After the tests had been thoroughly passed, leaving the receptionist hastily scampers into the back room from the duo's quick and unexpected return, the guild receptionist eventually returned with the faint jingle of metal chiming from her hand. Displaying its owner's feelings on his behalf and for him, Inkaro's small floating grimoire bounced around him, exuding so much excitement it was intoxicating, like a child in a candy store after being told they could buy as much candy as they could carry.

  "Here are your guild lockets...," the guild receptionist chirped as she handled the objects with care, "...and I must say, you finished your tests rather fast. Vito must've been working hard for a change."

  "You could say that," Nuenala uttered in a huff with her arms crossed, recalling how the examiner was sleeping while standing when she and Inkaro arrived, followed by him writing stuff in his sleep.

  The receptionist faintly giggled, glad even, at seeing someone as young as Nuenala agreeing that her colleague could be passionately inattentive at the best of times.

  Holding out her hands, the imminent-to-be adventurers followed suit by hovering a hand under each of the woman's before she released her grip and allowed something small to drop into the duo's possession: in their hands were a teal metal square-shaped locket that housed an opaque crystal, and attached to the locket was a teal chain with a bubbly firm slime-like material on the end.

  "Now that you're officially adventurers, I must now divulge to you how the ranking system works."

  At hearing the mere mention of something sharing traits of a lecture, the yukachuo girl felt a compulsion to stop the receptionist before the woman could fry the young girl's brain with a drawn-out explanation of any kind.

  "But-" Nuenala managed to voice before holding back her words. She figured outright asking the reception to actively not do her job was plain rude, even Nuenala refused to be that selfish. In a split second, she listed off all the possible ways she could get herself out of this 'objectively' perilous situation, but then the ringing of her phone shattered her focus to pieces, not that she was complaining at such a gift. In a meek, embarrassed whimper, the girl said, "I... um... need to get this."

  Not waiting for even as much as the receptionist registering her words, Nuenala booked it down the grand hall before functionally divebombing through the door. Had what she had seen not been so outlandishly amusing, the receptionist pondered if she should feel offended the girl ran at the first chance to avoid hearing her explain things.

  "Some people just pick the worst time to call, am I right?", the receptionist remarked aloud to seemingly no one in particular before turning her attention to Inkaro, "Now, I hope you'll tell her what I'll impart to you, young man?"

  "Word for word, I can assure you, madam," Inkaro remarked cheerfully, ready and excited to be inundated with tendentious information, as his floating and grimoire case-cladded phone shut its case to hide its glowing screen.

  From behind the entrance door, Nuenala ignored her phone to the point the ringing stopped and the phone auto answered, as she pressed her ear to the door with a stern pout on her face. The lady explained how the ranking system for adventurers worked in deep and thorough detail, leaving nothing out, no matter how seemingly irrelevant. With a beaming smile, Inkaro gleefully took in every word while Nuenala was forced to endure the onslaught of information being divulged to her. Blinded by the words clouding her brain's small intake window, Nuenala could only loosely nod as her brain could only grasp at the general idea of how the system worked.

  To summarise her words to something Nuenala wouldn't mentally collapse from: An adventurer's overall rank is divided into three specialities: Team Synergy, Capabilities, and Knowledge.

  So, someone with an A C and C would be in the B range... probably. I wasn't there to confirm the details myself, bite me.

  This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

  Outside the building, Nuenala sat hunched against the wall, hunched to one side as her swirly marks seemed to spiral in time with her lost stare. She could feel her brain contracting and squeezing with the mere effort of trying to compute all the info she'd watched Inkaro take in with ease. It honestly made her more mad. Inkaro was such a bookworm, while she, in some ways, was the meathead.

  "Would you like a spell to help with that headache?" Inkaro offered as he stepped outside, followed by his friend staggering to her feet in a vain effort to save face and refuse the help.

  "I wished you weren't conflictingly capable of being considerate, it makes it hard to be mean to you," Nuenala grumbled as she hung up the call on her phone, displaying the icon she'd assigned to Inkaro's contact: an obnoxious close up of the grimore obsessor sleeping on a banana floaty at the beach in the middle of it floating out to sea.

  Cracking a smirk at the flattery coated in a layer of a snarky jab, Inkaro snapped back with a jab of his own. "So, you do have a conscience."

  Only allowing it to show for a second, the short girl frowned. She had half a mind to punch the guy for daring to get better at comebacks behind her back, but relented on the idea. Not because she didn't want to, she really did, she just decided to let him off the hook, mentally pointing to the phone call rescue earlier as her reasoning, or so she convinced herself.

  However, a verbal attack was an attack, and losing one of those wasn't in her cards. So she shot back to full force, like the weakened state she was just in didn't matter, before firing back on full power.

  "And you've mentally developed beyond stuffing your head with script mumbojumbo," Nuenala quipped while sticking an aquisitive finger in the direction of the guy's face, only to be intercepted by the floating phone-carrying grimore.

  "Anyway, you wanna check out the Adventure Guild App and see if there are any quests available nearby?" Inkaro retorted, utterly ignoring that last jab like his younger self would. Almost on command, the guy's floating grimore swung open. The blacksmith girl involuntarily sighed. She'd expected to see something genuinely unpleasant and something annoying, neither of which were related to the other.

  Sadly, the annoying thing was obnoxiously obvious to Nuenala: the quest the grimore had personally selected was such a tedious task, the girl unquestionably would rather be the subject of one of Inkaro's spell tests.

  The one saving grace Nuenala basked in was the fact that a certain annoying individual didn't make their appearance on the grimore page beside the phone, for now at least.

  Nuenala slumped her head, followed by a deep groan filled with audacious dismay.

  Back in the adventurer's guild building, the receptionist let out a satisfied exhale that bordered on a yawn, feeling genuinely tired from having talked for so long nonstop. She'd never seen someone not only listen to the whole explanation without interrupting her but also seem to actively enjoy listening. It made her strangely happy.

  "I suppose not all youngsters are ill-mannered like some adults," the receptionist remarked, raising her voice to the point the guy entering the room could only cast her an angerly amused side-eye, knowing she was unquestionably referring to him.

  "Oh, Vito, finally back, are you? I thought you might have let the examinees injure you again," the receptionist said in earnest innocence, acting like her prior retort hadn't just been said so shamelessly.

  Vito, the practical examiner, didn't even bother coming up with a retort, knowing how fruitless going against the receptionist would be with her years of experience dealing with rowdy people using her words alone, since she'd been prohibited from using physical means a day into being hired.

  "Nothing that serious, got whiplash from those two's results and ended up passing out, or so I assume."

  Every single part of what Vito said left her baffled; she wanted to ask all manner of questions, but focused on the most bizarre part first with a single word.

  "Assume?"

  The guy swiftly nodded. "Yeah, one minute the targets were there, then they were still there. Which was strange, given I could've sworn I saw the boy conjure a blue fireball that destroyed that entire half of the courtyard. Strange, right, Nali?"

  Nali stared at Vito in unbroken silence for a solid minute. She eventually breathed in, slowly. Before long, she lowered her head to the reception counter and finally exhaled, forcing every particle in her lungs to make way for as much fresh air as possible to hopefully clear her mind.

  "I'll just pretend you didn't just mention that young man using advanced-level fire magic."