Karla woke up around seven in the morning as her alarm clock went off with the usual annoying sound. She had a great sleep last night which surprised her as she clearly remembered how she was so anxious a moment ago.
She didn't think much of it and got up to prepare for the big day.
After having a light breakfast she left with Blue to go to the city administration office. Along the way she saw many people who were similarly in the same direction as they headed. Many young adults were present today and soon the outside of the office building became crowded.
Except for those who reached 18 and the relevant officials no other people were allowed within a hundred meters of the perimeter. Soon some players with their matching guild uniforms appeared and silenced the rowdy crowd by releasing a bit of their power to intimidate them.
Then in front of the silent crowd a player with much wrinkles on his face went forward and started explaining the procedures during the awakening ceremony,
"Listen up, it is quite simple."
"First of all, be obedient and quiet. Secondly, we will take you to the ceremonial ground shortly and you will have to follow the steps that would be explained by me. Third, if you awakened successfully then you will be led to the nearest guild from here for the last part of the procedure and upon its completion you can return home temporarily."
"Fourth, you will be sent to the capital after a week and the academy's enrollment process will be explained there. Fifth, those who can't awaken will have to swiftly leave the perimeter and be on their way home till further updates appear about the mortal craft education courses they have to learn for five years. Sixth, any signs of disobedience will either result in swift expulsion for a minor offense and immediate execution for a major offense."
After explaining, he told them to line up in groups in front of one of the nine players present and then follow them obediently.
Thus everybody silently followed the players as they went inside the office building orderly. They all went downstairs inside an enormous basement.
Inside the basement Karla could vaguely see some flowing lines in the air that emitted all sorts of colors while floating throughout the environment. She was startled by witnessing such phenomena. She looked at Blue beside her who also had an astonished look on his face.
Not only them but all the young adults had seen such a scene. That wrinkled face player then told them,
"Don't be so surprised over it. What you're perceiving is less than tenth of what you will see for every moment after you awaken."
Most of them had a horrified look on their faces as they wondered if they could even withstand such a sight for every waking moment of their life while some held indifferent expressions as they clearly were aware of such things beforehand.
Karla being one of them.
Her family had two players so such basic information was already available for her. She had also told Blue about this before so he also appeared very calm.
The wrinkled face player then pointed to the nine small tables on the middle of the room and told them that,
"Nine people from each group will go at the same time. You will then place your hand on the slightly dimmed orb on the table and have two minutes to sense the inside of that orb with just your mind and make it glow bright. Those who can do so will become awakened and the less time it takes to make it glow will indicate the future potential of that player."
The wrinkled face player suddenly looked at her for a moment and then focused his attention on the young man beside her for a while. He seemed to be thinking about something as his eyes narrowed. This puzzled her and also other young adults present. The other players also noticed him at that moment and just like the wrinkled face player they also had a similar expression on their faces.
After a while, he pointed at the young man who was wearing a bucket hat and told him,
"You, step up and head to the table."
This young man with a bucket hat was given the first honor to commence the awakening ceremony.
°°°°
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Laura was sleeping peacefully without an iota of what was happening around her.
After the soul search countermeasures, Blue took out a syringe that had few wisps of black smoke emitting from it and a vial that had some kind of slimy transparent liquid within it.
Any weaknesses that may arise from another party having obtained one's blood could be instantly neutralized if a prior preparation had been made against it. You just had to make it so that the blood had a coating around it permanently. Whether it was within the body or outside, that coating had to be imperceptible with effects such as appearing as the ordinary version of that race's blood.
It will thus prevent others from seeing through any special bloodline information one might have. As for using the blood to harm the owner, it will be fruitless since the coating on top of the blood will be the first to be subjected to any power used on it and would end up harming the source that coating came from while keeping the owner safe and sound. The blood on their hand will also cease to exist because of the properties of self-destruction which also had to be present in that coating.
The syringe was crafted by the same woman who made the Hidden in Plain Sight bracelets. And he always liked to name such things personally.
He called the syringe "Zero Trace".
It had the power that could grant any liquid within it a self-destruction property that would be triggered if there were any foreign aether with malicious intention seeped in it while the blood was outside the body. Such oddly specific power would truly make any opponent frustrated if they ever heard it.
The slimy transparent liquid was just an alchemical solution he made. He had quite a bit of talent in alchemy. It was made out of a special variant of slimes who could make themselves imperceptible when hunting for food. This imperception temporarily extends to five senses, aether sense, sixth sense such as instinct or intuition, abilities or other methods specific to observation types and four primordial elements influence.
With his alchemy the "temporary" had been turned into "permanent" and it could now be merged with the blood as a coating while the solution amount would propagate to cover all blood cells in the body. He had too many alchemical products he used to make for many situations that he dreaded to be in.
Thus he didn't name it anything specific.
He then drew in the solution inside the syringe and waited for a minute. After the wisps of black smoke stopped emitting from the syringe he injected the solution on Laura's body through the artery in the left hand.
Three minutes later, her body's artery channels lit up making it possible to observe it from outside. This process would have finished after 8 hours but thanks to his arrangements it would be completed around half an hour.
Blue didn't wait around and went to Karla's room to do the same. After she also began the blood coating process he went back to Laura's room to work on the third weakness.
The gene related troubles if someone had acquired any part of your body for a gene test or for malicious means.
The countermeasures for such situations were a bit similar to one of blood coating results of shifting the harm on another entity than yourself. It nonetheless significantly differed as one needed to take into account hairs, nails, skin, innards and many other things. So instead of coating the interior and exterior of the body a simple but terrifyingly effective method was to make an effigy that had at least a single piece of your body's entirety except blood on it that established a connection with yourself through sharing a part of your four elements.
If someone wanted to properly investigate your genetic informations then the effigy in your possession should had a pre-setup that makes it relay the information you want to make public and if someone wanted to harm you after obtaining a part of the body then the effigy would take the damage instead and alarm you of any tracking method that might had been cast on it.
One might think why not let the effigy have your blood too and the coating trick could had been ignored but here's the problem, if someone truly had a special bloodline then the aether within the blood would also treat the effigy as the bloodline owner thus end up halving the overall power that could had been harnessed.
So it was a no-brainer to use the coating.
Blue brought out a vial that had glowing red liquid and made her drink it forcefully as he pasted a talisman on her stomach that had the rule to trigger the healing only when there's damage on the body.
That vial was obviously a failed alchemical health potion left alone in the subspace but on a mortal human it ended up becoming a miraculous medicine.
He then took out a hand size featureless doll that was purely white in color and held it atop Laura's sleeping figure as a red light scanned her entire body. The doll started to enlarge and morph into her figure swiftly as he sat it by the bedside floor. A minute later, it was now a replica of Laura's body shape but still featureless.
He then reached his hand behind its neck and pressed a switch placed on the nape region. It began to grow hair, skin, nails, eyes, nose etc as about ten minutes later it became a perfect duplicate of Laura. The healing effect immediately took place inside the original's body as many parts of herself got transferred to the doll.
The doll was called "Perfect Portrait".
This was made by a collaboration of his alchemy talent in puppetry and the same woman who made the bracelets and syringe. This doll's power of shapeshifting and body part extraction through pre-set spatial methods as well as anti-tracking alarm was his handiwork and the sharing of four elements with the target to make a connection that wouldn't backfire in any way was her contribution.
Despite the use of mysterious ingredients this countermeasure always took the least amount of time regardless.
He put the doll in his subspace as he watched Laura making a painful expression while sleeping.
Only two more weaknesses left to mend.