The testing chamber lay beneath the Guild.
It was circular, with walls reinforced by magical metal and runes carved into the floor. Crystal pillars stood around the edge. Beyond a shimmering barrier, a Guild examiner waited with a clipboard and the tired patience of a man who had seen every kind of ability and been disappointed by most of them.
"My name is Pell; kindly step forward into the center."
Sung-Il stepped into the center. Six-Ears, who had refused to wait outside, sat at the barrier like a tiny bodyguard.
High above, a viewing gallery ran around the chamber’s rim. Most of it was empty. In one corner, though, a broad-shouldered woman in scratched armor leaned on the railing, arms crossed, a huge weapon on her back. She wasn’t talking to anyone. She was just watching him.
Sung-Il looked away. Weird, he thought, and promptly forgot it.
"Most abilities reveal themselves during testing," the examiner said.
He touched the first crystal. "Stand still."
Sung-Il also touched the crystal. Pale light passed over Sung-Il, making his teeth itch. A slate beside the barrier filled with tiny marks.
ABILITY ANALYSIS BEGINNING
Pell frowned and turned the slate sideways.
Sung-Il straightened. Here it came. Unknown rank. Impossible potential. An exploding instrument, preferably after everyone had moved away from the expensive parts.
"Local biological perception," Pell said.
The crystal remained insultingly intact. "That’s all?"
"That’s what this instrument confirms." Pell tapped a second line & said, "It cannot establish the full parameters or an upper limit from this examination."
Sung-Il leaned forward. "Unlimited potential?"
"Unmeasured potential." Pell corrected
"You make everything sound worse."
"It saves lives." Pell studied the slate. "There’s also an unresolved condition involving compatibility."
"Compatibility with what?"
"If I knew, it would be resolved."
Sung-Il felt strangely relieved. Not good. But for the first time, something about his ridiculous ability sounded promising.
The examiner placed a wooden dummy in front of Sung-Il & asked him to attack a wooden dummy.
Sung-Il looked at the dummy. The dummy looked considerably more employable than he did.
"With what?"
"Your ability."
"You read the name."
"I’ve learned not to judge names."
"Your job is to judge right?"
Before beginning, Pell had asked whether a public demonstration was acceptable. Sung-Il, still imagining an impressive debut, had agreed.
Sung-Il focused on the dummy’s wooden backside.
Nothing happened, then he circled around it, crouched, and tried again.
The examiner wrote something.
"Please don’t write that."
"Fails on wood."
"That sounds worse."
"Would you prefer unresponsive to timber?"
"No."
The examiner named Pell had silver eyebrows, three ink stains on his sleeve, and no visible capacity for wonder.
"Unique abilities are narrow at first," Pell said. "We establish the narrowness before somebody sells you a dragon-hunting permit."
"People sell those?"
"People sell everything."
Pell called in an adult porter named Daro, who had volunteered for the test in exchange for an early lunch. Daro was short, cheerful, and wearing an apron that said "PLEASE USE BOTH HANDLES."
"I have a handle on each shoulder," he explained. "I work as a harness. Everybody asks me about that; I am happy."
"I wasn’t going to" said Sung-Il
"You were looking at them."
Pell placed chalk marks across the floor. Daro agreed to the examination and stood on the first one, facing Sung-Il.
Sung-Il focused on Daro intently, imagining if something would happen
Nothing.
"Turn around, Mr. Daro," Pell said.
Daro turned.
Sung-Il concentrated on the outline of the man’s hips. One second passed. Then a second.
[RECTUM ANALYSIS.]
[LOWER TRACT: MILD DISTENSION.]
[PELVIC STRAIN: NONE OBSERVED.]
[CAUSE: THE SUBJECT ATE SOMETHING.]
[OTHER FEATURES LOCKED]
He read it aloud except for the locked feature aspect.
Daro considered this. "I had bean stew."
Pell made a note.
"Did I identify the beans?" Sung-Il asked.
"No. You identified constipation, I think. Daro identified his lunch."
"It was breakfast," Daro said.
"Then you’re ahead of us both."
They moved farther apart. At 10 meters the window still held. Beyond the next mark it vanished. A thick shield blocked Daro’s lower body; the reading vanished again. An ordinary coat did not stop it.
When Daro turned around and faced him after acquisition of the analysis window, the reading remained until a crystal pillar crossed between them.
Sung-Il tried looking at Pell while keeping Daro’s panel open. The first panel closed. Pell’s window did not appear until he turned, and Sung-Il held the rear angle for two seconds.
"One person," Pell said. "Line of sight: short to mid range. Acquisition from the rear or rear quarter. We’ll record those as observed limits, not eternal laws."
"Wait," Sung-Il said. "A few days ago, outside the city, my ability detected a powerful entity. A woman riding with some armored people. She had a blue aura. I was several kilometers away."
Pell stopped writing. "You could see the aura yourself?"
"Yes. And the system said, ’Powerful Individual Detected.’
Then it said, "Analysis was unavailable because she was outside my range."
"Did it give you her level? Her ability? Anything about her body?"
"No."
"Did you deliberately activate it?"
"No. It appeared by itself."
Pell added a separate entry to the slate. "Then we have two observations. An automatic alert at a distance, and a detailed reading that requires you to be much closer."
"So it isn’t broken?"
"We haven’t established that it was ever broken, but I have several personal complaints about it." "Those need a larger form." Pell underlined the new entry.
"We don’t yet know what triggers the alert. Raw power, visible mana—any of those would be a guess. Seeing one notification doesn’t mean you can search the city for powerful people whenever you like."
"I wasn’t going to." Sung-Il added
Pell looked at him. "I had only started considering the employment opportunities. For now, record the exact wording if it happens again. Don’t confuse noticing someone with being able to examine them."
"So I can’t inspect an army."
"Can you survive standing ten meters behind an army?"
"Fair point."
Daro braced to lift the test weight.
[LOCAL TENSION: RISING BY 60%]
Sung-Il pointed excitedly.
"I can tell he’s lifting!"
"So can I," Pell said.
Daro set the weight down and tightened the same muscles without touching it. The line changed again.
[LOCAL TENSION: RISING BY 48%]
Sung-Il’s excitement quietly packed its bags.
"You see tension and movement," Pell said. "You must learn what it means. Two different causes may look alike."
"And I can’t make it stop?"
"Can you?"
Sung-Il tried.
Daro waited patiently.
"No."
"Then put that in the report."
At the gallery rail, the armored woman smiled once. Not unkindly. Sung-Il wasn’t sure whether that helped.
They tested a sleeping beetle in a jar. He received an indistinct pressure pattern and a warning that the anatomy was unfamiliar.
[LEVEL TOO LOW]
No species name. No explanation. The beetle rolled onto its feet and went on with its tiny, successful life.
By the end, Sung-Il had a headache and a support classification.
Daro had lunch.
The dummy had suffered no consequences whatsoever.
Pell handed him a yellow card. "No unsupervised medical claims. Show a licensed healer your observations if anyone is ill. You are not qualified to identify a disease."
"Could you put that more encouragingly?"
"You need to accept what you have. Think about its ceiling and what is still explorable within the domain."
That was inconveniently encouraging.
Pell offered him a choice of report copies. One for his own records, one shortened version for employers, and the full examination record kept under the Guild’s seal.
"Does everybody get to watch?" Sung-Il asked, glancing at the gallery.
"Demonstrations are public if you agree. Personal details aren’t. You can request a closed room next time."
He made a mental note to do exactly that before any next time became embarrassing.
As Sung-Il took the card, a private window opened.
[SECONDARY BRANCH: RESONANCE INTEREST WITHIN VICINITY.]
[RESONANCE: INACTIVE.]
[COMPATIBLE PATTERN: NONE.]
He waited for an explanation. The window remained exactly as helpful as a locked door.
"Resonance," he muttered.
It sounded expensive. That was all he knew about it.
He felt heat crawl into his face.
"Something else?" Pell asked.
"A private function, I think. I need to understand it before testing anything."
Pell held out a second card. "Private consultation appointments. Don’t demonstrate it in the lobby; I would prefer to be aware of what the rectum analysis private function is. I am sure it can’t be displayed publicly."
"I wasn’t planning to."
"Wonderful. We’re both having a good day."
Above them, the armored woman collected a public employment slip from the gallery clerk. Sung-Il saw her leave and wondered briefly who she had come to hire.
Probably the dummy.
That evening he earned a cot by sweeping the Guild steps. His first official wage was a heel of bread and the right not to sleep in a gutter.
He took the bread to the roof.
Asterra climbed around him in terraces. Narrow bridges crossed the dark between tiers. A bell rang below; a second answered higher up, and platforms began carrying goods homeward.
Six-Ears sat beside his knee, watching a winged courier limp across a distant landing.
Sung-Il opened his status.
[LEVEL: 1.]
STRENGTH: 5
AGILITY: 5
VITALITY: 5
MAGIC: 5
[STORED ENERGY: 0.]
Nothing had increased because he felt miserable. That seemed unnecessarily realistic.
He thought about his old room. The unsubmitted application. Someone would eventually enter it and find the circle, assuming the room still existed.
He didn’t know what they would find of him.
For a moment, the city lights blurred.
Six-Ears pushed its warm head beneath his palm. Sung-Il scratched between two of the ears and pretended he had only been tired.
He would keep the other world to himself. He could barely explain the ability he had, let alone the thing that had given it to him.
Below the roof, somebody laughed. A chair scraped. Life went on without needing his permission. Sung-Il looked at the family with two old couples and one young couple, eating dinner and laughing. Sung-Il fell into some though.
"If I wasn’t such an asshole in my life on Earth, maybe I would have been like that family."
Sung-Il pulled back from that thought again. "That life is gone. Now I can remain an asshole alone."
He broke the bread in two.
"Tomorrow," he told Six-Ears, "we get a proper job."
The creature accepted its half.
"And breakfast."
It nodded much more enthusiastically.