Master of the End Times

Chapter 54: Rune Affinity

As the crowd expressed their admiration, Liu Rui looked at Qin Feng’s direction with an amused look in his eyes, as if to say, “So what if your pet caused me a disadvantage? You may have won some face but you’re losing the pretty girl!” Suddenly, he felt a little better for himself.

However, after scanning the crowd, Liu Rui looked confused. Where was Qin Feng?

While all focus was on the healing, no one noticed that Qin Feng had sneaked Zhou Hao to the front of the line, grabbed a sign-up sheet, and left quietly.

“Qin Feng, your special ability is awakened? And Xiaobai is an ultra-beast?! What class is it? It looks really incredible! That pretty also girl seemed to know you!” Zhou Hao had an endless list of questions.

“You’re talking a little too much!” Qin Feng winced.

Zhou Hao rolled his eyes. “Then answer my questions.”

“I don’t want to!”

“Damn! You’re keeping secrets from your brother?”

“Isn’t that normal? We’d be gay if there are no secrets between us!”

Zhou Hao huffed in frustration, finally lost for words.

“I don’t mean to keep secrets from you, but I’m too lazy to explain myself. At least you know the truth now!” Qin Feng patted his friend on the shoulder.

“Are we still brothers?” Zhou Hao groaned. When he thought about the Talent Fruit and beast-general meat, it dawned on him that Qin Feng had been playing things real close to the chest since then.

But Qin Feng was also right. He could not possibly tell Zhou Hao everything. All that mattered was that he still treated him like a brother.

“Then I’ll you one last question: do you have feelings for that pretty girl?” Zhou Hao nosily poked with a smirk.

“What feelings?” Qin Feng cocked his brow and tried to look as cool as possible.

“Don’t be silly! That girl looked like she really likes you. Don’t you like her back?”

“Nope!” Qin Feng snapped.

“Why?” Zhou Hou looked at Qin Feng in disbelief. “She’s so pretty, and she’s a water ability user. She’ll be a doctor for sure! How can you not like her?!”

Qin Feng simply kept mum.

If he was young and carefree, he would have been overjoyed by the attention poured on him from a tremendously attractive lass like Li Yaoyao.

But Qin Feng wasn’t that young mutt who had just moved out of the orphanage, waiting to take on whoever came their way.

It was ten years ago, before his rebirth. Though Qin Feng may not have been at his peak, he did not lack anything either. Money, women... everything that he should have, he had them.

To him, there was nothing particularly special about Li Yaoyao. Also, he wasn’t the type to be too interested in these kinds of things.

In this life, his most pressing goals were to get revenge and to reach the top.

“There are no whys! She’s just not my cup of tea!” Qin Feng politely denied, not wanting to criticize Li Yaoyao.

Thank goodness, the bashful topic did not continue for long as they soon arrived at the testing area.

On the other side of the room, Li Yaoyao looked really unhappy and obstinate.

Once again, Qin Feng had taken off and left her alone. It was clear that this young man did not give a damn about her.

...

In the testing area.

“Wow! We have someone who has his ability awakened! My name is Cheng Chao. I will be your teacher slash instructor. Just call me Teacher Cheng!”

Cheng Chao was in his forties. He looked a little dull but seemed the kind type.

“Teacher Cheng, here is my form!” Qin Feng handed his form over.

Cheng Chao accepted the paper and placed it on the machine next to him.

“You’ve already confirmed that it’s a fire ability? Then there’s no need for another test. We’ll just measure your consciousness and rune affinity.”

Cheng Chao took out a red fire crystal, a rare crystal core with attributes, and placed it in the machine.

“This machine is a piece of essential equipment that you will need in the future. It can break down the runes in special ability cores. The more gifted a person is, the more powerful he or she would be able to absorb the runes. This all depends on their aptitude as well! Of course, even if results are not outstanding, you’re still fortunate. Don’t get too stressed. Alright, let’s start now!”

Qin Feng nodded. He was already seated inside the egg-shaped machine with a blindfold over his eyes.

“Release your consciousness and capture those runes – the more you get, the better!” Cheng Chao instructed.

Accordingly, Qin Feng unleashed his conscious energy and ‘saw’ countless fire runes bouncing here and there!

He knew that these runes were part of the test. Capturing them with the powerful pulling force of his consciousness, he absorbed the runes.

However, no matter how hard he tried, he was only fast enough to absorb 1% of the dark runes.

On top of that, once the runes reached his consciousness, they disappeared almost immediately.

At the end of the day, Qin Feng was still a dark ability user, no matter what he tried. He simply posed as a fire ability user because of the fire runes.

Even if he absorbed the fire runes, it would not be stored in his diamond planet.

“But what about the sub ability core around my ability core? I wonder if I can carve the runes onto them?”

Sub ability cores were those really narrow and small infernal satellites orbiting the ability core.

Qin Feng pulled the fire runes in again and attempted to carve them onto the infernal satellites.

“It works!”

He had successfully absorbed two runes. But just before he could continue, a beep rang in his ears, and all the fire runes disappeared.

“Done!” The teacher blurted as the machine spat out the report. Ripping off the sheet, he took one look at it, and his eyes widened. Then, he slapped his thigh regretfully. “Sigh!”

Qin Feng looked at the man. “Teacher, what is it? Do my results disqualify me from enrolling into the academy?”

“No, you are qualified. It’s just... a little unfortunate!”

The teacher passed on the results to Qin Feng.

Elements captured: 2

Strength of consciousness: S

Rune affinity: G

Qin Feng did a double-take. The power of his consciousness was ‘S.’

“It’s too bad. If only your rune affinity could be higher. It’s very rare to see S-tier consciousness!” Cheng Chao looked a tad disappointed.

Qin Feng did not react to the comment, though. He knew now that his rune affinity was Class-G because he did not only absorb dark runes.

“Sir, how is affinity evaluated?” Qin Feng asked.

He knew practically nothing about ability users. The more basic the information given to him, the fewer details he knew.

“A G-tier ability user’s initial absorption ability is at a 2. Similarly, it’s 4 for F, 6 for E, 8 for D, 10 for C, 12 for B, and 15 for A. S-class is the strongest. It could even go up to 20! Don’t underestimate the small difference between the tiers. If all consciousness’s strength is the same, then the efficiency of an elite absorbing rune would have greatly increased!”

One should know that even a G-tier special ability would need at least 1,000 fire runes, needing a G-tier affinity ability user to complete it in 10 days. However, an S-tier affinity ability user would be able to complete it in 2 to 3 days. When it came to high-tier special abilities, one would need at least tens of thousands of runes.

Qin Feng remembered when he had just awakened dark runes, he was able to absorb 20 dark runes in an hour during the day and over 100 at night.

Did that not mean that his talent had, in fact, exceeded S-tier?