My Infinite Investment System

Chapter 10: Rank Adjustment

Ryan arrived at the registry with one fractured wrist, a hundred and twenty Return Credits, plus a combat technique priced at exactly that much.

Mika inspected the brace before she would let him out of the car. It took long enough that a queue formed behind them.

"If they punish the result because you tested injured, we make them write down what they punished," she said, tightening a strap he had already tightened.

"The assessment measures output, reaction, then field performance," Ryan replied, "so my shoulder only affects all three."

"Pain has improved your disclosure standards," she said, finally releasing the door.

The Exchange was still sitting open when they walked into the controlled-dungeon annex.

[Opening Position]

[Cost: 120 Return Credits]

[Function: Establish Controlled Spear Range]

[Warning: Technique Knowledge Does Not Replace Training]

Keeping the credits would have preserved an emergency reserve.

Nine days had also taught him that a reserve does absolutely nothing when you lack the power to reach tomorrow.

’Caution is just fear with better spreadsheets,’ Ryan thought, then bought it before he could talk himself out of it.

[Purchase Confirmed]

[Return Credit Balance: 0]

Knowledge settled through his stance without strengthening a single injured part of him.

It showed where the spear should begin, then how every careless retreat gave away control he had never known he was holding.

"You spent something," Mika said, watching his attention change.

"Everything available," he replied, flexing the hand around the grip.

"That’s either confidence or a recurring personality defect," she said, eyebrows up.

"The assessment should price the difference," Ryan answered, already walking.

A clerk recognised the Accountant Assist before she reached his licence, then asked, with visible excitement, whether he was Mika Santos’s mysterious manager.

"He’s mysterious because nobody reads captions," Mika said, sliding the assessment notice across.

The clerk looked at Ryan, who looked at the notice, and the clerk kept looking at Ryan anyway.

"Can I ask a question," the clerk said, leaning forward.

"You may not," Mika replied, and steered him toward the first station before either of them could answer.

That station measured raw output against a reinforced target, and it placed him last by three digits.

Two junior testers immediately went off to check whether his F-rank entry had been filed incorrectly.

"The machine’s working," Ryan said, waving off the second tester, "record the weakness accurately, because I need a licence built on what I can repeat inside a dungeon."

Refusing to demand a recalibration disappointed them considerably more than an excuse would have.

One applicant laughed at the displayed number and asked whether viral footage now replaced minimum standards.

"The field test answers that without needing either of our opinions," Ryan replied, not looking over.

Mika photographed the output board before staff could clear it.

"Why post the worst score first?" the applicant asked, half amused.

"Because excuses get harder after the ending," she said, thumb already moving across the upload.

The reaction station changed everybody’s expression before its opening sequence reached the midpoint.

That reflex separated every light cue into its own arriving thing, which let Ryan post an E-rank score through a shoulder that slowed each corresponding movement.

The proctor inspected every sensor twice, then reset the board.

"A second run confirms equipment function without replacing the first result," the proctor said, tone carefully neutral.

"Recalibrate anything you need to," Ryan replied, still catching his breath.

Two misses appeared during the repeat, though his score stayed above E-rank standard until the sensory pressure forced him into a recovery break with both hands flat on his knees.

Mika showed him the comments piling up under an anonymous leaderboard post.

{bottom output, top reaction. explain the build}

{the brace makes this worse, not better}

"They responded before your former guild did," she said, turning the screen toward him.

"That suggests they don’t have a compliance department," Ryan replied.

{registry please confirm whether accounting is a combat class}

The field assessment put him in a controlled E-tier lane with two higher-output applicants, three training constructs, moving partitions, then one rescue mannequin wearing an expression of permanent mild concern.

Emergency suppression covered the ceiling, though the repair marks across the floor suggested controlled did not mean painless.

One of the applicants noticed the baton inside his jacket.

"You brought a cane into a dungeon test?" the applicant asked, grinning at his partner.

"The brace is medical equipment," Ryan replied, as black sections extended through his good hand, "the weapon is separate."

The first construct attacked before the man finished laughing, which Ryan considered a reasonable outcome for everybody involved.

He levelled the spear and activated Opening Position, at which point Combat Valuation, trained footwork, then the reflex all aligned around a single rule.

[Opening Position Established]

[Effective Range: 3.2 Meters]

The space ahead belonged to his point until he chose to give it up.

Ryan caught the construct outside its strongest angle and redirected the weapon, which let the higher-output applicant destroy it through the opening.

The observation deck credited the other man with the kill.

Ryan’s own interface marked no loss at all, because Opening Position cared about control rather than spectacle, and every enemy entering his range became a decision he could redirect.

The second candidate sprinted for the rescue target and triggered a partition that cut him off from both teammates.

’There it is,’ Ryan thought, ’the scoring system eating somebody in real time.’

He refused to chase, shortened the spear as the lane narrowed, then extended again as two constructs entered the same approach.

Every step kept his point between them, which forced one machine to obstruct the other until a precise thrust took out the lead knee.

"Stop holding the centre," the first applicant said, voice climbing, "we score individually."

"The rescue target only scores once," Ryan replied, not turning around, "so breaking formation makes the lane charge us twice."

Ignoring him entirely, the man crossed the declared range, then swung at the disabled construct before its weapon had finished falling.

Combat Valuation marked the collision path and the unstable grip, so the applicant’s own momentum was about to endanger both of them.

Ryan rotated without striking him, caught the man’s weapon under his spear shaft, then planted its point into a floor seam while the construct’s attack passed through empty air.

Silence arrived on the observation deck, complete and unhelpful.

"Release your weapon and follow the lane leader," the proctor ordered, sounding uncertain which of them she meant.

Ryan recovered the mannequin, opened the trapped partition, then finished the course with one construct disabled and every candidate intact.

His destructive output stayed dead last on the board.

Completion time, damage prevented, then rescue efficiency put him first by a margin that made two testers lean toward the same screen.

The applicant whose weapon he had planted avoided his eyes until the replay showed the construct’s blade passing through the space his ribs had occupied.

"You saved me before embarrassing me," the applicant said, not quite meeting his eyes.

"Reversing that order would have complicated the paperwork," Ryan replied, retracting the spear.

The man laughed despite himself, then asked for the spear footage before scores finalised, which was the first professional courtesy Ryan had received from anybody in nine days.

The assessing officer was reviewing that footage when a compliance objection appeared under Northline Guild’s crest.

{Request: Suspend Advancement}

{Basis: Applicant separated for conduct incompatible with support duties}

"Did your former employer file a registry charge against your licence?" the officer asked, frowning at the screen.

"A public charge would require disclosing the procurement records I accessed," Ryan replied.

She read it once more, then rejected it with a keystroke that sounded faintly satisfied.

"Then this is an employment grievance wearing compliance formatting," she said, "the registry certifies recorded performance, and letterhead does not create jurisdiction."

His result came up on the public terminal a minute later.

[Public Rank: E, Level 1]

[Certification Status: Provisional]

[Fast-Track Reassessment: 90 Days]

[Exchange Technique Verified: Opening Position]

No strength arrived with the notice, so his wrist stayed fractured while his credit balance stayed empty, and the same testers who had questioned his entry were now replaying the planted weapon from three angles.

His banking app, sensing an occasion, congratulated him on his career growth and suggested a professional-development savings goal.

’You locked me out of a sandwich four days ago,’ Ryan thought.

The clip reached the waiting room before his licence finished printing, showing an F-rank output score controlling an E-tier lane without taking one unnecessary hit.

Outside the annex, an unknown address forwarded him an internal Northline memo.

{Blacklist Tier: Revised upward}

{Action: Dungeon footage requested}

{Review: Funding, Mika Santos / Northstar}

{Priority: Identify advancement source before competitors acquire it}

Ryan saved it beside Invoice 4421 before he showed her.

"They’ve stopped asking whether I found another employer," he said, jaw tightening, "now they want to know who taught me to hold a line."

Mika read it twice, and something behind her eyes did arithmetic he could not see.

"They think somebody’s funding you," she said, very evenly.

"Yes," he said.

"Everybody thinks somebody’s funding you," she said, handing the phone back without looking away from him, "it’s becoming a genre."

’Say it,’ Ryan thought, ’ask me again and I’ll still have nothing.’

She did not ask it again.

She linked her arm through his for the certification photograph instead, positioning the black spear and the fresh E-rank licence inside the same frame, then produced a smile with no repossession anywhere in it.

"Let them study the footage," she said, chin up for the camera, "they still have to cross it."