A lone man was walking aimlessly through the vast desert, his pale white appearance bearing the semblance of a ghost.
He had completed the mission he was here for, and wanted to report back to his teammates. However, as he peeked through the spaces between his spiky white hair, he realized that he was completely lost.
"Hm..." He had gotten carried away again. However since this wasn't the first time something like this had happened, the white haired man shrugged it off.
He bent his knees and then launched himself into the sky. While he was in the air, he turned his body around, thinking he would maybe catch a glimpse of where his teammates were. But there was no sight of them, even within his long range of sight.
Regardless, he did see something else that interested him; there was a cube shaped edifice a couple of miles away. It was certainly strange, but the fact that it seemed to be made out of sand, allowed the building to camouflage in its environment. So it was by chance that this man just happened to see it.
As soon as he landed, he bolted off in the direction of the strange building, at full speed. As he was running, he felt that he should have gotten to the building in no more than five seconds, withal, it didn't look like he was even close as he hadn't even seen a trace of the building yet.
After staying in the straight direction he was moving for another five second, he realized that something must have been wrong, he still couldn't see the building in front of him.
So he dipped his legs in the sand again and jumped. Looking forward during his ascent, he still saw no trace of the building, it was also neither in the direction of his left, nor right. But as he turned some more, on his way back to the ground, he saw that strange sand building was now behind him.
Not even stopping to think twice, he ran off in the direction of the place, turning into a speeding line of white. But the same thing happened; there was no sight of the building in front of him, but when he looked behind, its interesting sight was to behold. He had even calculated how far he'd have to run to reach the building, so he couldn't have passed it by mistake.
But just in case, he counted his steps more carefully and ran towards the building, alas, it was to no avail.
"A space dislocation phenomenon?" He muttered. But after thinking again, he felt it was improbable. "Nothing feels out of place."
"Why do I care, I'll just send for an investigation team when I get back." He wasn't one who liked to ponder complicated things, so it wasn't hard for him to give up. All he needed to do now was drop some kind of flag that would make it easier for the investigation team to find this place.
'Sand tower.' An idea popped into his head, so he jumped back and stretched out his arms.
Taking a deep breath, he gathered strength into his arms and then slowly started bringing them close to each other.
As he was doing this, the atmosphere around him shook fiercely, and like he was controlling the wind, strong gales started to clear the sand, in the area, bringing them to a certain point between his outstretched arms. When he was done, there was a seventy meter high tower in front of him.
However his tower looked thin and roughly made, so the man was aware that it wouldn't even last an hour before it came tumbling down. Looking near the foot of the tower, he caught sight of a strange marking, inscribed on the floor. This marking looked like a skull and was plated in a shining gold colour.
The man walked over to it and wiped it clean to get a clearer picture. It was then that he noticed the golden plated skull marking on the ground had the letter 'T' on its forehead. The letter looked more like a key hole though, as it sunk deep into the ground.
But after looking at it for a while and not being able to figure out what it meant, the man chose to give up once more.
It was at that instant that, he remembered he could track his teammates' location with his watch, so he pulled up his left sleeve to do just that. But as the holographic screen of the watch popped out, he suddenly heard a loud bang. Following the sound, he found a part in the sky that was covered in the colour red.
'If they're making this much noise then they must be done with clearing the monsters on that side.'
The man, after a bit of thought, threw his watch on the skull marking and bolted off in the direction of the crimson blast. If he could find their location using his watch, then it could work the other way around.
BOOM!!!
He turned into a flash of white and jumped into the sky.
———
"Hi bro!"
As he fell from the sky, the man wearing a pale white coat heard the cheerful voice of a beautiful woman below.
He looked behind her, and caught the figures of two men running speedily in the opposite direction.
"You're really testing me, Yenn." He muttered with a frown as he shifted his gaze back to the woman. She wasn't stepping aside for his landing like the other two.
This man wasn't like the rest of them who could control the impact of their landing, his strength was just like that; wild and untameable.
He pointed his legs to the ground, and just when the man was about to land, he stopped, over Yenn's head.
BANG!
However, the sound of his body hitting something still sounded as the space below his feet warped and quivered. He walked a few more steps in mid air and then landed behind her.
"Do you have a death wish?" He looked over his shoulder and asked coldly.
"Nope." In contrast, Yenn answered with a smile.
"Well do that again and I'll really crush you."
Yenn laughed at his warning. This man reminds her of someone she used to know. Apart from their similar levels of stubbornness, she felt like 'that' person should look just like the white haired man now. They certainly did look alike when they met a couple of years back.
"Meeting." The white haired man suddenly shot forward.
Up front, Enzo and Jiten had stopped to look back when they noticed that the white line had already landed. Turning their heads to look at each other, they sighed.
"That was close huh?" Jiten chuckled.
"Yeah. But where is—" All of a sudden, the two of them felt a hand clutching their shoulders. It was cold and hard, but they both knew it was definitely the palms of a living man.
"Meeting." They heard his voice, emanating more of the cold aura from his words. Before they knew it they had already gone back to whence they came. It was like they had teleported, but their disheveled hair and rough clothes said otherwise.
"Apocalyph, how was your side of the... uh desert?" Jiten asked nervously.
"What do you think?" Apocalyph, the white haired man asked back.
"Good. Haha... Right?"
"Sure." He let go of their shoulders. After allowing them to dust off their bodies, he soon started explaining his experience with the mysterious sand tower. Of course, he left out the part where he got lost.
"Since you left your watch there, then it'll be easy to find that place, nice." Jiten praised, sounding more serious than before. He and Enzo weren't really afraid of the white haired man, they felt more awkward around his intimidating nature than anything.
"Yeah... About that." Yenn suddenly spoke. "I can't track your watch's GPS."
"Hm?"
"Not only that but, I can't even track theirs. It's like something's messing up with my GPS locator. Why don't you both check yours?"
"Okay."
"Sure."
Enzo and Jiten checked their watches but it was the same result as Yenn's.
But this wasn't the only strange development.
"Woah guys, check out the compass." Jiten pointed at the hologram of the digital compass floating above his arm. Moving it around, the rest discovered that the pin pointing north wasn't moving at all. It was as if Jiten's watch was broken. And they might have thought that, if it wasn't the same for everyone else.
"Something's wrong." Enzo frowned.
Nodding in agreement, Yenn asked, "Jiten, get us an aerial view."
Jiten then floated up into the sky, pulling up the rest with his ability. At an adequate height, the crew looked towards the direction Apocalyph had come from, and when they did, they saw the very same cube shaped castle he was talking about.
"What the—" Jiten exclaimed as he peered into the distance. He had flown this high multiple times, but that building was definitely not there before.
"Uhm guys, I don't mean to drop this on y'all but, I think we're lost." As Enzo said that, Yenn and Jiten noticed that it was true, their environment did seem different. On top of that, they had killed a lot of beasts in this desert, but their carcasses were nowhere to be found.
"Ah~" Yenn sighed. "Let's go to that place since it's definitely related to what's happening." She pointed at the sand tower, deeming it as the most probable solution to their current predicament.
"But why'd it only show up now?" Jiten was still wondering.
"Maybe Apocalyph set something off or whatever. Who cares though? At the very least, let's get to that skull marking." Enzo suggested and they all agreed.
Their mission was to clear this place of its dangers and lay a foundation for its habitability.
———
Back at the Dean's office...
"So you're saying you have an elite force of kids who've breached the S-rank division?" Asher asked Lucius in disbelief.
"Precisely." He confirmed.
Asher sat slumped back on his chair with a little disbelief in his gaze. Such a thing was unheard of. Even he who had SIX abilities was still struggling to breakthrough the A-rank barrier, so it was quite understandable why he couldn't believe people his age could make it that far with only one.
In Ansel Academy, there were five distinct class groups, or ranks divided by a colour system.
The first and lowest ranked group being Red, followed by Yellow, Blue, Violet and finally Black. The Black ranks were abnormalities that no one on Ansel really knew about. Where they came from, what families they belonged to and even how they came to be was a complete mystery.
A mystery only the Dean /President himself had knowledge about.
People just knew that along the years of Ansel's advancement, THEY showed up. It was like they popped up out of nowhere, without invitation or warning.
And although the other class divisions knew next to nothing about those people, they were aware that the Black ranks were definitely not a myth.
———
Asher left Lucius' office for somewhere else.
His official days in the academy would start a week after the arrival of the black ranks, and according to what Lucius had told him, that would take quite a while.
Fortunately, Asher had things to do anyway. After all, he was working on a project that if it ends well, will increase his power by folds. That way, even if his Soul Constrictor Fabric deactivates again, he wouldn't be as week as to rely on 'someone else' to fight his battles.
But before working on his 'project', there was a place Lucius had asked him to check out. And with what Lucius told him about that place, Asher couldn't resit the offer.
As he treaded gently through the Neath province's landmark forest, moving away from where Lucius stayed, Asher suddenly heard a voice from behind him.
"Hey boy! I'm gonna eat you!"
Asher turned his head in the direction of the voice. But when he did, all he saw was a wide and narrow pond with trees scattered around it, there was no trace of intelligent life as far as he could tell.
"That was weird." He said, but continued his walk. Time was of the essence.
But as soon as every trace of Asher was gone, a small purple and yellow frog jumped out of the water. The small frog was only big enough to fit in a man's palm.
"What'd you do that for Sapphire?!" The frog suddenly started yelling words like a human being. And from the way his voice sounded, one could easily guess that it was his voice Asher had heard.
"You've got your fish smell all over my face." It complained again.
At his bothersome nagging, a blue carp stuck it's head out of the water. "I covered your mouth because you weren't thinking straight, Shen." The carp itself sounded like a middle aged woman.
"If you wanted to do something as stupid as eat a human's flesh first thing after sleeping for who knows how long, pick wisely!" She blasted him with a rapid complaint of her own.
"What are you talking about?" The frog rubbed it's mouth on the floor.
"Didn't you look at the boy's eyes?" She asked, but didn't wait for the frog's answer anyway. "They reminded me so much of the eyes of those Soul eaters. You're lucky he didn't see you."
"Soul eater?" The frog paused for a while, but later shook the thought out of his head.
"First it's the Sator's Golden Sand temple you mysteriously sensed, and now this? Haha, go back to sleep old woman, you're delirious." The frog waved it's sticky foot nonchalantly. "Now that you've chased my meal away, I have to go look for something else to eat in this... wait,
where the heck are we?"