Chapter 373 (1/2)

The Assessment on the afternoon of the 1st day was System Knowledge, and it had just as many, if not more, people attending as the combat Assessment had. Perhaps because this was open to all people, and while not everyone had any wish to participate in combat, Donnyton’s almost 4,000 strong population all thought they knew a thing or two about the System.

Because almost 800 people wanted to participate in this, in order to test them all in an efficient manner, Daniel had done his best to design several tests. A huge part of the knowledge of the System was memorization, because there simply wasn’t a logical underpinning they understood yet. So to start, everyone had to do three tasks: Name 10 Classes, 10 Skills, and 10 Paths. The only caveat was their choices couldn’t be the Class, Skills, or Paths that they had access to.

There was no real way to check for sure if people were following the rules for the second and third categories, but usually people’s Skills were obvious, and their paths even more so. Of them all, Paths was the hardest to remember, as most people had never really thought about the Paths that other people used.

With these three tests, the large group had been knocked down to just under 100, a 90% failure rate, from something so basic.

Because he was bored, Randidly found himself taking the test, and rather easily passing through the first three tests. Afterwards, however, he went over to Daniel, curious, and asked how they would know if they weren’t just making up Classes, Skills, and Paths.

“I suspect it doesn’t matter,” Daniel answered shortly, barely looking up from his papers, people rushing about him in the small tent they sent up for him to hold court at. “If you have made up something that we haven’t considered yet, so much the better. Plus, it shows initiative and ingenuity. This is just to knock away the lookie-loos. The hard stuff comes later.

Bemused, Randidly took the next round of tests as well. This time, the test asked Randidly to rank 10 Classes in order of Strength. The question was very careful to say that accuracy wasn’t as important as logical underpinning. The Classes were Spiritualist, Warrior, Archer, Arcane Mage, Axe Warrior, Thief, Strongman, Glorious Knight, Amazon, and Lich Necromancy.

Randidly raised his eyebrows. This…

Was a trick question. Because Strength was capitalized. Which meant it wasn’t overall power, but rather basically which were the most physical Classes. Which probably meant Strongman was first, followed by Axe Warrior and Glorious Knight, then Warrior and Amazon, followed by Archer. Behind them were Spiritualist, Arcane Mage, Thief, and Lich Necromancer, that were basically all not strength focused, or even Strength adjacent.

Randidly turned in his paper, one of the few to answer so quickly, and was waved onto the next area.

It took about an hour, but around 40 or so people came trickling in. Listening to other people talk, some people had apparently not actually gotten the trick of the question, but talked at length about the power of adjectives and specificity and Classes, and they were given special exemption to proceed.

Inwardly, Randidly approved, even while he rolled his eyes. He approved because Daniel needed people like this, who could wholeheartedly research things like Class specificity. He rolled his eyes because Daniel clearly just wanted people he could get into pointlessly long conversations with, talking about what the System had done to people. Even Clarissa grew weary around Daniel after being exposed for too long.

This Assessment did a good job of bringing those people to the surface. What was interesting about this Assessment, rather than the other three, is that this type of test could only be used once. Every 6 months, a whole new criteria had to be devised, both because general knowledge would improve, but because people could study for the test specifically, if it didn’t change, rather than actually becoming knowledgeable.

Randidly shrugged. Oh well, that was Daniel’s problem.

The next round was a word problem, Randidly found, much to his own bemusement.

Alice has received the Class “Brave Adventurer”. She receives 15 Attributes per level, as well as 5 Stats, mostly concentrated in Health and Physical Defense. She also receives the Skills Struggle, Brave Strike, Desperate Stand, and Aura of Hope. She has 6 free Skill Slots.

James has received the Class “the Armored King of Turnips”. He receives 11 Attributes per level, as well as 4 Stats, which is balanced between Health, Vitality, and Wisdom. The Skills he obtains are Turnip Strike, Green Thumb, Farming, Rising Strength, Valiant Block, Armor Proficiency, and Ruler’s Aura (Un). He has 4 free Skill Slots.

Dmitri has just gotten the Class “Conqueror”. Please speculate how many attributes, stats, skills, and free skill slots Dmitri will receive. Include your reasoning. Assuming he obtains at least 3 Skills, speculate as to the nature and strength of three of Dmitri’s Skills. Explain your reasoning.

Following this, please develop criteria on which to grade Classes, and explain how the different types of Classes affect the bonuses that come along with stats…