The town where Rex and his 2 friends lived was called Bowling Town.
After the age of awakening where planet earth was exposed to the wonders of mystic energy and countless mystic beasts invaded, humanity suffered a steady decline in numbers due to the numerous deaths.
The dominance of the mystic beasts was too much, their advantage was so massive that it required a miracle for humanity to get the upper hand.
The emergence of mystic warriors reduced the speed of annihilation by a large margin, but the mystic beasts were still firmly holding the advantage.
Throughout the centuries that followed after the age of awakening, the number of humans on earth decreased from the previous 7 billion where it thrived to mere tens of millions of living humans.
The more time passed, the more the major nations of the world recognized the danger of extinction, this was what brought the great alliance.
All the major nations of the world combined to form a massive planet-wide alliance that later became known as the Resistance Alliance.
Once the major nations were in, the lesser nations of the world had no choice but to join also. Through this, humanity for the first time put up a unified front against the invasion and started the shelter project.
It was already a well-known fact by then that nowhere on the earth was safe anymore. Beasts invading capital cities of nations, annihilating every opposition and killing the President was not recent news so they sought to put an end to it.
This unified goal resulted in the greatest project that humanity has ever embarked on, the creation of the 7 Great shelters and the 29 small shelters.
By pulling in all the resources that they could amass by then, humanity combined forces to embark on this project and finish it. After suffering a lot of setbacks and attacks, the shelter project was completed after a decade.
The 7 Great shelters became the backbone of humanity's resistance against the invasion of the mystic beasts, while the small shelters became akin to outposts where they could use to extend their area of influence.
The 7 Great shelters had a capacity to take 10 million humans while the 29 small shelters had the capacity to take only 3 million humans each.
Due to the damage and death that was already inflicted by the beasts, there were not enough humans to fill the shelters. This resulted in the few humans being divided into specific shelters to occupy them.
Each of the shelters were heavily guarded by the greatest force of mystic warriors that mystic families and the government managed to amass.
It was already proven that despite humanity's impressive technological developments, technology alone could not do it, mystic energy attacks were the key to defeating mystic beasts.
Every shelter had a huge thick wall that was made using the best and most resilient non-mystical metal on earth, the titranium.
This granted the shelters the thickness and resilience to hold against the unrelenting attacks of the mystic beasts.
Throughout the years, none of the 7 Great shelters have fallen though 8 of the small shelters have fallen, leaving only 21.
As the years passed, humanity reproduced which was something that they were famed for, recovering their numbers in droves, now the remaining shelters were already populated adequately with humans.
The shelters' defense foundation was already established after so long. It was unlikely for another shelter to fall soon, which provided a much-needed relief to the humans who had to live in fear all their lives.
According to history that was taught in school, due to the appearance of mystic energy and the establishment of the shelters, earth's territory was divided into mid-earth and the rim of the earth.
All the 7 Great shelters were built in the mid-earth where not only mystic energy was more abundant, but mystic treasures also abound.
The mid-earth also attracted mystic beasts the most but humanity was already strong enough to defend themselves from them, at least the Great shelters.
As for the small shelters, they were all built in the rim of the earth. Of the 21 remaining small shelters, the King Resistance Shelter was Rex's home.
The King Resistance Shelter was built to look exactly like a nation, but one whose borders were surrounded by an extremely large wall.
Just like any nation, the King Resistance Shelter was divided into states. There were 12 states that made up this resistance shelter, each one governed by an advanced mystic warrior.
Below the states were the cities and towns which it comprised of.
Delta State was one of the bigger states inside the King Resistance Shelter. Under it was Obedin City, and under this city's jurisdiction was Bowling Town.
Obedin City was named after its star academy, the Obedin Mystic Academy. It was due to being from the same state that Rex was able to participate on and win a government scholarship that provided him passage into this mystic academy.
The distance from Bowling Town to Obedin City was just a few kilometers. Rex and his 2 friends left for school from their town every day during school sessions, today was no exception after Rex made his strange decision.
Rex woke up at approximately 8:00am, he enjoyed his birthday celebration with his friends for a few dozen minutes, now the time was 8:48am while the school bus that could take them to school was set to leave exactly 9:00am.
Despite the time constraints, Rex and his friends were not pressured. Ben and Cassandra went back to their home which was opposite Rex's while Rex directly rushed into the bathroom to get a nice bath.
Unlike the privileged ones, they were burdened by less things since they couldn't afford them in the first place, fashion was more of something natural to them than something that needed to be artificially finetuned.
Rex had his bath in 3 minutes, got prepared and put on his blue and black school combat uniform in 2 minutes, roughly arranged his house in another 2 minutes before finally going out to meet his friends.
On getting outside, he saw Cassandra and Ben were also ready.
Together, they caught the bus and left for school.
…
"So, what did you want to show to the 2 of us?"
"Be patient". Rex grinned. "You guys will be shocked".
The more Rex kept on talking like this, the more his 2 friends' curiosity kept on growing. If he had his way, the impatient Ben would have thrown a punch at Rex already so he could spill the beans faster.
Despite their biting curiosity, Ben and Cassandra succeeded in holding their peace. Cassandra was the main reason for this, having hinted at Ben.
She was 18 but she was already very sensitive for her age. She's lived close to Rex for years, she knew him, she knew his personality, and she also knew when he was happy or feeling sad.
At this moment, Cassandra keenly felt that Rex was happy. Even though she didn't know why, she felt happy that he was happy, so she was content with keeping it this way.
Though Rex said that Collins and Turan were not important, to avoid trouble, he took his friends through a relatively remote path inside the school.
After going through a lot of winding corners and avoiding anything that could attract attention, to Cassandra and Ben's confusion, Rex brought them to the virtual arena hall of the academy.
"What are we doing here?" Ben asked as he looked at Rex suspiciously.
Rex ignored him. "Just follow me in".
Once they were inside, Rex used his remaining shelter credits to purchase a virtual training ticket. Once they entered the isolated domain, Rex showed his 2 friends a reveal that left the both of them wide-eyed.
"When…, did you awaken mystic energy?!"