I just attempted to punch, and a beam of light shone from my fist, going to the tree monster, destroying a part of its body, half of its leaves and the apple. As collateral damage, the back part of the school was now in ruins.
I realized I had "awakened" with a power, somehow including light! Aden, although was taken aback, burnt the rest of the leaves and then the tree.
"Woah", Aden said, surprised.
"Welp, I guess I have superpowers now", I said, overjoyed.
"Well, I have an idea. Want to kill a tree?"
A few minutes later, I went to the tree, using the light thing to destroy one of its apples. The tree reached out for me but I just destroyed the branch with the light beam.
Things were going pretty smoothly, I kept on shooting the light beams, leaves were getting destroyed, and whenever a branch came to kill me, I just destroyed the branch. This went on for a good 30 minutes.
I was slowly running out of energy. I mean, yeah the tree was pretty big, but come on, I had been destroying it for a relatively long time, and the leaves were still in abundance. That is when I realized, the leaves were regenerating.
Crap. If the leaves were regenerating, then we were screwed. Unless I could unleash some kind of a large area light attack we were screwed. Even if this was a possibility, I had been fighting for a good half an hour. I was beyond exhausted.
I tried running away, but the tree took the opportunity and grabbed my ankles. Aden saw this, and tried burning it, but he only barbequed me. I attempted to destroyed the branch holding my ankle. But I didn't have enough energy. The light beam I shot at my ankle just made it flinch.
Luckily that was enough. For now. I dropped on the floor, and it hurt. I took the chance, mustered enough strength to use a light beam onto its hollow eyes, temporarily blinding it. Then I dipped.
I now knew how to beat it, but it was very energy extensive. I went into the school building. Aden was there. Waiting.
"I know how to beat it.", I said.
"Oh yeah? Why didn't you beat it then?"
"Just realized how to.", I said.
"So why don't you go do it now?", Aden asked.
"Because I am exhausted, need to replenish my energy."
"Well then bad news.", Aden said, solemnly.
"What?"
"A lot more leaf monsters are there in the school. To beat it, I need to destroy the leaves right? You are the only one good at it. It is resistant to fire."
"Well let's head back-"
"Hello there, idiots.", Linda said, triumphantly.
"How are you here?", I asked.
"Why are you here?"
"Well, now I have wind powers, so shut up.", Linda said, acting like as if she owned the world.
"Well, this is awfully convenient to the plot isn't it?", I muttered
"What?"
"Nothing"
"Anyway, with you here, things can be a lot easier", I said.
"What do you mean?", Linda asked.
I didn't respond. To be more accurate, I couldn't respond. I was, of course, stricken by fear. There was a tree monster right behind Linda. And it was a leaf monster. The monster was huge. Like the size of a refrigerator. And it grabbed her by the ankle and hung her up, upside down.
Linda was screwing, using her wind powers against the tree, but it was too weak and the tree wrapped a tree branch around her left arm. Then pulled it. The monster ripped Linda's arm off. Linda was screaming in pain. Then the tree branch wrapped its branch around her neck. You can guess what happened.
I was stricken with fear. Although I had come across dead bodies, I had never really seen a person get killed, worst of all, in a brutal way.
With a strike of pure luck, Aden looked away at just the right time and wasn't paralysed with fear. He burnt the monster, making it step backwards, but didn't do enough damage to justify the energy wasted on it.
Then both of us dipped. We ran as fast away, as far away from the monster as possible. I didn't have enough energy or damage the monster. It was way bigger and stronger than any other leafed monster, other than the main tree monster.
More and more unleafed tree monsters were appearing. Those were a piece of cake, and we beat all of them whilst running. Spoiler: it was a bad decision.
Although the monsters were easy to beat, it didn't change the fact that I had to use energy, to kill them. I was trying to preserve energy. And yet I still wasted it on the random monsters.
When I thought I was ready (I wasn't), Me and Aden ran outside running face to face with the apple tree with a face. I released as much energy as I could, which was a lot, in order to destroy all the leaves. That was my genius plan.
To destroy EVERY SINGLE LEAF ON THE TREE.
With my pathetic store of energy, it wasn't very effective. The tree was barely even damaged. A few seconds before I blacked out, I saw a streak of black lightning go straight through the tree
It had been a full 7 years since that incident. A lot of things and changed. First of all, was time itself. For whatever reason, although 7 years had passed, me and every other person around me aged 1 year.
The government made two systems of time with this in mind, biological time, and physical time. In this case, the 1 biological year had passed. 7 physical years had passed (For those interested, physical years refers to the rotation and revolution of the earth, which hasn't changed).
The government took the biological time as the standard for most daily activities, including the enrolment to school and stuff. That brings me to the second change: the government.
The government itself had changed, most countries now opting for a monarchy like rule rather than a democracy. Since many people had "superpowers", the strongest person of all of these was considered a "king" of sorts.
The government also made official terms for a lot of stuff, like the new powers being "magic", the energy for magic "mana", items infused with mana "module of mana" or "artifact".
Apart from these changes, there was another change in the day-to-day life of a person: the appearance of monsters
These monsters would start to appear in random places, and start destroying the nearby area. Many were directly hostile, some were neutral, and some were even passive. Most were hostile.
And the hostile ones were extremely hard to deal with. They made a lot of collateral damage, and eliminating them was a pretty hard, depending on who was doing it.
Most governments started investing a lot of money into magic research similar to the arms race of the Cold war.
Year 1 was the second hardest year of them all, causing a lot of damage, and the appearance wasn't as manageable as it is today.
All monster appearances had a certain pattern, very similar to the tree monster incident. There was a small area of mana "fog" where a boss monster resided. I made other monster spawns, and destroying the main boss would eliminate the threat.
They were classified as expected, E class being handleable by normal knifes and handguns, and didn't need any magic to destroy, to A class, being a massive pain and needed serious magic reinforcement to handle. S class was insanely hard, and most S classes were passive, but on the off chance of them being hostile, the area was evacuated, and essentially turned into a wasteland.
At year 5, bigger and bigger fogs of mana started appearing, and started causing a lot more destruction. Year 5 was by far the hardest year. These new, bigger fogs had special properties.
Number 1, they had entrances, and these fogs were unusually dense, making it impossible to enter without going through the entrance.
Number 2, they were like completely different rooms. Like the outside was a warzone and the inside was a cave. After destroying these, the places it was near reset itself, with only a few remanets of the cave.
Number 3, although the fog was thick and pretty big, the inside was way larger than what it seemed to be from the outside.
These occurrences were called dungeons. They were classed similar to the monster appearances, E to A and S being rare but dangerous. These dungeons only contained hostile creatures.
This was part of why it was a lot more difficult to handle. And worst of all, these dungeons had a habit of spawning a lot of monsters.
Magic had its users have their "affinities" of sorts. Like fire, water, earth, air, healing, darkness, and light. These are actually a lot more specific but the main things to note are that all people have at least 1 affinity, people in this new world have 2-3 and they can be increased with training. Darkness and light were the rarest of them all.
There were also more specific affinities, like gravity, electricity, and more scientific ones, like radiation. The scientific ones are impossible to get, without specific training and knowledge of the affinity.
Magic schools were also established, their curriculum being made 3 years after the incident. School enrolment was based on biological time. Elementary school was still as normal, as people still had their biological development slowed down. Although stuff like calculus and trigonometry was introduced by the year before high school.
Normal school didn't have any magic related curriculum, apart from the bare basics, and true magic school started from high school. High school was the time where magic was learnt and utilised.
The scientific ones were also used in day-to-day life, X-ray being used by doctors, and UV used for water purification.
Now there is me. I had a light affinity. It was rare, and extremely powerful.
"Bye mom!", I said, as I departed to attend my first day in one of the best magic schools in the world, Merlin's Campus. I had been selected as the few people who would attend the school after passing a test.
I had been training like crazy over the last 7 years, and I was ready to fully finish a D class threat, solo.
School was extremely good for me; I was extremely popular because of my strength. I made a group of friends, who were pretty strong, by the end of the first week.
I considered myself good in all classes. The classes were like alchemy, practical usage, battle, theory etc. (It was only the first week though.)
By the end of the first week of school, a new boy joined our class. He was a happy, joyful little guy, and was very weak (which was weird, as this was Merlin's Campus, the best magic school of all time.). His name was Khon.