Chapter 608: Impossible Phenomenon
Thalen quickly grabbed the card out of Northern's hand, bringing it closer to his eyes to be sure he was seeing correctly.
'What? What is this I am seeing?'
It was still there. Sage Northern.
His eyeballs rolled down to the base of the card.
Drifter's rank: TRANSIENT.
It was all there, it wasn't faked. Not to mention, the card had changed color.
'I have never heard of a soul rank card changing color at all... could there have been a malfunction? But I have also never heard of a malfunction in the rank card.'
The rank card was crafted by the best of the best craftsmen, not just mundane, but drifters that awakened with craftsmanship abilities.
Since it had been in circulation fifty years ago, never had it been recorded that it changed color or broke.
So this couldn't be possible. There was a first time for everything, but Thalen knew enough about Northern's capabilities that he didn't want to doubt this.
The color change of the card called for extra attention, but that did not deny the fact that the boy's rank had changed from Vagrant to Transient.
'There's no way... there's no way he became a Sage in six days.'
Indeed, there was no way!
Thalen's thought was literal and introspective. Perhaps if he were to consider the influence of the rift, it took a lot of time to absorb a soul core.
And one didn't have all the time in the world, not with the dangers of a tier-seven rift lurking around them.
This did not make any sense!
Thalen held his forehead, closing his eyes for a moment.
He turned to the civil servant whose mouth was still open and eyes still blinking.
"You've had your truth now. Can you leave us?"
The voice was polite, but something in the depth of Thalen's eyes hinted at a coming rudeness.
The civil servant glanced at Northern once more, his eyes still drowning in disbelief.
A Sage who is sixteen years old?
He had never heard of such a thing before. Never in his entire life!
He slowly removed himself from the two of them and walked away, still sending glances back at Northern.
Northern watched him leave with a slight frown on his face, and when the guy kept looking back, his frown deepened.
"What's the deal with him?"
Thalen also glanced back and shook his head, sighing before he started.
"The civil servants are non-military arms of the government that oversee the activities of the rift and drifters. They'll jump at any chance to recruit a drifter."
"I see..." Northern muttered.
There was silence for a while, then Thalen's voice came again.
"Besides, anyone would be like that after what they just saw." His eyes scanned Northern's eyes.
Northern looked down at the card in the headmaster's hand and opened his mouth. "Oh."
"Oh?"
Northern was dumbfounded for a minute, not exactly sure what the news was or what to do. He shrugged.
"What do you mean 'Oh'? You just became a Sage in six days and you don't have anything you want to say?!" The headmaster's voice soared but quickly came back down.
Northern lingered in silence for a while. He looked here and there, then brought his eyes back to Thalen and shrugged again.
"It just kind of happened, really. Even I was not expecting it. I guess we can just say I have a fast growth rate."
Thalen slapped his palm on his face.
"A fast growth rate?" He mumbled to himself. "No one... especially not a drifter has a fast growth rate. You think if such a thing was possible, Paragons would be scarce."
"I'm special." Northern retorted with an amazing smile.
A smile that only poured fuel to the flames burning in Thalen's heart.
The attitude and energy Northern was giving to this situation was like he was underrating it.
'Perhaps he did not know the gravity of what is happening right now...' Thalen thought.
He breathed in and out several times before facing Northern again.
"Listen," he said, holding Northern's shoulders, "look at me."
"I'm looking at you. You seem out of gas, are you okay?"
"Leave me, let's focus on you. I'm going to try to dissect this for you so you understand."
He stared deeply into Northern's eyes with focus.
"I heard the governor of Arcadia died... the owner of the mansion you guys lived in... did you
meet him before he died?"
"That man? Yes, I did. What about it?"
"That man is a Sage."
"Ooooh... I see..."
"Okay, okay, indeed you see. But what you don't see is, that man awakened at the age of
fifteen just like you, and became a Sage at the age of forty-seven."
Northern narrowed his eyes, slightly surprised. "That was heavily slow."
"Exactly! Exactly what I'm saying. That's how these things are!!" Thalen's words were
suddenly filled with vigor.
"But when you look at it... he wasn't in the Dark Continent and maybe he didn't enter so many
rifts."
The headmaster shook his head. "No, no, no, you are not getting something right. If we count the number of rifts he has been into and the number of monsters he has slain, I'm sure you are
not even halfway there."
Northern's face immediately contorted darkly.
"Don't say what you don't know. He might have been in more rifts but certainly not killed
more monsters."
Thalen paused for a couple of seconds, then he sighed and nodded his head.
"Okay. Perhaps you are right. Perhaps you have killed more monsters. But a normal transition from a Vagrant all the way to a Transient soul rank should take not just one or two but at least five years, if one was absorbing soul cores every day. Make it make sense that you achieved
that in six days."
Northern shrugged. "It doesn't have to make sense to you. It is what I am. I don't make sense
to anyone."
The headmaster stood there, shocked and helplessly going to accept that Northern had progressed two ranks in six days without any proper explanation.
He felt like his head would burst from all the racing thoughts, bringing and dismissing the possibilities of what this impossible phenomenon could be.