The year a child turned fifteen was the year the gods looked down and decided whether that life would amount to something.
Today, I stepped across that threshold.
From this day onward I was no longer counted among the children who scraped and struggled beneath the notice of the world. I had joined the ranks of adults. And like every other youth who had reached this age, I walked toward the temple with a heart so swollen with hope it almost hurt to breathe.
In this kingdom, adulthood did not begin with a celebration or a feast. It began with a bestowal.
Before the altar of God, one could receive up to three Skills.
No one fully understood their origin. Scholars argued, priests preached, and adventurers invented their own explanations in taverns thick with smoke. But one truth stood unchallenged: Skills shaped lives. They decided whether a man tilled soil, forged legends, or died nameless on a roadside.
They were used in war. They were used in trade. They were used in the quiet, desperate business of surviving.
And sometimes, when the right abilities were granted together, they produced power so overwhelming it rewrote the fate of a single person.
The heroes of old were all born from such combinations.
The most famous example lived still, seated upon the throne.
The King possessed two Skills.
[One-handed Blade・Holy]
and
[Physical Strength Enhancement・Large].
The first was a combat Skill, part of a lineage whose strength rose in clear stages:
[One-handed Blade]
[One-handed Blade・Extreme]
[One-handed Blade・Holy]
[One-handed Blade・God]
To be granted the third rank meant standing just below the realm of the divine.
The second Skill amplified the body itself, feeding power into every motion, every strike, every breath taken in battle. On its own it was valuable. Combined with a blade Skill of such rank, it became something monstrous.
With those two gifts, the King had carved his path through war and history alike.
Powerful Skills were rare. The temple taught that the stronger the effect, the lower the chance of receiving it. Ideal combinations were rarer still.
There were countless Skills in the world. Perhaps not infinite, but so many that no one could record them all.
Among them, only a handful shone.
That was why everyone who walked toward the temple today carried the same dream:
To obtain the "right" Skill.
To become someone.
I walked among them alone.
Both my parents had died five years earlier, when the epidemic swept through our region like a silent fire. My father had been a hunter. The traps he left behind became my inheritance, along with a bow too large for my arms when I first tried to draw it.
I learned to survive by imitating him.
Rabbits from the forest. Herbs from the hills. The butcher who paid a little more than he should. The owner of the gold refinery who bought my pelts without haggling.
Kindness had kept me alive.
But kindness did not change the fact that, without Skills, I had only one way to live.
Hunt.
That life ends today.
At least, that was what I told myself as the temple gates came into view, white stone blazing beneath the morning sun.
Inside, the air was thick with incense and murmured prayers. Children who had grown up beside me stood with their families, their faces drawn tight with expectation.
I waited for forty minutes.
Long enough to watch those who came out after receiving their Skills.
Some smiled with relief. Others looked as though they had been handed a sentence.
Each expression tightened the knot in my chest.
Then my name was called.
"Enter the circle and offer your gratitude to God for reaching adulthood."
The magic formation inscribed upon the floor glowed faintly as I stepped into it. I knelt.
I did not pray for power.
I gave thanks for being alive.
For the villagers who had fed me. For the traps my father had left behind. For the simple fact that I had reached this day.
Light wrapped around my body, soft and brief, like the touch of something that had already begun to withdraw.
And in that instant, two words appeared in my mind.
Two Skills.
"It seems the bestowal was successful," the priest said gently. "Place your hands upon the orb."
The transparent sphere drank in the light of the temple and revealed what I had been given.
[Appraisal・Complete]
[Cut & Paste]
For a moment I simply stared.
Appraisal was a rare Skill. Most people received inferior variants: the ability to see age, or gender, or species. Useful, but limited. To learn a person's gender without a Skill was hardly an achievement.
But mine bore the word Complete.
If it meant what it implied, then there were no restrictions. I could examine anything.
It was a perfect ability.
A bullseye.
The second Skill was… stranger.
I had heard of [Cut].
A Skill that severed everything within one's sight. Farmers used it to clear weeds in an instant. Adventurers valued it for dismantling monsters quickly, before the scent of blood drew more predators.
But it worked poorly on living targets.
I had also heard of [Paste].
A Skill that fixed one object to another permanently. Not like glue. Once joined, they could never be separated. A single mistake could create an irreversible disaster.
Individually, they were awkward. Together, in the rare case someone possessed both, they became an inconvenience for combat.
But mine was not two Skills.
It was one.
[Cut & Paste].
A fusion.
Which meant the flaws of each might be lessened… and the potential far greater.
"Those are fine Skills," the priest said, peering into the orb. "Especially [Appraisal・Complete]. The other will depend on how you use it. May your life be blessed from this day forward."
I bowed deeply and left the temple.
Outside, the sky looked the same as it had that morning.
The town bustled as it always had.
Nothing in the world had changed.
And yet everything had.
The life of a boy who survived by setting traps in the forest had ended.
In his place stood someone who possessed the means to see the truth of all things… and a mysterious power no one else seemed to understand.
As I walked home, the weight I had carried for five years began, little by little, to lift.
For the first time since my parents died, the future did not look like a narrow path through hunger and endurance.
It looked wide.
And waiting.