Summoning" world she'd read about, it was never easy to survive as a weak person, unless at least one of a few different conditions were met. 

One such condition was that the weak person happened to be the protagonist of the story. In that case, the protagonist's plot armor would defend them, and they'd be either ridiculously lucky in dangerous situations or never face anything that posed a real threat to them. That possibility was a bust, of course, because there was no way Zorhellian had made her the protagonist of this world. If she were, then she would have had a unique class that no one else had. Certainly her class was special, but from what she'd examined so far, the true worth of her class would likely be inaccessible until she leveled up -- which, because of Gaia's curse, she couldn't do to begin with. Further, she wasn't the only Symbiotic Mage, nor was she the first. Sullivan was the one who met those conditions. He and the other members of her group seemed more likely to be protagonists than she was. Their Classes seemed both unique and powerful.

A second condition in which a weak person could survive was if the person's "weakness" was actually just because the person (who also usually happened to be a protagonist) didn't know how to properly utilize their power. While Alesha met the ignorance part of it, she still thought this was unlikely as well because this scenario required the person's power to have hidden potential. Her class's potential was clearly well-understood by the natives of this world, though. What hidden potential did she have? The Seed of Chaos System wasn't working properly, and all her Chaotic powers were gone; this made Alesha feel unexpectedly empty, like some part of her was missing. She felt like she'd been nerfed by the developers of a game or something because she was too powerful a character.

Actually, was that a possibility? This was, after all, incredibly likely to be the second "Story" in the "Storytelling Games." No, why would Zorhellian have noticed her to begin with? Sure, she'd done well on Werewolf Island, but she hadn't done anything so outstanding as to draw his specific attention, right? So she was probably just unlucky. Did anyone else have as severe drawbacks as she did?

Think, think! She thought to herself. What can I use to survive, in what other kinds of situations can weak characters survive in dangerous worlds?

She thought about the various comics, manwha and novels she'd read, focusing particularly on ones where normal people were summoned to other worlds. There were ones with weak, manipulative characters who survived by harnessing the strength of those they put under their control, but that strategy was not one she could pull off successfully. She didn't know the first thing about being manipulative, and nor did she want to. In other stories, weak, lovable characters survived by making friends with strong people or animals and being protected by them. Could she do that? Unfortunately, however, she didn't think she fit any of the proper stereotypes for it. She wasn't a person isekai'ed as a small animal, or an incredibly beautiful but naive heroine, or a monster tamer of any kind. 

Some weak characters had civilian-type classes that could stay far from the front lines, such as alchemists, cooks, or blacksmiths; though, as she recalled, many of those eventually overcame their "weakness" and went to the front lines anyways, and usually as adventurers at that. She sighed. It was a waste of time to think about them, since she didn't have a noncombat class to begin with.

At some point during her musings, Alesha realized that the Appraisals had stopped and the wizard on the platform at the front of the room was speaking again. Hopefully she hadn't missed anything important.