“Spirit Power, Stage Three.”
“Failed.”
Silas Vane stood beside the Spiritual Power Level testing device and delivered the verdict without a flicker of expression.
“Wh-what…”
The thin boy in front of him went pale the instant he heard it.
“Young man, this is the part where you’re supposed to say: ‘The river runs east for thirty years and west for the next thirty. Never look down on a struggling youth…'”
Silas felt a poke at his waist.
He turned to find the petite Ise Nanao glaring up at him.
“Don’t listen to his nonsense. There’s no such thing as a ‘Spirit Power Stage.’ He made it up himself.”
Nanao turned to explain to the examinee.
“That said… his conclusion is right. Your Spiritual Pressure is too low. The testing machine can’t even display a value for it.”
“I’m sorry. You don’t have the aptitude to become a Shinigami.”
The boy’s eyes filled with tears.
He turned and walked away, utterly dejected.
Silas watched his lonely back and let out a long sigh.
“The truth is the sharpest blade, Nanao-chan.”
Nanao rolled her eyes at him.
“That’s still better than fooling him with terms you invented.”
Silas laughed heartily.
It had been five years since he transmigrated to the Soul Society, and he had seen scenes like this too many times to count.
Souls came up from the Rukongai dreaming of becoming Shinigami, and most couldn’t clear even the most basic Spiritual Power Level threshold.
Normally a soul with that little spiritual power wouldn’t last more than a few decades, let alone become a Shinigami with a lifespan stretching into the thousands of years.
Silas tapped a few keys, and the numbers on the testing machine reset to zero.
“Alright, next.”
These few days were the enrollment period for the Shin’ō Academy.
As a fifth-year student at the academy, he was occasionally roped into helping the school with staff work.
Free labor, basically.
Today he and a handful of classmates were in charge of testing the Spiritual Power Levels of the incoming examinees.
“Silas, look over there.”
Silas followed Nanao’s gaze.
A group of three came walking through the crowd toward them.
At the front was a black-haired young man, back straight, steps steady, a bright, sun-like smile on his face.
Close behind him came a girl with an athletic build, her long black hair tied back with a white headband, carrying a wild and slightly rebellious air.
At the very back trailed a somewhat rugged-looking boy, his eyes scanning the surroundings with open curiosity.
Looking at them, Silas felt a strange sense of familiarity.
Beside him, Ise Nanao pushed up her glasses, her eyes turning a shade more serious.
“Do you feel it? His Spiritual Pressure… it’s very strong.”
Silas nodded.
Even at a distance, he could sense a spiritual force far beyond that of an ordinary examinee.
The black-haired young man lined up dutifully at the back of the queue, while the two younger ones stood off to the side, pulling faces at him and pumping their fists to cheer him on.
The line reached him quickly.
“Next, Number 176!”
The black-haired young man stepped forward and handed over his number plate.
“My name is Shiba Kaien, from West Rukongai.”
He said it with a smile, his voice very clear.
Silas looked at him and, without meaning to, went blank for a moment.
“What’s wrong?”
Noticing the lapse, Nanao turned her head and asked.
“Nothing.”
Silas shook his head, pushing down the swell in his chest.
He raised a finger and pointed at the testing device.
“Put your hand on it and release your Spiritual Pressure.”
Kaien did as he was told.
The next second, a powerful Spiritual Pressure erupted from him, and the numbers on the device began to climb fast.
At last the number stopped at six.
“Spiritual Power Level… Grade Six!”
The testing grounds broke into an uproar.
The teacher in charge of coordinating the day’s testing was suddenly standing beside Silas, staring at the result in shock.
A Grade Six Spiritual Power Level.
This was a Spiritual Pressure on the order of a high-ranking Seated Officer, or a lieutenant’s assistant.
Aptitude like this surfaced barely once in a hundred years in the whole history of the Shin’ō Academy.
Even Nanao, watching from the side, couldn’t hide her surprise.
The moment Shiba Kaien let go of the device and drew his Spiritual Pressure back in, a glowing fragment fell from him.
No one around so much as blinked.
Only Silas’s eyes narrowed a fraction.
This was the ability he had awakened after transmigrating.
He could see the various attribute fragments that dropped from other people, and by touching them he could absorb them and make them his own.
Over the past three years, on the back of that ability, he had quietly climbed from a bottom-rung student whose Spiritual Pressure barely met the admission line to where he stood now.
On top of that, by hanging around the library with Nanao so often, he had picked up a large stock of Kidō knowledge fragments.
Silas took a casual step forward and brushed the fragment as he handed back the number plate.
[Obtained Spiritual Power Fragment, Spiritual Power Level EXP +200]
His pupils tightened.
The fragments he usually picked up were worth single digits.
A single burst of Spiritual Pressure had just dropped a two-hundred-point experience fragment…
“Not bad.”
Silas drew a slow breath and looked at Shiba Kaien in front of him.
“Shiba Kaien, you’ve passed the Spiritual Power test. Come back tomorrow on time for the second round of exams.”
“Alright, thanks for your hard work.”
Kaien smiled as he withdrew his hand, then turned to flash a victory sign at the excited Kūkaku and Ganju.
Watching them, Silas felt his thoughts drift as memories of his past life came surging up.
Shiba Kaien.
The man who would finish every Shin’ō Academy course within two years, join the Gotei 13 the moment he graduated, and make lieutenant in five…
“Hey, why are you spacing out?”
Nanao tapped his shoulder lightly with her rolled-up book.
“It’s time for the next one.”
Silas came back to himself, nodded, and carried on with the testing.
“That really is incredible talent. Back when I enrolled, my Spiritual Power Level was only Grade Eighteen.”
“Indeed.” Nanao turned a page in the Kidō theory book in her hand.
“It seems a formidable one will emerge among this year’s freshmen.”
As she spoke, a white fragment drifted down at her side.
Seeing it, Silas reached over and patted Nanao’s head, letting the fragment settle onto himself along the way.
[Obtained Kidō Insight, Kidō EXP +5]
“What are you doing?”
Nanao smacked his hand away and looked at him, a little lost for words.
“Nothing. My heart just swells to watch the world’s heroes stream past like a school of fish.”
“What ‘world’s heroes’? There’s exactly one who stands out from the crowd.”
“Ha. You’re a tough one, little sister.”
“Get lost… By the way, you said you opened another shop out in the Rukongai. Which number is this one now?”
“Let me think. The third, I believe.”
“Tsk. Capitalist…”
Silas: ?
While he chatted with Nanao, the Spiritual Power Level testing rolled on.
By the end of the day, Silas had helped test hundreds of people.
The ones who passed were few and far between.
Most had middling aptitude, Grade Eighteen or Nineteen; now and then someone came in at Grade Fifteen or Sixteen and counted as a decent prospect.
Extreme, high-end Spiritual Power like Kaien’s never showed up again.
Silas didn’t mind.
He worked his way diligently into every corner of the testing grounds, quietly gathering up those invisible fragments.
[Obtained Spiritual Power Fragment x2, Spiritual Power Level EXP +10]
[Obtained Kidō Insight x2, Kidō EXP +10]
Sadly, for a crowd of raw freshmen, the fragment drop rate was negligible.
It wasn’t even as much Kidō experience as little Nanao shed while reading her book.
The day’s harvest, Shiba Kaien’s surprise aside, could only be called better than nothing.
As the sun went down, the enrollment work drew to a close.
The grounds slowly emptied, and the staff on testing duty packed up and left one by one.
Silas and Nanao walked out of the testing grounds side by side, heading for the cafeteria to eat.