Edgewood looked on in contemplation as the Church explained the rules of the trial.

"First things first," she said amiably. "You're all going to sort yourselves into a line for each listed apprentice position. Children can go with their parents.

"Again, all of you are expected to change positions countless times going forward, so don't think too hard on this process. After that, I'll divide all of you up and prepare the trials." As soon as Lisa stopped talking, 12 different parallel lines appeared on the ground, the sides of each labeled in big, bold letters with one of the 14 apprentice positions.

People immediately sprang into action, talking feverishly amongst those nearby and rushing over to the lines as though just getting there was part of the test.

Lisa watched everyone with a good deal of interest. This was part one of the Hierarchy of COTD: building up the hierarchy's base, the teachers. These very first COTD members would be the foundation of the entire future structure.

Lisa had faith that all of them could become good teachers. As long as Bath could even the genetic playing field, she didn't see why anybody couldn't succeed at everything. Some people were naturally better at some things than others; some people came in with extensive previous experience. In the end, that just meant that those people could specialize as teachers...after they learned everything else.

Another aspect of this program was to build mutual respect. If everyone followed every path to expert, Lisa fervently hoped that when people specialized and followed the paths beyond that they would look on others with respect. She especially hoped to see this when the big split occurred between those who would live with the intention of peace of and those with the intention of war.

Lisa waited about an hour until everyone was in line, then touched her ear to signal to Bath that she was ready for stage two.

Edgewood instinctively jumped back when walls shot out of the ground to form a 1000 x 1000 meter square around his line.

The possible choices had been as follows:

Child educator, adolescent educator, adult educator, specialized educator, chef, caretaker, land-shaper, artist, director, administrator, scholar, tactician, close combat fighter, ranged fighter.

Edgewood noted that if COTD planned on making a self-sustaining community, it was missing quite a few professions on the list.

The lines were all quite distant from each other, around 2000 meters away; Edgewood had wondered why, and now he had his answer. They were to be separated for the trial. He figured that everyone present had appreciated the constitution boon when walking the perhaps many-mile-long distances to their chosen lines.

He looked up when he heard the Dragon's easily recognizable, though disembodied, voice sound out within the newly-formed enclosure.

"Welcome to the Close Combat Trial. To start off, each of you will spar with one of my avatars." Instantly, replicas of Bath's human form appeared off at the edges of the enclosure, one for each of the five thousand or so people present.

Bath didn't claim to be any kind of expert in martial arts or human close combat. He didn't need to be. His reflexes alone were such that he could fight any person alone on pure instinct and come up on top, especially given that his instincts had been honed over the course of over half a billion years.

Edgewood walked over to the side of the enclosure, standing across from one of the many generated avatars. It appeared completely relaxed and didn't assume any kind of fighting stance, causing Edgewood to frown.

Seeing that the avatar wasn't going to initiate combat, Edgewood started forward, moving gracefully across the ground. The conspicuously bare-footed Bath just looked onward with expectation.

As Edgewood approached, his nerves began to increase as he saw hundreds of people had already been completely destroyed by their paired avatars. By destroy, he meant that they'd been taken down in less than 5 seconds each. He didn't want to meet with a similarly unfortunate fate.

'Is the Dragon really controlling all of these avatars at once?' Edgewood wondered to himself. 'I suppose it makes sense if he's a god. But, I wonder...'

Edgewood suddenly got an idea.

---

Bath was rather annoyed when he realized one of the people he was testing was playing dirty.

'Don't people know not to cheat on tests?' he asked himself ruefully. He was currently splitting his consciousness evenly conducting tests in each of the fourteen enclosures. The 42,000 or so people were difficult for him to manage on a person-by-person basis. Thankfully, some of the trials were just written exams prepared by Lisa with her chip reader AI's help, and thus only required Bath to serve as proctor and vigilant anti-cheating monitor.

The two combat trials were devouring the brunt of Bath's attention. Even though he realized one of the people in the close combat trials was intentionally screwing with the test, he couldn't take proper action while his mind was divided elsewhere.

The problematic human in question was punching the ground.

It seemed stupid, however, by punching the ground, the almost autonomous strand of Bath's consciousness in the avatar went forward as though in response to a direct attack. As a result, instead of the human going straight into the avatar's waiting clutches, the human could get off a kick or punch before retreating back out of range.

Bath thought the tactic stupid and underhanded, but didn't really care enough to pay the offending human much mind. When he conducted the trial again, he'd be sure to issue a reminder that this test was designed to gauge combat abilities rather than ingenuity.

---

Edgewood felt great as he continued to bash the avatar whenever it stepped forward to attack. He was the only one so far who had managed to get a single hit on the avatar, let alone multiple blows. If that didn't signal doing well in the trial, he didn't know what would.

After about 5 more minutes of "sparring," the Close Combat Trial elapsed, its closure clearly marked by the immediate disappearance of each avatar.

"Your placements will be given to each of you now."

Bath had given each of his avatars an algorithm of sorts for how to fight and how to rank their opponents. Now, after dismissing them, all of their rankings poured into his head. He struggled for a minute to organize it all, then chuckled when he saw the ranking of the human who had cheated.

Edgewood and the others all looked around impatiently. Then, out of nowhere, rankings appeared in the air around each person in the same way the paper with hierarchy information appeared.

"The fuck!?" Edgewood blustered as he saw the ranking in front of him. Apprentice. So in the end, he was sorted into the lowest level? How? He was sure that he'd done well, perhaps even the best on the entire exam. He wondered idly if perhaps nobody did better than Apprentice.

Bath processed the data from the other 13 trials and gave results back to the eagerly waiting COTD members. The majority of people were sorted into Apprentice, with around 20% sorted into Beginner, 10% sorted into Advanced, a handful being sorted into Elite, and none being sorted into Expert. 'As is to be expected,' Bath thought. He wasn't going to deny that he had rather...skewed standards.

He was going to make these people infinitely more powerful than their current selves. What would be the point of the hierarchy if people with only constitution boons (excepting the few from New York having health boons) started at the highest tier?

---

Edgewood was pissed as all hell when he realized that some people were placed in higher tiers of Close Combat than himself. He reminded himself that whatever the results of the trial, he'd be able to advance quickly. He had absolute faith in his actual close combat skills even if the trial didn't accurately measure them.

After everyone received their placements, the giant walls separating each of the trials sank into the ground. Hovering in the air were Lisa and Bath together, looking every bit a king and queen in their matching and complementary clothing. The Dragon was in black, an emotionless expression on his face, his eyes piercing, while the Church was in white, smiling softly, her eyes full of excitement.

The Church spoke: "Now that you have all received your placements, we will transport you to your respective training rooms." Lisa had planned this out carefully: 14 different professions, each with 5 tiers, meant that there would be 70 kursi needed to oversee each training room. There, they would employ the dragonleaf to transmit information to each of the constituents. During that time, Lisa and a few of Bath's avatars would continue to test the small, steady stream of new arrivals and sort them. Lepochim would continue overseeing the Central Marketplace while issuing commands to the kursi and answering their questions.

Lisa sighed in exhaustion, then traveled back with the other people to The Anima. She went to the main room to welcome the new arrivals; everyone else was then directed with arrows to the labyrinthian basement of The Anima where, Lisa presumed, 70 training rooms were available for use. Lisa didn't even want to think about how big a cavern Bath had carved out under the earth to extend the basement.

---

After being transported from the large, floating platform to The Anima by the Dragon via levitation, Edgewood and the others followed a line of extremely obvious, pulsing yellow and red arrows that led into The Anima and then downstairs into an absolutely massive basement. Edgewood and the other apprentice-level close combat people walked for more than twenty minutes down a subterranean hallway before finally arriving at a door marked with a pulsing bullseye. As Edgewood was at the front of the group, he pushed open the door with a snort. However, all annoyance with COTD over his placement and the inordinate amount of required walking dissipated away as he beheld the massive training room in front of him.

"No fucking way," he murmured, walking briskly forward to lead the rest inside. In the room was the Dragon and a youthful woman with black hair, medium-colored skin, and charcoal eyes. She regarded them all with a soft smile as they entered. Edgewood recognized that she was wearing the plain, gray employee uniform worn by all the staff in the new city.

"Welcome, close combat apprentices," the Dragon said, his human form smiling gently. "The point of the COTD isn't to teach you information. It's to train you how to use your enhanced skills. Remember: the way of the Dragon is that of self-determination: later, you'll all be teaching yourselves.

"Now, hold still while I grant you all a pain-tolerance boon." The Dragon only tilted his head, as though thinking about something abstract. As he did so, all in the room let out small gasps. Edgewood realized that this boon, unlike constitution, didn't hurt, per se, but felt cold. It reminded him of the sensation that follows drinking an iced drink too fast.

After a minute, everyone let out sighs of relief as the bestowal ended. Edgewood breathed in deeply as he regarded Bath's peaceful form off to the side. He didn't pay the woman much notice.

"Now, we're going to start the bestowal of your first boon: basic combat processing."

The Dragon's essence once again washed over everyone as the bestowal began. This time, somewhat familiar with the process, nobody made any noise. Moreover, the bestowal itself was much easier to get through with the new pain tolerance boon. While Edgewood felt a strange, piercing ache in his back and head, he didn't find the pain too distracting.

This boon took a bit longer, about five minutes to finish. Compared to constitution, however, the boon was much faster to take effect. As it finished, Edgewood started to feel the change in his movements. He opened his fingers, then closed them, realizing that the motion seemed crisper, faster. He wanted to test out the effects of the boon immediately, but waited for the Dragon to give the next instruction. He sensed that impatience would not be received well, a feeling he often got around his military superiors.

"To advance in the beginning sequence, master each bestowed boon. However quickly you master basic combat processing will determine how quickly you advance to the Beginner tier. Stasia here will monitor your progress and answer any questions while I provide avatars for you to spar against. I presume that you'll find the activity easier than you expect." The Dragon paused, then looked out into the crowd in Edgewood's direction. Actually, Edgewood was fairly certain that the Dragon was looking directly at him.

"Remember that you're here to practice sparring, not cleverness. You'll learn that in tactics."

With that, the real Dragon vanished in a swirl of air just as hundreds of avatars appeared off to the side of the long, training-room wall.

Edgewood clenched his fist, then started forward, again the first to move. He was determined to advance as quickly as possible. If he was going to be stuck here in this city for the forseeable future, he wasn't going to waste the ridiculously insane opportunity to increase his own power. He never would have suspected that COTD would just randomly give super powers to anyone who showed up at their door; he was certain that if more people knew, the city would have been burgeoning with millions by now. Edgewood resolved to tell all his friends to come to Basalith as soon as he had a spare moment to use his phone.

He had been skeptical about this Church of the Dragon business in the beginning but now, after seeing the abilities of the Dragon and the Church...he couldn't help but grin in anticipation of things to come.