Talent Assessment

"Forset! I knew you could do it!"

"Yea...."

The blue aura around her slowly faded away and gravity took over her body as she fell over. Just as she was about to hit the ground, Vi felt a gust of wind, making him close his eyes.

When he opened his eyes he was greeted with a curious sight. The old man was gently holding Forset in a princess carry, who was now asleep.

"You did well, you can rest now."

The old man lightly put Forset on the ground before disappearing and reappearing in front of Vi.

Vi flinched, expecting to get punched in the stomach, but instead, the old man put his hand on his shoulder before speaking to him, "Don't worry, I'm done trying to kill you. You have both proven your worth."

Vi was confused about many things when he said that, but he could only express one question at the moment, "I understand how Forset could have proven her strength... but what did I do."

The old man looked at Vi in his eyes before answering his question, "Who said I was focusing only on raw power? You proved your determination. When I was at your level of combat experience even I would have given up, but you kept on going. That quality is a lot more important in combat than people think. If you didn't keep on getting back up, I would have moved on to the girl quicker and you guys would be in the grave... wait this is a graveyard. Haha!"

Vi just ignored him laughing at his own joke and asked him another question that was extremely important to him, "What does this even mean? Are you going to let us go?"

The old man stopped laughing and looked at Vi before giving him a sadistic look, "Of course not! Why would I just let two new and talented chosen ones leave me this soon? I, a 4th generation chosen one, will teach you how to get strong without raw stats and good equipment!"

When Vi heard the words that came out of the old man's mouth, he practically lost it, 'How does this NPC know what stats and equipment are?! Did also just say he's a 4th generation chosen one?! Does that mean other people with systems came before us? This is confusing...'

The old man observed Vi's flabbergasted expression before laughing his ass off, "HAHAHA!! Oh, this is funny, teach was right. Sorry to burst your bubble but you are part of the 50th generation of chosen ones. There are many other, powerful, people with systems. I was thinking the same things as you when I learned there were others with the same system. On one hand, you are unlucky because you are the 50th generation, which means there are 49 stronger generations than you. On the other hand, though, you are lucky because I'll teach you some secrets about what you can do without just the system. Before we can begin though, we must wake up sleeping beauty over there."

The old man left the confused Vi to go towards Forset and weakly slapped her, "Hey wake up."

She didn't react at all, 'I guess she is sleeping deeper than I thought... I'll just wake her up with this.'

The old man lifted his hand to face her head with his palm facing the roof. He lightly blew air out of his lungs above his palm and a red bubble appeared out of thin air. The bubble slowly floated toward her head before popping with a soft pop.

Right as the bubble popped Forset quickly sat up at a right angle and looked at where the old man was, "What the hell just happened! Vi watch out he's going to attack you!"

Vi went up to the old man and put his hand on his shoulder before responding to Forset, "It's alright, he's cool now. Apparently, we passed his test or something like that."

Forset calmed down and thought about his words, "Well that was a messed up test. It's alright, I'll forgive you for... 20 gold."

The old man raised his brow at her odd remark before explaining the situation to her.

"Ok, so that's the situation. I can't believe the developers would do this to us, letting NPCs have the same system. I guess that stops us from taking over the world too quickly."

Vi heard his words and waited to see the old man's reaction to them saying terms like NPC and developer.

"Wow, you have the goal of taking over the world, how ambitious! You can throw that out of the window... for now at least. Now that you both are awake I don't see why we shouldn't start right now. Lesson one: choose your path."

Vi was a bit disappointed at his response, 'I guess he just ignores any terms that would destroy the 4th wall."

The old man looked at how Vi and Forset were criss-cross in front of him before giving them a speech, "There are three main paths you can take with the system: pure physical, pure magical, or half physical half magical. Neither one is more powerful than the other, it all depends on your talent and what you want to do. I can give you a basic run-down of all three of them."

"Pure physical means you have to put more work into becoming physically strong and upgrading your technique with your chosen weapon. Pure magical means you have to put work into becoming mentally strong and being flexible with spells. Half physical half magical means you have to split your attention between physical strength and mental strength; most people who focus on this end up buffing their weapons or physique with magic."

Vi and Forset listened to his speech like it was liquid gold. This information could be extremely important, but what they got was less than expected.

Vi didn't want to be disrespectful to someone who is trying to help them, but he felt it was important to know, "I mean no disrespect sir, but we already had an idea of what you are telling us..."

The old man looked at Vi and understood what he meant, "Yes I get what you mean, but what is important, is what I can do after you know this information. I'm going to evaluate your talent for all three categories."

Vi heard his words and got excited, this would be an extremely big help to them at this stage in the game. Knowing what path they will walk down will let them not waste stats on things they don't need.

"Ok let's start with the girl first, I'm curious about what you will do in your future. Let's start with pure magic."

The old man went up to Forset and pulled out a crystal ball. He pressed his finger against it in strange patterns before pressing the ball against his and Forset's forehead.

After a couple of seconds, he took his forehead off of it and opened his jaw, "You have a C grade talent for pure magic, not bad at all. Let's go ahead and look at the other two.

After a minute he had the grades for the two other categories, "That's a D grade for pure physical. Wow! You have an S-grade talent for Half and Half. I would recommend going with that S-grade talent. Now it's this young man's turn... let's start with pure magic."

After a couple of seconds, he finished his assessment and the old man looked flabbergasted, "Wow I haven't seen something like this in my thousands of years being alive!"

Vi heard those words and he automatically got enthusiastic, "Does that mean I'm super talented?!"

The old man looked Vi square in his eyes and answered his question without sugar coating it, "You have absolutely zero talent in magic!"