This Batch’s Top Prospect

According to the bald instructor, I was supposed to be this season’s most promising prospect.

I took that seriously for a while.

Well, I only thought about it.

If I’d had any interest in this sort of thing to begin with, maybe I would’ve known what to do. But I’d gone from sleeping peacefully to getting hit with a sudden, absurd disaster out of nowhere, so I didn’t exactly have a wealth of knowledge to draw on. If I’d attended an Awakened academy, maybe that would’ve been different, but I hadn’t.

And so I kept thinking about it until, at last, the real practice week began.

Unlike me, who had been thrown into live training from early on except for a single day, the other Awakened were only now entering the full-scale phase of field practice.

If they came out of this training with the same kind of transcript I’d received, they’d use it to enter the Awakened industry.

If their grades were good, the so-called major guilds would come scouting. If not, they’d either join a smaller guild or simply go independent without joining any guild at all.

Of course, that didn’t apply to everyone. People had their own personalities, preferences, and all sorts of other factors. Some ambitious types might want to dominate the entire industry, gather like-minded people, and start with a private party of their own.

Obviously, none of that had anything to do with me. If I had the connections to do something like that, I wouldn’t still be sitting around and merely thinking about it.

At first, all I did was explore Gates alongside senior Awakened, but before long observers started tagging along too.

I thought they were only checking the monitoring equipment from outside, but a day or two later, some of them began entering the Gates with us directly.

The Association assigned stats based on activity during the training period, but standard stats couldn’t always capture everything, and each guild also tended to value its own extra metrics. The observers’ job was to see those things with their own eyes.

There were rules to that too.

In sports, the process of selecting amateur players is often called a draft, and the way guilds recruit Awakened is similar.

In professional teams, lower-ranked clubs get priority in choosing first, based on their results from previous years, so that the talent pool helps level out the league.

But Awakened recruitment works ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠differently. Priority for rookie selection is based on how actively someone worked the previous year and how much they contributed to society.

The number used to quantify a person’s guild activity and social contribution is what they call Contribution.

A guild that simply gathers people and spends more energy on anything other than Gate expeditions won’t rack up much Contribution, no matter how large it is or how much money it has.

If things get bad enough—or worse, if they cause public trouble—the guild gets penalized. And if the resulting Contribution falls below the threshold, it becomes impossible to claim rookie recruitment priority at all.

The Association updated Contribution values in real time so no one else could interfere at will, and the rankings were immediately visible as well.

So you could argue that new Awakened had no choice at all, but that wasn’t true.

If there were no guilds with priority this quarter that you wanted to join, or if you wanted to walk your own path rather than join a guild at all, you could simply opt out of the draft. And since it was only priority, you could refuse if you didn’t like the conditions they offered.

"It’s coming again!"

Except for the first few times, I’d mostly been forced to stand at the very front despite being a trainee.

There was no helping it. If they put me in the back just because I was a trainee, the monsters would ignore the front-line tank and rush straight at me, and the formation would fall apart in an instant.

It was better to place me beside the tank from the start. At least then we could avoid that kind of chaos.

By the Association’s standard stats alone, I looked a lot like a thief class—someone who ran all over the place and aimed for the enemy’s blind spot whenever there was a chance.

But in practice, things were completely different. No matter where I moved, the bastards just kept following ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠me.

At first I tried to dodge them by running around like a headless chicken, but honestly, that was exhausting for me, and it was lousy for the teammates backing me up too. So recently I’d changed my approach a little.

"Hah."

Watching the herd of single-horn rabbits charge at me, I took a light breath in and then held it.

These things were tiny, but incredibly agile. The horn on each of their heads was so sharp and hard that if you let your guard down and got stabbed by one, it could turn into a serious injury before you knew it.

It was basically like having living daggers flying at you from every direction.

The first time I’d faced them, it had been a real struggle, but now that I’d built up some experience, I could handle them fairly smoothly.

If I only focused on dodging, the people in the rear would end up taking the damage. The front line’s most important job was to block as much of the enemy’s attack as possible so it never reached the back row, so rather than fully avoiding the rabbit strikes coming from all directions, I concentrated on altering their trajectories with my hits.

If luck was on my side, I could finish them off with a single blow. If not, I could still stop them from breaking through to the back.

I slammed a single-horn rabbit out of the air with my three-section staff and sent it crashing to the ground, then kicked another one that was leaping up from my lower right and sent it flying.

When I’d first come out for training, even watching them had made my eyes spin, but now it was starting to feel more like a rhythm game.

Thinking about it myself, that was one hell of an improvement.

As the party’s main tank supported me, the dozen or so single-horn rabbits that had suddenly poured out were blocked before they could get behind me.

As long as we could somehow stop the initial rush, the back line’s firepower could wipe them out in one go.

"Seha, you’re getting more and more skilled."

"Yeah, she really is this season’s top prospect."

Once that battle was over, praise came pouring in from the rest of the party.

"Thank you..."

For some reason I felt embarrassed, so I just scratched my head and answered that way, and the others burst out laughing again at the sight of it.

The observers who had been watching from a distance wrote up a report based on what they’d seen and sent it to each guild once the hunt was over.

A tank who specialized in evasion was actually a difficult prospect in many ways. Most importantly, if you dodged attacks that were supposed to be absorbed in the front line, the burden would fall squarely on the back line instead.

In that sense, Lee Seha’s response in combat was an appropriate way to offset the weaknesses of such an ambiguous position.

"The standard stats just can’t capture this properly. No matter how you look at it, this is clearly different from the usual evasion tank."

"But it’s not easy to add a new official stat to the record, either. That’s why we have the observer system in the first place."

"All right, let’s set that aside for now. So, what’s the verdict after reviewing the data?"

Inside a guild, besides the Awakened who handled combat, there were office workers who supported them. These people were generally called the front office, and the ones gathered here were the scouting team responsible for recruiting new guild members.

"Our guild uses several related stats. APR, PAA, P-ROI, and CPS-P are the ones in question. Based on this observation period, the four stats we obtained are as follows."

"Incredible... These numbers are something else. I’ve never seen anything like them."

"At this level, she’d be top-tier not just for our guild, but for the whole country, wouldn’t she?"

"Even if we account for the fact that she’s still a prospect, it’s honestly hard to believe."

"A few of the numbers are still low, but that’s probably just the difference experience makes. If we limit ourselves to prospect-level comparisons, her stats are still astonishing."

The team members reacted with excitement, but the team leader’s expression wasn’t all that bright.

With stats like this, there was a real chance someone might ignore the draft convention and contact her quietly from behind the scenes.

Even if it was called a draft, being selected didn’t mean you had to sign a contract. It only gave them priority. If someone disregarded convention and offered even better terms in advance, there was a good chance she’d be tempted to take the deal.

"What does Finance think?"

If the prospect were merely decent, there’d be no need to worry. But for a rookie of this scale, the guild’s finances couldn’t be ignored. On top of that, they also had to consider fairness toward the existing guild members.

The finance team leader thought about it for a moment before answering carefully.

"At this level, anyone would classify her as A-plus or higher, and we may even need to consider S-class待遇. This isn’t something we can decide on our own."

"So in the end, it comes down to the guild master’s judgment."

Under normal industry practice, the signing bonus alone would likely start ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠at three billion won or more, with a guaranteed first-year salary of at least five hundred million won. On top of that, the contract would probably ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠have to include guaranteed promotion to a first-string party within a few years, plus dedicated analyst support, a personal trainer, and funding for custom equipment.

The question was whether they could really commit to that level of investment in a rookie prospect whose exact potential still hadn’t been confirmed.

If it worked, the return would be worth every bit of the expense. But if something went wrong halfway through, all that effort could go up in smoke in an instant. In the end, that was just gambling.

Which, come to think of it, was exactly what a prospect was.

The scouting team leader hesitated for a moment, then spoke again.

"This is not something we can decide. Let’s report to the guild master first."