🏆 THE AMBY AWARDS 2023 TOP PICK - DIVERSE LIT 🏆
It's Rin and Hye-jin against the world. Or so it should have been.
Nagara Rin and Joon Hye-jin, college sweethearts and passionate gamers, have lived a fairytale marriage. Not even a decade after did...
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Heather slammed her hand on the counter, leaning all the way past the desk separating her and Maryan. "What do you mean we can't renew our license?" she demanded, her eyes narrowing into slits. "We have the right balance for it!"
Maryan, who hid behind the glare of her round glasses, flinched. "I'm sorry, Heather," she ducked her head and moved to fix the papers scattered over her desk. She had been doing that for the whole time we crowded in her cubicle. "The system says your points are not enough to be considered for promotion."
Heather slapped the counter repeatedly, each fall eliciting a painful crack and splinters flying everywhere. "What do you mean not enough? We've made it past the quota this month!" she said. "We even helped out with that Dragnasand thing. Shouldn't that be worth—I don't know—a lot? Are you sure we aren't being cheated?"
The receptionist gulped, her throat bobbing. "I...have not been informed of such a case," she said. "But since you're technically not affiliated with Raventhorne, you need to have your attributes measured to be able to skip ahead to being an adventuring party."
She retrieved a slate of glass I could only liken to a tablet from where I came. Her gloved fingers clacked dully against it as she tapped here and there, the glow streaming from the screen setting her glasses alight. She held up the screen to us, bearing all of our names and list of attributes. "Look here," Maryan circled a finger around Trink and Arzo's name. "While you and Revery are somewhat in the acceptable range, these two barely made it past the second tier for all attributes. The minimum requirement for an adventuring party is at least fourth."
"And me?" I piped up.
Maryan glanced at me like she had forgotten I was there to begin with. "Seline...um," she pushed her glasses against the bridge of her nose, humming under her breath as she searched for my name. "Here you are. If you notice, you've barely changed since the last time—"
She paused. "That's strange," she tapped something on the upper right corner of her tablet. A refresh button equivalent, no doubt. Her eyebrows scrunched together. "Your attributes..."
I cocked my eyebrows. "What about it?"
Maryan turned the tablet over to me. Heather couldn't have beat me faster than she did now. Only her uneven locks as well as the corners of the tablet could be seen as she took the glass plate with both clawed fingers. Then, her shoulders shook like she's crying.
"Don't tell me it's so atrocious it made you cry," I frowned. "That's not funny."
Heather turned to me with the brightest smile on her face. "Quite the contrary. What did I tell you, Sel?" she shoved the tablet into my hands despite Maryan's protests fading in the background. There, I saw my attributes. And it was...
All attributes past the fifth. Which made me...
"Lower Artisan, hey!" Heather screamed, slapping my arm with her hand. Hard.
