The sword in the stone—what a classic setup.
Whoever could pull the sword embedded in the stone was the king chosen by fate, the hero who would save some land, and so on.
Jia Xiu was not too surprised that the Ukemak Plane had come up with this kind of "hero testing" method.
Because similar things were common on the Mainland Plane as well.
Though they were not necessarily swords.
They could also be spears or axes. The Orcs liked using axes, while the Dwarves had hammers. But hammers were not easy to stick into stones, so "being chosen by a hammer" meant lifting the hammer instead.
The Elves had a similar version involving bows: the Stringless Bow. Whoever gained the Elf God's recognition could summon a bowstring formed from elements, one that would never snap.
Such things were rarer among spellcasters, because weapons were not an absolute necessity for them. Still, they existed, and they were usually made on a grander scale. Sorcerer groups that practiced bloodline inheritance especially liked this sort of thing.
But spellcasters made theirs far more flamboyant. It would not just be a stone sitting there; it would be some gaudy treasure vault full of riddles, mazes, and guards. Only after braving layer upon layer of peril and breaking the final seal could one obtain that staff or Magic Grimoire brimming with power.
The kind where, if one could see attributes and quality, a sparkling orange panel would pop up with a whole pile of modifiers.
But as times changed, such things became rarer and rarer, because people gradually realized that they had all been arranged beforehand.
Only the forms differed. Their shared purpose was to build momentum for the option that had already been chosen. Since the formats were all more or less the