It was another regular day in Rick’s life at star alliance high school. It was here that all the talents on the planet gathered to start their studies into professions. It was Rick’s dream to become a space traveler and fly into the universe with his spaceship. The Uncharted universe has always been a place where both riches and danger coexist while people fly into this abyss like moths attracted to a flame. Whether it is exploring uncharted areas or conquering new worlds with resources both prospects are fantasies people delude themselves into thinking it was their way to the top.
Rick is an avid daydreamer who spends nearly every second of his day, dreaming about adventuring in space and being a lord in his newly conquered world until his history teacher threw a book at him which brought his distracted mind to the class where everyone was staring at him with varied expressions of pity, disdain, and schadenfreude. He could only smile awkwardly and pay attention to the screen.
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Date 4th February 2155
Modern History
It has been a hundred years since “The Disaster” when an unknown object fell on planet earth and exploded, nearly deforming the surface of the planet. Which led to people of other races descending on the planet to pillage for resources as the planet was exposed to the various powers of the universe. It was the Star Alliance who maintained order and helped the remaining native people survive the ordeal.
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While the loss from the catastrophe was astronomical, the radiation from the explosion led to our planet upgrading from 1 star to 2 stars which seldom happened. Please complete your assignment before coming to class tomorrow. Class dismissed...
Once the teacher left, the whole class relaxed and started going to the next class venue, as this was his favorite training, rick was looking forward to the class. If it was just regular physical training, Rick with his thin body had nothing to write home about but after “The Disaster” everything on the planet had changed due to the radiation from the explosion people came into contact with Mana which became the medium that links our souls to the world of elements.
Rick was highly talented in manipulating Mana and his body, although weak, had high compatibility with Mana since he was a kid which was the biggest reason he could study in the best schools even though he was average in academics. There was a tall square-shaped tower at the center of the school where all the students of his class gathered for the training. Huge arrays were running in the building to concentrate the surrounding Mana on top of the tower. Instructor Drake, who teaches combat and cultivation at star alliance high school is a retired melee professional and a veteran who lost his right hand in battle.
All the students were sitting at the nodes on the array where dense Mana fluctuations could be felt and started meditating while trying to absorb as much Mana as possible inside their bodies. Though the Mana would just flow through them and nothing would be left inside their bodies, seeing this instructor drake couldn’t help but sigh while thinking this was the fate of the people of this planet. After half an hour all the students got up feeling energetic except Rick who felt completely worn out. He has always been confused by this but did not tell anyone this problem because Mana compatibility was his only redeeming quality and he hoped this would get better over time. Through sheer willpower, he gathered near the stage which was a cube with a height of 10 meters covered with an energy barrier on all sides made from the array carved below.
Today the shield covering the stage was deactivated and students were sparring with one another taking turns yet Rick just watched from the side. His physical body had always been weak from childhood due to many reasons, he was thinking about tomorrow’s awakening ceremony where his seed of hope would be chosen, and with it, he can finally begin real training and become stronger. After school, he went home and started preparing dinner for himself and his little sister who has yet to come home.
For as long as Rick could remember he was an orphan and had a rough childhood, one day he met a little girl being beaten on the roadside by other kids looking like hooligans trying to snatch the bread piece in her hand which she was holding onto very firmly. He chased them away and helped the girl up and brought the girl to his orphanage upon knowing she had no one and nowhere to go and got her bruises patched up.
Her name was Lilly, it had been 7 years since then and she is almost 12 years old now. The first few years were very hard for both of them, only after Rick was tested and found to be highly compatible with mana did he get a scholarship from the government and things got better. They lived in an old single-room apartment with a living, kitchen, and bedroom which had rent they could barely afford, thankfully the owner was an old lady who took pity on the kids and rented it at a low price. Once it was 6 PM Lilly came home from school through the back door and kept searching like a curious little cat in the kitchen for food while making noise. Rick heard the noise and told her to freshen up and they would eat dinner together, Lilly with puppy eyes could only go and do as he said.
Lilly was a very cute-looking girl with big blue eyes filled with cleverness and curiosity, black hair, and milky skin while Rick was rather thin and plain-looking with brown skin and black hair. If not for his black eyes filled with spirit and an unusual glow he would be invisible in the crowd. While having dinner Rick would always place more food on Lilly’s plate before eating himself and would firmly refuse if Lilly offered her portion to him. Knowing it was the awakening day tomorrow Lilly wished him the best and both of them went to sleep. Rick who lay on the couch in the living room was a bit restless and also excited for the next day due to which he couldn’t fall asleep immediately and kept thinking if he would get lucky with an overpowered legendary seed of hope and rise to the heavens in a single step. Only later in the night did he fall asleep, little did he know he would never forget the next day for his whole life.
Stolen novel; please report.
The next day he woke up early, made breakfast for both himself and his sister, and reached the school half an hour early. He could see a few of his classmates already waiting with both nervous and excited expressions. Once it was time for the class a middle-aged man with a dignified expression came to take them to the venue of the awakening ceremony upon seeing the middle-aged man all the students in the class stood up to greet him. He was the headmaster of the star alliance high school. When Rick entered the grand hall he could see a person seated on the chair and all the teachers were differentially standing behind the man with expressions filled with respect and there was an elevated platform made of unknown metal filled with complicated lifelike inscriptions carved in the center of the grand hall. The headmaster went to the person seated and greeted him seeing that all the students broke out into discussions, Rick heard from others that the person seated there was a two-star envoy from the star alliance who came especially to preside over this year’s awakening ceremony on the planet.
The envoy stood up and examined all the students and spoke with a serious expression “unlike others in our galaxy the people of this planet are unfortunate because not only are you incapable of becoming hunters like the rest of us, you also have very few people fortunate enough to be awakened because of how rare the seeds of hope found on your planet are. But this is also your fortune because the type of seed of hope you choose can determine your talent, elemental affinity, and how far you can go as a hunter” he then looked at the headmaster and nodded to him signaling him to start the awakening ceremony.
The headmaster took out 60 seeds of hope from his spatial ring and placed them on the table in front of the platform. All the seeds of hope looked different, few looked like real tree seeds, few were the size of a chicken egg with hard shells, few were the size of a football and looked like a rock. The headmaster called the student with the highest Mana compatibility to choose his seed of hope, his name was josh he nervously stood on the platform and released his perception to sense mana fluctuations coming from the seeds, the headmaster cautioned him to pick the seed which was more compatible with him and not just the seed with higher mana fluctuations because though the seeds with higher mana fluctuations might have stronger abilities at the start if it is not compatible with the individual they won’t be able to progress far on their path.
Josh finally selected his seed of hope and it looked like a white egg the size of a fist with complicated golden patterns on it. He started absorbing the concentrated mana nearby and sent it to the egg gently. After fifteen minutes the egg started shaking and in a few more minutes a tiny bird head peaked out of the shell and started coming out of the egg. Once it was out, it started looking at Josh curiously and felt he was very familiar. It looked transparent with complicated runes on its feathers made out of mana, yet just by its presence, they could feel it was extraordinary.
The headmaster then took out a magic scroll and made josh place a drop of blood on it and the magic scroll started to glow and the light enveloped both josh and the bird, the little bird didn’t resist since it felt a familiar feeling from him and once the light disappeared there was a connection between both the man and the bird. Once the contract was established the mana in the surroundings suddenly moved and rushed into josh then at the same time the little bird suddenly moved and entered his sea of consciousness.
Josh was previously unable to sense his sea of consciousness but once the bird entered it, he could sense a space void of mana. The little bird started emitting streams of extremely dense wind elemental mana in his consciousness which formed a cocoon around itself that expanded slowly to form a spirit base in the center of his sea of consciousness, filling 55% of his sea of consciousness. Josh inspected the spirit base formed from wind elemental mana and found that the wind element mana inside was extremely dense and the bird was weakly flickering with no runes on its wings exhausted after doing all the work and started dissipating leaving only an empty spirit core with complex golden runes on it. The spirit base formed looked like a transparent sphere with a spirit core in the center among raging winds, occupying more than 50% of the space in the void.
The surrounding mana started flowing into the crystal core slowly, the spirit that has formed from a seed of hope is known as companion spirit and these spirits have an extremely important use for the people of the earth as they can help awaken them as professionals and start their journey in becoming truly strong in the universe.
Josh started explaining what he had experienced to the headmaster. The headmaster had a smile on his face once he heard that there was a spirit core in his spirit base. New professionals just starting their training might not understand the significance of a spirit core, but he did. Once one has obtained a spirit core that means he has the potential to become a 1-star professional, as long as the person diligently trains they can become a 1-star professional without too much difficulty. Josh instantly became the target of envy of all his classmates because he will be prioritized to be nurtured among all of them and once he graduates, he might be selected in elite teams to raid dungeons or join the star alliance troops. He will have a clear and stable path ahead and won't have to struggle on his own to eke out a living in this cut-throat world.
It was next Rick's turn for the ceremony, he went to the platform with excitement and anxiety and started sensing the seeds of hope for any fluctuations. After a while there was no response, Rick started to become a bit nervous. This was his only chance at becoming a proper professional; he couldn't miss it. Just then one of the seeds looking like a stone burnt in the oven reacted to his surprise. Rick was overjoyed he was finally qualified to become a professional. Once the charred stone was given to him, he started sending the surrounding mana to the rock. After quite some time passed the rock finally cracked revealing a purple seed with a tiny sprout.
Once he placed a drop of his blood on the magic scroll given by the headmaster both he and the purple seed were covered by its light then the seed went inside his sea of consciousness, Rick could see his sea of consciousness which was empty other than a colorful air bubble at the center. The seed collided against the bubble to no avail after a while rick started to lose his patience as this was not how it was supposed to go according to josh then the bubble started glowing with mysterious lines and sucked the purple seed inside. Rick could now see inside the bubble, it was filled with multicolored energy moving about and the purple seed started moving towards the center of this space. There was a small floating island filled with multicolored sand with a small pond in the center filled with crystal clear water and in the center of the pond there was a pitch-black skeletal hand holding up a multicolored gem the size of a fist. The gem, pond, and sand were in stark contrast to the black skeletal hand. The purple seed flew and landed near the shore of the pond in the multicolored sand and took root. Rick who was observing it all for the first time was dumbstruck unsure of what was happening.