Gifted - Chapter 10 - Ranks (Patreon)

Classes today were not necessarily interesting to Melmarc.

There was a high chance it wasn’t the fault of the classes in and of themselves but his inability to concentrate. He kept his head on his desk during recess and stared at Gilian, a classmate of his that sat by the window.

Their classroom was upstairs, so the window seats gave good buffs of fresh air.

Must be good sitting by the window, he thought, then turned his head downward and stared at the ground. It was simple marble flooring with white streaks designed to look like cracks. They were not cracks, though, he’d checked already, long ago when he’d started school. But they always looked so real.

As recess came to a fast end, his mind continued to be drawn in a single direction. For him, it was the wrong direction.

What does he do with the trash?

He knew he needed to move his mind towards his new pet currently swaddled under his bed in his shirt, but for some reason his concentration always pulled away from it. The answer to the question of what the creature was didn’t seem very impossible to figure out.

All he had to do was follow the logic of mythical creatures and he was sure he would find a clue.

The portals were often known to hold different kinds of creatures. And most of the time, those that didn’t look like sinful abominations of mixed monstrosities often looked like creatures from myths and fairytales.

Just last year there’d been a Chaos run where the creatures that had come out had been reported to be fairies. Actual fairies. They were tiny with gold dusted wings that let out fairy dust as they flapped, quick as dragonflies. They wrapped themselves in leaves that served as their garments and spoke with voices that sounded like the tinkles of glass.

But they weren’t necessarily like fairies in the stories. For example, they didn’t have beautiful faces to look at. Someone had somehow gotten a picture of one of the dead fairies and posted it online. While humanoid, they had the heads of piranhas, so there was that.

There were also reports that the fairy dusts that fell from their wings had hallucinogenic properties.

One of the videos from a few of the news channels that employed Gifted to go into such chaotic situations and get footage for the media had captured a Delver clawing out his own face when the dust had gotten on him.

It had been a grotesque scene, and one of Delano’s favorite scenes.

The bell rang, bringing recess to an end. It met Melmarc still thinking of fairy dusts and Uncle Dorthna’s trash obsession.

It can’t be related to his powers, right?

Ark speculated that it was either just an odd obsession, nothing more, a game to keep him as an entertaining uncle, or something related to his powers. They knew he quit Delving but not why.

That was another mystery no one was willing to share with them. Ark was a firm believer that their uncle had somehow lost his powers. Which, in Melmarc’s opinion, was vastly incorrect. Since the first Gifted, there had never been any record of a Gifted losing their power.

Skills were mana based. All of them. Even the Power classes that got skills that acted to enhance their physical attributes multiple folds. No skill was without mana.

And only the gifted had mana, so taking trash from them wouldn’t do anything for their uncle in the way of skill re-acquisition.

With the rest of his classmates trooping back in with the residual spirit of recess yet to die out, the class grew noisy.

Melmarc didn’t react much. He returned a wave or two and a greeting here and there. There wasn’t much else to it. He wasn’t a pariah or a loner, at least he didn’t of himself as the latter. He just simply liked to do what he had to do when he had to do it.

He rested his jaw on his desk and watched the class as everyone trooped in.

Delano and Eroms were in the same class, which was separate from his own and he only got to see much of them during the second recess. It was longer and more fulfilling.

There was also gym class, which was a combined class, and the occasional once in a while when Delano was feeling extra rebellious and would sneak into his class.

The silence died off as their teacher, Ms. Pentint, walked in. She was a chubby lady with large glasses and always held her hair up in a bun. The lens of her glasses were so thick that one of the mysteries of the school was what the color of her eyes were.

A more notable part of Ms. Pentint was how strict she was. She wasn’t a cruel teacher by any standard of the word, merely a strict one. All the rules had to be followed to the letter. Any student she caught breaking any of them would be given the specific punishment for breaking the rule.

Ever since her ‘rumored’ relationship with Mr. Trald, she’d loosened up a bit. Some students got away with a few things, and she let a few others slide in her class.

Melmarc raised his head up and sat properly. No matter how loosened up she was, she still remained a stickler for good posture.

Like most of his other classes, paying attention proved difficult. Ms. Petint taught business studies, and Melmarc couldn’t bring himself to focus on lefts and rights of how a business’ balance sheets were meant to be managed.

Instead, he crossed off more possibilities in his head. He stared ahead, hoping Ms. Petint wouldn’t notice his lack of focus. Ark thought their uncle had lost his skills but there were evidences that stood contrary.

You can’t make things move on their own without magic, after all, he thought, keeping his eyes on the general direction of their teacher.

Besides, he doubted his parents would allow someone that wasn’t gifted ‘baby-sit’. There had been that one time when Uncle Dorthna had been a day late. Ark had suggested a regular baby sitter, a girl Melmarc had known his brother was crushing on.

Their mom had personally taken them to Mr. Ilya’s place instead.

Uncle Dorthna had picked them up when he’d arrived. Melmarc had been eight years old then.

At the time Melmarc and his siblings had just assumed their parents wouldn’t trust their care into the hands of anyone who wasn’t Gifted.

In the end he was left with no answers at all.

The skills in the world were too many, and the classes were the same. People had similar skills sometimes but the way they used it made them different. For instance, two Gifted could have fire magic but one would have orange flames and the other would have blue.

And classes, though fewer than skills, could still be different. For instance, Dark-Mist had been a rogue class, but he was the only Rogue class that used mist. Melmarc didn’t even know what the mist did.

Guessing why Uncle Dorthna took trash was impossible, and once again, not for the first time in his life, he accepted his defeat. He would never figure it out.

Second recess was a thirty minutes long period. Students used the first recess for basic conversations, though most of them left their classes to do only God knew what. The second recess, however, was when they used the cafeteria, ate, and did whatever they could. It was a chance to use the school’s sports facilities without being part of any of the sports clubs.

Melmarc spent it with Eroms and Delano.

They sat in the cafeteria, the only three members of a single table. Melmarc opted for a plate of rice, a juice box, and an apple.

“I swear I could see her hurrying on over when she saw me,” Delano was saying as he ate.

They had waited for ten minutes before joining the queue simply because Delano didn’t want the head lunch lady to serve him.

Melmarc mixed his food with a plastic spoon, not necessarily hungry.

“For the last time, Delano. The lunch lady isn’t out to get you.”

“You’ve never had a sworn nemesis so you wouldn’t know.” Delano shoved a fork of salad in his mouth.

Eroms bit into a sandwich he’d brought from home. “The lunch lady is not your sworn nemesis, D.”

Even seated, Eroms was considerably taller than the rest of them.

“Anyway,” Delano said, pushing the topic of conversation. “What was so important that Ark was calling you yesterday? Did he finally get a class? Was it an unranked one?”

Melmarc poked his food with his spoon. “Nope. He just had something to show me.”

Eroms took the last bite of his sandwich. Still chewing, he asked, “What’s an unranked class?”

Delano poked him in the side. “Don’t eat with your mouthful, big guy.”

“It’s don’t talk with your mouthful.” Melmarc took a bite of his lunch.

“Is anyone going to tell me what an unranked class is?” Eroms asked. “Or are we going to let Delano keep teaching me wrong food etiquette.”

“It’s not wrong food etiquette. And it’s the thought that counts.”

Unlike Melmarc and Delano, Eroms was the friend with the littlest interest in the Gifted. Every child wanted to be gifted. If not for the money or the fame, then it was for the simple ability to do amazing things. Create fire out of nothing. Fly. Move a boulder like it weighed nothing.

Every child wanted to be Gifted because it was cool, despite how little the number of people that got to be Gifted was. But the media always made it seem like anyone could be. Just in the country there were over ten thousand known and registered Gifted. So there was always one gifted or the other with one class or the other in your face whenever you turned on the news or opened the internet.

It made people forget that the actual number was over ten thousand known and registered gifted in a country of over a hundred million people. And out of the ten thousand, only about a thousand were Delvers.

“Hey, Marc,” Delano said. “Do you want to do the honors of explaining to our fine friend over here, or should I?”

Melmarc made a gesture with his plastic spoon, giving his friend the honors, and Delano rubbed his hands together like someone about to do something grand.

“Classes are divided into seven major ranks, my fa—tall friend.” He smiled at Eroms who had paused his meal to listen. “Now the rankings are simple. We’ve got F being the lowest, all the way to double S, which is the highest. There are only two known SS-rank Gifted in the world and none of them are from our country.”

Eroms counted his fingers. “Seven ranks, so F, E, D, C, B, A, S, and SS. Even my younger cousin knows that, and he’s two. What’s an unranked class?”

“We’re getting there, don’t rush me. You don’t just jump into the game, you start with a kiss, then some—”

Melmarc winced. “Please no sex references at lunch, D. I’ll lose my appetite.”

“I don’t think you have any appetite. You’ve been poking your food since you got it. But okay. Where was I, Eroms?”

“You were about to talk about sex instead of what an unranked class is.”

“Alright, before I get there, you know what a class growth potential is?”

“Yeah. It’s how strong your class can be. If you get an F-rank class with an S-rank potential, then it can grow quickly. But that’s unheard of.”

“Yeah, most people who get less than a C-rank usually get a similar growth potential. That’s why a lot of Gifted aren’t Delvers. There are Delving companies that won’t employ anything less than a C-rank.”

“Isn’t that discrimination?” Eroms asked.

Melmarc disagreed.

“Not really. There are very few and rare E-rank portals that open up, so sending an F-rank into a D rank gate or a C rank gate is more like suicide.”

Delano pointed his plastic fork at him. “Exactly, there’s no point wasting money on people who are just going to end up being cannon fodder. C-rank and above is where the money really is. Most of the Gifted that aren’t Delvers mostly awakened less than C-rank.”

Eroms shrugged. “Sounds kind of unfair to me.”

“Nope, my good friend. Unfair is meeting the most beautiful girl in the world and finding out that not only is she older than you, but that she’s also your friend’s sister so you can’t make a move on her.”

Melmarc sighed.

“Even if Ninra wasn’t my sister, you still can’t date her. You’re just sixteen, and she’s twenty. It’ll be statutory rape.”

“Still don’t know what an unranked class is over here.”

“Sorry about that,” Melmarc said. “In summary, what Delano’s trying to get to, is that unranked classes don’t really fall under any of the rankings. They are literally ‘Unranked’. According to the records, your class comes after you’ve gotten a pick of your skills.”

“Which you don’t have to do immediately.” Delano picked up Melmarc’s apple and took a bite. “I heard that if you wait longer, you get offered new skills, different skills. If you started with two skills, you could probably get a total of eight different skills in total to choose from if you wait for, like, a week or two.”

Melmarc casually reached out and took his apple from Delano and placed it back on his food tray. He kept the part Delano had bitten into facing away from him.

“Everyone gets only two skills so waiting just gives you a chance of more options. You get two skills which then unlocks the class. You get to pick the skills but the skills pick your class. As for the unranked class, it’s more of a double-edged sword.”

“But is there a way to pick it?” Eroms asked.

“None that anyone knows of,” Delano answered. “They aren’t that popular. And the Gifted that have it say they have no idea how to get it. Even the forums don’t know, and those guys speculate a lot. They even know the skill combinations required to get the Barister class. Which is a useless class, because who wants to get magical powers that can only make really sweet coffee.”

“The problem with the unranked classes is the growth potential.” Melmarc moved the conversation along. “With an A-rank class, even if your growth potential is F-rank, at least you know you’re A-class. If you’re B-rank with an A rank growth potential, then you know you might be able to get to S-rank one day.”

“Ha!” Delano laughed. “Good luck with that. Do you know how hard it is to get to S-rank? It took Dragon-Knight ten years to get to S-rank, and he started as a B-rank with an A-rank growth potential.”

Eroms looked between the both of them. “So an Unranked class doesn’t mean very strong. It just means we don’t know the rank?”

“Correct, my good friend.”

Delano reached for Melmarc’s apple again and Melmarc smacked his hand. Delano glared at him but turned back to Eroms.

“So with the Unranked class, everyone always looks out for the growth potential. The higher the growth potential, the more willing companies are to higher you.”

Eroms thought about it. It was in the look in his eyes, and the way his lips moved.

“What of an Unranked growth potential?”

“Doesn’t exist.” Delano and Melmarc said easily.

“The growth potential’s always ranked,” Delano said. “There’s no Gifted with an Unranked potential.”

Eroms looked skeptical. “None?”

“None.”

Eroms made a sound that could’ve meant anything then dipped his hand into his brown food bag and brought out another sandwich. He didn’t eat it immediately, though. He just sat there, sandwich in hand, silent.

After a while he shrugged and took a bite.

“Anyway,” Delano picked the conversation back up. “What did Ark show you?”

Melmarc picked up his apple and bit into it. He stared at it for a while before dropping it back. He really didn’t have any appetite today. “He got a new pet.”

Delano laughed. “Tell me it was another snake. Oh, please say it was another snake.”

“It wasn’t another snake.”

“Spoilsport.”

“I’m not a spoilsport,” Melmarc argued.

“You kinda are,” Eroms said. “You kinda worry a lot. The first time I gave you an apple from the lunch lady, you didn’t eat it. You kept asking where I got it.”

“Because you don’t bring apples to school. I’ve known you for four years, and no apples. Not even one.”

“Then,” Eroms continued, “when I told you it was from the lunch lady, you asked why she gave me an apple.”

“The lunch lady doesn’t just give people apples. And we hadn’t even been to the cafeteria that day. She just found you and gave you apples for no reason. It’s kind of suspicious.”

“She was being nice.”

Delano banged the table with a plastic spoon to get their attention. In the large cafeteria, with students making all the noise they could, it wasn’t very loud. But it got their attention.

He looked pointedly between the both of them and said, “Now that I have your attention, what kind of animal was it?”

Melmarc shrugged. “Haven’t figured that one out yet.”

“You’re kidding, right? Is it a dog or a cat or an alligator or an iguana? We already know it’s not a snake so what is—”

“It’s magical so we don’t know. Something called a Guardian.”

He had intended for the words to come out as nonchalant so it wouldn’t draw too much interest from his friends, but the looks on their faces told him he’d failed.

Eroms was the first to break the silence.

“What’s a Guardian?”