The evaluation summons arrived two days later, delivered by a junior Association clerk who looked faintly nervous handing it over, as though William might do something unpredictable simply for being asked to report. He read the notice twice, the small guardian sniffing curiously at the parchment’s edge, before folding it into his pocket and heading for the Association’s testing wing that same afternoon.
’Talent grade reassessment. Combat aptitude testing.’ He’d expected this since the moment Yuen mentioned it in the plaza. ’Standard procedure, she said. Let’s see how standard it actually is for someone whose Talent isn’t supposed to exist yet.’
The testing wing was a separate building from the healing ward, all polished stone floors and humming crystal arrays, the kind of place William had only ever seen from the outside during his years as an F-Rank nobody. A technician in Association grey led him through a series of chambers, each one lined with softly glowing runes he didn’t recognize, murmuring instructions in the bored tone of someone who’d walked a thousand hunters through the same process.
"Talent scan first," the technician said, gesturing toward a raised platform at the chamber’s center. "Stand here. This won’t hurt."
William stepped onto the platform, and the runes surrounding it flared to life, a soft blue light climbing up around him in a column that hummed faintly against his skin. He held still, uncertain what exactly the scan was searching for, and tried not to think too hard about what it might find.
The light faded after several long seconds, and the technician frowned down at a crystal slate in his hands, tapping it twice as though expecting the readout to change.
"That’s strange," the technician muttered, more to himself than to William.
"What’s strange?"
"Your Talent’s registering as Taming. Same as your original ceremony record." The technician tapped the slate again, brow furrowing deeper. "Grade reads as Common, same as before. No change detected."
William kept his expression carefully neutral, though something in his chest loosened at the words. ’It can’t see the System. Whatever changed inside me, whatever the Mythical grade actually is, the scan doesn’t register any of it.’
"Run it again," the technician said, more to himself than to William, adjusting one of the runic dials at the platform’s base. The blue light climbed a second time, longer now, more thorough, and still the readout came back unchanged when it faded.
"I don’t understand." The technician glanced up at him, something between suspicion and genuine confusion crossing his face. "You walked out of a Tower two days ago with a Guardian Class beast bonded to you. That kind of taming success should register as at minimum a Talent grade jump, maybe two. The scanner’s not showing anything past your original Common grade reading."
"Maybe the scanner’s wrong," William offered, careful to keep his voice mild, curious rather than defensive. "Or maybe whatever let me tame it doesn’t work the way normal Talent growth does."
The technician didn’t look satisfied with either answer, but after a third failed scan produced the same stubborn result, he seemed to accept there was nothing more the equipment could tell him. "I’ll need to note the discrepancy for the file. Captain Yuen may want to follow up personally."
’Let her follow up. There’s nothing here for her to find either.’
They moved next to the combat aptitude chamber, a larger space with training constructs lining the walls, animated golems calibrated to test a hunter’s raw physical output against controlled resistance. William went through the paces methodically, his improved stats from the night before making themselves known in small, satisfying ways, faster reflexes, stronger strikes, none of it dramatic enough to draw undue alarm but enough to register as genuine growth on the technician’s readouts.
"Strength and Agility both show modest improvement consistent with disciplined training," the technician noted, sounding somewhat relieved to have found at least one metric behaving the way he expected. "Nothing outside normal bounds for someone who’s been through a significant combat experience."
The final test involved Cerberus directly, the small guardian summoned forward from where it had been waiting patiently outside the chamber, and the technician’s composure cracked visibly the moment the bonding scan confirmed what half the city already suspected.
"Confirmed bond. Guardian Class entity, tamed and loyal." The technician stared at the readout for a long moment before looking back up at William, something like reluctant awe creeping into his expression despite the earlier confusion. "I don’t have an explanation for how a Common grade Talent achieved this. The bonding confirms as genuine, no signs of external artifact assistance or borrowed power. Whatever you did in that Tower, Mister Belforht, it’s not something our equipment was built to measure."
’Because it’s not something this world has ever had to measure before.’ William kept the thought carefully behind his neutral expression. ’The System is outside everything you know how to test for. As far as your scanners are concerned, I’m exactly the same person I was three days ago. Just luckier.’
Captain Yuen arrived partway through the final report, reading over the technician’s notes with a slow, careful frown, and when she finally looked up at William, there was something guarded in her eyes that hadn’t been there in the plaza two days earlier.
"Your Talent grade remains registered as Common," she said. "Officially, nothing about your classification has changed. Unofficially, you’ve bonded a Guardian Class monster our systems can’t explain, using power our systems can’t detect." She set the slate down slowly. "That puts you in an unusual position, Mister Belforht. Not powerful enough on paper to warrant special attention. Too anomalous in practice to ignore entirely."
"What does that mean for me?"
"For now, it means the Association has no formal grounds to restrict or reassign your status. You remain F-Rank, Common grade Talent, exactly as you were before the incident." Something almost like reluctant respect flickered across her expression. "It also means you’re going to have people watching you regardless of what the paperwork says. Guilds don’t need official confirmation to recognize an opportunity when they see one walking around with a Guardian Class beast at his heel."
William nodded slowly, filing the warning away alongside everything else Reyes had already told him.
’Nothing changed on paper. Nothing they can prove, nothing they can measure, nothing they can control.’ He glanced down at the small guardian pressed against his leg, and felt something settle into place beneath the lingering unease, quiet and certain. ’Which means whatever I build from here, I build on my own terms.’