The magician sent by the kingdom would be arriving shortly to test affinities. Everyone who had yet to be tested was lined up at the entrance of the village from oldest to youngest, right to left. The two wonder kids were standing the farthest to the right, looking all prim and proper. The formal clothes in this world were so colorful, add a red nose to them plus their already red hair and we got a pair of bonafide clowns.

“Ha, Ha, hmm.”

Macho was standing in front of the line, ready to greet the kingdom’s magician as the head of the church. Surprised? Yes, Macho was the head of the church now after the last one died when the church bell fell on him two years ago.

He may or may not have slowly cut the supporting beam over an extended period. The head priest was just such a jackass. So he observed him, figured out his schedule to know when he would be under the bell. He slowly cut away at the beam and added water to make it look like rot. Then one day, simply set up someone to pull a rope that happened to be attached to the beam and, Uh, Oh, the head priest is dead. A very glorious death that he saw from outside through a church window. The bell made his brains splatter everywhere. No healing that. People were “picking his brain” out of their hair for days. Hilarious.

He was now ten years old but physically fifteen. He was also getting very confused about differentiating ages, so he will just call himself fifteen from now on.

In the distance, he spotted a golden gilded carriage kicking up dust on the dirt road heading towards him. Someone was a high roller it seemed. It was being pulled by an eight-legged horse called a Sleipnir, he had never seen one before. It honestly looked kind of freaky. He was used to only seeing horses with four legs, and this was just too many legs. Freaky deeky with a side of leaky, the horse was peeing.

While he had been thinking, the carriage had stopped in front of them. The coach who looked to be a male soldier dismounted and walked next to the horse, getting out some oats. They slipped in the pee puddle and got a pretty good view down there.

“Mother fff… I present her magicious Kella”

Oooh looks like he almost slipped up there while he was getting back to his feet.

The carriage door opened while the soldier tried to dry his armor. Is pee hard to get out of chainmail? Never mind, best to ignore him. Ignoring him was not that hard because, BOOM, a bombshell just stepped out of the carriage. She was very pretty, with long dark blue hair, blue eyes, and a straight nose. He wondered what she would look like if he chopped her nose off. A professional nose job.

Yes, he just thought giggle.

She continued down some steps from the carriage to land on the dirt road. She was wearing a robe, must be from some church. It had red and yellow flames on it. He had no idea what church it could be, none at all.

“I am from the church of fire, sent here by the kingdom to test your affinities.”

Church of fire? Who could have guessed? Not him.

She walked toward the right side of the line where all the oldest kids were. First up to be tested was Lily. Kella had pulled out a simple-looking rock, nothing special about it at all. This was called an affinity stone, they randomly appear in random spots. The reason the church does the testing is that they have been around a long time and amassed stones over the years. The stones appear randomly and look normal, so it is really by chance that someone would find one. You can’t go around picking up rocks all day, hoping to find one. There is also no reason to because the church already tests everyone anyways.

Lily touched the stone and her eyes widened as she looked at something only visible to her. This would be the interface, a mystical screen that appears in front of people when they do something of note. For example, leveling up, or attaining a class, or for instance, touching a stone to activate said interface. You can’t just pull it up whenever you want and have a look, you have to earn it.

“Ooh, a holy fire affinity, a combination of fire and light. We may have a place for you in our church.”

She got an uncommon affinity. How much more annoying can she be. Look at her squirming, trying to keep in her excitement. Disgusting.

“Congratulations, you have the metal affinity, a combination of light and earth.”

Rats, Jack also got an uncommon one. He wished he could just chop them up into baby-sized pieces and just kick them through windows.

That would put him in the same league as his traveler scum parents. His water would be crystal clear, no scum in sight. Of course, the occasional skimming is needed, he can’t just not kill people who piss him off, that would be ridiculous. But the scum level of his parents is just too much to clean. How should he kill these two instead?

While he was thinking away it seemed it had come to be his turn. The village boys and girls before him all got plain elements, no combination. He HAD been paying attention after all.

He reached out to touch the stone. It was smooth and cool to the touch. A window appeared in his vision which he eagerly read.

HP: 10/10 MP: 10/10 Str: 5 Ag: 5 End: 8 Dex: 8 Int: 8 Class: NA LV: 0 Affinity: Perpetual LV: 1 Skills: Identify

Perpetual?

Kella looked disgusted. She immediately kicked his feet out from under him then spit on him.

“Looks like we got a deficient affinity, perpetual, never seen that one before. If he uses any mana at all, it will continue to drain out of him till the last drop and kill him. What a useless pig”

She continued to walk down the line and test everyone else. Then she spoke to Macho about the promising affinities and left, leaving a trail of dust from her carriage.

He was still on the ground, shocked that he, who was destined to be a hero, would have such a garbage affinity.

He was interrupted from his thoughts by a slap to the face. Maelstront had slapped him. He was no longer Macho but Maelstront.

“I am disappointed in you. Now go clean out your room.”

He stood up from the ground, his cheek stinging. He turned and walked towards the church. He knew what would happen if anyone got a deficient affinity, they would be treated as slaves and ridiculed. He would be made to do the worst jobs in the village, starved, beaten, and never getting a chance to leave. If he tried to leave, people would hunt him down then kill him. After all, what can he do to defend himself, he can’t even use mana.

All the classes used mana except for a few that were looked down upon. If you had a class that did not use mana, you would be ridiculed just as harshly as someone with a deficient affinity, never getting a chance to level your class. They were suppressed.

This was the worst possible outcome. Why did he even come to this world if not to save it or something along those lines? Wait for a second, why did he kill that priest? He was a jackass but does that warrant murder? There must be something more. There had to be a better reason, he just can’t remember what it was.

While he was packing up his clothes, he noticed that his knife was missing.

“Fuck.”

He was cut on the arm. It was a nasty gash on his outer forearm about ten centimeters, four inches, long.

“Well well well, we can’t let slaves have weapons now, can we boys?”

Lily elicited a sound of agreement from her goons after she had cut him.

“AAHH, he’s attacking me”

He had not moved at all. He was aware that they finally had their excuse to beat him up. Lily was just putting the cherry on top with the additional excuse of him attacking her. Lily, Jack, and the rest of their goons continued to beat him to a pulp.

When they were finished he had two black eyes, bruises all over his body, a cut on his left forearm, and three knocked-out teeth. They left him to bleed on the floor. He had not uttered one sound during the beating, perhaps they thought he had gone unconscious, but he hadn’t. He was just busy thinking of all the ways he could slice or crush them.

When they were all out of the room he struggled to get up. He coughed up a bit of blood when he got onto the chair. There would be no more healing magic for him, he would have to bandage it the old fashion way. He grabbed a shirt which he tied around the cut to stop the bleeding. Then he picked up his teeth and washed them in some water. The teeth were shoved into their respective gaps in his mouth.

He continued to pack his things in a cloth bag he swung over his shoulder. Then he walked towards the edge of town into a shack. The shack was full of holes and abandoned. He stepped through the door to see a rat shitting in the middle of the room.

“Fuck me, no, fuck you.”

He stepped towards the rat but tripped. He fell with his face landing in the shit.

“Could this day get any worse?”

He jinxed it, the rat was now in his hair peeing on him.

The rat fell off when he swatted it. He stood up to find a cracked mirror, his reflection looked haggard. One hundred and seventy centimeters tall, five foot and five inches, dark green hair and violet eyes. He would look pretty good but right now he looked pale with bruises and scrapes all over his body. This was the first time he had looked at his reflection.

He looked the same as he did on earth, the colors were just different. He had honestly never looked at his reflection before then.

As night was approaching he shoved his bag under his head and slept on the ground. The doorway was left open because the shack did not have a door.

….

A kick to the shin made him wide awake in an instant.

“It’s time to wake up Zelhaut, you’ll be working the fields today, pig swine.”

A villager had rudely awakened him to begin his backbreaking work. He got up and began walking towards the pond to wash up.

“Where do you think you’re going”

CRACK

A pain appeared on his back between the shoulder blades. A whip slithering back towards its master pulled his gaze towards the villager. The villager was gesturing towards the fields with his other hand. He will now be known in his mind as slaver A.

He trudged towards the fields and began working. He worked from dawn till dusk with no breaks, except the occasional whipping for doing something “wrong”. This village is just filled to the brim with sadists, too bad he’s not a masochist.

….

He was seventeen now. He had been working hard labor for two years. He hated to admit it but he was wearing thin, he did not know how much more of this he could take. He might just wander into the forest to be eaten by beasts, that would be better than enduring more of this. That was when he spotted a tall woman, she was around two and a half meters, eight feet two inches, tall and covered from head to toe in armor and cloth that resembled a samurai from his old world. She even had a mask depicting some kind of demon on her face. None of her skin was showing, even her eyes were not visible behind the mask.

Out of curiosity, he identified her.

Class: Ronin Lv: NA Affinity: NA Lv: NA

This was interesting. He knew that there were ways to block people from identifying certain aspects of themselves, like items or certain skills, but they were very rare.