NOVEL NEXT 30. On Talent
Liya was immediately teleported away. Her forge's wards would've protected her, but she let the system do its thing.
Moments later, she was standing in a vast white room with a damn high elf. How the damnation had a high elf gotten herself in a Talent Reevaluation Committee after the Qilin Scandal?!
Well, Liya knew how: backing and efficiency. If the elf lacked either, she wouldn't be here. It didn't bode well for Liya herself.
The high elf was the spitting image of her kind: tall, so white she might as well be part of the background, yellow-haired, and wearing white and golden clothes that Liya had to admit were beautifully crafted even if their colors sucked.
She had her back to Liya and didn't turn to greet her, the arrogance expected of a Talent Reevaluation lackey.
Liya saw herself as a progressive thinker. She had seen hard work surpass talent enough times to not give it as much importance as the Alliance officially gave to it. Talent evaluation was a relic of older times before even the Guardian System came and changed enough things to make talent almost obsolete.
Yet, enough old-timers remained in charge of things to make getting rid of the Tyranny of Talent almost impossible.
"Are you Liya, exile of Shar'Talon, dark elf in charge of Feng Shen?' the high elf asked, still without even turning Liya's direction. She was looking at one of the thousands of system windows floating around them.
Her voice was also very high elven, almost singing and bright despite her obvious displeasure.
"I am," she said. If the system had marked her as such, she couldn't undo that. Not with her current exile status, at least.
"Tell me what you think," the high elf said, nodding to the windows. Liya obeyed.
Uk'Gaar had said the Dreamer was messing with this Tutorial but not doing something as terrible as the fake trials Liya's people had been subjected to. Uk'Gaar clearly had no idea of how bad things were.
Liya saw G-rank weaklings divided by age groups, given the G-rank Learning Ability Upgrade for free, and told to kill enemies they had no idea how. They had to figure things by themselves, which was doable with their upgrades but inefficient and stupid. It would take them months to get rid of the bad habits they were learning—and that wasn't even the worst part.
The first stage was the kind of trial nations, corporations, clans, sects—any organization, really—created to filter talented warriors. Determining one's potential fighting talent took only a spell, but how much of it was actually used depended on multiple factors, willpower the most prominent among them. Only actual battle revealed their true talent.
While improved learning ability made people understand things faster, it required information or experience. Talent, on the other hand, provided bouts of inspiration that made learning things, small or big, instantaneous. The issue with talent was that it came and went at its own pace—and was evaluated precisely by its shown frequency.
Learning ability could match or surpass the most extraordinary talent at a high enough level or with enough time. Unfortunately, there was only so much it could be raised on each rank. That limiter was the thing that made the brass acclaim talent so much. They claimed that without talented individuals at critical moments, the Alliance would've fallen already. That spark, they said, created heroes when they needed it the most.
Bullshit, of course.
Many more talented people died without producing anything useful. But stupidity was plentiful everywhere, including at the top of the Alliance.
Either way, Liya could see different levels of talent on the screens. She agreed with the automated evaluation given by the Guardian System to most people, which was shown on each window, together with their names. About three hundred different people were displayed, enough for her to understand what was going on and see that one window specifically was very wrong.
Feng Shen's.
She had seen a recording of his before, fighting Uk'Gaar's Incarnation. That had been nothing in front of the talent he was showing at his first battles.
Liya had been trained by the very best and was more experienced than most people she had ever met. She could tell at a single glance that Feng Shen had had theoretical knowledge of fighting when he started but was improving ridiculously fast. He showed talent surpassing even first-class at first, but that wasn't so impressive. Early burners were a disappointment everyone wanted to avoid, and unfortunately, way too common, which was why the system didn't evaluate him as highly.
"The first stage's main goal was determining human growth rate," the high elf said. "We found out they have adaptability higher than goblins."
Goblins were pests that could be thrown at any world and survive. No, not survive, thrive. They were barely intelligent enough to be considered sapient, which some people joked as being the only reason they didn't rule the entire Alliance. Being adaptable was desirable but not fundamental in the grand scheme of things.
"That is impressive," Liya said with blatant mockery. Just enough to offend a Reevaluation Committee official yet not get in trouble.
"The first half of the second stage," the high elf continued, ignoring the jab, "was in place to determine human statistical improvement gap."
Liya focused on the other system windows, showing another hundred people.
Statistical improvement gap was the Alliance's way of predicting the rate of elite emergence in a race. Liya wasn't in on the specifics, but the gist of it was that the furthest the people at the top got from the ones at the bottom, the more likely it was for a powerhouse to appear. For whatever reason, the fewer people at the top, the better, too.
One person, Feng Shen, was screwing the charts, but when normalization kicked in, humankind kind of sucked. To the point Liya wouldn't guess they were from the same race as Feng Shen at all.
That's when she noticed it.
The boy was a fucking cultivator.
"Fucking shit asshole Uk'Gaar," she muttered. "I'm gonna fucking kill him."
The Cultivators' Association was tyrannical and stupid. They would send an assassin to get rid of her as soon as Feng Shen got to her doorsteps, no matter the absolutely enormous consequences that would bring them. A killer might even be on the way already if they knew she claimed to be in charge of a cultivator.
She had to get away from this evaluation place and pack her things as soon as possible. It was time to stop being an exile. That status had given her some business opportunities, but now she needed the protection of being within Shar'Talon borders to prevent a team of B-ranks from just barging into her shop and killing her.
The window showed Feng Shen had had a fourth-class talent evaluation all along, which was obviously wrong. The system did that sometimes for fear of early burners. Rightly enough, the Stage Overseer changed it to third-class at some point.
Then Feng Shen met a girl, and his talent dropped to an absolute low. It was so infrequent it might as well be inexistent, almost as if he was an ordinary human. A great example of how unreliable talent could be.
And then the stage changed.
"The second half of the second stage," the high elf said, "is in place to determine desperation response."
At the battlefronts against the Void, desperation killed more than anything. It only took a single crack for the Song of the Void to make even the bravest just flee from it or join the Void in oblivion.
One of the windows got larger. It was the one Liya had glimpsed and determined this place was worse than the fake trials.
They had brought a fucking Void Spawn to the tutorial.
But what surprised her were the people around, especially a Mark Williams. He showed a psychological crack so large he actually broke if the system's readings weren't wrong. Yet, he recovered from it, and when he called to his companions, half of them recovered too.
"Holy fuck!" Liya said. "Humanity can pull back?!"
"Yes," the high elf said. "An ability only shown in twelve races to date. Yet not a natural one."
The large window changed to show the human genome. Then it showed the dragon genome. Then pointed out the alterations on the former to make it more dragon-like.
"Human high adaptability is not only psychological due to the dragon genome," the high elf said. "The very fact they received a mythical race's gene and survived shows they can be altered on a micro-level with little issue. Don't go too far on what that might mean, or you'll reach conclusions best left alone." She warned, but it was too late already. Liya knew a fucking war would come sooner or later. She had to decide on what side to bet quickly. "The most intriguing part is that dragonkind has not expressed any discontent with the modifications despite being known for killing anyone attempting to experiment with them, no matter how against the law killing is."
Now Liya knew what side to bet on: the humans. They had the dragons on their side. Dragons weren't invincible, not even particularly strong collectively, but they had connections beyond the Alliance, so she would at least have a path of retreat with them.
"Yet that is not all," the high elf said. "Keep watching."
Liya did, but it took a while for her to notice it. When one of them saw the Void Spawn, everyone was affected. All people in the windows were showing greater talent than before. Seven of them had improved considerably, her charge included. Yet, the vast majority were nowhere close to the Void Spawn.
"Hivemind genes?" Liya guessed.
The high elf shook her head. "A strange tweak of their collective unconscious. I have no proof yet, but I believe it's not natural either. Someone engineered humankind to be not the strongest at first, nor the fastest rising through the Alliance's ranks, but the ones with the best long-term prospects. They are almost perfect for fighting the Void too. Yet, we can't see how the alterations were made when we look at Earth's past. Our specialized B-ranks found tampering signs in their timeline after very long scrutiny, yet they couldn't undo it. An A-rank could, but they would need to stay longer than two seconds to achieve that, which would unravel this galaxy, as it's not yet ready for such power levels. It will take years to strengthen itself enough, and who knows what designs the engineers behind it all might have?"
Liya swallowed. If the high elf suggested Liya was in cahoots with the engineers... Suddenly, coming to this place didn't sound like her best decision in life.
"And your charge is an even bigger incognita," the high elf continued. The large window changed to show Feng Shen's current rate of killing and improvement.
That was first-class, alright.
Yet, Liya had seen her fair share of first-classes die. Talent was better shown in moments of great need, so it was customary for talented people to be sent on suicide missions to make it or break it. They usually broke. Trying to manipulate events to be just challenging enough for them always left them stuck at lower ranks too.
Talent was a bitch, and nothing would ever change Liya's opinions on that.
No, what truly impressed her enough to make her eyes widen was the girl with Feng Shen.
She was currently evaluated as third-class but had been considered utterly talentless before the Void Spawn came. Talentless people weren't as rare as third-class talents, but close enough. Liya, due to her upbringing, had never met someone genuinely devoid of any talent before.
"He's an Uplifter?" she asked.
The Multiverse Alliance was old and enormous. It also liked science very much, especially when it could help against the Void, and the Guardian System recorded almost everything minimally noteworthy. That led them to learn about special people whose mere presence could cause others to improve in various ways, including their talents, though no one knew how or why that happened.
Multiple wars had been fought for Uplifters, as keeping them close and on good terms was always beneficial.
"No," the high elf said. "He's, in fact, a Dull." Dulls were those that not only weren't Uplifters but also couldn't be affected by them. Sad, really. "Keep looking."
Liya swore in her mind. What was with all the mystery? Couldn't the damn bitch just tell her what was going on?
When she saw, really saw, what was going on, she stepped back.
"Son of Chaos," she whispered.
The high elf finally turned, revealing golden eyes, a perfectly symmetrical face, and anger.
"Yes," she said. "Your charge is a young Void-touched cultivator of a genetically engineered race with tampered history. I am Alvaerelle Elafir of the Mana Guild. I cannot arrest you, Maiden, but you better give me an explanation or the Tribe of Enyra will face the Guild's wrath."
Liya's eyes twitched at the threat, and once upon a time, she would have met it with a swing of her spear. She had learned better though. That Alvaerelle also knew Liya's identity as Maiden also spoke of a powerful backing Liya might not want to deal with.
"Uk'Gaar's Incarnation marked the boy in the first stage," she explained. "Then Uk'Gaar, the Rising Star of the Orc Race, asked me to train him in the spear. That's all I know. He should know more, but is the Mana Guild willing to question a Rising Star?" she asked mockingly. If they were, Liya wouldn't be here.
Alvaerelle frowned, then tsked and turned back. "If you're telling the truth, you're a victim of a ploy. Which means the Tribe of Enyra will be at war soon enough." Then, for the first time, her voice showed happiness. "When you're done with him, he'll be no Rising Star anymore, will he?"
Liya snickered. "I've come a long way in my Path. I'll question him first. War will come if war must come, but words served me well now, against your threat. Maybe they'll suffice once again." Alvaerelle didn't reply, and Liya hesitated before asking, "Does the Association know?"
If the damn cultivators weren't aware of Feng Shen yet, she could question Uk'Gaar before returning to her homeland. That would make things simpler. Once her status was restored, getting in touch with him would become much trickier.
Liya wasn't sure the high elf would reply, but she did. "No. The Dreamer is shielding the boy for his own ploys. However, they do know Earth has four other cultivators whom the Dreamer will give to them. They will surely investigate as soon as they can."
"Thanks, niece," Liya conceded.
Drow hated to be associated with other elves, especially the high elves. When they did, they were acknowledging the other party wasn't so bad. When they called them family on top of that, they were saying they owed the other party.
Alvaerelle had been a bit bitchy in the meeting, but she had explained a lot she didn't have to. Showing the Void Spawn had probably even broken a few rules about tutorial confidentiality. Liya knew a lot about her charge—she still had to decide if she would keep him or not—and could prepare better for the upcoming challenges.
The high elf sighed, turned back, and nodded in a semi-bow. "Thanks, aunt." She received the owed favor with grace. She recognized she was younger and weaker too. Their hierarchy had been adequately established.
Liya nodded back. "Am I free to go?"
"Yes. The Dreamer will know you know," Alvaerelle warned.
"He always does," Liya replied and teleported away.
Her calm face turned to barely controlled rage as soon as she was back at her forge. Then, a black and red spear materialized on her hand, her shop disappeared into her Inventory, and she teleported away once more.
It was time to make Uk'Gaar pay.