Every eye was on her, shocked to see their first S tier. Sure, this was one establishment of many around the world used for awakening, but seeing an S tier was as rare as one in a million.
"Isn't that Elena Silva, the daughter of Silva, the legendary mage?" someone asked.
"Oh my God, she's the one," another responded.
"I guess greatness runs in their genes."
And it was true, genes played a heavy role in the kind of ability a person got.
Even Captain Alex was visibly impressed. He nodded at her; she smiled proudly and left the stage. After her, the situation shifted back into lower awakenings, but soon enough a young man with blonde hair awakened as an A-tier warrior in strength and speed.
That caused an uproar as well, not as much as Elena, but still pretty loud. Everyone thought that after that, they had seen it all, but what followed after was the most shocking thing: a silver-haired pale dude awakened as an S-tier metal mage, causing another loud uproar.
The shock was massive; seeing two S tiers in one day was crazy. Aren found himself paying attention to the three special ones. He didn't know why, but he just did.
Soon enough, after everything, his turn came—one of the last people. There had been some exciting moments later on, but nothing great.
Aren walked up to the stage; he felt every eye on his back, looking at him, waiting to see what he would get.
'Honestly, it doesn't matter to me what I get; I just want to get rid of all the nightmares and go back to a normal life. I have nothing to do inside the trial,' Aren thought.
He walked up and placed his hand on the crystal. The entire room went silent as they watched. A few seconds passed, and then the information showed on the screen—but what everyone saw there immediately shocked them.
[Class: ?????]
[Type: Shadow]
[Tier: ?????]
The entire room fell into silence. Confusion filled the air as they watched. Even those who had been crying and lamenting their bad luck paused to look at the screen.
'Question marks? What the hell is that? Why do I have question marks all over? And what even is a shadow? I've never heard of anything like that,' Aren thought.
'Shadow? I've never heard something like that,' Captain Alex thought. 'Could he be a special one, awakening a unique ability? But what are those question marks? Did he fall so below the tier listing that he actually got question marks?'
'The world is so unfair. He awakened a unique one only to be left with a tier less than F,' Captain Alex thought. He looked at Aren with pity in his eyes. He had never heard of there being anything below F, but that was the only thing that made sense.
He would report the incident to those above and have them decide what to do.
Aren looked over to Captain Alex to know what the issue was. Captain Alex met his gaze and let out a full sigh. "I'm sorry, it seems your tier is so low that the machine is incapable of picking it up." His voice cut through the silence, and somehow, the silence became even quieter.
Everyone stared at Aren standing there, disbelief written all over their faces.
"He was lower than F tier? That's a joke, right?"
"They have to check the machine, no way he is lower than F."
"Are you dumb? Those machines are fine-tuned before the awakening. There is no way they are wrong."
"Damn, talk about being a failure. He couldn't even get the weakest."
"Damn, now seeing this makes me feel less bad about my E tier."
All sorts of discussions erupted, insults pouring in like a dam had been broken. Aren stood there, confused and unsure of what to do.
'Does this mean I really fell under even F? Am I that trash? Tsk, it hurts to see this, but then again, it doesn't matter. I never planned to enter the trial as an awakened; I should just continue my life delivering packages.
Both my parents in this world aren't strong awakened. They both had F tiers, which basically means nothing. I shouldn't have expected all that much,' he thought to himself. On earth is had been trash, pushed around and bullied, with nothing good to write about his life, and even now in a new world he was still trash. But he didn't care, he had come to grow numb to embarrassment and pain.
Pulling his arm off the crystal and not even asking for a second try, he walked down the stage, every eye on him. Captain Alex watched as he returned with a grim expression, but that was how it was always going to be. There would be weak and strong, and in the case of Aren, he was the weakest.
Aren went back to the back of the building, and the people who were left went up to take their exam. After a few more minutes, they were done, so Alex took the center stage. He scanned the faces that stood there. He saw grown men with faces twisted in pain, saw anger, rage, and more—and it was all normal when you consider the fact that they had all just lost their opportunity to be strong, their lifelong dreams shattered in an instant.
He took a deep breath and then began speaking. "One thousand of you took the awakened test. Six hundred got an F tier, two hundred got an E tier, one hundred and ten got D tier, eighty-three got C tier, four got B tier, one got an A, and two got S." The weight of what he said hit them all as they realized that they were mostly all worthless and a few stood on top.
"Based on the Awakened Organization, anyone can enter the trial and seek out greatness. There are no restrictions to it, but before you do, remember that your life is in your hands and there are no trade backs." He said this as a way of warning the lower ranks to stay off the trial, but sadly the heart of man would never allow that. Many would still come in hopes of greatness.
He then pointed at the screen, and it changed into a display of a system.
[Name: ...]
[Class: .....]
[Type: ..... ]
[Tier: ..... ]
[Soul Fragments:]
[Level: ..... ]
[Soul Energy: ...]
[Strength:]
[Speed:]
[Defense:]
[Constitution:]
[Intelligence:]
[Skills:]
"What you can see on the screen here is a display of the system you will activate the moment you walk into the trial. Before you go, and use the night to think about what you want to do before the day of entering the trial tomorrow, I'll take a little time and explain to you what exactly each part of the system does."