We were able to get a suite, because Doom was royalty in one of the biggest kingdoms in the world. There were four beds, black carpet, four armchairs, a dinner table, a kitchen, and a single bathroom. I asked why there was only one bathroom. The team explained that you don’t need to use the bathroom once you absorb six soul stones. There was a living room with a projector, and a weird block of wood. Doom touched some numbers and it started rattling.

A projection came up, showing a creature of Doom’s kind. He was nine centimeters taller than Doom, suggesting he was diamond category to Doom’s silver. Doom siad, “Hi dad,” and his dad asked, “Who is that,” and he pointed at me. I haven’t seen his kind since I was three hundred and thirty-eight. He looked about fifty, and was in better shape than Doom. Doom had told me his father was about five hundred years old, and he only looked young because of the anti-aging effects of diamond category.

He and his dad talked about stuff I didn’t remotely understand for almost an hour before it was time for dinner. Doom’s dad was in another time zone, so it wasn’t dinner time for him. Doom just put a silver coin in his mouth. I went out to a restaurant. There was a monster more powerful than a normal barreling hedgehog, so I summoned my Waeswar and he killed the monster. I collected the drops from it, and I got nothing good. I had a local delicacy, and when I got back to the suite it was about eight o'clock. I went to the projector, and it projected a TV, which I watched until about eleven o’clock, which is when I went to bed. I woke up at about six AM.

Doom had woken me up, with his alarm. It was weird, it sounded like a brick had hit a piece of steel four times at a frequency of two hundred thirty-seven hz. How I could tell, I don’t know. He took me to a complex. He spoke to the reception. He said “First of all, I need a silver category badge. Second, I want to register a new one. Arjun, is that OK?” “For what?” I asked. “One of the highest-paying jobs in the world.” “Of course” I responded! What a great opportunity! Doom put a badge on the counter, along with a small device. They flipped over that badge, and took out a small device, and put a new one in-the one Doom provided. They made some modifications to it, and gave it back to Doom. Doom turned to me. He said, “We’ll start your training tomorrow.” Then, we went to a training yard, and I watched them train. It was amazing. It was like watching a Taekwondo demo done by superheroes using their powers. They were also, as I've mentioned before, insanely fit. Doom was the fittest of them all, being silver category. I was a nonillion percent amazed (a nonillion is the real term for ten to the power of fifty-four).

At around 10 o’clock, they popped bronze coins in their mouths. They told me to get out of the area, because they were going to practice soul stuff. At about noon, we actually all had lunch. At the table, they presented to me 4 items. They were these:

Soul stone of darkness

Soul stone of sin

Soul stone of death

Soul stone of omen

I absorbed them all, and I got these powers:

You have absorbed the soul stone of darkness

New power unlocked

Perception of darkness

Class perception

Effect (copper)

Makes your vision perfect and allows you to see in the dark

You have absorbed the soul stone of sin

New power unlocked

Sinfree Soul

Class soul

Effect (copper)

Allows you to attack with your soul, inflicting (brain death) on enemy

Brain death-your brain suddenly completely detaches itself from the nervous system

You have absorbed the soul stone of death

New power unlocked

Cloak of death

Class counjurement

Effect (copper)

Cost

Low death mana

Summons a cloak, which works as armor, and allows you to change the ambient light

Summoning incantation: Cloak of death, arize

You have absorbed the soul stone of omen

New power unlocked

Bad Omen

Class affliction

Effect: (copper)

Cost

Low death mana

Cooldown: ten seconds

Inflicts your opponent with (oddly terrible luck)

Incantation: your luck’s fate is to suffer

Oddly terrible luck: your opponent has no good luck for a week

A soul stone appeared in my hand:

Soul stone of doom

I absorbed it

You have absorbed the soul stone of doom

New power unlocked

Execute

Class spell of death

Effect (copper)

Cost

High death mana

Cooldown: one hour

Kills the nearest opponent if they're within a kilometer if they're copper category or below.

Incantation: you will die

I felt a great power surging within me. I started glowing with gray light. Doom tossed me a bottle of the thing he had poured on himself when he had become silver category. Gunk shot out of my pores. I poured the stuff on myself. It felt like I needed to climb a mountain or run a marathon or something. I used to be a normal-looking person, but now I was about as fit as a mediocre professional athlete. I equipped my atrion armor. I could run at twenty kilometers per hour for an hour without getting tired. I could jump one meter into the air and not get hurt. I could knee my head just as easily as a Taekwondo black belt. I could memorize books and read them at ten times the pace of a normal person. I ate an iron coin for dinner. It tasted like tangy pineapple. I finally went to bed after dinner, knowing I would need to for my training.

I woke up at six because of Doom’s alarm. We started training on strength, flexibility, and using my traits appropriately with Doom until lunch, which was just a coin. After that, we trained with Fesoul on magic and soul. We trained with Joe after dinner until bedtime on everything else required. This went on for a week, when we took a break because Doom had to go on a business trip to assess some iron-category people to get the job I was training for.

After Doom came back, we started training more rigorously, with doom waking us up at five o’clock. We had a month left before I would get assessed for my job. A week before the assessment, Doom took me to a mansion. A peak silver-category answered the door. She called upstairs, “Bob! The sparring partner from Doom’s recommendation is here!”

A person as fit as a bronze-category came, even though I could sense he was iron-category. We spared for an hour every day for a week, while Doom, Joe, and Fesoul sparred with his mother, who was almost as powerful as a gold-category. One thing I had been taught was that gold-categories were elite and diamond-categories were almost mythical. No diamond-category had had anyone but a fellow diamond-category see their combat ability, as the collateral damage for a diamond-category fight was so massive, it would kill a gold-category. A diamond category could run across the Earth in a few seconds, they could jump to the moon, and they could look into the future, for some examples of their power. It was so immense, that there were very few, even though if they weren’t killed, they could live for a thousand years. Doom, Joe, and Fesoul were some of the few people lucky enough to have met one, but Doom’s grandfather was diamond category, so that was sort of a given.

On the day of the assessment, we went out into the woods. We stayed out there for ten days. I passed. I got the job. I started making recordings for my family if I ever got back.