“Next in line, please come forward.”
In the hallowed church hall, an elderly priest dressed in holy vestments called me forward. Before him stood a pulpit engraved with a cross, and resting atop it was a large, blue crystal. The priest picked the crystal up with both hands, holding it above his head.
It was my turn to participate in the Heaven’s Blessing Ceremony, a mandatory rite of passage for every subject in the Meldrake Kingdom the year they turned sixteen.
The ceremony revealed in each participant a latent class affinity and special skill. Just as the name suggested, it was an opportunity to receive a blessing from heaven.
There were several different types of classes that each participant could manifest, including your standard combat classes, such as fighter, mage, and knight; noncombat classes like merchant, blacksmith, and farmer; and even specialized classes like sorcerer, paladin, and spellsword.
Special skills were generally closely related to your class, and regardless of your socioeconomic status, it was possible for the ceremony to reveal an advanced class affinity that would reward you with celebration and support from the kingdom. No matter who you were, the ceremony offered the opportunity to turn your entire life around. It was hardly an overstatement to say that it was the most significant milestone in a person’s life.
Most people looked forward to receiving their blessing and eagerly awaited their moment in the ceremony...but not me.
My name was Chris Sparring, and I was born into an esteemed family lineage of sword fighters. The Heaven’s Blessing Ceremony had bestowed sword-wielding classes upon generation after generation of Sparrings, and the affinity held by the head of the family had always had a profound influence on our family’s prestige.
My father, George Sparring, also possessed a sword-wielding affinity just as his forebears had—but his specific one, “seasoned swordsman,” was the lowest-ranking affinity that any Sparring head had ever been given.
Maybe that explained why he had a bit of a complex about class affinities. Since I was the eldest—and my younger twin brother had a weak constitution—my father had subjected me to strict training from a young age, hardly ever letting me out of his sight.
That was what the Heaven’s Blessing Ceremony represented for me: the weight of all my father’s expectations on my back.
I knew that it would probably go just fine, considering that every member of the Sparring bloodline had received a sword-wielding class...but when I stopped to dwell on the one in a million possibility that I might be the one to break this pattern, it was hard to suppress the tremble that came over me.
There were probably plenty of people out there who envied me for how easy I seemed to have it. From the outside, it must have looked like I wanted for nothing. But, no matter how difficult their lives might have been in other ways, I would have done anything to trade places with the kids who didn’t have to bear the burden of their parents’ unrealistic expectations.
As I made my way slowly toward the podium, doing my best not to throw up, I heard my brother, Claus, speak from behind me.
“Hurry up and go already. I’m up after you,” he said.
Claus had been frail and sickly as a child, requiring the constant attention of a doctor. But once he turned five, he started to show real signs of improvement, and now he lived a perfectly normal life.
So, you’d think that we would have grown up with a perfectly normal sibling relationship...but for some reason, Claus seemed to hate my guts. Whenever I tried to talk to him, all I’d get in response were tepid one-liners. In all our years growing up, we’d never once had a proper conversation.
Still, as much as I hated bearing the weight of all of our father’s expectations, I guess from Claus’s perspective, it might’ve just looked like I was getting all of his attention.
“Sorry. I’m going.” I sighed deeply and quickened my pace to approach the podium.
Once I was standing in front of the priest, he wrapped his hands, which were like two withered trees, around the crystal and began to chant some sort of incantation.
Only seconds passed, but to me, it felt like an eternity.
Then, as if he had just seen a vision of the blessing I’d received, the priest lowered his hands from the crystal and looked at me directly.
“Christopher Sparring,” he said. “Your affinity is farmer. Your special skill is poison resistance.”
The second I heard his proclamation, my head began to spin, and a sudden sharp pain seized my chest. It felt like someone had my heart in a stranglehold.
F... Farmer?
Did he just say...I’m a farmer?
The priest’s lips were still moving, but nothing else he said penetrated my ears. The nausea I had fought so hard to keep at bay was now threatening to erupt.
“You got a farmer affinity?! How awful... But hey, don’t worry! You’ll be all right! Cheer up, brother!” Claus exclaimed from behind me, loud enough for everyone in the church to hear.
I turned around and saw him looking at me with an expression of unadulterated delight.
Out of instinct, I almost leaped to cover his mouth. But I knew it was too late. The damage had been done.
All of the strength left my tightened muscles. Claus stepped closer to where I was standing and patted one of my slumped shoulders.
“Hey, thanks. Now I won’t have to worry so much about going up for my blessing,” he whispered into my ear before jostling me on his way to the podium.
In a stark contrast to his confident stride, I shrank myself as small as possible as I tried to make a discreet exit toward the church doors. It was there that I spotted my father, standing with his arms crossed.
Even from a distance, I could see how angry he was—angrier than I’d ever seen him. He didn’t waste a single minute laying into me.
“You good-for-nothing clot! You imbecile! I spent all those years training you only for you to be a farmer?! With poison resistance?! How dare you disgrace me like this!”
“I-I’m sor—” I began stammering in strangled tones, but my apology was drowned out midway by loud cheers from behind me.
I turned around to see the priest patting my beaming brother on the shoulder. The church crowd began to murmur excitedly, and before long, the news on their lips reached my father and me.
“I think he just got the ‘sword god’ affinity! That would make him the fifth sword god in history!”
“But...how? Surely that can’t be possible?”
Bewildered, I turned to face my father again. The hitherto unforeseen rage that had filled his eyes was now replaced with hitherto unforeseen joy. They sparkled as he looked proudly up at Claus, who stood at the podium.
I had already long vanished from his gaze. It felt as if I were suddenly all alone among the throngs of people that filled the church hall.
“F-Father... I... I’m sorry,” I blurted out.
When he glanced over at me, his gaze was full of pity.
A pain seized my chest again—that same feeling, like my heart was being constricted. It was getting harder and harder to breathe. No matter how much air I took in, I felt like I was suffocating.
I clutched at my chest as my knees collapsed from underneath me. But before they could hit the floor, a pair of hands caught my armpits to push me back up. I wasn’t even allowed to faint.
Slowly, I lifted my head to see who had come up behind me. Looking down at me was none other than Claus, who regarded me with a smile even crueler than the one he’d worn before.
“Come on, now, brother. You’re not trying to steal the spotlight with this little stunt, are you? This is a big moment for our family, now that one of us has been given a sword god blessing. If you want to have a fainting spell, then do it in some back alley where no one will see you. You can cry your eyes out there all you want, farmer.”
Furious, I balled my hand into a fist, ready to strike him. But within moments, the sobering clarity of the difference in our fortunes quelled my fiery instincts. Instead of raising my fist, I simply hung my head.
As soon as Claus realized I had no will to fight him, he let go of my arms. Amid a chorus of cheers and applause, he turned to our father.
“Father, I’ve just received the sword god affinity. It’s a real shame that Chris turned out to be a farmer...but God hasn’t forsaken us. At least one of us can carry on the Sparring family legacy and preserve our honor.”
“Y... Yes, you’re absolutely right. Well done, Claus! Well done! You really are a Sparring. I hope you’ll continue leading our family down the path of greatness,” our father said, overcome with emotion as he wrapped his arms around Claus in a tearful embrace.