Jin had fallen asleep with the book in his hands. Spots of gray dust lay on his face. He had studied all night until his body collapsed from a burnout and he fell asleep. his sleep had been peaceful and deep for once. With a total of around two hours of it, he was woken up by a nurse. “Sir, please get ready. You still have to attend the weapon ceremony”, she had said. Jin had done what she asked without thinking too much about it, the tons of information about eyes still lingering inside his mind. he even dreamed about being on a chair with millions of eyes watching him. Jin had discovered almost everything there was to be discovered about the organ. If his calculations were correct the eye had a very unique ability as a mana organ. When he had looked at how the nerves were composed and how the pupil worked it would most definitely be an offensive type. You could divide mana organs into two main groups: offensive and defensive. There were a few rarer types but they weren’t talked much about. Based on this you should pick your weapon, the most important part for a starting climber. What had confused Jin was that after diving deeper into how the retina of the eye worked it indicated towards a stealth type. In the end, he tested some basics and found that the eye was a kind of hybrid of the two. This was only possible because the eye has a very unique build in comparison to the other organs. After washing himself, which is extremely hard to do when you’re sitting in a wheelchair with no feelings in your legs, the nurse came back. The lady told him she’d bring him to the ground level, where a trainer would be waiting for him. Jin wasn’t as awake as he wished to be but still managed to keep his concentration up to a certain level. They reached the ground floor by going through several white, high-tech hallways. Digital screens were everywhere presenting data that Jin couldn’t understand. Once in the big lobby, Jin spotted a woman. The place would’ve been empty if not for her. A young woman with brown hair and brown eyes, dressed in a black uniform like all the staff Jin had seen yesterday. She had a strict expression on her face and a batch pinned on her chest pocket. After spotting Jin she walked up to him and the nurse, then she started talking: “I’ll be the one to bring you to the weapon grave, it’s not worth it to exchange names so just keep quiet until we reach it. I also don’t have time for you so just don’t bother talking to anyone on the way there. Understood?” Jin nodded his head which gave him a disgusted glance from the woman. “Next time answer with yes ma’am.” Jin found it funny how they treated it like the military. He nodded in silence and watched how the two ladies swapped places. With a quick pace and completely ignoring the boy in the wheelchair, she took off. Jin was pretty anxious as to what the “weapon grave” would be like. It was a pretty weird name for a place where you choose your weapon. “Maybe it’s normal in this era to name things more dramatically”, he thought. The two didn’t speak a single word to each other. Building after building they kept going until they reached a castle. The words “Lower Dorms” were inscribed on the big, wooden entrance doors. As if the woman could read his mind she explained what the building was for. “It’s the dorm for everyone but you, twenty people in every room. I can tell you that it isn’t very nice inside. We’ll go inside and wait for everyone to get ready. The weapon grave is beneath the building, I anticipate it’s going to take around half an hour until all the students are ready to go. Just keep sitting in the spot I’ll leave you until I come to pick you up, understood?” Jin told her not to worry and asked her if he was allowed to talk to the other students. The glare from before was present again, that sense of disgust. It took her a while to answer the question. “I guess that there’s nothing wrong with it but only when they approach you first. You are allowed to do almost everything except for moving.” She stopped the conversation by continuing inside. As they were walking through the hallway in silence Jin saw a woman, dressed like the one who was pushing his wheelchair, opening a door. The woman looked confused as she was staring inside. “What’s going on here?” she said. It was impossible to hear if she was mad, shocked, or both. The woman who was pushing Jin’s wheelchair noticed her colleague and gave her a soft smile. “Angelica, is something wrong?” she asked. The woman at the door opening who was called Angelica looked behind her and looked concerned at the other guide. Then she pointed towards the inside of the room. “Look for yourself, I don’t know what to do with this.” The woman let go of the wheelchair’s handles and walked over at a steady pace. “What’s the problem here…” her expression went blank. “Before I give all of you girls a damn punishment, mind to explain what this is all about.” There was a hint of concern in her angry tone. Jin was getting curious but he wasn’t able or allowed to go look. It didn’t take long for the woman to realize she asked it the wrong way. “There was a stalker. We killed a stalker! He’s not dead! Not yet. He was peeking through the window! Do we have the right to kill this bastard? Yes, let’s kill him. Can we hang him in public? YEAH, end the bastard! How about we burn him?” All of them shouted through one another making it close to impossible to understand even a single sentence. Jin was now truly triggered, how bad could the situation be inside for the girls to act like that? “Calm down everyone!” Angelia shouted to make them silent. “I think I understand what happened but we DO NOT have time for this. I’ll just call someone over to detain him and we’ll get back to it when all of you have finished your ceremony. Now all of you get in two lines right in front of me!” Silence, as if time had stopped. The ruckus of female voices shouting with fear, excitement, happiness, and concern had finally faded. The storm had calmed and only its scars were left, on the man’s head. Jin could hear footsteps after a while. He was a little bit too far to be able to see the room or the people lining up. The woman in the uniform walked back to Jin and pushed the wheelchair forward again. Angelica waited for them to line up and began speaking again, now in a softer tone: “Now all of you follow me in silence, if I hear even a single word or see any signs of communication all of you will be punished as a group. There will be a male student coming with us because of special circumstances, don’t talk to him either. Understood?!” With an incredible synchronization as if they were trained military soldiers they answered. “Yes ma’am!” Angelica walked out of the door hole followed by twenty girls. Jin had to hold in a laugh looking at the mixed reactions. Some of them looked at him with a sympathetic look in their eyes when they saw his state while others looked embarrassed that he had heard the situation and had some grasp on what happened. At last, Lea walked out, when she spotted Jin she couldn’t hide the fact that she was surprised. She gave him a wink before they began walking in silence. The consecutive sound of the wheelchair’s wheels reaching a new floor tile was the only sound nearby. Hall after hall, room after room, they kept on walking in silence. Jin thought about how big the building was and how easily you could get lost inside. Finally, they reached a ginormous hallway with lifts. Other groups were arriving at the same time as them, each one of the groups with exactly twenty people. Four groups of boys and three groups of boys. A lift arrived not long after Angelica pressed the call button. the lift was big, made to transport a lot of people at the same time. One by one the girls walked in. Jin was up last, he was an extra. The doors closed and it started to descend rapidly. “All of you guys will stay in your groups. We’ll arrive at the waiting hallway in a couple of seconds. all students will gather there in their corresponding groups so don’t even think about walking away from the place I leave you guys at. Do all of you understand?” Once again the girls answered, but this time Jin participated. “Yes ma’am!” The lift opened and revealed the waiting area. A grand underground hall lighted with thousands of little candles. The room had polished walls and millions of names inscribed in it, probably belonging to the people who had died because of the first tower. It was the size of over five soccer fields. The flames gave a flickering effect on the high sealing. Every few steps there was a ventilation fan to make sure there was enough oxygen. On the other side of the room, there was a huge door made from spruce wood. There were already a few hundred students, divided into groups of twenty with around ten to fifteen meters between them. Angelica guided the group to a space somewhere near a corner. “I’ll leave you guys here now because me and my colleague have to go. Don’t go away from the group unless you want to be expelled and take care of the boy in the wheelchair. It should take around thirty more minutes before they begin the ceremony. Just talk a bit to each other. Does everyone understand what I just said?” Once again the girls and Jin answered with the formality in a perfect synchronization. The woman released Jin’s wheelchair and took off with Angelica. There was a moment of silence until the girls started to whisper amongst themselves with a sense of panic. “What do you think will happen to the man? Will they kill him? What’s your name? Do you think there will be dead people in the ceremony?” Questions that no one knew the answer to, useless to speak out loud. Lea walked up to Jin with a wide smile on her face. “You’re here? What are the odds? by the way, thank you for telling me the way to the library. I wouldn’t have found it without you, this place is huge. Anyway, how did you know where it was?” Jin looked at her almost falling asleep. “Ah, Uh I just saw a sign with the library when they brought me to the hospital.” Lea looked a tad disappointed with his dry answer, she wanted to make the conversation longer. “What’s your name? Mine is Lea Rosdniw.” “It’s Jin Gelida, I’m from Sweden.” Lea’s smile shined bright in the dim room. Her long blond hair hung over her shoulders waving from side to side. “What weapon will you take?” Jin thought about how she resembled the nanny he had when he was young in his previous body. “My weapon? Hmm… let’s see… if I look at the eye… I think two khopeshes would be best.” He murmured the first part of the sentence to himself. A vague look of confusion came into Lea’s eyes. “What’s that? I know a lot about weapons but I don’t know what that is.” Her piercing green eyes stared at him. They were deeper than the ocean and brighter than the sun. Jin had never seen something like it. he lost himself inside of them for a second before he slowly began answering her. “They’re special one-handed swords used by the Egyptians, around fifty-five centimeters. The swords are very durable and deadly. Do you have a weapon you’re going to take?” Lea seemed to be thinking about it for a while. She was at the point of saying something when she closed her mouth again. “Not really, I’m good with almost every weapon but I want something unique.”Jin could understand why she’d want something unique amongst all those kids. Most of them would either take a katana, a bow, or a standard medieval sword. Although they were all pretty decent you had to think like the tower. Inside the tower, your weapons were linked to certain deities and gods. This meant that the bigger a weapon had, the better. Jin wanted to give her the best advice he could. he saw it as his first deed to guiding a student towards becoming more useful inside the tower. He let mana fill his pupil and started to search her body’s mana circuit. Lea had an amazing amount of mana and it was extremely pure. All of her mana circulated through her stomach. Jin couldn’t see which exact organ it was but he knew one thing for sure and that was that she should take some kind of sword. Organs around the core were mostly capable of letting out fierce bursts of mana, perfect for a sword wielder. He began comparing all the swords he knew and found the best one. One where you could go in almost every direction. “How about a jian? It’s a sword from ancient China, with a powerful history and very nice usage. At the start, it may feel dull but later on, you’ll see that it’s very powerful and destructive. Every user of that sword takes a different path.” Before Lea even got a chance to answer Jin’s proposal speakers from all around the room turned on. The same woman who had announced the things yesterday could be heard. “The ceremony will start in a minute, please gather at the door.”

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