Henry, his classmates and their teacher were sitting in their classroom and looking at the huge holographic TV hanging from a small device on the ceiling.
On the TV were two people fighting : one was wearing a shiny rainbow colored armor and it could be guessed this person was a woman because of her body shape, on the other side was a man as thick as a bull holding a giant golden war hammer. Although he didn't wear an armor like the female fighting him, his half-naked body was covered in what looked like gleaming bear fur and was withstanding almost effortlessly her torrent of attacks.
These two were the 93rd Warrior's universal cup's finalists ! Every 5 years the strongest warriors of the Alliance would be sent to fight in a tournament and update the ranking of the strongest warriors belonging to the Alliance. A popular rumor on the Uninet said that the Enemies also had a similar tournament to rank their warriors.
After a long fight the man started to show signs of tiredness and lost his balance for a second, in the blink of an eye the woman teleported from her original position to behind him and brought her short spears to his throat from behind, anybody who had had the bad luck to blink in that timing had missed the finishing blow of the fight.
"Miss Anaya took it again this year !"
"She's so strong !"
The girls showed admiration and when she took off her helmet the boys went into a frenzy!
"She's so beautiful !"
"I'm dying !!!"
Henry showed just as much admiration as his friends but the focus of that admiration was different!
'What was that teleportation at the end ? Is it an active skill attached to one of her equipment? I never heard about such a native skill.'
His eyes started shining because of the idea of such a discovery, it wasn't that he didn't find Miss Anaya attractive but he was born realist and knew that it was the same as chasing after a dream so he didn't give her as much reverence as his classmates and focused on his own success ! As he was born with an unknown native skill and had no hint on how to use it he mostly relied on skill implementation to fight.
"Alright kids it's time to resume our lesson."
The teacher was an old man with white hair and a white goatee wearing a wide suit, he snapped his fingers and the holographic screen disappeared.
"Mister ! Can't we watch the ending ceremony? It's a one in five years opportunity!"
The students all pleaded but the teacher didn't care and kept his lesson going.
"You can watch the rediffusion at home !"
He said and he continued his class.
"As you all know we humans left our mother planet Earth more than 10 000 years ago, we started terraforming more and more planets on our way through the universe and amongst these planets we found some inhabited by Heavenly beasts and Demonic beasts. Today's lesson is about Demonic beasts, Henry why don't you tell me what you know about them ?"
Henry stood up without feeling even a bit of pressure or shyness, some girls also sneakily looked back. Henry was definitely their ideal boyfriend, he was handsome, tall, smart, athletic and down to earth. The only thing that he didn't possess and would have made him the perfect guy was that he didn't have any exceptional familial background.
However most people here didn't have any powerful background so they didn't care about such stuff, this was after all only a public high school on the small planet of Buton.
"Demonic Beasts and Heavenly beasts are actually the same thing except that Demonic beasts have been judged "demonic" by the first people to discover them due to their appearances and eating habits and thus have been named so.
Demonic beasts are all carnivorous while Heavenly beasts tend to be herbivorous and sometimes omnivorous but that's very rare.
Both heavenly and demonic beasts bodies can be made into fantastic armors and weapons. If the best materials are used and the creator of the item is sufficiently qualified they can also infuse skills into it, it's called a "skill implementation", inside Demonic Beasts is also a core that can make our bodies stronger by ingesting it."
"Very good however there really is a difference between heavenly and demonic beasts, that is that a Demonic beast cannot be contracted. You probably have all heard that a lot of miss Anaya's armors and weapons are contracted Heavenly beasts, this means that she didn't kill the beasts but made them into contracted beings, contracted beasts made into weapons and armors are also relatively stronger than forged ones. If she decided to release one of them now they would turn back to their original form so you can say that instead of enslaving them she's their friend. That isn't possible with Demonic Beasts as it has been tried thousands of times by different people to no avail."
In all the other student's minds it was confirmed now that it wasn't possible to make a contract with a demonic beast and they forgot about it but the always curious Henry still questioned that and wouldn't believe it until he tried it himself, that was the way he was.
After class Henry stood up and walked home alone, although he was friendly with everyone in school he was still alone most of the time. He had no close friends and no family, he was an orphan and started living alone a year ago when he reached adulthood at 16 years old as you were considered a fully capable adult when you reached 16 years old on planet Buton.
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After humanity left Earth to live on other planets they had to develop a new version of internet for the whole universe, this version was called Uninet and linked every computer, mobile phone and even humans together. For centuries now some humans had even started transforming their bodies into cyborgs using robotic limbs, organs and additional chips to make their brains more productive, they were relatively rare though as it was now possible to break the limits of the human body without having to turn yourself into a robot because of the demonic and heavenly beasts' cores.
Henry sat down in front of his desk and a holographic screen, mousepad and keyboards appeared. He started browsing the Uninet for informations about Miss Anaya's new skill. He realized he wasn't the only one curious as some fans of her had also never seen her using this skill they wondered if she was hiding it all along or if it was a new implementation.
[guest65716: I've been Miss Anaya's fan for years but I've never seen her using this skill, I guess it's an item implementation."
[guest54664: Don't you think she might have been hiding it ? Maybe she never met an opponent strong enough to make her use it.]
The forum Henry went on was a forum frequented mostly by Blacksmithing enthusiasts just like himself, finally a comment caught his attention.
[blackblacksmithsmith222: I've heard a rumor saying that the Forge has had a few breakthroughs this year, since her father is a high ranking member of the forge it wouldn't be weird that she's has gotten access to them before we're aware of what are those breakthroughs.]
'That's insane ! If they really have such new implementations then wouldn't native skills become useless ? I want to try wearing it !'
Henry's blood was boiling and his eyes were shining, his useless native skill always made him annoyed. He still ranked first in his high School's tournament because of his calm mind, pure talent and hard work but he knew that the further he went the stronger and the more useful in a fight would native skills be.
He lied down on his bed and stared blankly at his ceiling while thinking of a solution about his weird native skill.
'Eh?'
He stood up with his guard up and looked around himself, there was nobody but he was certain someone had spoken a second ago. What was weird was that the voice didn't come from any direction, it seemed like it had been whispered into both his ears at the same time.
The same voice resounded again, Henry checked under his bed and in the bathroom. As his apartment was only one room he was now certain there was nobody with him.
'I'm not becoming insane right ?'
He thought.
"My native skill ?"
Finally his eyes started shining, he had heard it the first time but was too scared by this sudden voice to think about it, after calming for a bit he finally was interested in what the voice had to say.