The next day Luke and Alice went to get tested(author: at the guildhall). After entering the guildhall, they met with the guild master who was also an elf. An older fellow but he seemed to eminent the aura of someone who should not be messed with. He looked to be about sixty years old and that means he was way older than anyone Luke had met in his life since elves have a very long life span. “Greetings guild master, my name is Luke”, he introduced himself. “I know who you are young man, I heard you have two elements. That is very rare but I will not give you a high rank just for that or give you a high rank for being related to nobility. I hope you’re not all talk and have some skills.” Luke was kind of pissed of now, this old man was assuming that Luke was just some lucky kid of some noble. He wanted to show the guild master but he was also kind of scared to be found out by this old man. His last experience with an old man was bad enough when he dealt with earl Evert. Luke thought about it for a second and replied, “I hope not to waste your time today, guild master.” Luke wanted to be placed into at least B rank because anything below that seemed like a waste of time. B ranks were allowed to enter B rank dungeons and even go into A rank dungeons if supervised.

The guild master turned his eyes to Alice and spoke, “well, hello there young lady.” Alice replied, “I am pleased to make you acquaintance guild master.” “I haven’t seen very many elves this far away from the elf nation, why are you getting tested alongside this human?” he asked. Alice replied respectfully “I am young and was hoping to explore the continent when I received an offer to teach a human child, now he is here alongside me.” Luke noticed that Alice didn’t even bother to lie to the old man and thought it might be wise just to be more cautious around him. The guild master decided to cut to the chase and said to follow him. He led to the basement and through a door into a large room into the back of the guildhall, the space had a roof but there was light coming through and it was well lit. It had a floor made of some sort of cement or mug and targets equally placed on all sides of the wall. “The first task is simple, I want you to shoot those 10 targets with your fire magic but you’re only allowed to cast one spell,” said he said. Luke knew this was a very simple exercise in magic control and anyone above the intermediate rank should be able to do this. He made a large fire ball appear and he threw the ball to one target and incinerated each target till he finished with the tenth one.

The guild master was very impressed with Luke’s skill of just using one fireball instead of making ten appear with one spell because he was actually just testing what kind of mage a person was. A mage that would use ten different fireballs would mean the person is good but has no skill in controlling his magic or creativity to use a simple spell. The way he intended the test to be was on measuring the magic control and skill of a mage, not just power. Luke was one of the few that understood he needed to use his brain, rather than some complicated spell to hit all of the targets at once. The guild master knew this young man was a skilled magician just by that. He decided to test the elf, if she was the one who taught this young man, she must also be in the advanced tier of her magic. “Now, young elf, it’s your turn. Hit those ten targets on the other wall,” he said. Alice used her water magic to summon water and turned it into a blade then the targets were all cut in an instant. The guild master expected as much from her since she should have been able to do this much as an elf born in the elf nation.

Luke didn’t know what this old man was thinking with this test besides testing their magic control. “What else does he want to measure?” Luke wondered. A few moments after Alice finished her target hitting the guild master had a smile on his face. A smile like he just found a cash cow that was going to make him a lot of gold if just he took care of it a little in the next few years. Luke thought he had hidden his power enough for the old man to not notice but it seems like the old man knew they were better than just the average advanced tier mages. “You guys are very close to being saint class, I feel it,” the guild master said. “Thank you, guild master, we are honored by your words” Alice replied. “It has been a long time since I’ve seen adventurers that were this capable. Let me introduce myself, my name is Ares,” he said. “Thank you,” replied Luke.

Luke learned that he would be a B rank adventurer but if he proved himself later in the future, he would be promoted to A rank. The reason he was given was that he seemed a little too young and he needed more experience. Alice was given A rank because she was older and the guild master thought she could do A rank dungeons and quests without any issue. Luke got what he wanted originally and he would be happy to just stay in Alice’s shadow in the future if they ever did something. Luke didn’t want the promotion to somehow end him up in S rank. He hadn’t even displayed much of his strength and the guild master had somehow noticed he was strong enough to be in A rank if he had more experience. Luke wondered how the guild master knew Alice had “experience”, do elf children get trained differently than how Luke was trained? Luke left his train of thought as he and Alice began to look at quests on the quest board. There were C rank quests on hunting some small beasts. Some B rank quests on dealing with bandits, beasts, mercenary work, and C rank quests that were not completed for longer than a month. A rank quests had something to do with magical beast extermination, a few on dealing with demons and some asked to do work for nobility such as guard duty. There were two S rank quests, one was for defeating the demon lord’s generals and the second was defeating the black dragon. There were also a small list of dungeons for each rank and the location of the dungeons, A and B rank had the most dungeons, there was only one C rank dungeon. S ranks had all the dungeons and the one where the black dragon was located. The dungeons and locations associated with the demon lord’s generals were unknown.

Luke got a lot of information and with each bit, he questioned how dangerous this world would be for him. There was a demon lord for god’s sake. Was he like a cool guy or just someone who was made to be the bad guy for nothing? He knew it was a world of fantasy but why the hell was there a demon lord. He wondered what roles the gods of this world played in the creation of the demon lord and what religion said about the demon lord. He could imagine it now, he would be killed by some demon or crushed in a dungeon’s rubble made by a dragon wagging its tail. He knew that if this was a video game, this world had a difficulty level of hard or even hell, the player(him) didn’t even have much to go on. Where are the screens that pop up for the player to control his skills, look at maps, go to teleport points, and chat to request help on something or form a party? Luke was going to need to learn how to communicate very well, keep his guard on for everything, hopefully not fall into a trap or get betrayed. His peaceful life on the farm had hardly given him this much information. His parents had always kept what they did on adventures a secret topic and the storybooks talked about heroes but they were shown as something unreal. Luke got the first dose of the real world and it was a painful dose, worse than any wound he had gotten in his past life. He was also somewhat positive that his skills were good since he could wield all the elements and null magic. He still needed to learn light and dark magic spells, they could come in handy someday in a dungeon or a tricky situation.