Chapter 57: Rumors
The applicants had been sitting in the guild hall for almost an hour before Hajin walked through the doors, and most of them had already run out of things to talk about.
The big man in heavy plate armor, a mercenary named Gorren, was leaning back against the wall near the entrance with his thick arms folded over his chest. He had been staring at the ceiling for the last fifteen minutes, bored out of his mind, when the guy next to him nudged his shoulder.
"That’s him," the guy whispered, tilting his head toward the front doors.
Gorren lazily rolled his eyes toward the entrance and watched a young man with dark silver hair walk in alongside a white-haired beastkin girl.
He didn’t look impressed.
"That’s the royal recommendation kid?" he muttered, looking him up and down. "He looks like he just rolled out of bed."
"Don’t let the look fool you," a woman sitting on the bench across from them said. She was lean, dressed in dark leather with no visible weapons and a face that gave away absolutely nothing.
Her name was Sable, and unlike most of the applicants in the room, she actually did her research before showing up.
"I asked around yesterday," she continued, keeping her voice low. "The guild receptionist told me he walked in a few days ago and dropped a legendary-grade boss core on the counter like it was a bag of apples. A four-shard anomaly core from the two-shard gate that’s been eating parties for months."
A younger applicant sitting nearby leaned in, his eyes going wide. "Wait, he’s the one who cleared that gate? I heard about that. People were saying a full ranker squad handled it."
"It was just him and the beastkin," Sable said flatly.
The younger applicant sat back, looking genuinely stunned.
Gorren let out a low grunt, completely unimpressed. "So he killed a mutant in a baby gate. That doesn’t mean anything. Anomalies in low-tier gates are just overfed trash monsters, they hit hard but they’re slow and stupid. Any decent three-shard fighter with half a brain could handle one if they played it smart."
"It was a four-shard anomaly," Sable corrected.
"I heard what you said," he shot back, his voice getting a little louder. "And I’m telling you it doesn’t matter. A four-shard that grew up eating rookies in a two-shard zone is not the same thing as a real four-shard from a proper gate. The mana density is completely different, the combat patterns are weaker and the overall threat level is lower. He got lucky."
A few of the other applicants glanced over, clearly listening now.
"What actually pisses me off," Gorren continued, leaning forward, "is the royal recommendation. You know how much I paid to get into this exam? A hundred gold that I saved for two years, ran back-to-back missions and nearly lost my leg in a border skirmish last winter just to afford the entry fee."
He pointed toward the front desk where Hajin had just finished paying.
"That kid paid ten gold because he knows the King," he said, his voice thick with resentment. "Ten gold, and now he gets to sit in the same room as the rest of us and take the same exam like we’re equals. How is that fair?"
Nobody answered him, but a few heads nodded slightly.
The younger applicant scratched the back of his neck, looking uncomfortable. "I mean, he still has to pass the exam though, right? The recommendation just gets him in the door, it doesn’t guarantee anything."
"Doesn’t matter," Gorren said, shaking his head. "The fact that the door opened for him at all is the problem, the rest of us had to break it down."
Sable watched Hajin cross the hall and sit down near the far wall, the beastkin settling in right beside him. She studied the way he moved, relaxed but aware, his weight balanced and his eyes tracking the room without any obvious tension.
’He’s not tense, but he’s not relaxed either,’ she thought, watching him lean back against the wall. ’He knows people are staring at him and he genuinely doesn’t care.’
She kept that thought to herself.
"I don’t care who recommended him," she said after a moment. "If he’s weak, the exam will expose it. If he’s not, then we have bigger things to worry about than his entry fee."
Gorren scoffed, cracking his knuckles. "If the exam pairs us up, I hope I get matched with him. I’ll show him exactly what a hundred gold worth of effort looks like."
"You’ll show him what a hundred gold worth of ego looks like," Sable muttered under her breath.
He heard her but didn’t respond, just clenched his jaw and went back to glaring at the ceiling.
Then the door at the top of the grand staircase opened, and every conversation in the room died instantly.
Allen reached the bottom of the stairs a few seconds later and stopped, his hands resting loosely behind his back as he looked across the room.
"Good morning," he said, his tone casual, "for those of you who don’t know me, my name is Allen and I’m the Guildmaster of this branch. I’ll be overseeing the Ranker examination today."
He paused, counting heads with a slow glance across the benches.
"I see fourteen applicants present. That’s a decent number," he continued, letting out a small breath through his nose. "I won’t waste your time with a long speech, so I’ll keep it simple. By the end of today, most of you will walk out of here as rankers, or maybe none of you will."
He walked toward the center of the hall and looked around at the applicants. "The guild changes the format every cycle to keep things interesting. I’m curious if anyone has been paying attention to the rumors."
A girl sitting a few benches down from Hajin raised her hand almost immediately, her back straight and her eyes locked onto the Guildmaster. She was dressed in a pristine white combat tunic that looked like it had never seen a drop of blood, her hair tied back in a perfectly tight bun.
"Yes?" Allen asked, nodding toward her.
"According to the historical data from the last three years and the current mana density readings reported by the city’s perimeter mages," she began, her voice crisp and fast, "the guild has been prioritizing survival and cooperation over raw destructive power."
"I believe the first phase will be a simulated environment designed to test our resource management under pressure while forcing us to navigate terrain that actively suppresses mana regeneration."
She stopped and offered a small, confident nod, looking like she was expecting a gold star for her answer.
Hajin watched her for a second, then glanced at the stream panel in the corner of his vision. The chat was moving so fast he could barely read the names, the golden text flashing in a frantic rhythm.
[ CringeSlayer91: OH BRO THERES ALWAYS ONE ]
[ ShadowMage44: certified teacher’s pet alert ]
[ NewViewer_02: she definitely reminded the teacher about the homework ]
[ DarkBlade: look at that posture, she’s literally begging for a compliment ]
[ LurkerNoMore: textbook teacher’s pet lol ]
Hajin blinked, his brow pulling together as he stared at the words.
’Teacher’s pet?’ he thought, looking back at the girl who was still staring at Allen with a hopeful expression. ’Is that some kind of insult? I’ve never heard of an animal being used to describe someone like that.’
He decided to ignore it, assuming it was just more nonsense from the people in the other world.
Allen didn’t smile, but he did give a single, slow nod. "An interesting theory. You’ve clearly done your homework, Miss...?"
"Elise, sir," she said, her chest puffing out just a fraction.
"Right. Well, Elise," he said, turning his back on her and looking at the rest of the applicants. "You’re about thirty percent correct. Now, if you’re all finished sitting around, let’s head to the training grounds."