Appraisal was the name of the special ability I’d been born with. All I had to do to use it was stare at someone for long enough, and then I would instantly learn all sorts of information about whoever I was appraising. When I say “someone,” by the way, I mean it. I could only appraise people.
To be clear, it wasn’t like someone came up and told me, “Oh, that power you’re using is called Appraisal!” or anything like that. I named it myself, actually. “Appraisal” just seemed like an appropriate name for a skill that let me peer into a person’s detailed abilities and traits.
As I stared at the man, a sort of black screen materialized before my eyes with all the information I could obtain about him displayed on it. I knew from experience that I was the only one who could see the screens. That particular man’s looked like this:
The format of the status screens just so happened to bear a striking resemblance to that of the menus in a historical strategy game I was quite fond of, so I knew exactly how to interpret them.
LEA stood for Leadership: the ability to effectively command an army.
VAL was Valor: a person’s combat prowess.
INT meant Intelligence: ergo, how quick-witted they could be.
POL was Politics: their ability to conduct negotiations and handle administrative work.
Finally, Ambition represented how likely they were to betray their superiors if the opportunity arose.
The numbers on the left indicated their current score, while the numbers on the right indicated their maximum potential. Breaking the numbers’ meanings down, the scale went something like this:
100+: Inhuman
90: Excellent
80: Great
70: Good
60: Average
50: Mediocre
40: Bad
30: Hopeless
Or something to that effect. At the very least, that was how the scale went in the game I used to play. I’d gone out of my way to appraise as wide a variety of people as I could manage, and everything had seemed to more or less line up with the game’s systems so far.
Next up, the Aptitudes. They were scored on a letter-based system, with D representing the lowest possible score and S the highest:
Infantry: the ability to fight at close range.
Cavalry: the ability to fight on horseback.
Archer: the ability to fight at range with a bow and arrow.
Mage: the ability to wield magic for combat purposes.
Fortification: the ability to construct and maintain castles.
Weaponry: the ability to both create and handle weapons.
Naval: the ability to battle aboard a ship.
Aerial: the ability to battle in the air…probably? I wasn’t entirely sure what that Aptitude referred to, as it wasn’t from the game.
Strategy: the ability to think tactically and turn the tides to your advantage.
Incidentally, the one person I couldn’t appraise was myself. Looking at my hand or my abdomen didn’t allow me to bring my status screen up, and looking at my face in a mirror didn’t do the trick, either. It was a real disappointment, honestly─I would’ve loved to know what my own talents were.
Anyway, back to Mister Millais, who I’d just appraised. His Valor satisfied the bare minimum standards for decency, at least, but everything else was more or less a wash. On the other hand, stats like his were probably just about normal for a rank-and-file foot soldier. Pretty much all of his fellow soldiers fell into the same basket: middling Valor, terrible everything else. Some of them didn’t even have a decent Valor score.
There was one thing that caught my attention about Millais, though: his aptitude as an Archer was remarkably high. In other words, he’d probably be pretty skilled with a bow, if he got his hands on one. And yet, there he was, out on the field training with a spear. He’d been practicing his spearmanship the last time I saw him, and I couldn’t remember ever seeing him so much as hold a bow. Was he just not interested in archery? I decided to ask.
“Millais?”
“Huh? D-Did you need something, Young Master?” Millais stammered in a panicked reply. “And wait, you know my name?”
“Why don’t you ever use a bow?” I asked, pushing past his confusion.
“A bow? ’Cause bows are a coward’s weapon, of course! Real men don’t stand off in the back lines, shooting away when their enemy can’t even reach ’em─they fight up close and personal!”
Wow, what an incredibly banal answer.
If that was all that was keeping him from making use of his talent, I figured stepping in to intervene was probably best. He had a B-rank aptitude for bows, so surely he’d be reasonably effective fighting with one.
“You should give bows a try!” I urged him.
“Ugh, seriously?” Millais moaned.
“You have the talent for them! Just try it!”
“Look, kid, just because you’re the lord’s son─” began Millais, almost certainly intending to turn me down again. But just then, the other soldiers who were training nearby started giving him a look. Specifically, it was the “You know you can’t actually turn down a personal request from Lord Louvent’s son, right?” glare.
Millais hesitated for a moment, then sighed and replied, “All right, fine, I’ll do it.”
The soldiers didn’t know about my appraisal ability, of course. They probably just wanted to get on their lord’s good side by way of his son.
“Never drawn a damn bow in my life,” grumbled Millais as he picked up a nearby bow, then turned to face the archery targets and nocked an arrow.
“Oi, Millais!” shouted one of the other soldiers, who specialized in archery himself. “You’re way too far for a beginner! You’re not even gonna reach the targets at that range, much less hit ’em! Move closer!”
“No, stay right here,” I commanded.
This was all my idea in the first place, so Millais stayed rooted to the spot. He drew the bowstring back as far as he could, then let it loose.