The task sheet was simple.
One page. Clean print. No excess.
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[ MONSTER TAMER ASSOCIATION ]
[ Assessment — 1st Star Apprentice ]
[ Task 1: Material Appraisal ]
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A sealed box has been placed on your desk.
Inside: 20 materials of various types.
Identify each material correctly.
Input your answers into the desk screen.
Minimum passing score : 18 / 20
Time limit : 30 minutes
Assessment begins on examiner signal.
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Qalish set the sheet down and looked at the box.
Plain wood. Latched, not locked. Standard sizing — the kind used for material transport. Nothing about it looked unusual.
Around him, the other applicants were reading their own sheets. A few had already opened their boxes and were looking at the contents with varying degrees of confidence.
Seraphine Aldis stepped to the front of the room before signalling the start.
"Before we begin — the examining panel for today's session."
Her voice carried without effort.
"I am Seraphine Aldis. Three-star Monster Tamer. Lead examiner."
She gestured to the two men by the door.
"Renn Holdt. One-star. Junior examiner, session coordination."
The younger man gave a brief nod.
"Harren Aldric. Two-star. Senior examiner — responsible for material preparation and assessment content."
The older man inclined his head. His gaze moved across the room once — unhurried — and paused briefly at Qalish's station before moving on.
Qalish noted his name. His face. His rank.
Filed it away.
"Any questions?"
Silence.
She raised her hand.
"Task one begins. Thirty minutes. You may open your boxes."
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Qalish unlatched the box and lifted the lid.
Twenty materials, each in a small individual tray, arranged in four rows of five. No labels. No order that he could immediately identify.
He looked at them without touching anything yet.
Mixed. That's the right word for it.
Monster parts — he could see at least seven from here. Bone fragments, a fang, something dark and crystallised that looked like compressed essence. Herbs — three or four, dried, the kind that appeared in alchemical references. Raw crystals, small grade. And a few things that weren't immediately obvious — a grey stone-like piece, a coiled material that might have been sinew or root, something flat and scaled.
He picked up the first tray.
A shard. Dark at the edges, translucent toward the center. Faint void quality — light bending slightly rather than reflecting clean.
Void Crystal fragment. Low grade — too small and too cloudy to be a proper shard. Residual energy only.
He typed it into the screen. Moved to the second.
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He worked steadily.
Not fast. Not slow. The pace of someone who had decided on a method and was following it — left to right, row by row, no skipping, no second-guessing after the first read.
Most of the materials he identified from knowledge alone. Two years of reading everything the academy library carried on monster taxonomy, material classification, and elemental theory. He had gone through the advanced section so many times the librarian had stopped looking surprised when she saw him.
For the ones that gave him pause — he held them and let the system work alongside his own reading.
[ Monster Analysis — Material Mode ]
[ Object: Unidentified organic fragment ]
[ Classification: Beast-type residual ]
[ Origin: Earth-element monster, D rank minimum ]
[ Common name: Stonehide Membrane ]
He typed it in. Moved on.
The grey stone-like piece — the one he had flagged from the start — turned out to be a compressed earth core fragment, not a stone at all. The kind that formed when an earth-element monster died in high-pressure conditions. Rare enough that most people never encountered one outside a specialty shop.
He almost smiled.
Someone put real thought into this box.
He didn't know who. He didn't particularly think about it.
He typed it in and moved to the next tray.
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At the eighteen-minute mark, he reached the last row.
Sixteen confirmed. Four remaining.
The coiled material — sinew, he had decided, but not standard. The coiling pattern was too tight, the fibre too dense. He held it and ran the system check again.
[ Monster Analysis — Material Mode ]
[ Object: Coiled organic fibre ]
[ Classification: Beast-type / Spirit-type hybrid residual ]
[ Origin: Dual-element monster — confirmed ]
[ Common name: Eclipse Bind Tendon ]
[ Note: Extremely rare. Natural dual-element mutation source. ]
He stared at the panel for a moment.
Natural dual-element mutation.
He thought of Foxy. Of the Eclipsed Beast Fang he had used for her second evolution.
He typed in the answer and set it down.
Three left. Twenty-two minutes elapsed.
He finished the remaining three without stopping — a dried herb identifiable by its edge crystallisation pattern, a fire-element fang fragment with the distinctive layered grain of a high-temperature beast, and a small flat scale that the system placed immediately as a water-type surface layer from a D rank aquatic species.
He entered the last answer.
Leaned back.
Checked the screen.
Twenty inputs. Twenty-three minutes elapsed. Seven minutes remaining.
He read through each entry once.
Then submitted.
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The thirty-minute mark came and went.
Seraphine Aldis called time. Applicants set down what they were holding. The screens went dark briefly — compiling — then displayed individual scores in a column at the top right corner, visible only to each station's occupant.
Qalish's screen showed:
[ Task 1 Result ]
[ Appraisal Score: 20 / 20 ]
[ Status: PASS ]
He read it without expression.
Around him — reactions. Some quiet relief. One person exhaled loudly. Another muttered something under their breath that didn't sound happy.
A few people glanced at each other's general direction — not at the screens, which were private, but at faces, reading what they could.
Seraphine Aldis moved through the room, collecting confirmation from each station. She reached Qalish's desk, glanced at his screen, noted something on her board.
Her expression didn't change.
She moved on.
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The scores were read aloud — not individual names, just the distribution.
"Results for Task 1," Seraphine said. "Passing score of 18 or above: nineteen applicants. Below passing: seven. Those below passing are thanked for their participation and may reapply at the next assessment date."
Seven people stood and left without much ceremony. The room felt smaller after.
Seraphine looked at her board.
"Top three scores will be announced. Third place — Daven Colt. Nineteen out of twenty."
A man near the back of the room — older than most applicants, broad in the shoulder, the kind of face that had spent time outdoors — gave a single nod. Said nothing.
"Second place — Lyra Maren. Nineteen out of twenty."
A woman two stations from Qalish straightened slightly. Her expression didn't shift. But her eyes moved — just once — to the station at the front of the result order.
"First place — Viridis Qalish. Twenty out of twenty."
Silence.
Not long. But present.
A few heads turned. People finding the face that matched the name.
Qalish kept his eyes forward.
From somewhere behind him — low, but not careful enough.
"Material appraisal you can study for. Wait for the Monster task."
He noted it. Didn't respond.
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Harren Aldric moved.
Not dramatically — just a step forward from his position by the door. His voice was measured. The kind of measured that was holding something back.
"The first place result should be reviewed."
The room went quiet.
Seraphine looked at him.
"On what basis?"
"An F rank talent placing above experienced applicants in material appraisal is — irregular. The integrity of the result should be confirmed."
Seraphine held his gaze for a moment.
When she spoke, her voice hadn't changed at all.
"The materials in each box were prepared by the examiner assigned to that station's assessment set." A pause. "If a result is irregular — the materials that produced it are irregular. And the examiner responsible for those materials is the source of the irregularity."
Silence.
Harren Aldric said nothing.
"Unless," Seraphine continued, "you are suggesting that the materials in that box were not what they should have been. In which case — that is a matter for a different conversation. One that begins with the examiner who prepared them."
A long moment.
Harren Aldric stepped back.
Said nothing more.
Seraphine turned back to the room as if the exchange had not happened.
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Seraphine returned to the front of the room.
The remaining nineteen applicants looked at her.
"Task two will begin shortly," she said. "Please remain at your stations. Further instructions will follow."
She walked back toward the examiner area.
Qalish leaned back in his chair.
Something about the box had been sitting at the edge of his attention since he finished. The compressed earth core. The hybrid tendon. The void crystal residue.
Those weren't standard materials.
He glanced toward the examiner area.
Harren Aldric was looking at his board. Expression flat. A little too still.
Qalish turned back to his desk.
Noted.
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