The Author's POV
chapter-18

"pfff, you can't even remember the faces of your own teammates?"

Smirking, Jin mockingly looked at Kevin.

"Oh? so you're telling me that you remember the face of all your teammates?"

Raising his brow, Kevin turned around and skeptically looked at Jin.

"..."

Turning around, Jin pretended to have not heard Kevin and walked away.

Dumbfounded, Kevin helplessly looked in Emma and Amanda's direction, only to be left even more speechless.

Swiftly moving around the trees, Emma was currently being chased by Amanda whose face remained expressionless.

-Swish!

-Swish!

-Swish

Taking out her bow. At an inhuman speed, Amanda's fingers danced between the bow and the quiver. Soon, three arrows flew in Emma's direction at a speed that couldn't be seen by the naked eye.

-Thud! -Thud! -Thud!

"Stop! Stop! Stop! I give up!"

Taking cover behind a tree, Emma raised her hands in defeat as she fearfully looked at the arrows that were imbued on the tree she was hiding. Each arrow perfectly penetrated the hard outer shell of the tree. Looking closely, the tip of each arrow was only a few centimeters from Emma's face, sending cold shivers down her spine. If it weren't for the fact that Amanda restrained herself, Emma might've actually died.

Shaking his head, Kevin turned his attention back to the young girl, not before letting out a long sigh. He was starting to doubt whether grouping with them was the right thing to do.

'Maybe if Melissa was here things wouldn't have been as bad...'

Thought Kevin for a moment before shaking his head.

Knowing Melissa's personality, things might've actually turned out for the worse.

Sighing once again, and ignoring the commotion that Amanda and Emma were causing, Kevin squinted his eyes and took a good look at the girl before him.

She was a beautiful, light-skinned young girl with a petite yet curvaceous frame and below-average height. She had long, slightly curly black hair that reached all the way to her back. Her large crystal eyes were slightly covered by short square bangs. She had plump rosy cheeks which accompanied by her short figure made one want to tightly squeeze them.

"Did you come to me to ask me to protect you?"

"N-no!"

Quickly shaking her head, the young girl timidly pointed towards another group of people in the distance.

"They sa-id that they know where the hidden task was..."

"...oh?"

Taking one good look at the members in the distance, Kevin was reminded of the people he had previously seen in the waiting room.

Although he did not remember the young girl, he did remember two out of the four individuals gathered.

They were the most arrogant and prideful of the bunch, so of course, he knew about them.

If he didn't remember wrong, they should've been ranked around the hundreds and were extremely prideful of their ranking. They were so proud and arrogant that they thought that they could fight Kevin on equal terms.

Like they all say...

Powerful people often grew confident, and confident people were often conceited.

Power gets in the head of everyone. Kevin was no better, but because he had a clear goal, he managed to suppress his inner desires.

Shaking his head, he walked towards them

Although he had no interest in interacting with them, since they knew where the location of the hidden task was, it was only natural that his interest was piqued.

"...Oh, by the way what's your name?"

"Ehm.."

Timidly looking down, the young girl avoided Kevin's eyes and swiped her hand right.

Soon a screen appeared in front of Kevin.

User ID : Ava leafz

Age : 16

Picture : (Holographic image)

Program : Hero program Year 1

School Rank : 1078/2055

Potential : Unranked

Profession : Monster tamer

"..Ava? Monster tamer?"

Touching his chin, Kevin looked at the information that was presented in front of him.

Looking at the shy young girl once again, Kevin couldn't help but be slightly moved.

If one asked Kevin which profession he thought was the strongest in the world, Kevin would without a doubt say the monster tamer class.

Usually, most people would regard things such as swordsmanship, or fancy professions that were flashy and pleasing to the eye as the strongest professions.

However, Kevin begged to differ.

In his opinion, the most fearsome out of all the professions was the monster tamer profession.

Each person was born with a certain level of talent.

This level was a set limit that could never be changed no matter what someone did.

...well that was unless you were Ren or Kevin who were both cheats.

If your talent was ranked D, then the best you could achieve throughout your whole life was becoming a D-rank hero.

Once you reached your talent limit, no matter how much extra time you spent training, you would never be able to improve.

Kevin was all too familiar with the despair that stemmed from knowing their talent was too low.

Originally, Kevin's talent was terrible. It was so bad that throughout his whole childhood he was bullied for it. While everyone around him showed incredible talent that made them stand above their peers, Kevin was born with a mediocre E-rank talent. The worst possible talent that anyone could get.

At the time, his parents who also had low talents blamed themselves for his poor aptitude.

Fortunately, Kevin's mentality was strong and he was never saddened by his low level of talent.

Well, that was until that fateful 'day' arrived...

It was the day that demons managed to infiltrate his hometown, and killed everyone without remorse.

Because his hometown was far away from any major city, no rescue came until dawn, five hours after the massacre began.

His parents had sacrificed their lives in order to hide him from the demons...

'Even though we couldn't give you a good talent, sacrificing ourselves to let you live should be enough to atone for letting you be born with a low talent that made you suffer throughout your whole childhood'

With the most beautiful smile on their faces, those were the last words his parents had said to him before closing the trapdoor that led to the basement and disappearing from his life forever...

To this day, he had still not gotten over that day as it still haunts him in his dreams, like a plague that never ceases to attack the immune system. It was almost like a seed had been implanted inside of him, slowly eroding his state of mind. Kevin couldn't remember how many times he had woken up because of the nightmares, only to find his bedsheets soaked in his sweat.

If not for a strange system suddenly appearing before him when he was in his most dire state, he would've never been able to survive, grow strong enough to rank first in the school ranking, and let alone enroll in the lock.

He owed everything to the system.

Thanks to the system he managed to completely change himself, his body, his talent, his mentality.

Everything about him changed.

He went from an E-ranked talent to an SSS-rank talent over the course of a few months due to some strange elixir the system provided him.

But, what determined talent?

Talent was a measure of natural aptitude.

In this case, talent was assed in regards to the profession one had.

A profession, like talent caps, was something that could not be chosen nor changed.

Around the time of the second cataclysm and humans were able to access mana, strange status windows similar to the ones that appear in games appeared in front of everyone.

From then, the age of the 'awakened' happened. Slowly people started familiarizing themselves with mana through which they gained access to supernatural powers. Powers that enabled them to do things that they could've never have hoped to achieve in the past.

If someone paid closely to their status window they would notice that, right below their status, there was a small section called profession.

That was your natural talent.

If your status window showed 'Spearmanship' then it meant that your aptitude towards spearmanship was amplified naturally by the status window.

Meaning that if a person talented in spear arts trained in sword arts, their comprehension would be nowhere near as fast as their spear arts comprehension which was amplified by the status window.

Of course, everyone had different levels of talent in regards to their natural talent. Meaning that even if someone was talented in spear arts, their talent cap was still there. So if your talent cap was D-rank, then in your lifetime you could only be a D-rank Hero who specialized in spear arts.

In the case of Ava, the reason why Kevin believed her talent was the best, was because she did not have a talent cap.

Monster tamers don't have a level cap because they don't need to have one.

What mattered was the monsters, not the tamer themselves.

Yes, a certain amount of control was required by the tamer to control the beasts, but even then, what mattered most was the monsters.

A monster tamer could tame an unlimited number of beasts regardless of their potential. Making monster tamers some of the scariest opponents to face.

Unfortunately, in modern society monster tamers weren't highly regarded. This was simply due to how difficult it was for them to tame a monster, as a lot of complicated steps were required. Moreover, the financial burden one would incur just to raise a monster could even cause some of the wealthiest people in the world to feel the sting.

Especially if an S-rank pet was raised. They fed on monster cores.

By the time they were fully grown, their daily food consumption alone could sustain a whole city for years.

It was just inefficient.

But to Kevin, this didn't matter because...

He had the system!

With the system, gaining monster cores or manuals wasn't hard. All he had to do was complete a quest and he could easily earn some low-ranked cores.

If his talent had been monster tamer instead of swordsmanship, he could've raised an army of S-ranked monsters with which he could have used to fight against the demon king.

"We're here..."

Stopping in front of four people from his group, Kevin ignored their looks of disdain and lightly smiled at them.

"So where's the hidden task?"

...

"four more minutes"

Checking the time that was left, I quickly dashed away from the place I was hiding.

Right now my plan was, find a safe spot, rest for 3 minutes, and continue to the next spot.

This was the strategy that Kevin had used when he was doing this trial, and it worked.

By continuously changing my location, it made it harder for the 'hunter' to find my exact location.

Although the 'hunter' tracked through scent, it didn't mean that it will only focus its attention on me.

No, It will obviously go for the easiest prey.

With around 90 students inside the map, accompanied by the limited number of 'hunters' present in the map, the hunters who were programmed through the computer system will only go for what the computer deems to be the easiest target to hunt.

If it was presented with two choices, prey A and prey B, the hunter will go towards the easiest target to hunt by default. If prey A who was constantly changing location was harder to hunt compared to prey B, who was hiding in the same spot without moving, then it will undoubtedly go for prey B.

Therefore. for the past 19 minutes or so, I have been constantly changing my location.

The 'hunters' were not something I could take on.

Each 'hunter' was a precise replica of famous beasts that could be found after the second cataclysm.

Each beast present ranged from Rank G to Rank D, which only a handful of students could fight or escape from.

A G+ rank student like me cannot possibly hope to defeat a D ranked beast with my current strength. Although the sword art I practiced was extremely strong, at the end of the day my rank was only G+. Moreover, considering the fact that I had only been practicing the art for about a week, asking me to fight the beast was like asking me to kill myself.

There was no way I could last longer than a couple of seconds against a D rank beast.

The only option I had from the start was this one.

Roaming confidently without being scared of encountering dangerous beasts was only a thing the protagonists could do.

I was not on that level yet.

Though I had always said that I didn't want to interact with the protagonists, it didn't mean that I didn't aspire to be like them.

I do long for a peaceful life, but could you really achieve that without power? In a world where power reigns above all else?

I wonder when I changed?

I wasn't like this before.

I used to think everything was troublesome and had no goal to strive for.

I remember everything being bleak. Everything apart from my computer and the comments I got from my readers were things that I found boring and troublesome.

Maybe I really was just waiting to die and rid myself of that boring life.

...And once I thought my life reached the end, I found myself inside my own novel.

Since then my world had suddenly gone bright.

I had a family, access to magic which was only something I saw in movies, and a goal to strive for.

And who would've ever imagined being inside of a real virtual machine?

Right...I had already decided once I discovered that I still hadn't finished the novel that I will try my best to be as strong as the protagonist or at least close to his level.

Smiling to myself, I looked at the azure clear sky and the softly rustling trees.

"Life is good...."