"ARGHHHHHHHH— STOP, STOPPPP—!"
Hide's eyes flew open, his chest heaving as if he had just sprinted a mile. He shot upright at his desk, his fingers clawing into the composite wood. For a fraction of a second, the sensation of a Calamity Beast's jaw snapping shut over his vision lingered in his mind, overlaying the dreary, fluorescent-lit reality of his high school classroom.
His uniform shirt was plastered to his skin, entirely soaked through with cold, terrified sweat.
He blinked rapidly, the beast fading away, replaced by the stares of thirty-something classmates turning in their seats to look at him.
"Haha! Look at him! That loser fell asleep again."
"Did you hear that scream? Sounds like a little girl." Fuu, a boy with large front teeth and a little fat body commented.
Laughter broke across the room like a crashing wave, harsh and entirely devoid of sympathy.
The teacher at the front of the room didn't even bother looking up from his holographic terminal, completely indifferent to the disruption.
The reason? Because Fuu was an awakened human and Hide was not. The contrast was painfully clear.
Hide slowly uncurled his trembling fingers, wiping the cold sweat from his forehead with the back of his sleeve.
He ignored the jeers. It was the same nightmare. The exact same memory of the Calamity Beasts tearing his mother away, replaying like a broken, blood-soaked record in his mind.
The shrill chime of the dismissal bell echoed through the corridors. Without looking at anyone, Hide mechanically packed his bag, slung it over his shoulder, and walked out of the classroom.
Waiting for him near the school gates were Kai and Risa. In the bleak, smog-choked reality of Area 17, they were his only friends.
At seventeen, Kai had successfully awakened as a Mage-class with a three-star talent. He was tall, confident, and practically radiated the clean, potent energy of an above-average Awakener.
He was already undergoing preliminary training to join one of the city's prestigious Extermination Agencies. Risa, standing quietly beside him, was the opposite; she had failed her first awakening attempt and carried the quiet, heavy burden of a normal citizen.
"I have to be at the training grounds," Kai said, offering an easy, confident smile as Hide approached. "The instructors are running us into the dirt today. But I'll be sure to head back by eight. Find us later, okay?"
Hide looked at him, feeling the vast, invisible gulf that now separated them, but he nodded anyway. "I will if I can."
A half-second pause hung in the polluted air. Then Kai stepped forward, clapped Hide once on the shoulder—a solid, grounding impact and jogged off down the street without making a big deal out of the day's gravity.
Risa lingered and watched watched Kai go, then turned her dark eyes back to Hide. She knew exactly what today was.
Today was Hide's 18th birthday.
She knew what it meant to fail, and she knew the burning, borderline obsessive hatred Hide harbored for the Calamity Beasts. She opened her mouth, closed it, struggling to find words that wouldn't sound like empty pity.
Finally, she settled for a soft, "Good luck, Hide."
He nodded silently, watching her turn and follow Kai's path. Once he was alone, Hide turned his gaze away and walked toward the towering, grey concrete monolith dominating the skyline of Area 17: the Awakening Assessment Authority — Public Division.
His heart began to beat frantically against his ribs. The anxiety was a cold knot in his stomach, but it was absolutely nothing compared to the molten rage he felt whenever he thought about the monsters beyond the city gates.
Today was his third and final chance. By federal law, citizens were given exactly three chances to provoke a mana response.
Once they turn 16, then at 17 and finally the last turn when they turn 18.
If he failed today, the door would be permanently shut. He would be relegated to the life of a powerless civilian, forever relying on Exterminators to protect him from the things that had slaughtered his family.
'I refuse,' Hide thought, his nails biting into his palms.' I will not be useless.'
He exhaled a long, shaky breath to steady his nerves and walked towards the large building.
The streets of Area 17 were exactly as they always were: loud, dirty, and unforgiving. The low hum of heavy transit rails vibrated through the cracked pavement beneath his boots. Automated cleaning drones, rusted and sparking, lazily swept trash into the gutters.
The air tasted faintly of sulfur and cheap synthetic fuel. But as Hide approached the Awakening Assessment Authority, the environment began to shift. The massive building sat behind a perfectly manicured perimeter, a pristine blue circular emblem glowing above the entrance. It was a monument of hope built in the center of despair.
Hide walked inside. The automatic glass doors slid open with a pressurized hiss, instantly cutting off the grime and noise of Area 17. The warmth of climate-controlled, perfectly filtered air washed over him.
The interior was a jarring contrast to the area outside. Clean, luxurious white floors and sleek metallic walls adorned with futuristic light strips that made the room feel as though it was glowing from within.
Before he could even step fully into the lobby, a sleek, floor-mounted scanner beside the entrance pulsed with a soft blue light. It swept over him from head to toe, beeped once, and a small ticket printed from a slot beneath it with a quiet mechanical whir.
Hide plucked the ticket from the machine.
APPOINTMENT CONFIRMED — HIDE VOLTER — FINAL ASSESSMENT — 18 AUGUST, 2381, 3:30
A receptionist stationed at the circular center desk was already rounding the counter. She wore a fitted white suit and carried a professional, practiced smile—the kind of smile meant to soothe anxious teenagers, a smile she had likely deployed a hundred times already today.
She saw the ticket in his hand and bowed once. "Right this way, please."
Hide followed her down a long, quiet corridor. Their footsteps were completely muffled by the polished, sound-dampening floor tiles. They passed a row of heavy, numbered doors before she stopped at one near the end of the hall and held it open for him without a single word.
Just beside the doorframe hovered a bright holographic display that continuously cycled through images and text.
The main title read: Awakening Process - What to Expect.
The screen displayed all the standard information a person needed to know before undergoing awakening, outlining the safety protocols, the science behind cellular mana stimulation, and the statistical probabilities of class and talent acquisition.
Hide didn't bother reading it. He had memorized this two times already. He knew the odds were terribly, cruelly stacked against him.
Only 1% people awakened during their last chance.
He stepped into the room. It was dominated by a massive, circular medical bed resting beneath an intricate, multi-jointed array of mechanical sensors. A doctor in a pristine white coat stood beside a bank of holographic monitors, tapping lazily on a tablet.
He looked incredibly bored, the absolute picture of a man who had seen hundreds of teenagers fail this exact test all week. An assisting nurse stood quietly near the back wall.
"Lie back, Mr. Volter. Try to relax," the doctor instructed, not even bothering to look away from his glowing screens. "We will now give you a life stone... as you might already know. You have to swallow it and wait. It might feel a bit warm, but it is completely painless."
Hide took a deep breath, dropped his bag on the floor, and lay down on the cold, sterile surface of the bed.
The nurse brought a small tray, and sealed under a thin transparent cover that she removed with a twist of the latch, resting at its center, was a stone the size of half a finger.
It caught the room's lighting and threw it back several folds like a diamond. It was deep red and crystalline with veins of brighter scarlet running through.
Even in a world of holographic displays and bio-scanning equipment, there was something about a Life Stone that made everything else in the room feel beside the point.
The woman set the tray on the bedside and stepped back.
Hide reached out and picked it up. It was lighter than it looked. He turned it between his fingers, watching the light move through it.
'This is it, Mom.'
He swallowed hard, placed it in his mouth and bit down.
It shattered instantly, brittle as dried chalk and tasted like absolutely nothing.
He swallowed the life stone after crushing it thoroughly.
With a low, mechanical hum, the massive scanner head descended, rotating slowly around his body.
For three agonizing minutes, the rhythm remained completely indifferent. Hide felt absolutely nothing.
The machinery whirred and circled, as cold and unfeeling as the Calamity Beasts themselves. Despair began to claw at the edges of his mind.
'No. Please. Not again, 'he pleaded internally. His left hand moved without thinking to the left side of his abdomen. His fingers pressed on the thick, raised ridge of scar tissue. The one thing that had never changed since that day six years ago.
The surgeon had told him he was lucky. He always thought about, but he could not find the answer — lucky for what?
He pressed harder against the scar.
He remembered the nightmare, the absolute helplessness of being small and weak while a monster tore his world apart.
He remembered the vow he had made to himself, the vow he had sworn to his mother's grave. He was going to kill them. He was going to kill every single one of those bastards.
'I am not done. I refuse to be done. I don't care what these machines say. I don't care about the federal law, or the three chances, or any of it. I am going to kill them, Mom. Just watch me. I will kill every last one.'
"Doctor."
The nurse's voice suddenly cut through the sterile quiet of the room, sharp and laced with confusion.
"The readings—"
The holographic screens lining the walls violently spiked, flooding with cascading lines of raw data that scrolled faster than a human could read.
The doctor was instantly on his feet, dropping his lazy posture. He gripped his tablet with both hands, his face illuminated by the manic scrolling numbers.
"It's working," the doctor breathed, his voice barely above a whisper, his eyes wide with absolute shock. "The mana... it's moving. It's spiking massively!"
Hide didn't hear them. His entire universe had narrowed down to the confines of his own body.
He felt it. It was as if a dormant volcano had just erupted inside his bloodstream. A thrumming, electric heat surged through every individual cell, pushing outward, carving intricate, burning pathways through his flesh that hadn't existed a moment prior.
Then, as suddenly as it had begun, it was all over.
Hide lay there, his chest heaving.
"Congratulations, Mr. Volter," the doctor said. He wiped a sudden bead of sweat from his brow, his professional demeanor entirely forgotten as he extended his digital tablet toward the bed. "You have officially Awakened."
Hide sat up slowly. He practically snatched the tablet from the doctor's hands, his eyes devouring the official registry data glowing on the screen.
Name: Hide Volter
Age: 18
Class: ∞
Class Potential: S
Talent: None
Talent Potential: None
An infinity sign? S-Rank Potential? Hide stared at the screen, his mind grinding to a violent halt.
He had spent his entire life studying the Exterminator databases. He knew about Warriors, Mages, Assassins, and Tamers.
But he had never, in his entire life, heard of an "Infinity" class. It was a Unique class and with an S-Rank potential at that.
But as his eyes trailed down, the euphoria violently crashed into a wall of absolute confusion.
Talent: None.
It was a paradox. How could he have the highest potential, but absolutely no talent to channel it through?
How could he have not awakened a talent... What good was a unique class with S-Rank Potential if he couldn't fight at all?
Before the crushing reality of that paradox could fully set in, the sterile white walls of the scanning room faded into the background.
A strange, translucent blue screen—entirely separate from the doctor's tablet—materialized directly in the center of his vision. It hovered in the air, glowing with an ethereal, unnatural light that didn't obey the laws of standard holographic technology.
[Synchronizing System Stats...]
Hide blinked, but the screen remained, etched perfectly into his retinas.
[Congratulations — Universal Adaptation System is now live.]