The Senior Assessment Board panel consisted of seven evaluators, one empty chair that was explained as 'a scheduling conflict' and clearly belonged to Director Voss, and more recording equipment than Liu Yun had seen outside of a television studio.
They put him in a testing chamber three floors below the Association's main building, a reinforced space used for high-output Hunter assessments, its walls plated with mana-absorbing material to prevent power bleed into the surrounding structure. Liu Yun had passed this room on dungeon registration trips dozens of times and never expected to be inside it.
He sat across a long table from the seven evaluators. He was wearing his new E-rank gear. He hadn't bought better yet, partly because he was saving money and partly because he found a certain satisfaction in walking into an A-rank panel evaluation dressed like an E-ranker.
The lead evaluator, a Senior Officer named Wren, opened with the standard questions: how long since ability change was noticed, what was the nature of the change, had he experienced any physiological symptoms, had he engaged in unauthorized testing. Liu Yun answered honestly where honesty was safe and vaguely where it wasn't.
Then they asked him to demonstrate.
He had prepared for this. He had specifically prepared to demonstrate just enough to secure his rank reclassification without revealing the full scope of what he could do. He released a controlled output of Void Energy, approximately twenty percent of his actual reserves, and the measuring equipment in the testing chamber climbed to eight hundred forty before he throttled back.
The seven evaluators looked at the readout.
Then they looked at him.
Then back at the readout.
'Mr. Morrow,' Wren said carefully, 'this measurement is anomalous.'
'Yes.'
'Your file shows a three-year history of near-zero output readings.'
'The standard equipment doesn't read Void-type mana correctly. It measures emission. Void-type mana absorbs. The standard scanner reads the net as near-zero.' He had rehearsed this explanation. It was true, accurate, and explained the historical record without implying that three years of assessment had been fundamentally wrong, which would embarrass people. Keeping people from feeling embarrassed was, he had discovered, the most effective way to move quickly through bureaucratic processes.
Two of the evaluators leaned together and murmured. A third was typing rapidly. Wren wrote something on a physical notepad in a handwriting that Liu Yun was too far away to read.
'We will need to conduct further evaluation over multiple sessions,' Wren said.
'I understand that,' Liu Yun said. 'In the meantime, what rank does this reading support?'
Wren paused. 'Provisionally, A-rank.'
The room was very quiet for a moment.
'A-rank,' Liu Yun repeated.
'With the caveat that your practical combat capability will need to be separately assessed. Raw output alone does not determine rank. Tactical ability, class-specific power application, dungeon performance data.'
'I cleared a Class D Gate solo last week in two hours and seventeen minutes,' Liu Yun said. 'The Association average for a solo D-rank clear is three hours forty for an A-ranker.'
More murmuring. More typing. Wren's pen moved faster.
'The full panel report will be issued within two weeks,' she said. 'In the meantime your provisional status has been updated.' She slid a card across the table. It was gold-edged, the color of A-rank provisional.
He picked it up. He turned it over once. He put it in his pocket.
Walking out of the Association building, he passed the front desk where the trainee with the higher mana output than his original readings was filing forms. The trainee looked up as Liu Yun passed and did a small double-take at the gold trim visible at the edge of Liu Yun's pocket.
Liu Yun didn't stop walking.
The system quest that had been pending since the warehouse training updated:
[QUEST COMPLETE - LEGITIMACY][Obtained official rank recognition above E-level. Reward: New Ability - VOID PORTAL (Basic). Create a temporary Gate to a low-tier Underworld location for scouting or entry. Duration: 10 minutes. Cost: High. Cooldown: 24 hours.]
He stopped on the sidewalk outside the Association building and read the new ability description twice.
He could open his own Gates.
He was no longer dependent on the Association's Gate roster, no longer waiting for party recruitment slots that never came, no longer limited to dungeons where other people decided whether he was useful enough to bring along. He could go where he chose, when he chose, and the creatures inside would feed his army.
He looked up at Director Voss's billboard.
He thought: You have no idea what's walking around in your city right now.
He walked home and cooked a real meal for the first time in weeks, groceries bought with dungeon earnings, not the cheapest thing on the shelf but actual ingredients prepared with minimal competence into something that tasted of effort and small victory, and he ate it at his desk while planning his next week.
The gold aura to the north was still there. Closer.
He would investigate it. But first there were dungeons to run, shadows to collect, and an army to build into something that could handle whatever a gold-class mythological entity was bringing toward his city.
He was, for the first time in three years, genuinely busy.