Again, however, it was futile.
No matter how desperately I tried, the only skill I was able to develop was [Stone Throw]. It was something that anybody—even children—could develop and use. To add insult to injury, despite the bow being a hunter’s defining weapon, I was never once able to use it correctly before the training term was over. In the words of my instructor:
“You have zero intuition when it comes to handling fine tools.”
I felt awful after leaving the hunter training school; after all, I had learned that I would never be able to live up to my image of the ideal hero from my father’s epics. I wasn’t cut out to be a class that fought magnificent battles, diving into the fray with weapons in hand.
So be it then, I thought. As long as I could go on adventures, my actual class didn’t matter to me anymore. I was fine with giving up the leading role if there was some other way for me to help. Maybe I wasn’t going to be a storybook hero, but there had to be something—anything—I could do.
That was why, somewhat frantic, I enrolled at the thief training school. I still had a faint hope inside me that maybe—just maybe—this was where my talents could shine.
But I was naive. In the end, all I managed to develop was a skill that muffled the sound of my footsteps a little.
“You can’t even open trapped chests,” the man overseeing my training—a thief himself—told me, “and with no detection skills, you can forget about scouting altogether.”
Then, in very clear terms, he said that I should try a different class, because it was obvious that I had no talent for being a thief. So, despite having clung to this as my final chance, I was sent away again.
I was at a complete loss. Thief had been my last resort—the only remaining class that I’d thought was within reach for me. All that remained were the magic ones, but I’d given up on those as soon as the guildsman told me about them.
Magic was the cumulative product of one’s innate affinity for mana, vast intellect, and diligent training. These three things were required just to reach the starting line. To make matters worse, it was commonly said that the difficulty of pursuing magic classes was incomparable to training for classes like swordsman and warrior. Knowing that, I’d discarded them as options...but now I had no choice. No other paths remained for me.
And so, despite my only knowledge of the world of magic being the bits and pieces I had gathered from children’s stories, I decided to jump right in. I was being foolish, but at the same time, who knew? Maybe there was a hidden talent for magic lying dormant inside of me. It was with that in mind that I went to the magician training school and asked to be trained.
To cut a long story short, I was hopeless. At everything. The old magician at the door had welcomed me in, saying: “Mm, why not? Let’s see what you can do.” But the most I had picked up was a single skill that created a tiny flicker of fire from my fingertip, no bigger than the flame of a lit candle.
It was a basic—no, beyond basic—skill that anybody, no matter how untalented, should be able to learn in three days at most, yet it had taken me the entire term.
“It’s quite unusual for a person to be so naturally lacking in magical talent,” the old magician had said, overseeing my efforts with great interest. But in the end, he sent me away with a gentle admonishment. “I’m afraid that this is not where you belong. Find yourself a different path to tread.”
That same day, I quietly departed the magician training school and gave up on becoming a magician.
All of my training thus far had ended in failure, and of the many classes that I could apply for with the help of the Adventurers Guild, there was only one left: cleric. It was a magic class that, for me, seemed like my most foolish pursuit yet. For one thing, becoming a cleric was even harder than becoming a magician. Those who held the title had almost always been born with a blessing from the divine—with healing magic—and undergone long years of disciplined training as young children.
“Clerics and the like?” the guildsman had said to me. “They’re the one branch of classes where putting your mind to it just ain’t enough.”
I believed his every word, don’t get me wrong...but it was already clear that I couldn’t become a swordsman, a warrior, a hunter, a magician, or even a thief. I had nothing else to pin my hopes on, so I headed for the cleric training school.
Soon enough, I arrived at a large, solemn temple built from stone. I knocked on the doors and then explained my situation and my hopes to the tall priest who came out to see me, but his response was plain and simple.
“You’re asking for the impossible. You have no foundational training. You should give up.”
I knew that all too well, but no matter how insistent he was on turning me away, I couldn’t bear to throw in the towel. “I won’t move from this door until you let me train here,” I said to the man. And, true to my word, I didn’t.
One day passed, then two, and then three, before finally...
“I suppose I can teach you the basics.”
Thus began my training to become a cleric.
Unfortunately, after a training term of nonstop, grueling effort, all I acquired was [Low Heal]. It was below even the lowest class of cleric spell, [Heal], and the most it could do was partially mend my own small scratches, making it a pointless skill for a cleric to have.
Even after training my absolute hardest, this one skill was the only thing I’d gotten. Put another way, I had proven my complete lack of talent once and for all.
“Coming this far despite not having received a blessing as a child is amazing in itself,” said my instructor, the priest. But despite his consolation, I could see the other trainees who were my age learning far more impressive skills and improving incomparably faster. It was obvious that I was incompetent. In the end, it had all been for nothing.
And so it came time for me to report back to the guildsman—to inform him that I’d learned no useful skills and that I’d been declared to have “no aptitude” for any of the classes.
“You couldn’t learn a single decent skill?” he asked. “You’ll end up dead in a ditch on your first day of adventuring then, no two ways about it. Give it up and go home, yeah? I could look for other work for you too, if you’d rather that.”
Naturally, he told me to cast aside my dreams. It made perfect sense—even I knew that the path of an adventurer was fraught with danger—but I still couldn’t bring myself to quit. So instead, I quietly left the city.
I had no talent. None at all. That fact was as plain as day.
But so what? I suddenly thought. What does it matter that I’ve got no talent for anything? All that means is that I’ll have to put even more effort into my training.
I knew then that I couldn’t give up, no matter what. After all, my swordsman training instructor had once told me: “Though it’s extremely rare, if a person constantly trains a skill over a long, long period, they can end up developing an entirely new one.”
I clung to those words. They were all that I had—my last and only hope. I convinced myself that the time I had spent being evaluated had simply been too short, and that, with more training, even I could learn a useful skill and become an adventurer.
Yes, all I needed was some intense training. I decided that as soon as I got back to my home on the mountain, I’d train until I dropped.
Of course, since I wanted to be a swordsman, the first thing I did when I returned was make myself a wooden sword. Then, using lengths of rope, I hung sticks from the branches of the trees surrounding my home. I struck them away with my wooden sword, over and over and over again with single-minded intent. That, and that alone, would be my training.
[Parry]
I used the one swordsmanship skill that I’d learned during my time at the swordsman training school—the worst skill among them all, deemed useless by everybody.
And so I parried sticks from dawn ’til dusk, day in and day out. At times, I even forgot to eat or sleep.