"What?"
"Did I stutter, young man? I said that you're worthless."
Katsumi froze. Worthless? What did the old geezer mean?
"It seems you do not understand. Your class is worthless. Now step back and let someone else try their hand."
Katsumi stood up and back away from the metal plate. He could hear whispers coming from the rest of the class behind him.
As the rest of the class took their turn, Katsumi remained in a daze. The emperor seemed to be happy with about two thirds of the class.
At a certain point, it was Mari's turn.
Name: Kimoto Mari
Age: 17
Class: Cook
Skills:
[Food Preparation]
-->[Imbued Food]
[Automatic Translation]
The emperor had not been too happy with her either.
After a while, the entire class had had their turn.
"Those of you who I call, step forward!"
The emperor began calling names and the students began to move over to the emperor's side one by one. When he finished, only the third of the class he had not been excited about earlier were left.
"Those of you who have not been called, the guards will escort you to your rooms. Now, for the rest of you, I'm sure you all are shocked at this turn of events, so why don't we talk over lunch?"
---
Katsumi was walked through several open courtyards to a drab, one-storey building. The two guards he was with showed him to a room. They told him that food would be provided three times a day at certain times at a dining room down the corridor, and that he was not allowed to leave the building unless he was called for by the emperor. He would be allowed to enter the library at the other end of the corridor to entertain himself if need be, but otherwise his only other option was to stay in his own room. Clothes of different sizes were available in the wardrobe.
Katsumi, Mari and nine others had been sent to this building. It didn't take much to piece together the fact that they were being effectively abandoned. Most of them shut themselves into their own rooms. Katsumi did so too for the first two or three days, but eventually decided that he should head to the library. At least then he would understand more about this world.
So, on the third day, Katsumi entered the library.
He had expected to be alone, but his expectations were betrayed. Mari was sitting in a corner already with a book in hand.
She's surprisingly resilient, isn't she?
She did not seem to want to strike up a conversation, so Katsumi sat at a distance and began his own reading.
---
The world was comprised of one main continent, roughly square in shape, and with several islands to the south. The northernmost end was mountainous, while the central region was flat, arable land dotted with big forests, with abundant water supply in the form of rivers from the north. The south end of the continent was mostly dry desert. The islands, on the other hand, were mostly dense jungle.
The empire, ruled by the Karis family, sat in the central region of the continent. The capital, Lithallin, was in fact exactly in the center.
The empire ruled over the northwestern end of the continent, while barbaric natives lived in the southeast.
The empire sought to unify the continent and liberate the barbaric natives by reforming them. Katsumi took this all with a pinch of salt. He was surprised how blatant the propaganda was. All in all, it seemed the emperor saw himself as a god, and wished to create a hegemony.
It seemed that Mari had picked up on this as well. As she read more, she began to delve into history books.
Meanwhile, Katsumi decided to stop pursuing that line of study. Instead, he began to study the magic systems in the world.
Each person possesses a class from birth, and each class has a "pool" of several possible skills. Each person would possess one of those skills and this disposition was set in stone. Using the skill would drain the person of stamina. With use, the skill would eventually improve over time. For example, a "Warrior" like Yamamura could have [Weapon Mastery], [Beserk] or [Enhance Body] as their skill. The "Tamer" class was unique in that it only had one possible skill, [Monster Control]. Even "Cook' had [Food Preparation] and [Drink Preparation]. Katsumi found no reference anywhere to the secondary skill in addition to their first skills that everyone in their class had had. It must have been a unique property of theirs since they were summoned.
"Tamer" was almost universally agreed to be the most useless class in this world. While [Monster Control] theoretically allowed the user to control any monster, it was useless for a few reasons: with how powerful humans were, most monsters were relatively easy to kill; since controlling a monster required use of a large magic circle drawn on the ground, and the size requirement of the circle would only increase if the monster was larger, most big monsters were impossible to catch; the "Tamer" could also only control several monsters at once, with the rest entering a dormant state. This made the "Tamer" class practically worthless, both in direct combat and as support.
The [Automatic Translation] skill seemed to be a skill added to everyone in the class by the summoning artifact.
Like this, a month passed.
---
The guards had entered suddenly right after breakfast, and rounded up all the "useless". Katsumi and the others were led out of the building. After several minutes of walking through the lavish palace, they were brought to what appeared to be a training ground, and told to stand in a group next to the other two-thirds of the class, which had already assembled there.
It was a rectangular field, around the size of a football field, but instead of grass, hard-packed dirt made up the ground. Just as Katsumi was looking around, a familiar voice rang above him.
"Welcome! Today, I wish to show you all how far your compatriots have come while you all have yet to accomplish a single thing!"
It was the emperor, leaning on the marble railing on a terrace above. Katsumi subtly ground his teeth.
"Now, without further ado, why don't we see how much young Yamamura has achieved in the past month?"