15: HINTING INTENTION
//
3:01 P.M. // 10 - 23 - 2023 // Arc
Starring Serene Goldwin
Featuring Jun and ???
//
The old professor’s steps were slow, and the students in Unawakened Homeroom 1 walked in relative silence, matching her pace. I scanned the group from the back. Dressed in the blue Arc uniform and battle, the quiet class of kids who had nothing in common with each other except to join their Awakened upper-peers talked little, a couple interactions only to pair up with one another and to never speak again. One perky student stood out though, bright pink hair, an equally bright face and fun personality, a little smile on his face towards me as I beckoned him over.
The sun, beating hot on the usual day, was drawn back in place of clouds as if to match the mood, as if to sympathize with us on what was about to happen next.
“Jun.”
“Yeah?”
“Do… can you be my partner for the project?”
He patted the sword by his side, and then playfully bumped my shoulder. “Didn’t think you’d ask this soon. Goblin hunting can’t possibly be that hard, eh? We got this.”
Just as I was about to say something, someone’s high voice from Jun’s right burst in.
“J-Jun!” A small ginger girl, one who’s name I didn’t remember, with a cute ponytail and a light touch of makeup. “Jun, c-can you please be my partner today?”
“O-oh, well…” Jun, equally surprised as I was, struggled to find the necessary words to reject the girl. I was impressed, both with her courage to ask him and her hardness of hearing. Jun and I were quite literally the only people talking earlier.
I quickly pulled up a Guide.
========================
Guides(1)//Options:
Answer
Memory
Overtake
Will you use a Guide?
Yes//No
========================
Yes, and an Answer. Make it quick.
========================
Option 1) “Sorry. He’s my partner.”
Option 2) “No. Go away.”
Option 3) “We can always do a party of three.”
========================
I sighed at the options. Doing this all the time was getting kind of dull, especially on unimportant conversations like the one I was having now, but I wouldn’t risk the chance of acting odd to random strangers. Acting authentic was reserved for those in my small circle.
“We can always do a party of three,” I offered quickly and graciously to my friend in need.
A flash of emotions on Jun’s face disappeared before I could fully comprehend them, and he strainedly nodded. “Yeah, of course.”
Out of the corner of his lips, he whispered to me, “Hey, what’s her name again?”
I shrugged my shoulders and he groaned quietly.
…
The earthy and blighted portal spit everyone out, one by one, and it wasn’t long before I was left hacking and coughing at the disgusting fumes of the cave, as were all of the students around me.
“Ugghh…”
“Rotten!”
“It smells!”
I weakly looked up, my right arm thrown over my nose as if I was about to sneeze, and pulled the gun from the holster on my belt, and it hung low against my left side.
The cave already was a magnificent sight to behold, a huge and rocky expanse, eerie blue lights coming from glowing neon pools and puddles below the barely visible giant stalactites speared through the stone walls, dripping the innocuous liquid. An awe struck over me as I looked around, still a little dizzy from the smell, many students were already getting into their small groups and trudging off to find what they were here for.
Slowly but surely, students began to leave the area in small groups, leaving the complaints to echo quieter and quieter.
“We should go too, Serene,” Jun tapped my shoulder from behind.
“Ah, yes,” I said, but then faltered, unsure of where to go, and then with slight hesitation I simply started walking in a random direction, hugging against the leftmost side.
What were we even looking for? Whatever. Anything to get away from the stench.
“Hey! Jun, Serene, wait up!” The ginger girl, Fanny, chased after us shortly as I kept my pace. Good thing I had paid attention to the names of the people the professor was calling out to go into the portal. Jun pushed ahead of me as did she, both of them with a sword in hand, Jun in the lead and I in the back.
“This project shouldn’t take us long,” she coughed into her arm, also bothered by the smell. “We just need a couple pictures of… hey, what are we looking for?”
“Both of you, keep your guard up,” Jun said firmly, not responding to the girl. “It’s not bright enough for us to see ahead.”
“Umm,” Fanny interjected with a little bit of confusion in her voice, “wait, then, can’t we…”
She lowered her sword, reaching to her watch, and I scowled. “Hey, didn’t you hear him? Lift your sword up.”
“But—”
“I don’t want to hear it. Sword, up!”
She looked up at Jun beside her. “Jun, I—”
“Please. Serene is right, she’s worrying for our safety right now.”
“… if you say so. Still, what are we looking for?”
We passed by one of the little glowing puddles, and with slight interest I glanced down at it. And then I noticed a distinct shape, the edges barely tangible but slightly outlined by the brightness of the liquid. Was that…
Steel?
“Everyone, stop!” My heart pounded, now fully aware of my surroundings, or at least the little that I could make out with the dim glowing liquid. In front of me Fanny and Jun came to a sudden and understandably nervous halt at the tone of my voice. “There’s a goblin trap over the puddle! They’re nearby.”
I spun around and put my back to them so I could defend our flank, in the corner of my eye Jun tensed up, his sword in front of him in a double-handed grip at a strike-ready position. His stance and posture was oddly and confidently straight, his legs apart shoulder-width and his eyes warily scanning. Fanny too had the same straightened stance, but was less impressive given her stature, guarding our side away from the wall.
We waited for a moment, a silent second. Then the distant echoes of a shout traveled over to us from another group ahead, and the clanging against stone from somewhere else further away gave me chills. The quietness returned, the anxious moment before battle.
My eyes constantly swept back and forth, in a quick motion, and then I realized that there was… less, than there was before.
All that had been in my periphery before was a bit of the stone terrain and Fanny.
In a panic I swept my head around in search of Fanny, then a small snapping noise of a camera. I laid eyes on Fanny just over the puddle, using her watch to take a photo of the goblin trap over the liquid, and before I could get angry I heard another noise, like a high-pitched growling, like a stomach rumbling. My head immediately turned and I spotted a new pair of sickly orange and yellow glowing eyes in the dark.
They were here.
Goblins.
In the far distance, ahead of us, nearby, the same noise of screeches and screaming and battle ensued, and I forgot about my trigger discipline.
—POOHK POOHK POOHK
I began opening fire, my arm pushing down to stabilize against the recoil of each shot as I heard from behind me a grunt, Jun swung his sword cleanly through a goblin and the horrible screech filled our ears.
As the bullets made contact, in that moment, two spears flew out of nowhere towards my open right side, my adrenaline raced and my dodgeball instincts kicked in.
I trained for this!
I would not lose to a pointy stick!
I ducked my head to the side and pivoted around the other one cleanly, and then shot twice in the direction of the spears, breathing with a certain level of difficulty.
—PAHH
I was shaking. I shot again, but my aim was off and it hit somewhere far back onto the stone. Oh, my body was just beginning to realize that this was real. I could actually get hurt here.
The smell of sour blood reeked and permeated our already shaded vision. Another spear, I took a step backward forgetting about the trap but Jun had also done the same thing and we collided, our backs against each other as he struggled against the force of a goblin. Luckily the spear flew right past, and then another one deflected by Fanny.
I needed to get my act together and play my part.
“Hold them for a second!”
“Got it!” Fanny cried back. The echoes around the other side of the cave were getting less and less recognizable as the sounds of human speech, and more of the screeches of dying goblins.
—EEEEKKKKHHHH
I turned around and pushed off the wall dripping the glowing liquid, and without my support against his back, with a loud grunt Jun stumbled backwards and just before he fell into the trap I yanked his arm over to me, his legs catching up like the dancer he was.
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Holding him up for a quick moment, I fired two shots at the goblin, a tooth necklace hung around the creature’s neck and decorating its bare and green chest, the colors barely visible with it being so close to the glowing pool. Its ugly face pulled back and it fell backwards, my bullets were fatal.
“Serene,” Jun said quickly, “let go.” He had a very weird expression on his face, but I recognized the gratefulness
“Don’t fall into the trap!”
—SCREEEEEEEEE
Jun nodded, then a screaming noise, and realizing my back was exposed again I turned to fire another blind bullet, but Jun swept his sword in an arc and cleanly decapitated the goblin running at me.
Without acknowledging his attack, I shook my gun to check for bullets in the magazine. I could only guess how many shots I had taken.
Maybe three or so left.
Two goblins with knives came at me, two goblins with bullets through their skulls, but they didn’t die immediately and just as they were about to turn me into a gutted fish their heads were impaled in a straight skewer.
“Thanks again, Jun!” And as he nodded his head and returned to block another spear, another was stabbed in the gut by Fanny as she and Jun hustled to protect my back. They breathed harder than I did.
“I can’t see them!” I yelled obviously, the panic clearly evident in my voice, and shot blindly into the dark. “And I need to reload!”
The blue pools of light were doing me only a slight favor, as when they disappeared behind the silhouette of a goblin I would shoot in that direction, but by then that goblin would already be in striking distance.
A sudden flash of light illuminated the dark from behind me, it didn’t take me long to realize that Fanny was using her watch as a flashlight, and I could see two of the spearmen with several poles on their back behind several advancing goblins, maybe eight more, from all around, knives in their claw-like hands, green from head to toe and pointed ears, dotty and glowing orange eyes, with a terribly hunched back and bony ribs. They were the ugliest things ever, several corpses of them lay dead on the stone floor. The whole cave behind should have also been alit with the watch, but it was like the darkness was consuming the little amount of light that the watch could output.
Quickly I smacked the bottom of the magazine on my pistol, and as the bullet casings clacked onto the ground. I pulled another round from my belt and stuffed it into the hot magazine, and then pushed it back into the gun.
Two seconds.
“Let’s kill them all!” I shouted.
Jun, in his stationary sword stance once again, immediately went on the offensive, Fanny taking his other side. He stabbed forward and impaled through one of the charging goblins, swiping his sword out of the goblin’s mutilated head. Fanny then rushed around him to the nearest goblin to Jun, also to my absolute horror, completely open to attack. I shot as fast as I could at the spear goblins to disable them from hurting her, my bullets ringing aloud in the cave like a bunch of firecrackers.
—POOHK POOHK POOHK
Hit, injured. Miss. Hit, it’s dead.
—POOHK POOHK
I was sweating beyond control, the constant sounds of screaming and slashing and shooting deafened me.
And finally, all of them were dead.
“AH!” A sudden noise of pain just when I thought I could rest, Fanny’s light shone over Jun, his foot caught in a painful hold between the metal trap.
Fanny screamed. “Oh my god! Jun!”
I was already very dizzy from the overload of sounds and smells, but this dug through my clogged senses and immediately I was by his side, as was Fanny.
Even if we didn’t like each other, we were going to help this young man. Without so much as a word to each other, Fanny lodged the butt end of her sword into the trap just next to Jun’s bloody foot, his shoes completely pierced through.
I came next, helping his foot out of the shoe, which I knew I couldn’t take out. Jun, the brave soul, did his best to put on his brave face for us, though wincing deeply at the pain.
As I helped him out, Fanny took off the top layer of her uniform and folded it into a nice pillowy surface, and though I didn’t understand what she was doing I trusted her in the moment.
“Sit.” The girl commanded. Obediently the young man sat down, tears close to falling in his eyes. Oh. That was just a pillow for his butt. How… thoughtful.
I, too, took off my overlayer with one hand and held his leg up with my other as he sat down, and then a memory popped into my head. It was one of my teachers when I was younger, my Scoutmaster, teaching me how to wrap a wound with a neckerchief. I practiced this on my older brother, as nameless to me now as he was ever since I had come into this world.
Well, this jacket was going to have to do the job.
“Fanny, hand me Jun’s sword.”
She unquestioningly gave me the weapon, her face full of concern.
“What can I do?”
The sword was a little heavy, but I digressed and cut off a chunk of the sleeve from my jacket. “Make it into something he can bite. This will hurt.”
They both flinched, but Fanny quietly took her order. She looked very petite next to Jun, their pretty faces and bodies matching well with each other, and the dim colors of the ginger hair complimenting the pink in the light from her wrist made my own silky hair feel quite bland.
“J-Jun. Open your mouth. G-good. Bite down. Good. Squeeze my hand if you need to, I can bear it.”
No time for useless thoughts.
I breathed in. “Get ready.”
He nodded faintly, and then I started.
A muffled yell escaped from his mouth, usually filled with a pretty voice, now in terrible pain.
“This will be quick. We need to get you back ASAP.”
Jun screamed as I began wrapping tightly around the impaled areas of his foot, the blood pouring profusely from the wound, his distress in contrast with Fanny’s red wrists from him squeezing too hard. She didn’t say a word.
“You’re doing good. Hold on, and calm down.” I was a little bit stressed now.
He was breathing way too fast now. I needed to treat him for shock.
“Calm!”
I wrapped the makeshift bandage over his foot, the other end looping around his ankle to support. Finally, I tied the finishing knot around the end, and breathed a sigh of short-lived relief. The jacket was already soaking from the blood, but the pressure of the tightly wrapped cloth would help to stagnate the blood’s flow.
“Now, Fanny, let him lay on your lap for a second so his head doesn’t hit the stone.” I was going to take the risk. Though I didn’t want the blood to keep pouring through his foot, I needed to get him to stop panicking lest his system shut down, and force his blood to flow. Embarrasedly Fanny allowed his head to lay against her, Jun’s face was very pale, and when I moved over to grab his arm he was also clammy with sweat.
Putting my right hand over his him and my left under his neck I began rolling him, back and forth like a rolling pin, a sure fire method of shock treatment. At this point, all I was scared about was the potential infections he could get from this.
All I was scared about was… wait… fear?
Should I be scared of something?
And then I remembered we were still in a dungeon.
“Fanny. Get your sword, now!”
She was clearly tired, and a little bit laxed now. “Alright—”
“We’re still in a goblin dungeon,” I hissed, standing up to their surprise, “at any point—”
A growl came from further down the cave and I abruptly stood up and primed my gun in its direction. Fanny pointed her watch’s light there, and I could make out a couple shapes. Too many.
“Go, go, go! Get your swords! Jun, don’t stand on your bleeding foot!” I began shooting at the goblins, and they screeched, and then began to charge.
Fanny jumped up, pulling Jun, still barely complicit, gently but frantically up with her, and yanked her sword from the goblin trap which snapped when she pulled it out. Jun’s arm was rested over Fanny’s small shoulders as he leaned against her, and she bore the brunt of his weight, the task of defending him, and finally to point the damn light at the goblins.
“I need the light!”
“O-on it!” She was clearly struggling.
—POOHK POOHK POOHK PAHHH POOHK!!
//
10:48 A.M. // 10 - 16 - 2023 // Arc - Portal Facility
Starring Reyenal Ato
Featuring Cedrance Manamune
//
“Nice chatting with you, Reyenal,” Rubia and Penelope waved their departure. They were pretty, as expected, though I didn’t expect them to have such vivid eyes. Rubia's was redder than rubies and Penny’s was bluer than sapphires, long and curly hair and a short and straight hairdo respectively. The other girl had already left long before, and I sat and stewed in my thoughts.
“Yeah, yeah, see you guys sometime.”
As their footsteps disappeared, sunk into my arms, and in the same way some realizations had sunken into me.
My God, absolutely nothing was happening.
Ever since I had woken up, I almost expected to have some kind of task. Was I going to save a kingdom? Slay a demon king? Create a diehard harem, live on a timer, find a way to go back home, anything interesting?
No. Not even a single clue.
It looked like this world wanted me to just get through school.
School.
Dammit, what’s so interesting about homework? Fighting for our lives, yes, magic, cool, but why? Actually, why did we even need to do any of this in the first place? Couldn’t Zen and I just quit Arc and go to a regular college for a regular education and live out a regular life?
Why were we torn away from our lives in the first place, and… I pinched myself. Don’t think like that.
Well then, was there even a task at all? Would one of us just randomly stumble into something, or was some cataclysmic event going to call us to battle? For now, I was just a student. Even so, that wasn't interesting at all. I was dying from boredom.
There wasn’t any drive for me to do anything.
The world was already well developed, running like clockwork, smoothly and would probably keep doing so even if I wasn’t around.
All of this, to me, meant that I should… live out life, as normally as I could, as faithful to Reyenal as I could. Because, if all I was doing was taking her body from her, then I had to at least give her the respect she deserved.
I glanced down at my watch, and looked through my notifications which I had been ignoring earlier. Messages from Zen.
[Dont think ive ever told you this before]
[This guy is probably the mc of this world]
Below that was a photo of quite possibly the most handsome person I had ever seen, and what a crime it was that he was underaged. An obviously blue color scheme going on, he had glossy and stylish blue hair, a great jawline with the perfect blend of anime-like proportions to realistic features, big blue eyes and sharp brows, a perfectly muscular side shot of him, which looked oddly natural in the sense that most people looked like that in this world. I recognized him, though. He was in a few of my classes, the top guy at the opening ceremony, just one rank above me, who didn’t show up to receive his prize, a generous sum of points which had bought me a very nice apartment. Other than that, I knew nothing about him. We never spoke, and it was like he avoided talking with people in general, particularly me, except this one hot unawakened girl who sometimes waited for him by the door of our homeroom.
[Did you figure anything out yet about other people like us? Cuz Im sussing two ppl rn]
It took lots of willpower to prevent myself from smacking my forehead. I had forgotten. Our theory was too good to be wrong, and the cliches of this blatant rip-off of an urban dungeons and monsters fantasy world only proved it further. I thought for a moment, and then texted back.
[Call me]
I waited for a second to see if he would instantly text me back like usual, but he didn’t.
Letting out a groan, I stood up from the bench, my feet sloshing against the water in my slipper. I was relatively dried up, now.
With my bag in hand, I walked out of the shower room, now with a new objective in mind.
…
There was no doubt that Cedrance Manamune deserved the position of rank 1 of the freshman year. I paused the replay footage just at the point before his blade’s sweeping motion was about to slice clean off the head of the giant viper, the boss monster of his dungeon.
I fell back into my chair, then sighed.
And yet, the doubt lingered in my head. This guy could be like me.
Leaning forward I grabbed the bottle of tea I had bought earlier, and brought it to my mouth. Barely a few drops left, and I shook my head, then flicked the bottle behind me. The clatter against hollow plastic told me that I had successfully hit the top of the trashcan’s lid, and it bounced off. Well, that was going to be future-me’s problem.
Reyenal, the person I had become, was simply overpowered. Her strength, her skills, they were all just made conveniently accessible to me, muscle memory for her, as simple as that for me.
Cedrance could be the same. What if, by any chance, a person other than Cedrance was inhabiting his body? Was he using a Guide in this video? I scraped through my head, recalling memories of being in his class. No, I couldn’t tell.
I didn’t know Cedrance’s mannerisms, or anything about his past, or even his relationship with me, much less with Reyenal. I didn’t even know if I could draw comparisons between his mannerisms and anyone I knew in the real world. With a face like that, he could have been just about anyone, maybe just himself, and I could never tell otherwise.
Unless he told me himself.
Well, I was going to get one comment out of the way for the written portion.
[Cedrance’s blade dances in beautiful, dangerous, and unpredictable ways, leading a tough game for anyone or anything trying to break through his defenses. Yet, his offense and even his coordination is equally as impressive, shown by a part near the end of the video where he only switches to the offensive when given a chance to capitalize off of his partner’s immobilizing ability.
These comments should be leeway into any negatives one may have spotted on watching the footage, yet nothing wrong stands out, enough so to make anyone wonder how much right he can do before it would seem as if he was simply following the perfect step-by-steps of a guide.
Meet me next week, Monday, 12:00 PM at the Royal Blue Bakery.]