Luca did not get a chance to check his apples for drugs, nor could he go on a tour with Ollie. Because his terminal suddenly showed an assessment summons courtesy of Doctor Brent.
"Is something wrong?"
Ollie noticed Luca's scrunched-up face the moment he checked on his terminal.
"I'm not sure, but I'm being asked to go to the Medical Bay for a reassessment," Luca partially explained his predicament to Ollie.
"It's fine, we'll go on a tour another time. Just go there first. That's way more important!"
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The same hallway towards the Medical Bay now felt less daunting. In just a week, he had gone from nearly being murdered by a hallway to walking and even sprinting.
Thank goodness.
But now, his major concern was his Spiritual powers. Luca was certain of the improvement. It was just the alphabetical rating that bothered him.
Luca prayed to get an average score—nothing too low or too high. He, of all people, should know the effect of having an outlier rank. Not that he ever got to test for his rating back in Tesseris, but because even without testing, it was already obvious.
The other Guides, who hated his guts, didn't want him to test for fear of their ranks dropping. One particular girl even cried foul when the doctors came for the mandatory matching test.
So, Luca never got to quantify his abilities. And he had developed a weird relationship with tests. If anything, he was positive that the doctors who kept him imprisoned held a complete record of his abilities. Still, they refused to share it with him to avoid getting ideas of overpowering them.
Luca knew he could. But he was too tired of running and hiding that he'd accepted his confinement. At least that way, he's done hearing people's snide comments and done receiving unwarranted beatings.
However, this was the Royal Military Academy that normally had a standard for enrollment. And he didn't really want to stand out by being too different, not when people already looked at him like a zoo animal.
He didn't want to fail.
But maybe he should've asked Ollie about the assessment because he barely had a recollection of how that went the first time he woke up. He was a bit too preoccupied with his lungs seizing that he never got to ask about the result.
The automatic door opened right when Luca stepped in front of it, and his thoughts were interrupted by Doctor Brent's greeting.
"Good, you're right on time."
"Good afternoon, Doctor Brent. You called me over for a reassessment?"
"Yeah. We couldn't really use your result because the assessment was stopped midway." Doctor Brent ruffled his hair even more but continued anyway.
"But don't worry, we'll use another device so you don't have to be submerged in medical solution. We still haven't figured out what happened back then, so better safe than sorry."
Luca wasn't sure whether this was good news or bad news, but he just nodded obediently.
"So, just stand up here for a moment."
Luca stayed rooted at his spot, just staring at the machine, so one of the nurses had to encourage him to move.
"Lord Luca, you only need to stand up. There's no need to think too much."
Aware of everyone's stares, Luca stood on the platform with several scales resembling thermometers. Then, a helmet suddenly enclosed his head, and his vision was filled with yellow spots.
Rather than panic, Luca decided to relax his mind since all they asked him to do was stand there.
So Luca waited and waited until he got bored. He thought the test was instantaneous, but this felt more like a CT scan. And with nothing to do, Luca decided to play with the yellow spots.
He arranged them into different shapes and then stacked them all together. Luca played like a toddler learning his shapes. And he did that until Doctor Brent told him that the test had ended.
"All right, you can come down for now."
Luca left the platform once the helmet freed his head, and it was only then that he saw the odd expression of the medical staff.
He was hesitant, but not asking would just make him fret the whole time, so Luca went for it.
"Doctor Brent, is there a problem?"
"Not really a problem, just an unusual result."
"Am I allowed to see it?"
"Here's a copy of your result."
Luca looked at the graph, which was shaped like a mountain, but without anything to compare it to, he actually had no idea what was wrong with it.
Doctor Brent probably realized that, too, so he showed him the typical results of the control group.
Even Luca could see what was different. The test would give results that looked like a trapezoid, but his result was a mountain range. His graph went up and down in steep increments and at different intervals.
"We're not really sure why this is happening, but this is similar to your earlier result."
"Then, what would my rank be when the graph looks like that?"
Luca was more interested in that because he guessed that his weird constitution was affecting the assessment results.
"For now, let's average the plots, which will give you a C-rank rating. Since you're touching on every rank but not sustaining it."
Hearing Doctor Brent's decision brought joy to Luca. That was perfect for him!
"But since the results are like this, we'd have to monitor for changes. Please visit us again when called. We'll try to do this a few more times to check for patterns."
It was not like Luca could decline, so all he could do was nod and promise to return.
"Host, once I have access to more of my functions, I should also be able to check your rating. So don't worry about your results too much."
"I'm not really worried." Luca chuckled because D-29 actually sounded more worried than the person with weird results.
"All I wanted was a normal rating. And considering my case, I'm surprised it only looked like that."
Because it could've been worse.
Heck, it was probably blank before he even got here.
So, this was already good news.