章 10: Evaluation Test [part 1]

As Shin and the stoic protector strode out, Northern's gaze drifted to the door the bartender had used earlier.

Furtively glancing left and right, he slipped his clone through the door, leaving his original self waiting patiently at the counter.

His eyes wandered as he hovered in the entryway, drawn to the stairs where the young boy and citadel's headmaster had ascended minutes prior.

He briefly pondered the kid's identity before dismissing such idle curiosities, it was better to focus on the matter at hand.

'I hope Shin hasn't started any trouble...'

No sooner had the thought crossed his mind than the door banged open, nearly startling Northern back a step.

A fiery woman barged in, her vivid vermillion tresses whipping about as if stirred by inner flames.

Thick, unruly strands spiked and twisted around themselves in a chaotic cascade atop the furry mantle draped over her powerful shoulders.

One callused hand gripped the neck of an already half-drained bottle while the other hung slack at her side.

Her face was mostly obscured by her hair, save for one smoldering eye that was glaring with unsettling intensity.

She cut an unmistakable figure: a hardened drifter clad in dirt-caked rags and piecemeal leather armor molded to a body sculpted by a lifetime of savage conflict. Loss and unimaginable hardship haunted the harsh lines etched into her face.

This was someone long accustomed to surviving through sheer, remorseless self-interest. Crude scars mottled her exposed skin, each one whispering its own grisly tale and hinting at even more horrific trophies concealed beneath her unkempt attire.

She moved with a deceptive, careless grace, lifting the bottle to drain another mouthful while locking eyes with Northern.

Despite her drunken haze, a keen predatory intelligence glinted in those irises, marking her as anything but some helpless sot.

"Stop staring before I hit you with the booze," she growled, clearly sensing his intense scrutiny of her scarred visage. Yet her tone remained almost playfully indifferent as she openly assessed him with an evaluating sweep from his boots to his hair.

Caressing her pointed chin contemplatively, the woman rasped, "You're the one who just awakened, eh? You look like a scrawny stick about to snap… but I've seen worse."

She shrugged nonchalantly before jerking her head toward the back room and saying. "Follow me."

Northern shot an uncertain glance at the bartender, who simply nodded reassuringly while deftly opening the door to grant the boy entry.

Since he wasn't getting any information from his clone, yet, perhaps his lingering curiosity would finally be satisfied.

Or so he thought, for the other side revealed little more than a wide stone corridor angling steadily downward into deeper shadows.

If anything, the impressive, sturdy construction only served to heighten the aura of a strange unreality.

Northern had expected the door to open onto some cluttered storeroom or gloomy antechamber precluding the underground training halls whispered about in the schoolyard rumors.

Instead, the hallway simply spread out in an open, rectangular space around fifty square meters wide, with its floor composed of finely raked white sand that undulated with each footfall.

The mysterious woman strode to the very center before wheeling around to face Northern.

"Brat. What's your name?"

The boy's brows furrowed slightly at the derogative word, but he responded without inflection.

"Northern."

His answer appeared to give the woman a momentary pause before she abruptly burst into peals of raucous, unrestrained laughter while clutching at her midsection as she gasped for breath.

"What… what the hell? You're actually named Northern?"

When the boy simply stared back in stony silence, her cackling tapered into a few muffled snorts before she finally fell silent, her head quizzically tilting sideways.

"... Really? That's seriously your name?"

"Yes," Northern bit out, his tone dripping with malice. "That is my name."

Registering his evident displeasure, the woman smothered her remaining mirth, shooting him a withering glare that sent an involuntary shiver racing up his spine.

A sudden, visceral sense of menace flooded Northern's psyche, triggering an instinctive urge to avert his gaze and compose himself lest he inadvertently provoke lethal consequences.

When she finally spoke again, the drifter's gravelly tone rang with sobriety.

"Listen carefully, Northern." She said, barely stifling another contemptuous snort.

"I'll be in charge of your evaluation, which I normally despise. Although truth be told, I was quite the big shot back in my day. But… certain matters transpired, and these days I tutor the rabble who are too meek, destitute, or feckless to enroll in the Academy. For all I know, you could end up being one of my permanent students, boy."

A tight frown creased Northern's features as he mentally rejected that possibility.

Public citadels primarily existed to monitor newly awakened walkers, testing and equipping them with the bare essentials for their first foray into rifts— basic survival skills to endure that harrowing transition.

Some, like this particular establishment, also focused on cultivating full-fledged drifters as collectives for rift-harvesting operations.

Whether privately or state-owned, citadels represented the first exploratory foothold beyond the academy's sheltered cloisters.

The woman clapped her hands together, the sharp sound snapping Northern's wandering attention back to her.

"Pay attention, brat!"

He bristled slightly at her demeaning manner but remained outwardly stoic as she resumed explaining in clipped tones.

"Two parts to the exam. First, is the practical and likely the easiest part for a snot-nosed whelp like you. All you need do is come at me with every attack in your arsenal. And yes, that means using your talent to its fullest extent."

She paused meaningfully before adding, "The second part involves using a specialized apparatus to quantify and classify your talent's basic parameters. Even if it reads out as utter trash. However, an exceptional practical showing could still earn you a top-tier recommendation."

One callused finger tapped the pocket containing her folded missive.

"Believe me, with my endorsement letter, you're virtually guaranteed admission at the Academy. At least, then you'd have adequate time to train more before your second awakening..."

Northern's eyes narrowed skeptically. 'Who is this woman to guarantee such?'

He inscrutably studied her for several seconds before the sudden tremor of her foot meeting the sand floor made him stagger, breaking his composure.

A tremendous quaking began, nearly unbalancing the reeling Northern as his heart hammered, threatening to burst from his chest.

Fixing him with a nasty smirk, the woman purred, "Nice… so you DO possess the sense to tremble before true power.

Good.

Now let's see what you're made of, whelp!"

With a feral shout, Northern exploded into motion, propelling himself across the clearing with every ounce of speed at his command.

Fist pulled back, he closed those final meters with the mysterious woman squarely in his sights, heedless of her seeming nonchalance as she sipped from her perpetually half-filled bottle.

Yet, razor-edged instincts that have been cultivated from countless mock battles with Shin shrilled with a warning, the fine hairs prickling along the nape of his neck.

Obeying that irrefutable sixth sense, Northern wrenched himself into an awkward evasion at the last possible moment— a fraction too late to feel the blur of air carving the space his torso had just occupied.

The ground ruptured with titanic force as something unseen carved a vicious burrow through the pristine sand.

Northern skidded to a jarring halt, gaping wide-eyed and panting heavily at the blatant display of unearthly power.

She could have split him in two with literally no effort whatsoever.

A chill slithered down his spine as that realization sank home, cold sweat beading his pallid brow.

Thanks to his instincts he was able to afford a split-second window to evade the lethal strike— this drunken enigma possessed the deadliness to effortlessly extinguish his life before he could even blink.

Yet she remained utterly bored, nonplussed by his desperate defensive action.

Stunned awe warred with burgeoning terror across Northern's features as he finally understood the truth.

If he had heeded those ingrained instincts even a tiny bit more sluggishly, he would now be two sundered pieces of flesh and bones slumped across the obliterated sand.

The scornful woman merely laughed again, waving a dismissive hand.

"Ohh… I honestly didn't expect you to evade that. I suppose you've got a decent combat sense, at least."

Fishing a scrap of parchment and quill from some concealed pocket, she swiftly scribbled an indecipherable notation before roughly folding and stowing it away.

"The point of this evaluation is assessing your practical talent," she drawled, focusing her single lambent eye fully on him once more.

"Which means you need to actually, y'know… use it. Unless..." Her tone adopted a mocking lilt as a new realization struck her. "Wait, don't tell me— is your talent speed-based?"

Northern minutely shook his head in the negative, his expression hardening to one of grim wariness as their gazes locked, electric tension rising between them.

She made a dismissive tsk. "Good...because THAT would've been dreadfully disappointing."

The silence stretched on as Northern remained rooted to the spot, refusing to be further baited into banter until the keening edge of mortal peril had dimmed from his honed instincts.

Finally, the master sighed. "How old are you, brat?"

"Fourteen," he responded automatically. "Nearly fifteen."

Something flickered in her eye— perhaps approval or even a nostalgic recognition. "Huh… an early bloomer. Lucky you."

A predatory grin slowly curled her lips as Northern's tentative facade of bravado crumbled beneath her resurgent, suffocating aura of threat.

Her stance shifted with subtle menace, hips cocked sideways and hands resting insolently on her belt.

"Try not to piss yourself, boy. I may be rough, but I won't outright kill you."

Yet everything about the smoldering drifter from her body language to the intensity of her eye to the glint of feral amusement said the exact opposite; that to perform inadequately before her would surely spell a death sentence.

And recalling that casual display of shearing lethality moments prior, Northern couldn't restrain a convulsive, full-body shudder of abject, mortal dread.

If their earlier clash represented pulling her punches, suffering the full brunt of this goliath's unfettered might didn't bear contemplation.

'No, I can't be paralyzed like this!' He savagely rebuked his fear, straightening his spine in determination.

'Even facing that abomination earlier, I didn't feel such crippling terror. There's something deeper at play here...'

Northern's gaze sharpened to laser focus as realization gradually dawned on him.

"You… didn't actually attack me. Not physically, at least."

The words tumbled out in a breathless rush, his tenor quavering slightly beneath the omnipresent pressure boring into his psyche.

Her visible eye widened fractionally before her lips formed a lopsided grin.

"Well, I'll be…. So the little whelp DOES have a modicum of sense after all."

Tossing back a long pull of cheap booze, the flame-haired drifter nonchalantly tossed the bottle over one shoulder, where it shattered against the far wall in an explosion of sound and glass shards.

As she began closing the distance separating them, Northern felt the malevolent aura crushing his mind intensifying with every ponderous stride.

"What you're experiencing is Spiritual Pressure— the ability to emanate one's quintessential soul essence outward through their aura. A relatively simple technique… for a Master, anyway."

Being a Master meant reaching the Vagrant soul rank— it was not the loftiest of heights, yet still stratospherically distant from a raw awakener like himself.

If Shin's casual displays of mastery were anything to judge by…

Before Northern could ponder that alarming thought further, the baleful entity loomed directly before him, near enough for him to smell the boozy smell of stale alcohol wafting from her imposing figure.

His legs began trembling uncontrollably, pathetic quivers racing throughout his body as the pressure peaked, constricting his very breath.

One calloused hand shot out to clench his shoulder, merciless fingers digging into his flesh until he cried out involuntarily.

As that baleful vermillion eye bored into his very soul, the drifter's voice sliced through his mind's hazy desperation with lancing clarity.

"I've decided to take you seriously… NORTH BOY." The tone on that final syllable dripped with searing venom. "You're the first worthwhile prospect to catch my eye in ages."