She said, "The first and most important reason why you were given the S-grade invitation is because of your mana affinity."
That took Arthur by surprise. He said in confusion, "I thought my mana affinity was poor. Isn't 23% like average for mana affinity?"
She said sternly, "Don't interrupt me when I'm speaking. Raise your hands if you have something to say."
He apologized quickly, "I'm sorry."
He apologized quickly because he knew that it was not a good thing to cross anyone. He knows he has his own quirks due to the side effects of the technique that he is training in.
After seeing so much lightning around her, he already had an inkling as to how severe her side effects would be, and he didn't want to be the target of those side effects.
The elder's face didn't change when he apologized. She just continued as if she was never interrupted.
She said, "Think back to the result of your talent test."
He did so. The result appeared in his mind after thinking about it for a while.
As usual, he skipped over the long list of jargon that he didn't understand. Instead, he focused in the summary of the test.
Life Activity: 21% (Innate Divine Strength)
Mana Affinity: 23% (Attributeless)
Spiritual Acuity: 56% (High-Density Soul)
She continued, "If you remember, your mana affinity is Attributeless. This is both a bad thing and an outstanding thing. It is not just good; it is outstanding."
"It is outstanding because everyone else is born with a certain affinity to mana. The element or type of mana they have an affinity for will be easier for them to cultivate and control."
"But you don't have an affinity. It means you will find it difficult to use any mana. It also means that you can use any type of mana, and the difficulty will be the same as that of any other type of mana."
"Your attributeless mana affinity is why every sect wanted to have you. Because of it, you will be able to use spatial techniques, poison techniques, corpse techniques, lightning techniques, and many more without any issue. You might even be able to combine more than one mana type. The sky is the limit."
His breath hitched when he heard that. He already knew that his attributeless mana meant that he wasn't good for any type of mana. But he thought that was all there was to it. He didn't know that this was a good thing.
The elder finally showed some emotions on her stiff face. She sighed and said, "Your attributeless mana is already a large project for any supervisor because it will be very difficult to bring it to its full potential due to your average talent for energy refining and mana."
"Your talent for energy refining is frankly not good. Calling it average is a bad thing. Being average in terms of talent is not a good thing because it means that your talent in other aspects will be average too."
"It is better to be poor in one aspect and be exceptional in other aspects. Like in the case of your spiritual acuity. If your talent in life activity and mana affinity were, say, 10% each, you would have an 80% talent in spiritual acuity."
"This brings me to the second reason why you were given an S-grade invitation. Your spiritual acuity is not impressive in itself. If you had something like 80% in spiritual acuity, you would be given an S grade invitation because spiritual acuity is a very important talent to have if one is to ever reach the fifth mortal coil known as the nascent soul."
"The percentage of talent for spiritual acuity is nothing special. But you have a special high-density soul. That is more valuable than an 80% talent for spiritual acuity."
"In simple terms, at this stage, spiritual acuity only has a little impact on cultivation. For now, it can only affect your control of spells and techniques. It won't start to show its effect until the third mortal coil."
"But this control over spells is very important for the techniques of the Blood Skull sect because our techniques are very difficult to control. Control will determine if our techniques will be able to show their power or not. So by having a high spiritual acuity and high-density soul, you are perfectly suited for our techniques."
She looked at him and said, "That is good news for you, but it means extra work for me."
Her eyes flashed with lightning when she said that. The sight and the sound of the lightning causing the air to pop made his skin shiver and his hair stand on end.
He felt an incredible threat coming from her. For a while, he thought he saw a lightning storm. The storm was approaching him and about to consume him.
But just as the storm was about to engulf him, it disappeared. The appearance of the storm was fleeting, and its disappearance was fast. It made him think he had hallucinated it.
He wasn't sure if he had hallucinated it either. But either way, he had left the cushion and was about to scramble away from her. His heart was beating wildly in his chest.
He thought to himself as he tried to calm down, "These people aren't humans. They are just pretending to be humans."
He already knew that the elders were only pretending to be humans most of the time. He also knew that they were bad pretenders. Any slight emotional upheaval was enough to expose what they were hiding beneath their human facade.
This thought made him have a new meaning of what she said about the techniques of the sect being too difficult to control. So he could be sure that she wasn't truly trying to kill him. She was just annoyed, which caused her power to leak.
If she saw his strange posture and the wary way he was looking at her or noticed his intention to escape from her at the sight of any oddity, she didn't care.