"… as for which of those options you will choose… it's entirely up to you."
To say that this damned elder managed to surprise me would be a great understatement. While I was already perfectly aware that he wasn't exactly the person that I initially expected him to be, the claim that I would be put to some tests still rang vividly in my ears.
"But… I'm sorry master, but I don't seem to understand. Wasn't I supposed to take some test that would determine my…" - I took a moment to find a word that would properly fit the context - "… aptitude or something?"
Adding the last two words I implied that aptitude wasn't the exact word that I was looking for. Shaking his head with a kind smile of someone who was pretty happy about something, the elder looked directly in my eyes.
"And what's the best way to make sure you will passionately do your best to reach greater heights in a given job than by allowing you to pick the branch that actually caught your interest? What would be the use of your great talent if I were to attempt forcing you to practice something that doesn't entice you to do it yourself?"
Now I finally understood what was the emotion hidden behind the kind smile of the elder. He wasn't happy. He was simply baffled by how simple the answer to my question was. To my defence, I couldn't know about it. And to be perfectly honest, I couldn't really agree with this kind of treatment for the students. Back in my family, it would never work. After all, on earth, talent was just an initial drive that allowed someone to take the task easy and enjoy fulfiling it. Once a certain threshold was reached, no matter what kind of activity one would attempt to master, no amount of talent would replace an honest experience.
As for the question of whether my subordinates liked to do what I was picking them for, the answer was obvious. Why someone so high at the ladder-like me would care for this kind of useless and pointless squabbles? After all, if anyone ever said that turning one's passion into work was the way to go, then it meant that he or she was either born with a silver spoon stuffed all the way down their throat to the point where it would come out of their asses or turned the task of fooling people with sweet words into his own damned work and passion.
No matter what world, no matter what society, no one really cared if someone enjoyed his work. After all, it wasn't the process that the entire thing was about, but the results.
"If that's the case, then I don't really have any doubts. I would like to pick alchemy."
Since I was given the choice, I would be stupid to ignore it just for the sake of it. While I knew that the explanation of each branch of the shared guild that its master gave me was less than wholesome, there was a single point that made me pick this relatively cheap and unbeneficial field of work.
And it was science.
Obviously, I never really cared that much for learning unless it was a part of the job that I was supposed to do, but I still knew a lot about the basic laws and structure of the universe. If this world happened to be built with exactly the same building blocks like the world I initially came form, then there would be barely any limits to what I could achieve with the alchemy.
After all, while it was just a rough guess, I could say with a great amount of certainty that no cultivator of this world would be able to survive a damned nuclear explosion!
Obviously, there was a chance that my guess about the basic structure of this world would be wrong… but then nothing would stop me from changing my decision outside of regretting the time I would waste on the experiments that would prove my initial guess to be false.
"Alchemy it is… Let me show you something fun, then."
Following the guidance of the elder, I carried my body deeper and deeper into the intricate mess of rooms and corridors of the shared guild. Most likely anticipating my reaction to the surprise he had prepared in advance – a matter of point, how the heck could he know which branch I would pick? - the elder didn't bother to keep the conversation going, allowing me to sort through all the information that he fed me during the small introductory talk.
If not for the deeper reasons of wishing to test out my theory, I would never bother to pick this job. According to the elder himself, it was not only the hardest to master or turn profitable but also didn't offer anything that great once one would conquer the hurdles of mastering it. Compared to, for example, creiser seemed to be the most combat-oriented branch of the shared guild, mixing in the elements of all the other mastercrafts – this is how the master of the guild called each branch – to bring forth potions that accelerated one's speed, herbs that sharpened his senses, pills that allowed him to quickly heal his wounds…
Compared to the alchemy that focused entirely on discovering the natural properties of the basic and complex materials along with theory-crafting aimed at discovering the innate truth behind the entire world… Just this single sentence should be enough to point how impractical becoming an alchemist seemed to be.
"Here we are. For the reasons that I will keep to myself, I won't enter this room. Once you will be inside… I want you to figure something out."
Sending me off with a smile, the elder suddenly moved away, disappearing from my sight before I could even react. Not only was that a proof that I was actually on the point with his appearance of a senile elder being nothing else but a persona he used to shield his true self, but also this was the very first proof to my guess that the power levels of this world…
Were something completely beyond anything that I could see humans achieve with their own bodies back on earth!