Today is the day I've been waiting for—the day I finally get to check my Status with the Appraisal Stone.
This world has Status.
You might think, "This isn't a game, it's reality—what's the deal?" But I'd long since stopped questioning it.
I'd realized it was more fun to just accept that this world works this way and move on.
That's right—fun.
This world really is just like a game.
The harder you work, the more you're rewarded.
Sure, there are probably differences in talent, but there's no denying this is a world where effort is recognized far more easily than on Earth.
After all, the proof of your hard work comes back to you in the form of Skills.
A Skill increases a value called Proficiency through repeated actions suited to that Skill, and once enough Proficiency accumulates, you acquire it.
Once acquired, a Skill can be used immediately as your own power.
And the more you use it, the higher its Proficiency climbs, raising the Skill's Level as well.
The harder you work, the more powerful that Skill becomes.
There's no such thing as effort going unrewarded.
What a wonderful world.
And from the day I was born until now, I'd learned from Ana and Clevea, picking up all sorts of Skills along the way.
The more I did, the more came back to me.
I was hooked on that rush, greedily acquiring Skill after Skill.
Games are more fun when you're strong.
Some people do challenge runs or self-imposed restrictions, but I've always preferred powering up as fast as possible.
And if it's not some game character but yourself? Even better.
Getting stronger like that was all well and good, but this world had its inconveniences too.
You couldn't see your own Status.
This world had the concept of Status, but to actually view it, you had to clear some pretty demanding conditions.
There was a Skill called Appraisal.
By using this Appraisal Skill, you could see Status—but very few people possessed it.
To acquire the Appraisal Skill, you needed the same kind of deep cultural knowledge an appraiser on Earth would have—judging the value of something, keen observation to determine what materials it was made of. In other words, highly advanced expertise that an amateur had no business attempting.
And on top of that, even if you managed to acquire the Skill, leveling it up was extraordinarily difficult—another reason Appraisal users were so rare.
The truth was, just acquiring the Skill wasn't impossible.
You could obtain any Skill by spending something called Skill Points.
So yes, you could get Appraisal too, as long as you paid the Skill Points.
You could—but sustaining it afterward was the problem.
To raise your Appraisal Level, you just had to activate the Skill.
Every time you activated Appraisal, Proficiency increased, and once it hit a certain threshold, the Level went up.
The catch was that activating Appraisal was a nightmare.
Appraisal didn't consume Magic or Stamina, so you might think you could just spam it.
Not so fast.
There was a trap built in—every time you activated Appraisal, you'd be hit with a splitting headache and a wave of dizziness.
The severity varied from person to person, but some unlucky folks reportedly lost consciousness after a single use.
Even talented individuals would be struck with terrible headaches and nausea if they tried to Appraise two or more things at once.
If a single activation caused that much damage, repeatedly firing off Appraisal to farm Proficiency was nothing short of torture.
And as if that weren't enough, the Appraisal Skill was useless until it reached a high Level.
For all these reasons, very few people bothered acquiring the Appraisal Skill in the first place.
The only ones who did were roughly the heirs of families that had been professional appraisers for generations.
So then—how do you check your Status?
That's where the Appraisal Stone comes in.
The Appraisal Stone is a magical tool crafted through a special process. While in your possession, it temporarily grants you access to the Appraisal Skill.
The Level of Appraisal you could use depended on the quality of the stone. The royal family owned one equivalent to Appraisal Level 10, and there were only a handful of such stones in the entire world.
Naturally, using one required special permission, and in practice, only high-ranking nobles close to the royal family were allowed access.
I was a member of the royal family, so I had no issue there.
That said, just because you were royalty didn't mean you could use one whenever you pleased.
I'd thrown a tantrum in front of Ana, begging to use the Appraisal Stone, but apparently you had to reach a certain age before permission was granted.
Apparently, your first-ever Status Appraisal was a special occasion—for nobles, it was to be conducted as a proper ceremony, with a dignified atmosphere.
I had to go through that ceremony too.
The ceremony also served as a coming-of-age presentation of sorts.
Your Appraisal results would be displayed in front of everyone, and at that moment, the adults would assess your worth.
My Skills were far above average for my age, so I wasn't worried—but if your Status turned out too low, the worst case was being written off entirely. Terrifying.
In any case, Sue and I were now officially debuting.
We were dressed in ceremonial children's outfits and made to listen to the ceremony's proceedings over and over.
The current King—that is, Sue's and my father—would be attending.
A whole roster of big names would be there too, and making a mistake and embarrassing ourselves was simply not an option.
We were children, yes, but we were still members of the royal family.
As the stars of the ceremony, we had to carry the family's prestige on our shoulders.
As a former commoner, that was more than I could bear.
But when I glanced over and saw my little sister standing there with perfect composure, a restless determination—something close to urgency—wellled up inside me.
"Are you ready?"
At Ana's final check, I nodded in silence.
"Then, please—go ahead."
With Ana's gentle push on my back, Sue and I stepped through the doors to the venue side by side.
This chapter ran longer than expected, so I'm cutting it here. The rest continues in S6.