Lucielle had been perceived as being utterly useless and pointless to be around as her only ability seemed to be to make herself prettier but only she knew the truth. The truth is that in this world where humans were bestowed gifts by some gods and had enough strength to destroy a small town Lucielle knew her gift was nothing to write home about, if she truly had a place to call home that is.
Many of her classmates back when she was in school had been gifted with powers by the gods they and their families prayed to while others could only grit their teeth with jealousy as they were not chosen by any god and remained a powerless human that would only be able to scrap a meager existence if they were exceptionally unlucky. Unlike when the Slayers were originally founded to safekeep and protect the unblessed humans, unawakened humans were seen as a minor annoyance by the majority of the Slayer population though some did still stand by the ideals of the original Slayers.
Slayer was the name given to the people blessed by the Gods with otherworldly powers. Obviously there was a difference in strength between all the Slayers so in order to make it easier to denote ones power level the original Slayers created a ranking system for the themselves. Slayers were separated among several different ranks, those being F, E, D, C, B, A, S, SS, and the fabled SSS. After awakening their powers a Slayer could apply for a test to see what level of aura she or he had obtained from the Gods. This was done to ensure that they had really awakened and once it was confirmed by the density of their aura or lack there of they would be assigned their rank. Generally speaking the higher quality or quantity of the aura the higher the Slayer could potentially go up the ranks, though nobody in the last 300 years had managed to hit SSS. Everyone started at the same starting line however and that was rank F but one could eventually work their way out of there if they were powerful enough.
In Lucielle's school there had been a young man that had awakened a Rank A flame power and as a result become the school darling. Of course the school officials didn't hesitate to brag about it to the city at large that they had a Rank A Slayer awaken at their school. Naturally a stir was made in the city as the amount of Slayers with Rank potential was nonexistent, the highest was Rank B at that moment. Lucielle had seen him on local TV more than she ever saw him in class at that point.
Of course just receiving a high power level wouldn't instantly turn someone into a powerhouse capable of destroying a whole town. No, all Slayers started out at the very same starting line which was Rank F but what limited a person future prospects was precisely the Rank of their powers. If a Rank A Slayer were to train for a year they would probably rise from Rank F strength to Rank D strength without much trouble. However for a Rank F Slayer to reach the peaks of their own rank it would probably take their whole lives and never reach it. After all the Rank of your powers only tells them the maximum potential they can achieve with their power. So a Rank B Slayer would be treated vastly better than a D or C Rank Slayer because it would only take them a few years to surpass those of the lower Ranks and soar even higher.
The Ranks were originally used to to send people of suitable strength to raid the Gates so as to preserve more human and Slayer lives, now however they are used to determine how popular they are and how much a Slayer would be paid for clearing the Gate to prevent a Gate Break from occurring. This was the prestige that a higher ranked Slayer could obtain as they steadily rose through the rankings. However Lucielle was not one of those lucky people to be blessed by any god. While a vast majority of her classmates were fortunate enough to be blessed by their patron Gods, Lucielle remained a normal human for several months. That was until the day she had finally given up praying to Hestia, Goddess of the Hearth, the Goddess her Mother and Father had prayed to all their lives, and who had blessed them as well.
Loneliness, anger, and helplessness were the feelings that had ingrained themselves in Lucielle's young heart. After dedicating herself so much to Hestia, offering prayers and offerings throughout her life, Lucielle came to the conclusion that her Goddess never gave a damn about her and will never offer her an awakening. Lucielle wasn't overly demanding, she just wanted at least a Rank E power, but until that day she had never been awakened so she had finally lost all hope.
Staring at the statue of Hestia that she had been given by her mother Lucielle reached out and threw the statue across the room while cursing Hestia's name. After the statue collided with the wall a message abruptly appeared in front of her but this didn't come from Whiteberry watch. No this screen materialized out of thin air and was a text box with a red and black font. Leaping up from her bed Lucielle stared at the screen before her.
"What the hell is this?!?" She rubbed her eyes and blinked a couple times to make sure she wasn't seeing things but the text box was still floating there before her. 'Have a I finally cracked and gone insane?' Her heart was thumping wildly as she forced herself to calm down.
Once her calmed herself down and made sure she wasn't just seeing things her earlier actions finally caught up with her. 'Oh fuck I just desecrated a Goddess' statue!' She had heard of many a tale of people that had offended the Gods that were punished severely. Her heart skipped a beat as she remembered the tale of a man that trashed a Gods temple being mutilated in the streets a few days later. They never did find his head either. Now Lucielle was worried that the Hearth Goddess might seek vengeance against her for desecrating her statue.
Lucielle went and retrieved the statue, completely forgetting about the text box that was still floating in the periphery of her vision. Picking the statue up Lucielle gingerly placed it back in it's usual spot on her dresser. It was at that moment however when she remembered the weird floating text window that was floating in front of her face a few minutes prior. As if sensing her train of thought the window shifted back into the center of her sight.
The text box was utterly black, as if crafted from the source of darkness itself, with a flaming red text looked as if it was blood that had been set aflame. Leaving aside the ominous look of the text box the message it contained was shocking to the young Lucielle.
'Am I being awakened?' Lucielle was extremely confused as she had never heard of a situation like this ever occurring for any Slayer that she had ever heard of. Slayers were usually awakened by the Gods they prayed to regularly. If one prayed to the God of War then one would only receive an awakening from the God of War. Other Gods wouldn't waste their blessings on someone that didn't give them prayers after all! You also couldn't choose to accept or reject the awakening. If a God decided to awaken you that was it. You would immediately be able to access the basic of your power as if you had been doing it your whole life. Of course training would be required to do even more with your ability, but she had never heard of any case of anyone being able to reject it. One could hide their awakening but who would be insane enough to do that when it would bring them nothing but benefits if they awakened a high rank?
Moreover Lucielle had never prayed to God. She had heard about him and his Heavenly Host in ancient history class because before the advent of the Gates opening and spreading across the world many people prayed to this Catholic-Christian God. At least until the Gates arrived and unleashed untold monstrosities upon humanity. When that happened the Gods from a variety of different pantheons appeared and awakened the first generation of Slayers. The Catholic-Christian God never appeared during their time of need so faith and prayers for him died out rapidly thereafter. Hundreds of years had passed and the only mention of this God could only been found in Ancient History books. Now she has apparently been awakened as the reincarnation of Lucifer, Gods former top dog Angel.
'Well it's not like I have anything to lose by saying yes.' Lucielle stared at the screen before her before accepting the windows challenged.
A timer appeared in the top corner of her sight which showcased the remaining time till her body will awaken her power. <1095:00:00:00> The other text window disappeared and never returned. Lucielle waited days but it never reappeared before her. Lucielle could have convinced herself it was all a hallucination that her broken mind had conjured up to comfort her that night if it hadn't been for that timer slowly ticking away in the upper left corner of her vision. Knowing she had only three years to wait to attain power she could only dream of Lucielle wasted no time before registering to be tested at her local Slayer Awakening Center. Not noticing the changes that had already began to change her body Lucielle rushed over the next morning.
The Awakening Center was quite large because every year there would be a large batch of young hopefuls coming to get tested, thus they had to the service into 4 blocks. Finding the least crowded block Lucielle, with her heart almost beating out of her chest, lined up. She didn't notice the various looks she was receiving because she was too lost in her own thoughts, some of them were very friendly while others were dangerous.
It should be noted this service, while very important to the everyday person, was not free. Even if nothing was spent to carry out the test, the government still required a fee of $25 per test so that people wouldn't come every day to fill up the various blocks with the hope that today will be the day that they'll awaken, though usually these people would end up getting banned for a while for wasting the Centers time.
And Lucielle, having been an orphan for the last few years of her life and living off the remainder of her parents savings, obviously didn't have too much money to spare so that $25 would be sorely missed this month. However she had faith in herself because of that message she had received the night before and the timer that was still ticking down in the corner of her line of sight. So with shaking hands she signed the form to perform the test and paid the fee so that the machine would check to see if she had truly awakened as a Slayer. And if it was so, she would finally have the right to, legally, enter Gates.