20: REFINE
//
1:31 P.M. // 10 - 23 - 2023 // Arc - F-Wing, Refinement Class
Starring Zendolyn Ato
Featuring Professor Carmela
//
My body felt so sluggish after being probed by those scientists.
Now was a time of respite in the classroom, where the students around me murmured about their results, but I didn’t want to talk to anybody.
As everyone got up to leave, I stayed seated. It was only until Reyenal’s fleeting and worried glance was torn by the closing door that I stood and walked down the stairs towards the waiting and watching Professor.
“So it looks like you actually stayed,” she said to cut through the silence, “most students when I ask them don’t usually have this much confidence to meet with me, directly one on one… what’s different about you?”
Reaching the final steps, I made strong eye contact with her, refusing to look away as her stormy eyes probed me. Now there were no other eye-catching or good-looking students in the room to distract me from the full force of her accentuated beauty, and I almost shook in my effort to not look away in distress, in the shame and embarrassment of my own self worth.
I stopped at the stage, and observed her. Her shiny and perfectly bouncy brown hair was pulled back so that it didn’t get in the way of her striking gaze and glossy lips that judged every inch of me and left no room for any other lesser thoughts.
No, no, get back in the game, Zen. I internally psyched myself up, and answered simply, “I’ve been through worse lectures.”
She smiled, “It must be your teachers then. Who must be so drawl for you to rat them out, hmm?” But her eyes told another story, one I wouldn’t have caught if I weren’t staring straight at them as intensely as I was.
There is no way that the Atos spared any second of the day for a child like you.
I returned her grin, genuinely, thinking back to how my mother nagged me at home. Then I very quickly snapped out of it.
“Sorry.” I said shortly. “What did you call me here for, Professor Carmela?”
“Come up here first,” she replied, and briskly walked past me, grabbing the two folding chairs from earlier. I stared at her the entire way as she stepped back onto the stage, placing the chairs down. We took our respective seats.
“To answer your question,” the professor tapped onto her watch twice, and then spun it around showing me the hologram’s front side. I recognized immediately what was on it.
Those were the results I had just gotten back from the assessments earlier.
——
1 2 6 6 0 4 3 9 6 5
Weight: 54.4 kg (120 lb) | Height: 166 cm (65.4 in)
Comment(s): “Unfit, but healthy. Suboptimal BMI and muscle-to-fat ratio. Poor strength and agility.”
Mana Production: High | Sanity: Stable | Mental Fortitude: Average
Comment(s): “Great conditions for Mystery. Seems to have a large pool of mana.”
Rhetoric: Strong | Preference: Music | Suggestion: N/A
Comment(s): “Has a strong presence and a stable voice under pressure.”
Overall Report, Analysis, and Predictions:
“Zendolyn Ato is very likely to become a support-type Mystery class. His body suggests that he would be ill-suited for any long term combat nor melee confrontations, and conversely his mana seems to be in a good position to set him up for success. Zendolyn also has a surprising amount of dexterity in his hands, as demonstrated during testing.”
Valiance: D+ | Mystery: B- to A | Truth: F
——
I cringed slightly at the rank predictions at the bottom. Wow, I really was an extra. Professor Carmela hardly batted an eye and said, “Just so you know, you’re the only person I’ve ever had in my class that is unawakened. Others have an assessment that looks a little different from yours, including having a class and subclass match.”
Her words surprised me. “I-I’m… the only unawakened student?”
My heart thumped loudly in my chest, louder when she spoke again, “Don’t worry, I have just as much expectations for you as I have for your Awakened peers. Actually, I was quite impressed by your speaking skills. I’m sure you would be a great politician, but I feel like you wouldn’t like that, yes?”
I nodded nervously, “Yes, Professor. But… why have I never heard of these tests before?”
Professor Carmela shook her head, and explained, “It’s like a… a progress report. Nothing more, nothing less. You’re the first person to ask me that. Your other peers in your home room classes will be taking the tests at a different time, but as this is an Awakened class you simply were privileged to be the first few to be tested.”
She could definitely see my frozen expression, but she didn’t seem to react to it. I focused back to my masked self again as she said sharply, “Zendolyn.”
I flinched.
“There’s another reason why you’re here today. Two reasons.”
I slowly nodded again, the anticipation rising in my chest. The professor spoke, “Your project will be to attend a gathering of around 300 or more people in Arc and without utilizing the Square.” I was completely baffled by how astonishingly un-intensive that seemed, but she kept on speaking, “Now, 300 everywhere else in the world might not be too hard to come across, but here at Arc, you’re going to have a hard time. For this project, you are allowed to use any resources available to you, and your submission will be comprised of a photo and a signature from a professor or a Holimont officer that has also attended the gathering. Don’t worry, they do it all the time; at least 1 supervisor is always required within 250 meters of any gathering of students. It will be due the 22nd of December, on the Friday before Christmas break. Understand?”
That was only three days before Christmas! I tried to compress all of the information into my head and could feel the holes already forming, as well as ideas, and more ideas. Connecting some pieces together, there was one thing that instantly stood out in my mind.
“Yes, Professor.”
“And secondly,” she said, not completely finished with me yet, “there’s going to be a school festival on that same week, and a talent show, and much more.”
Support creative writers by reading their stories on Royal Road, not stolen versions.
…
“On that note, we’re done now.”
Did she want me to…
Sing on a stage?
…
I got up to leave, and just as the door was about to close behind me Professor Carmela called to me again.
“Hey, Zendolyn. Are you planning on attending the Gemini concert tomorrow night?”
I paused in place.
“Maybe.”
…
I had another idea.
//
2:28 P.M. // 10 - 25 - 2023 // Red Rock - Turtlehead Peak Trail
Starring Kali Lapuz
Featuring Rubia, Penelope, Marsh and Regan Yglesias
//
Dangerous.
“Run!” I screamed, “Those are Devilhorn Bulls! W-we can’t fight those things!”
I couldn’t fight them.
The name instantly turned everyone pale, while the Awakened like Rubia and Penelope looked horrified as they read the ‘descriptors’ or something that were invisible to us unawakened. We really couldn’t beat three of those bulls, let alone a whole dozen. Not only was their charge almost impossible to dodge because of its ability of maneuvering and turning on a dime, it also had another dangerous ability.
“The Landscorched Trail,” Penelope whispered beside me.
I had only ever seen it in the textbooks, but in person it was so much scarier than in the safety of my dorm. The name exactly described what it looked like, the tanned earth became a bubbling molten red, and then black behind them as they ran towards us. Anyone caught in the midst of the charge would either become kebab, or if they were luckier they would melt to death. Who’s to say that luck was any good?
“RUN! NOW!”
Everyone took off back down the trail, at a pace we had never gone before. Already the tiredness was catching up quickly as I still hadn’t properly rested, but it was this or being trampled, skewered, braised, and then eaten.
But the noise of their rampage didn’t seem to quiet down. In fact, it was getting louder with each passing second.
—BADUM BADUM BADUM
I was huffing like crazy, my armpits, and forehead, my hair, neck, thighs, toes, everywhere was stained and drenched. My throat screamed for water as the harsh and dust-filled air slammed in with every laborious breath, but still the noise continued from behind.
Suddenly one of the guys in front of us stopped and turned around, and to my horror stood firm in place as he gripped his hands together, his legs wide as he took a strong stance on the ground.
“Marsh,” I panted, and then yelled, “what are you doing?!”
He responded with the face I had on, but with the more consistent tone of someone who wasn’t nearly as winded as I was. “Kali, I’m Awakened. I can stop them.” Marsh was also scared.
“Don’t try to be a hero and run!” Regan stopped by him, and pulled at his shoulder with a look of effort on her face, but he stood still and stoic, as if unmovable. She grunted, then glancing back and forth rapidly between the bulls and Marsh she yelled in frustration, something I had never seen from her before.
—BADUM BADUM BADUM
He was a lost cause.
“You unawakeneds better go straight to the vans, or I’m killing you all!” Rubia’s hair flipped around as she abruptly stopped in place next to Marsh.
I needed to run faster.
Marsh grunted as I ran past him. Then I grabbed Regan’s wrist who was still struggling with him and pulled her away. She yelled at me incoherently, but I didn’t care. Our lives were far too important to me. A surge of power split through the ground, and then a loud roaring sound came from the bulls behind.
I turned my head back slightly, panting so hard, though it seemed as if the bulls had slowed down, but not by much. The ground below them seemed to be a bit more sluggish like there was some sort of quicksand beneath them that definitely wasn’t there earlier. But then there was the noise of sizzling and the smell of charring, and I realized that the Landscorched Trail was burning and melting the sand even further. The bulls seemed to somehow be running faster the more molten the earth below them was.
From behind I could see the sweat dripping from Marsh’s neck as his body was tensed, and the hiking stick I had given to him was planted firmly into the ground, the handle wrapped tightly by both his hands.
Then he raised his right hand, and from out of the rocks on the right side of the stony path rocks began to clump together. In an almost inspired shock I stopped running, paralyzed by what was happening before me, the curiosity that told me to keep watching. Regan who was running by me was jerked back as I stopped, and she yelled something at me again but still I couldn’t make out what she was saying.
Marsh turned his hand into a ball, and suddenly a fist of earth the size of a small boulder emerged from the earth, and then he slapped his hand against the stick. Rubia and Penelope in tandem laced their fingers together and both pointed at the bulls in unity. In one quick moment the boulder slammed down towards the bulls, and dozens of earthen tendrils flew out of the ground from everywhere and all over went straight at the bulls, and the blinding dusty explosion left me hope that major damage had been done.
The debris settled a bit, and what I could make out the silhouette was the destroyed earth and perfectly sharp horns of the bulls still attached to their heads. A couple of them roared in anger, their beady black eyes turning a furious shade of crimson rage.
“No way!” Rubia lost focus, clinging desperately for her sister’s reassurance, but Penelope only stared and shook in place.
Clearly, there was not much damage dealt at all.
With renewed vigor and another roar of rage the bulls took up their deadly charge again.
“Retreat!” Regan hollered at them.
Taking that as the cue, the three of them came sprinting back giving me the sudden revitalization to move again as Regan finally uprooted me. Joshua and Corey and the others had already run off long ago, as they also weren’t stupid enough like me to stick around and find out the consequences. I hoped that the second group was doing okay, they had taken a different path than us.
“Keep going, Kali!”
“I—I… know!”
I couldn’t get caught no matter what.
—BADUMDUMDUMDUM
We were making progress, halfway or less through… that wasn’t nearly enough, I really couldn’t keep it up anymore.
Run.
My eyes were beginning to see stars and fog at the edge.
Run.
My running was beginning to become staggered, and each breath was heavier and harder than the last.
Run…
“Kali, keep going! Please, keep going!” Regan’s encouragement was filled with now only a sliver of her unending positivity and optimism. It was tainted with fear, fear, fear, fear—
[[“You’re m% #e@* f*%3nd, Kali! *0# m@(%er the most—”]]
I gasped and clutched my head.
A rock found its target at the front of my foot and I took a tumble onto the hard ground. My body rolled a couple of times and scraped over sharp rocks in the ground as a shriek came from somewhere nearby. I had no doubt that I was bleeding, on my elbows, my knees, all over my back, the back of my head.
My heart was beating out of control, and I lingered in the pain for a moment before trying with all of my futile and sluggish efforts. The earthen stench ripped through my nose.
“GET UP, KALI!”
The noises around me seemed to be cloudy.
“GET UP!”
My head flopped against the ground again. Regan’s voice was all I could hear. Time felt slow and deadly. I opened my eyes, and tears met me in the face of the best friend who wasn’t mine, the bulls stampeding ever so closer, her desperate struggle to pull me as the energy was being… drained… from my body.
The Devilhorn Bull was only so dangerous because of its ability to force judgment upon the weak, whom they would then cull for more power.
I was weak.
…
A giant dirt hand sprouted out of the ground in an attempt to wall off the herd, a sudden influx of more and more tendrils bombarded like rain from the sky.
And like a miracle had graced me, I saw Regan’s body suddenly tensing, facing away from me.
My eyes widened in shock.
Regan…
A piercing yellow and blue static duality of electricity arced from her fingers, and something manifested from the energy, the mana, into her hand, like a slice of lightning.
Regan’s short hair billowed for a second, and then in a quick flash she primed and threw the disc of lightning at impossibly fast speeds, my eyes could hardly catch it as it flew straight through the earth hand.
So much dust came out from the soundless but deafeningly charged impact. The static disappeared from Regan’s hair, and dispersed from her fingers as she breathed heavily.
… had Awakened.