The old man looked at the newly arrived individual; his eyes gazed at him from head to toe as if judging every aspect of his figure.
"You... What string are you?" He opened his mouth while his eyes furrowed.
His question gathered the attention of the other members; even they were curious about the person's ability.
However, the man kept his silence; it was Lindsay who answered the captain's query.
"Based on his record, he's a second-string equator, and his class is...." she said, but her introduction of him came to a halt as her eyes squinted.
All of them were now focused on her, waiting for her next words.
'W-what?' She contemplated; confusion was present on her face.
"What is it?" The old man asked upon seeing Lindsay's baffled expression.
The woman was dragged out from her own thoughts upon hearing her captain's voice. She looked at him before diverting his gaze to the young man.
"He's an appraiser," Lindsay stated.
"What?!" the old man exclaimed in disappointment while stifled laughter was heard from the others.
"An appraiser?" he repeated, mumbling.
Then he turned around and looked at the young man.
"We're not here to play. Why would an appraiser want this dangerous mission? What are your Flairs?" The old man added, fuming in anger.
But despite his rage, the playful smile on the young man's face remained. He was about to reply, but Lindsay stepped in all of a sudden, positioning herself in between.
"There must be a misunderstanding," she insisted.
While staring straight into the old man's eyes, she gulped a mouthful of saliva before explaining. She flipped the book in her hand and handed it to the captain, showing him the young man's record.
'Efraim Von Regalia,' the old man read the name with his eyes.
'He's indeed an appraiser,' he added in his thoughts, clicking his tongue.
The next second, Lindsay pointed at the bottom part of the record, the section where the results of previous missions could be seen. As the old man diverted his gaze on that particular segment, his jaw dropped; he even closed and opened his eyes while shaking his head.
A total of seven ruby rank missions, and all of them were completed by him alone. From gathering rare materials to eliminating fiend camps in the desolate land, the old man read all of it; he felt confused.
After all, ruby rank missions were so dangerous that no one was in their right mind to take them alone, especially fiend subjugation. However, it was not the case for the young man in front of him.
"You. Who are you?" the old man asked, his eyes gleaming with curiosity.
. . . . .
Severed limbs scattered across the open ground; grass and trees were painted red while the rusty smell of blood lingered in the air.
"He really is... something that is beyond my comprehension," the old man stated as he stared at the appraiser standing in the pile of corpses.
A while ago, they were on their way to the mission's location when the young man came to a sudden halt.
"What's the matter?" Lindsay asked as she surveyed the area, but the young man didn't reply.
Instead, he turned around and unsheathed his blades. Then a rain of arrows poured down on the group.
"An ambush! Take cover! Draw your weapons!" the old man shouted in a hurry.
They waited for the barrage of attacks to die down before engaging in the fight. However, the moment they moved back, a scene enough to make them gulp transpired before their eyes.
The appraiser whom they made fun of moments ago destroyed the group of bandits tailing them, dismembering their bodies into several parts in just a fraction of time. Lindsay covered her mouth in shock while the others almost threw up due to the hideous sight.
After the group recovered, they resumed their journey towards their target destination. No one was uttering a single word; only their light footsteps could be heard inside the forest.
The people walking in front were glancing a few times at the back, stealing a glimpse of the man with a casket earring. However, the moment they noticed that he was looking back at them, they averted their gazes, afraid that their eyes would meet.
Upon noticing this, Efraim sighed and lowered his head.
'Maybe I overdid it,' he pondered.
At first, he only wanted to show off his skills to get the group's trust, but they now looked at him with fear. Then, a tap on the shoulder pulled him away from the middle of his thoughts. He turned his head sideways to look for the owner of the hand; it was none other than Lindsay.
"You did well. Thank you for saving us," she said with a smile.
Afterward, she walked a little faster and caught up with the other group members. Efraim was startled for a moment, but the edges of his lips started to curl upward as he stared at the woman's back.
Then, changes from his left eye began to occur. Its black pupil shrank in size, and a cyan hexagram pattern appeared on it. These changes made his eye look like a magic circle.
The next second, he moved his gaze above everyone's head, and there it was. Numbers ranging from one to one hundred were written, floating on top of their heads; some were written in black, while two others had a blue color, including the group leader's.
However, Efraim's focus was not on them; it was on the number sixty-nine with a golden hue, floating above the black-haired woman's head.
Then he looked above the clouds, and memories from a year ago came flooding right through his mind.
. . . . .
Near the borders between the Sunless Cradle and the Oriental Plain. Alongside the river flowing from the mountain ranges, a man woke up from a nightmare.
The moment he opened his eyes, the brilliance coming from the ball of light hanging up above the sky was the first one to greet him.
"Am I still alive?" he asked with an unusual question, his voice barely a whisper.
But the gushing sound of flowing water and the buzzing of little insects were the only replies that he got.
He tried to move his body and afterwards raised his hand to obstruct the sunlight from his eyes. Then, he stood up and examined the surroundings he was in; however, he felt puzzled as he saw numbers floating everywhere. From the tiny pieces of stones up to the towering trees, even the insects hiding in the leaves, wherever he looked, he could see numbers at the top of them.
"What's happening?" he uttered, his brows furrowed in confusion.
He closed his eyes for a moment and even massaged the temple of his head, but nothing had changed; the moment he opened them, the digits were still there.
Upon seeing this, he clicked his tongue and went to the riverbank; he washed his face and stared at his reflection in the water.
It was the same as he remembered; however, there were two peculiar things that didn't fit his appearance. They were his left eye and the earring dangling from his right ear.
"What is this?" He said while examining the blue hexagram pattern inside his iris.
"A magic circle... Is this the source of those numbers? How is this thing possible?" He blurted several questions despite knowing that there was no one to give him an answer.
The next second, he reached the earring on his right ear. It was a tiny white wooden box that had a design of a black cross in front.
"This looks like... a casket," he uttered and gulped a mouthful of saliva.
'It's similar to that...' he thought as he remembered the scene from that night.
He tried to take it off from his ear, but there was no hook, stud, or wire for it to be unlocked. Given this fact, he reverted his focus onto his eyes.
"So how does this thing really work?" he asked, curious about the ability he now possessed.
From this point on, the man studied the numbers; countless nights had passed when he at last understood how to deactivate and activate the hexagram on his will.
Aside from this, he learned what it really meant; it acted as a measuring device to gauge an item's or an individual's capabilities. All of the numbers he had seen were ranging from one up to one hundred, with the latter being the highest.
Meanwhile, the colors kept his mind puzzled. All that he could see inside the forest was digits written in black and blue. Curious about this, he picked up two ants from a nearby colony.
One of them had a number seventy-eight written in black, while the other one had a blue-colored number forty-seven. Afterward, he pinched and removed both of its antennae and let the two ants fight each other.
Despite having the same size, the ant with the lesser number overpowered its opponent, giving the man a vague idea.
"Those who had numbers written in blue are way better than those black ones," he uttered.
Then a strange question came into his mind.
'Are there any colors aside from blue and black?' he pondered as he let his eyes roam around the forest.
. . . . .