The three days had passed with thorough studying and understanding little about this new world.
The Lowtown garrison wasn't a fortress as he expected. It turned out to be a converted grain warehouse with a fresh coat of paint and two bored-looking guards at the door. The line of hopefuls stretched out into the muddy street. Kids, mostly. A few older teens like Riku. All of them looked hungry, and not just for food.
Borin had wished him luck and went off, leaving Riku to navigate this on his own. The air around him was tense with a little sense of anxiety. It was a feeling Riku knew well from game launch days. The tension before the servers went live.
He watched the others. A girl with a permanent scowl clenched her fists, and a faint wisp of steam rose from her knuckles. A lanky boy shuffled his feet, and the ground beneath them seemed to soften slightly. They were all practicing. Showing off.
Riku had nothing to show. He didn't even know he had to show something. He just felt sick.
"Next!" a voice barked from inside.
The line moved slightly forward. One by one, they entered the warehouse. Some came out minutes later, faces flushed with triumph, clutching a stamped piece of parchment. Most slunk out, dejected, empty-handed.
Finally, it was his turn.
The inside was a single, vast space. At the far end, behind a simple wooden table, sat the same severe woman from the slum, introduced as Adjudicator Varia. The broad-shouldarded man, now identified as Sergeant Korb, stood behind her, arms still crossed. In the center of the room stood a strange, pulsing crystal on a pedestal.
"Name?" Varia asked, not looking up from her slate.
"Riku."
"Place of origin?"
"The... eastern grove?" he said, repeating what she'd said days before.
She made a note. "Present yourself to the resonance crystal. Channel your energy."
Riku walked toward the crystal. It hummed with a low frequency that oddly made his teeth ache. Channel your energy. Right. How? He'd spent his previous life channeling caffeine and frustration into code.
He stopped in front of it. He closed his eyes, trying to remember the feeling of the VR overload, the sheer amount of fear. He focused on it, trying to push it out, to do something at least.
Nothing happened.
He heard a snort from Sergeant Korb. "Is he sleeping?"
"Focus," Varia said, her voice flat.
Riku gritted his teeth. He thought of the error messages, the demon's glitched face, the certainty of death. A cold knot tightened in his chest. Come on. Do something. Wasn't this what they meant by negative energy?
A flicker. A tiny, pathetic spark of yellow light sputtered in the air between his palm and the crystal. It lasted for a second, then died.
And in its place, a small, clumsily rendered toy soldier appeared on his open palm. It was made of faint, shimmering light, no bigger than his thumb. It stood stiffly, its painted-on face blank. It was the most basic 3D model he could possibly imagine. 'What in the world is this? Is this what everyone else was doing?' he thought to himself.
The hum of the crystal died down. The room was silent.
Varia looked from the toy soldier to Riku's face. Her expression was one of profound disappointment. "Wow, never thought I would be seeing this class my whole life. A 'Designer'-type manifestation. Tier 5 classification." She made a mark on her slate, shaking her head. "Historically non-combative. Utility: negligible."
Sergeant Korb let out a short, harsh laugh. "A toy maker. We're recruiting toy makers now." He shook his head. "Get that rubbish out of here. You should be hiding your face in shame now. A Designer-type of all classifications? How useless."
The toy soldier flickered and vanished. Heat rushed to Riku's face. He'd been called a lot of things by beta testers - incompetent, lazy, selfish, crude, a hack - but never a "toy maker."
Varia slid a piece of parchment across the table. It was blank. "You are registered as awakened. You are not, however, accepted for Ascendancy training. Your classification is unsuitable for frontline duty. You may go."
Dismissed. Just like that. For something he didn't even understand a bit of.
He turned and walked out, the laughter of the other hopefuls who saw his failure following him into the street. He missed his old life even more now. Sleepless nights, running on coffee, pizza and a whole lot of other junk he could put his hands on.
The sunlight felt hotter on his skin as if showing its own disappointment as well. He'd been given a second life, a chance at power in a world of monsters, and his ultimate ability was to create a glowing toy soldier or whatever it was supposed to be.
"Shit. This is all bullshit." He muttered then sighed. "I would've been napping either on the sofa or on the bed by now, not getting baked because I didn't get something right. Even the landlady's angry knock on the door feels better than this..." He sighed again, running his hand through his hair. "Ahh, you're an idiot, Riku. You freaking fried your brain and you want to go back?"
He looked at his empty hand, the shame burning away as his eyes slowly widened. "Jack pot! One heck of a freaking jack pot!" He yelled, smiling widely.
A lady passed with her son, staring at him like someone who lost his mind.
"What're you two looking at, huh? Zoom off." He frowned. His focus came back to the realization that dawned on him earlier.
A Designer-type. They saw a toy. But Riku saw something else. He was given him a dev kit. A terrible, underpowered, practically useless one.
But a dev kit nonetheless. And he was very, very good with those.
"Oh, wow, take a look at that." He cleaned the bead of sweat on his head. "I just got a practical start point to my old life."
Riku looked up. "This might be a game after all."