Hi-Ah walked to the front and placed her palm on the crystal ball that tested her stats.
Ning was curious, so he moved a little forward to see what she showed.
[Strength : B, Speed : B, Mana : A]
"Huh? Not bad actually," he thought. The surrounding crowd immediately went into a frenzy, mostly from the Scouters who saw a guild-less person get an A rank in any of the stat.
In a mid-tier guild, she would definitely get a spot in the main party without a doubt. As for something like the White Devil, she had a good chance of making one of the newbie parties as long as her skill was good enough.
Now, the Scouters just had to hope that she passed that part of the test.
Ning left behind an illusion of his and teleported into the room where the testing was happening to see how it worked.
The testing room was larger than he had imagined, and the judges were staying on the upper floor and watching from the balcony.
Hi-Ah stood in front of a metal contraption that was humanoid in shape but had no distinguishing features.
"Your mana is A rank, so use any skill that you can," the judges said.
Hi-Ah nodded and put her hands before her. Suddenly, a magic circle formed in front of her hands as she shot out something small and bright.
Ning saw some sort of fire-like bolt of energy strike the metal puppet in the chest.
To his surprise, the puppet took absolutely no damage at all. However, it took enough damage for the judges to take note of how she did.
"Next, balls will fall from the ceiling and they will be targeting you. You can attack the target again, but only 5 seconds after we begin, and before 10 seconds have passed," the judges said.
"Begin!"
Hi-Ah's eyes shot up as she saw the various colored plastic balls fall from the ceiling. There were maybe 2 or 3 seconds, and they were effortless to dodge as they didn't bounce around much.
However, it was a bit hard to concentrate on her spell as that required a great deal of focus, and focus was something he couldn't afford at the moment.
Still, she focused as much as she could while dodging the various balls and shot another projectile of volatile energy at the puppet.
Once done, she dodged the balls for 2 more seconds and was done.
"Great, now a final test," the judges said. As they spoke, 5 more puppets appeared out of nowhere. "Attack them all at once. As long as your damage is higher than B rank, you will pass."
Hi-Ah nodded and prepared her attack again. A magic circle formed on her hands, a different one from before. Just as it appeared, lightning struck forward, branching into various tendrils.
There were 6 main tendrils and they all attacked the various puppets directly, burning them red hot, but not damaging them more than that.
"Great," the judges said. "You've passed. You may leave."
Hi-Ah nodded and left the room. Ning left as well. He arrived back in his place and his illusion disappeared with none the wiser.
The moment Hi-Ah walked out and was announced to have passed, the Scouters immediately hounded after her. However, it seemed that Hi-Ah had absolutely no intention of joining any of them, so she flat-out refused.
A few of them still tried to follow after her just in case she changed her mind, but they scurried away once she threatened to beat them.
"Congratulations, but this was a given I suppose," Ning said.
"Thanks," she said with a small smile.
"Your turn isn't up yet?" she asked.
"We seem to have registered mine a little late. We will still have to wait a few minutes longer," Ning said.
"That's fine. Once we are done here, I can take you to visit grandmother," Hi-Ah said.
"I'm not sure if that will be possible or not," Ning said.
"Huh, why?" she asked.
Ning didn't answer. Instead, he simply asked, "do you have some sort of hatred for these guilds by any chance?"
"No, I just—" he didn't want to bring it up. Speaking out loud something so pessimistic felt wrong for her.
"You don't have to answer if you don't want to. I just wanted to know if you would be uncomfortable if I joined any guild," Ning said. He looked towards her to see her emotion. However, she didn't show anything.
"Oh, you can join if you want to. I don't mind. My brother is already working with a guild, so I have no bad feelings about anyone working with guilds," she said.
"I see, that's all I wanted to know," Ning said.
Hi-Ah looked at him curiously, wondering why he wanted to know what he had asked. But, she quickly found it hard to care about as the time she had to spend here waiting for his turn to come around was quite enormous.
Finally, after nearly an hour, Ning's name was called. The people around him looked at him weirdly as the name being called out wasn't Korean, but rather Chinese.
Ning walked through the staring men and arrived in front of the crystal ball that would tell the world about his stats.
He thought for a moment. What exactly would this device figure out about him? Would it figure out everything about him or only the part that was affected by Mana? But then, he had been on earth for no more than 7 or 8 hours at this point, so he wasn't even sure how much mana he had gathered.
Should he actually hide his stats by any chance? Was there even any merit to hiding his stats at all?
'Why should I even bother?' he thought. 'Besides, I need to find the fruit that can heal Mana Poisoning.'
With that in mind, Ning placed his palm on the crystal ball and felt the energy flow through him. In mere moments, it would reveal all of his secrets.
