Park Rhea, a member of the Cult of Wokes, was unique. She was the only person blessed with an S-rank Skill, "Nereids", when she joined the cult.
She hated that skill.
Many of her peers were jealous of her after the higher-ups started treating her as an apostle. They were also jealous that the Appraisal Machine (AM) noticed only her Skill. Due to her Skill and her title as an 'apostle', she hadn't seen her father and was locked up for training.
There was no way she wouldn't hate the Skill. It was the reason why she was hated by her colleagues. It was the reason why she had no freedom. It was the reason why she was viewed and treated like a human tool by the higher-ups.
It was a curse, and she was not an apostle at all.
During one of her missions, she accidentally drowned one of her teammates with this Skill, and her other teammates had to sacrifice themselves to prevent her from being caught.
She believed her curse had led to their death, but many of the higher-ups, even the Administrators of the cult, had told her that her teammate died because they were too weak.
The deaths of her teammates did not change her treatment at all. Now, she was on another mission with the alias Park Dae.
The Cult gave her two tasks: infiltrate TREE to find and neutralize any troublesome Skilled amongst the students, and if possible, find 'good seedlings' to invite to the Cult. Rhea knew she wasn't the only one who was assigned to this mission. However, the identities of the other Wokes was kept a mystery in order to prevent names from leaking: there are many people in TREE with truth-gathering Skills.
Despite all this, she had noticed one of her peers. In fact, it was hard not to.
Due to the nature of the mission, she had to be constantly paying attention to her surroundings. But even if she was completely slacking on the job, anyone would notice the strange guy in class 1A, the class assigned to her.
Everything about that guy was suspicious: the green hair, the way he acted, and most of all the badge on the strange guy's uniform. It had a yellow F, representing a support-type F-rank Skill.
Rhea knew that classes 1A,B,and C only contained people with S to C-rank Skills, and even those C-rank Skills are usually powerful offensive Skills. Students with a support-type F-rank Skill should be in class 1F, not even 1D or 1E. You would only see a student with an F-rank Skill in classes A, B, or C if they got a really high score during their FIRST year in the academy.
So how did a person with an F-rank Skill get into class 1A?
Rhea continued to follow that boy until after school, when she saw a red glint in his eyes before he disappeared. She knew that Skill: it was 'Shadow Steps', and it's one of the Skills belonging to the Cult of Wokes. The individual she was watching was part of the cult.
Then Rhea was immediately disappointed. How dumb did the boy have to be to use a Woke Skill in front of everyone's eyes? It was only the first day of the academy, and people were already going to find out about the mission!
Was that person really a part of the Cult? There's no way, right?
Rhea did a background check on 'A Chul'. A Chul's background was very boring: orphaned, in debt, with no friendship or relationship or extended family. A perfect background for dirty work.
There was no longer any doubt about this boy's affiliations with the Cult, especially not after she followed him into the city of Teton. She even saw his silver spider-lily pin. She then witnessed what was possibly the most stupid thing the boy has done so far: using the Cult's power to rob a shop.
Rhea did not want her mission to fail because of a newbie like him. She was also tired of being the sole survivor of every mission.
Rhea decided to 'lecture' him for his own good (it was more of a beating than a lecture), but she noticed something wrong about the kid. He was weak. Way too weak. He was even weaker than the average unskilled human. However, his senses were extremely sensitive. Then it clicked. The kid was cursed, just like her.
There were many cursed people in the Cult: some couldn't speak the human language, some grew extra pairs of arms, some had defective body parts, many had their skin rotting. Wokes exchange their humanity for extraordinary power, but when that exchange becomes unbalanced, curses were created as a way of compensation.
The boy in front of her exchanged his physical strength and health for something else, and the cult was using the boy as cannon fodder. By throwing A Chul into the school, even if someone finds out about the infiltration, he would be the first one to be found. He was the sacrificial lamb just to protect the 'apostle'.
She felt sick to her stomach. She wasn't about to ask any more personal questions about the boy. All she knew was that he was a part of the cult and he was weak, too weak: slow reaction time, low strength, reckless, and speed that was barely acceptable.
She had to make sure the boy lasted long enough, at least until she could complete her mission.
That was her plan, but A Chul, for whatever reason, knew her real name. What was more surprising was that he didn't appear to know about her reputation. It was strange, but she was glad that there was nothing she needed to hide. She was finally able to speak with someone who didn't treat her as a monster, criminal, or a tool.
"What's your real name?" She asked. No matter how happy she was, she still had to be suspicious of A Chul. She hoped that he was not a spy, but a person around her age with genuine kindness, a person who didn't care about rumors.
"Alex Stanley," He replied.
It was a strange name, a name that could only exist in two sections of the planet. However, he didn't look like he was from there. Luckily, due to the 'training' she received through her missions, she knew all the human languages and was able to speak them fluently.
She decided to test him one last time by greeting him in his own language. If A Chul couldn't reply at all, then he was just a horrible spy after all. If she detects even the slightest accent, it means either he's a prepared spy who's acting dumb or his stay in section C had affected him, meaning he wasn't recently transferred.
"Well, nice to meet you, Alex Stanley. My name is Park Rhea."
"Likewise."
What she received was a perfectly spoken sentence with no accent at all. It was as if 'A Chul' was really 'Alex Stanley's' cover-up, but she couldn't erase the suspicion.
She decided she would trust him for now. She will watch 'A Chul', or 'Alex Stanley' closely and play along, and if there were any signs of him being a spy, she will remove him immediately.