The heavy sandstorm that had been blowing relentlessly finally stopped; no it would be more correct to say that this part of the dessert didn’t have a sandstorm on it. This uncanny phenomenon would run chills down the spine; it was almost as this section belonged to a different dimension.
The half naked man fastened the pace; he had finally found what he had been looking for. During the last past month he had been traversing the dessert, apparently aimlessly, but the only way to find a lost place is to get yourself lost first, and thus it was exactly what he did. He currently stood on “mirage oasis”, a warping zone, and probably is the only active participant that has ever made it through the dessert.
The crystals on their back shined under the sun´s light. The crystals were clinging to his back on a complex layout, giving the impression of reptilian’s scales. These crystals were the only reason he was able to find this mythical place. Not only would they provide protection towards the elements, as a form of armor, replacing the tattered clothes worn down by the persistent sun and wind; but they also provided fuel for his body.
The scale crystals were a manifestation of his “Sync ability”, a troublesome rule implemented after he was transported to this realm. Upon arrival, after being kidnapped, from earth; they were modified and every participant was given their very own “Sync ability”. The reason why they all were different was that the modification was affected by their own personalities, thought process, and experiences and as a result no two abilities were identical; although, there was a few that seemed to overlap with each other.
Every individual would also receive a “core” which was basically a battery to power up the “Sync ability”. This were also different on the amount of charge they could hold, how fast they could discharge it, and how much time would it have to pass for it to recharge naturally. He was sure there was some logical reason why the cores were different from participant to participant, but so far he hadn’t been able to figure it out. And thus the combination of your sync ability and your core would determine how strong you would be on this realm, they had basically granted them superpowers.
Of course, none of this was done out of good will. No, in fact, it was far from it. The one million humans that were transported to this realm were now part of a test; a test to determine if humans were advanced and adaptable enough to be considered “Sentient Beings”. There wasn’t any noble quest to save the humankind from extension of from an alien attack; no it was more like a membership test. No real benefit or downside would come to humankind either way.
The “president” of the ridiculous club was the “Rheios”, for humans they would be akin to gods, and humans would lack the ability to comprehend them. However, they weren’t the ones imparting the test; that task fall under the “Conis”. The Conis were a far less advanced race if compared to the rheios, haven’t themselves passed the test recently (under rheios standards of time anyway) but still were far superiors than human. Unlike humans they lacked a physical form and were a little more than a mass of pure energy that had gained conscious. The reason they had taken so long to pass the test it has not been because of raw power but adaptability, the total opposite case of humans.
Not every race would get modifications in order to participate in the test, humans were given because it was judged it was a race that was dependent on tools, their adaptability was high but power input was low. However the low power input was not a problem in long term since their tools would fix it. So humans were equipped with technology that they could fairly fabricate on their own given time. It was done with the idea of accelerate the test, because otherwise the test would take several decades to finish; waiting until humans were to develop the tools themselves during the test.
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Obviously, humans were not able to use their sync abilities and cores on a natural way. Their bodies felt odd to them and they will most likely fail the test without a fair chance if they were to do it on this state. The solution had been to give them crash courses to master their sync abilities. The crash curses had duration of only a month, a far cry to be enough time to master these odds abilities but since they were testing their adaptability either way, it was more than a perfect setup.
It was in this crush course that he had discovered the dire problem that he faced; his core had an almost nonexistent capacity to hold power. With a core with no power it was impossible to maintain his ability for long time, making it tricky to use despite being able to discharge great amount of power at once, power that he didn’t have. Restoration was average but with such a short power hold it was of no importance, he would be a full charge very fast but that full charge was too small. Fortunately his sync ability could somewhat compensate for it. He had the ability to create and control crystals. It was a very specific type that he had never seen before, however they were of very familiar a pale green shade of color and thus he had decided to name his ability “Jade”.
The crystals he could form required a huge amount of power to create; using a full charge he was only able to create a shard the size of an apple. This was insufficient to do anything with it; however, once created the shards were easy to control and morph into all kind of shapes by marinating a flow of energy towards them. The flow of energy was very easy to maintain since it required so little energy input and the shards wouldn’t fade on their own, even if you cut the power flow to them. So in theory he could haul a stockpile of shards created before hand and use that as his tools, although highly impractical it gave him a fighting chance of survival.
No matter how impractical his ability seemed at first glance, it had a saving grace. It had the ability and absorbs and converts all kind of types of energy. The amount he could absorb and convert were dependent on the type and his own ability on using his sync but given the right circumstances it could be close to one hundred percent. This means that as long as he had a friendly unit supplying power, or as long as he could counter enemy energy and transform it on the fly, his small core wouldn’t be much of a problem.
After a month of training, they were given a map of the region and tossed outside. The realm was filled with non sentient monsters, little more than beast, it was divided in 109 levels and the human objective was to reach the final level. If they were able to reach, they would clear the test. Contrary, if all humans were to die without reaching that level, they would fail the test. The monsters were there to halt their advance. However the path was a non lineal one, you could jump from level one straight to level eight without going through all the other levels. It was a labyrinth designed to trap humans. The test have started a little over a year ago and the map given at the time was highly inaccurate and only of a small area. That has been when his trial had started.
After taking a sip of water from the oasis and shedding his scales, he stood in front of one of the portals, a faint smiled escaped from his face. He took a deep breath and finally exclaimed out loud “Are you ready monster? This is where things finally get interesting.” However there was no one to reply to him.