Chapter 11 (XI) The Assessment - Part 1

Megan approached and stood beside him in silence as the celebration slowly started to die down. Her thoughts raced, and her expression revealed the raging emotions within her. She had imprinted to Jackson shortly after she arrived a few years ago despite his withdrawn demeanor.

"Hey, Jax..?" Megan whispered reluctantly as she grabbed the hem of her skirt.

"Yeah?" Jackson replied, turning his face slightly as he watched the remnants of the party.

"You're going to come back and visit, won't you?"

"Of course, I will! I can't leave you all alone with Miss Exme!"

Megan sighed in relief before smiling, "Great! I need to go do something; I'll see you before you leave!" She said, running off as Jackson smiled and shook his head.

Shortly after, Head Mistress Le Doux came over with a smile.

"Well, well, well, Jackson! I'm quite surprised you even decided to show up to your own party; the whole time I've known you, you never once attended!" She chuckled with a large grin.

"With how hard Megan worked to plan it, I figured I should at least attend this one! How much longer until we depart for The Climber's Association?" Jackson asked.

"Why's this one different? She's always worked hard to plan these parties for you since she first arrived!" Tara joked, intentionally ignoring her question.

"That should be obvious; it's the last one!" Jackson countered, placing his cup on a table and crossing his arms as he stared at the headmistress sternly, "When are we going?"

Tara began pouting, "Oh, you're no fun!" She teased before relenting, "Soon, you all ready to go?" He nodded in confirmation.

"You're a rather particular case, Jackson Seraphin. Any other orphan who claimed they would become a Climber would have been laughed out of here, but you..? There's not a single doubt in my mind. I hope you find the answers you're looking for; God's Tower is a very dangerous place." She said before turning and leaving.

Jackson looked around and smiled before returning to his room. He quickly grabbed everything, returning the room to the once barren, empty state as he had found it a decade prior.

Changing into the clothes he recently bought, he exited his room carrying a small crate filled with the three tomes and his investigation pages from the walls.

He wore a long white jacket that stopped just below his knees, and underneath was a black shirt tucked into loose-fitting black pants and sturdy black combat boots. Attached to his left shoulder was a pauldron strapped around his chest underneath the jacket, which allowed him to link the two basic iron short swords across his back.

His silver necklace rested against his form-fitting black shirt. He wore a sturdy glove that came to his elbow, providing additional protection against attacks, and his silver ring sparkled on the index finger of his bare right hand.

Jackson had long since memorized every word in the three tomes, but they were less valuable than he anticipated. He practiced their stances thousands of times but could never reproduce any of the effects mentioned.

A large stone fireplace with an intense fire was in the common's room where Jackson knelt in front of it before he dumped the contents of the crate into the fire and tossed the box to the side, sitting back as the fire grew substantially.

He stood up, staring at the flames with conflicted emotions. He would have liked to keep the manuals but feared them being stolen. Having spent the last decade memorizing every page and practicing each move was ingrained into every fiber of his being, he wasn't worried about forgetting them, but his father wrote them for him.

They had saved his life many times but what he could reproduce from the texts wasn't even one percent of their true potential, 'Yet another dead end... Thanks, dad!' He thought sarcastically as he made his way out of Saint Mary's Orphanage.

Tara Le Doux and Megan stood next to each other at the top of the stairway leading away from the large manor. The younger girl beamed when she saw Jackson wearing his new clothes.

"All set?" Tara asked as Jackson approached and nodded, "Great, let's get going!"

The three made their way across town, out of Duskgate's slums, into the nicer, more developed section of the city where organizations settled, close to God's Tower and the protection from The Climber's Association.

The massive capital building had been renovated utilizing masonry and repurposed to be Duskgate's branch office for The Association. The medieval exterior starkly contrasted with the more modernistic interior of the building.

The glass doors opened automatically as the three entered the building. Tara led the pair through the lobby, ignoring the long line of applicants at the front desk, pressing the call button for an elevator.

Boarding, she pulled a key out from her coat and inserted it into the elevator as a panel popped out, revealing three additional buttons. She hit the middle one as the doors closed, and they began to descend to the subfloors.

The descent surprised Jackson and Megan as they passed by dozens of floors before stopping. The doors swished open to reveal a massive, pristine tiled room with a large machine connected to pipes and wires from the ceiling.

A group of men and women dressed in white coats were huddled close to one another as they stared at a clipboard, pointing and chatting amongst themselves.

A woman with long blonde hair and piercing blue eyes sat cross-legged to the machine as dozens of electrodes were attached all over her body. She smirked confidently as a monitor nearby quickly began processing billions of bytes of data as binary blindly scrolled across the screen.

After a moment, a window appeared on the screen with a detailed report of the woman's capabilities:

[Power: SS]

[Perception: S+]

[Stamina: S+]

[Speed: SS]

[Instinct: SS]

[Rating: SS]

Jackson inhaled sharply as he gazed at the monitor before glancing at the woman again. She beamed arrogantly, seeing the results, an aura of superiority oozing out of her body as the scientists quickly removed the electrodes from her.

Tara patted him on the back, "Your turn! You nervous?"