Elijah and Marcus met up with Liv in the food court, where she had sat down with a veritable feast in front of her. She waved them over to her. "I went ahead and bought a little of everything that way we can know which is good." They sat down and dug into the food, while muching down on a Buffalo wing, Elijah held out 5 tickets to Liv.
"For the raffle tonight, maybe you'll win something nice." He said with a smile before diving into a takeout container filled with fried rice.
"Ooooo, I thought about buying a ticket, but when they told me it was 50 dollars, I decided otherwise." She said around a mouth full of fries.
"Yeah, well, I tried to back out and got threatened by a weird monkey lizard."
"It didn't threaten you. You just made it sad, and you felt bad for it. Even though it was a robot and can't actually feel sad." Marcus said plainly before punching a corndog into his mouth.
"It certainly behaved like a real person, and it looked like it was about to cry." Just as he finished his sentence, an intercom buzzed on in the center of the food court.
A perky voice came pouring out of the speaker. "Hello everyone! I wanted to start by thanking you all for participating in today's event, and I wanted to thank the student volunteers today who took the time to learn the new magitech items and offered to show them off. We will now announce the winners of the raffle as we pull them with the grand prize being announced in the auditorium in 20 minutes. All prizes can be collected in the auditorium as well. Starting with the self-repairing cloak made by the Xeflods of Yutipa."
The three of them worked their ways through the halls, trying to find their way to the auditorium. Thankfully, they had some signs set up to direct them in the general direction of the auditorium.
"Ticket number 729! Amulet of Teleportation, a special A ranked treasure provided by Mentor Crishmai of Alaxia Prime." They heard coming through the doors of the auditorium as they strolled through. Most students were either sitting in the bleachers or hanging out along the side walls as a teacher stood at a podium rang off, winning tickets.
There was a steady stream of kids pouring to the stage behind the teacher, where a short pudgy man was shouting at a group of kids to bring him each item as it was called up.
"Ticket number 82! Stormcaller Crossbow, a crossbow wrestled from a warrior of the Storm Kong army." The pudgy man was taking the crossbow from a students hands and holding it up for everyone to see it before handing it to the student. "The crossbow is laden with minor lightning principles making each shot quite the shocking event!"
"Ticket number 455! The Elemental Blade, a sword that was weilded by the first Practioner of Principles, Devanius Vedicus. The first Alaxian to learn every basic universal principal."
"I have 460- 464." Liv piped up as she looked at her tickets.
"I have 450-454" Marcus said as he looked at his. They both turned and looked at Elijah, "Hey, you won! Let's go see what it looks like! I want to see if I can reverse engineer it!" Marcus ran ahead of the two of them before they could say anything.
"You're not taking apart my magitech!" Elijah sprinted forward, blowing past Marcus and sliding up to the prize table.
"HEY!" The rotund man behind the table that was handing out the prizes. "I understand you're excited, but there is no need to use skills in a crowded room where someone could get hurt from gross negligence!" He was red in the face, angry with Elijah.
"Woah there, Professor Matso Ball. I wasn't even using any abilities. I'm just that fast."
"Don't lie to me, boy! And if you ever call me outside of my name again, I'll have you suspended." He got redder and redder. He was right he wasn't a Matso ball. He looked more like a steamed tomato now.
"He's not lying, dude. He can go about 4 times faster than what he just did. That may as well have been an easy jog for him! Furthermore, he only ran because I was teasing him, so if there is anyone you should be yelling at, it's me." Marcus was there now coming ferociously to his defense.
"Well, you all have powers now. You need to be more responsible. Not all of us are so lucky." The look he gave them was one of pure envy filled hatred. "Not all of us would play around and squander the chance of a lifetime. What is your ticket number?"
"455." Elijah pulled the ticket off of the strip he had stored in his pocket and handed it to him.
He took the ticket and ripped it and begrudgingly turned around in his rolling computer chair and scooted to a back table where he grabbed a rectangular box and brought it back to the main table. "Congratulations on your prize, may it help you in all your future endeavors." He said through gritted teeth as he read a paper that was taped to his side of the table, reminding him of the prompt he had to say.
Elijah took it over to some bleachers on the side of the auditorium that were black seating with gold stairs and floorboards, he could get used to these school colors it was much better that the green and yellow of the Cornhuskers.
They sat down, and he shook the box open, it sliding slowly like an iPhone box. It revealed a black Saber within it. It looked like it was one solid piece of metal with a large hand guard.
[Elemental Saber of Absorption
Would you like to forge a connection with this item?
Yes/No]
He quickly clicked yes and felt a familiar feeling of a rune tattoo being emblazoned on his body. He pulled the waist of his pants down, exposing his left hip where a rune was in the shape of a scabbard. Glowing golden with small cracks of green mixed into it.
"Man, this is bullshit! You get _another_ fuckin ability. We haven't even tested the last new one you got. They aren't freaking pokemon dude. You don't have to catch them all."
As Marcus proceeded on his rant about Elijah's ability to just manifest his own destiny, Elijah was busy watching the metal take the faintest of green hues.
[Elemental Saber of Absorption - Rare - B Rank
Rare magitech artifact recovered from the Tomb of the Frost Dragon on Alaxia Theta.
The Saber absorbs any elemental energy and can convert it into powerful attacks.
May be stored in the scabbard rune.]
Oooo this is going to be an excellent tool. He tapped the blade to the scabbard rune, and it dissolved into a million gold and green particles that flowed into his hip, filling the scabbard and emblazzoning the handle into it.
The rest of the raffle went by pretty seamlessly. Some kid named Grayson ended up winning the grand prize, Marcus was the most bummed about that. After the raffle ended, they ushered all the students outside where there was an entire building that was covered in something that resembled a giant purple satin sheet.
After the entire student body stood outside, Dr. Crest took her spot at a podium.
"Thank you all for coming out for our unveiling today -" Elijah tuned her out and turned his attention to his dope new sword. He kept sheathing it and resummoning it, getting used to the tingle of the sword coming off of his hip. After a couple of minutes, he was able to summon his Saber in under 3 seconds.
Stolen story; please report.
"-and without further ado, it is my honor to unveil the first direct teleporter between Earth and Alaxia Prime!" She waved her arm up behind her, and a team of drones lifted a massive white sheet off of a multistory building that almost reminded him of a pagoda or a telescope sitting on its lens.
Moments after the sheet cleared, a purple beam of energy started to trickle into the tip of it, lighting it like a beacon. The beam slowly expanded further and further until it enveloped the top of the building, and in the base of the building through a large archway, a flat sheet of energy appeared. From within it, you could see a small group of shadowy figures coming from the other side. They stepped through, and suddenly, they were there. Alaxid.
They looked exactly like they did on his phone. They all started forward and paused at the edge of the teleporter. They looked around amongst themselves and pulled out boxes. They opened them up and started handing out patches. First to the teachers and then to the students gathered around, teachers began helping with the passing out and application process.
Professor Resonix was the one who greeted Elijah's group. Placing a patch in each of their hands, he began directing them. "Rub some saliva on the back side of the patch." He waited and watched as both of the boys licked the patch where as Liv took the slightly classier approach of licking her finger and applying the saliva using it as a secondary medium instead of licking alien technology. "Now stick it behind your left ear. You'll feel it melt and leave a small tattoo sting."
"It's odd that we have to use saliva to activate it. I wonder if it has something to do with needing to process our DNA first." Marcus muttered aloud dictating to his framework in a notepad like function.
Resonix chimed in. "Oh, the saliva was my idea. It just needed to be moistened. I just thought it'd be funny to make you all lick Alaxian tech in front of them." He paused and glanced over his shoulders at their new guests. "And it is, I mean, look at them they're mortified."
Elijah did just that looking over the crowd at them, but something was off. They didn't look happy to be here at all. It wasn't anger or hatred, but almost a grimdark fear had them in its grasp.
Moments later, once everyone stopped shuffling around and focused their attentions to the Alaxian guests in front of them. A young man stepped out of the group to the front. He looked maybe 30, the same white hair that they all had was tied back into a single braid that branched into three separate braids at the end.
"I come here on a day meant to be joyful with horrifying news." He paused and looked down for just a moment. "It would seem your galaxy is richer in chaos energies than even our wildest estimations."
A small murmur went over the crowd, and one of the kids just a few feet away shouted out. "But that's a good thing, right? We'll be stronger?"
"No. Sadly, that is not what that means. What this means is that instead of the normal teaching styles and timelines that we use to integrate your society into a multi-planet scale, you get the boot camp, crash course and hard realities of what we are."
He tossed up a crystal into the air. Once it reached the apex of the toss, it expanded into an absolutely massive monitor. "This is another planet we introduced the framework. They were also rich in chaos energies, this will happen to your planet in about 90 days if you don't work with us." It showed a ruined city with what looked to be piles of humaniod bodies and giant monsters from rhino sized rats to full-on kaijus rampaging across the landscape.
The crowd started yelling and panicking. Some people started shoving and moving around, trying to leave suddenly.
Resonix's voice rose out of the crowd with a thunderous boom. "SILENCE. STAY PUT." The words trembled through his body, his ears were ringing, and now compared to the deafening silence, he was sure he'd have permanent tinnitus. Resonix himself broke the silence after nobody so much as shifted on their feet. "Please continue." He bowed his head in respect to them before turning a hawks eye on all of the children.
With a nod, the Alaxid man continued. "In roughly 90 days, Dominion gates will begin forming. We will spend the next 90 days giving you a crash course on dominion gates and putting you through an intense training regiment to prepare you to defend Earth."
"So you knew this would happen to us?!" Another voice shouted from the crowd.
"We knew the chaos energies in this sector were high. But now that we've unlocked Earth as a chaos condenser, giving you all power. The planet is sucking in too much chaos energy and will begin producing Dominion gates about 9 and a half months earlier than our earliest projections. If you listen to us their may be a chance to survive what is essentially going to be an apocalypse." Panic washed back over the crowd, and some of the crowd actually started walking away, pulling out phones. The teachers started after them only be stopped by the man speaking. "Let them go. They can survive the coming days without our guidance if they so wish." That gave a couple of them pause, but most of them were already dialing phones to their parents.
"They're going to leak this publicly. It will be mayhem for the next 3 months!" Dr. Crest yelled out, gesturing at the kids telling their parents that the world was on the verge of ending.
"What is your point? Do you think you're the only ones who should be allowed to prepare to save your lives?" He looked at her with obvious disdain.
"No, I just meant that we wouldn't want to cause panic and resource hoarding." She was holding her hands out trying to back pedal now.
"Why wouldn't we want that? The world, as you know it is going to end. There was supposed to be time for us to prepare your heroes, and the Dominion gates were going to be manageable. But without a trained and skilled global strike force, you won't be able to clear them fast enough. The detection system won't be set up in the more rural locations in time. Gates will grow, and break and hellish monsters will spill into your Earth. This is a risk of the framework your leaders were warned could happen."
"So what do we do now?" Elijah blurted out. He hadn't so much as had the thought before it was out. "Yeah, what do we do?" Half a dozen more teens parroted him.
"You go through 90 days of hellish training under our guiding eyes. And we hope it's enough that the earth doesn't completely fall to the Dominion gates. All over this planet, more of us are arriving to help, but as it stands now, there is about a 20% chance this world survives another year after Gate Day."
"For now, we urge you all to go back to your dorms." Dr. Crest spoke up. "There will be an announcement in the morning as for the direction we will be taking moving forward."
The crowd began dispersing the walkways crowded as nearly 1000 students shuffled away with the sudden weight of the entire world on their shoulders. As everyone left, Elijah sat down in the grass where he stood for the unveiling. He pulled out his phone and typed in his mom's number.
He pressed the call button, and it rang twice before she answered. "Hey baby boy! Did you miss me so much you had to call already?"
Elijah opened his mouth to talk, but the words got caught in his throat. The words from the Alaxids mouth continued to replay in his mind, trying to find the best way to relay them to his mother.
"Hellooooo, you there?" She let out in a sing-song tone.
"Yeah, sorry, mom. Hey, I just wanted to let you know that some news is about to come out. I'm going to stay here and train, but I'll be home before it all starts. I'll make sure you stay safe."
"Stop being so cryptic and talk to me, Eli." His mom had no patience for anything but direct communication.
"It will be on the news soon, but life is about to change and get really hard. Go to the store right now and buy all of the essentials, I'll transfer as much as the bank will allow me to. Buy a large tank at least 100 gallons. Fill it with gas." Elijah tried thinking of anything else she should do.
"Elijah, you're acting crazy. You need to take a breath and tell me what's going on." The concern in his mom's tone hurt him to hear.
"Mom, there's really no time. You need to go get this done now before the news breaks, and the chaos starts in earnest. The world is ending. The alaxid told us that the earth is taking in too much of the stuff that fuels our magic, and soon, the world will start producing portals that will release hellish beasts on earth. There is the short version of the story. Now, seriously, I love you. Go get all the resources you can, and I'll call after my training finishes tomorrow." Elijah hung up the phone before hid mom could keep him on the phone longer.
"I'll be back at the dorms later, I'm gonna get some running in." Elijah hopped up to his feet and brushed the dust off of his pants.
"Alright, I'm going to go do some preparation for tomorrow morning." Marcus gave Elijah a nod and turned towards the dorms.
"Speaking of which, I was wondering if you could help me make some gauntlets, big and bulky ones that could make good shields and protect my fists for punching." Liv was somehow able to feel excitement talking to Marcus right now. Elijah stared in bewilderment. How could you have anything but complete dread right now?
Elijah turned on [Feeling springy] and tore down the path to the dorms, making it there before most of the people who left right away. He ran into his room and changed into his jogging sweats and combat boots, and ran back out.
He found his way out to the edge of the blood-red dome. He took a moment to draw out a starting line in the ground, tearing out a small length of dirt so he would have a lap marker.
He started running, trying to clear his head and find his zen place. All that played through his head were the memories of being shot, the words telling them all the world is about to end. The thought of his mother dying because he is too weak to keep her safe.
He felt his chest fill with a warmth as he ran harder and harder head down watching the path he'd beaten down on his laps already, his running became a little easier so he pushed down on himself harder feeling his muscles pull and want to stop after the fatigue began setting in after a few minutes of full sprinting.
He noticed that even though his body was getting more and more tired, the ground beneath his feet was flattening the plant matter had all but disappeared. His repeated stomping the ground into a compacted path.
He kept pushing through it, his legs screaming at him, his ribs hurt so badly they threatened to break him in half, and his lungs stung, the winter mountain air burning them from the inside out.
Finally, he turned off his feeling springy ability and slowed himself down gradually as he came across his finish line. He walked over to where he left his phone in the grass and picked it up.
[Combat exited calculating experience]
**Level up! Feeling springy Level 2**
**Level up! Feeling springy Level 3**
**Level up! Feeling springy Level 4**
**Level up! Fearless charge Level 2**
**Level up! Fearless charge Level 3**
**Level up! Fearless charge Level 4**
**Level up! Fearless charge Level 5**
**Minor Earth Principle of Erosion comprehended! You may now apply this ability to skills.**
A low whistle came out over the air, Elijah jumped and turned to see Resonix sitting on a branch of one of the trees that was near the starting line. "Did you mean to make a track for the school, or was that just a side effect?" Elijah turned his head back as the dust finally started settling back down, revealing a nice, well trodded dirt path following the edge of the dome.
"You all knew. Didn't you?" Elijah threw out the accusation between labored breaths, anger still lacing his tone. Evidently, he still had more energy to be mad, he though he'd burned it all up running.
"I mean, we knew it was certainly possible. But it's truly a rare occurrence. I've been to the other worlds. They're marvelous and powerful beyond measure. We all thought it was worth the risk." He dropped down from the tree, landing effortlessly and strolling casually.
"Well?! Is it worth it? The world is going to fucking end!" Elijah started screaming, anger welling up inside of him, tears stinging at the back of his eyes.
"Yes. It is still worthwhile. Because we won't let the world fall. They come in here claiming the world is going to die, but we have 3 months to prepare. 3 months to forge you all into the toughest iron. They don't understand our tenacity. Me, you, everyone else who got powers. We are the line that protects humanity. I won't lie, I expect half of you to die, maybe more in the first 10 days after Gate Day. After about 10 days, the first gates will start to break, and we'll have to contend with saving civilians at the same time as ourselves. On that day, 1 in every 4 humans will die." Resonix shifted in his stance and took a deep breath. "We will see more death than the black plague in a thousandth of the time."
"Then we do it for no other reason than we must?! Because if we don't, the world ends? And even if we do succeed in surviving, it will be what? A tenth of all humanity?!" Elijah was screaming at the top of his lungs, letting out the indignant rage at this situation. "You're telling me that in 90 days, I'm going to be more powerful than a tank? That I'll have more stopping power than a 50 cal bullet? What the fuck is coming for us that we can't fight back with traditional means? Why couldn't we just go on living normally without all this bullshit?"
"Listen, kid, I don't have all the answers, but I do have some. If you make it through tomorrow's training and still want to talk afterward, I'll give you all of the answers I have."
"I'm going to hold you to that. And I'm bringing Marcus because he'll ask better questions." Elijah gathered his stuff and jogged back to the dorms, leaving resonix out by the field to walk back alone.