"Welcome, participants. I am Vee," said the voice which seemed to speak directly into everyone's helmet.
"I am the AI responsible for handling this operation. Please relax as this procedure is harmless as it is conducted through transmitting electrical signals to your brain. However, depending on your class choice and the evolution following it, some of you would be objected to varying degrees of pain. But be at ease as this procedure is equipped with countermeasures which will cut your pain signals as they are merely the byproducts of your evolution and are non-threatening.
"After the commencement of the procedure, you will essentially black out and be taken to your subconscious in which your personal Revelation will occur, after which you will wake up and start your evolution. During this time, please remain rested and allow your transformation to complete.
"With that, I will begin the procedure," Vee concluded.
Following that was a brief silence, which turned the mood in the chamber solemn. Drai's heart palpitated as he waited for the moment of truth. Then he heard Vee's voice again.
"2498 Riv-Pon D1B8 Revelation. Commencing operation."
Immediately, Drai felt a slight jolt before losing consciousness.
***
In a certain room hundreds of kilometers away from Pontia, a middle-aged man was looking at a collection of data on his VC (virtual computer). His eyes and hands were moving rapidly, scrolling through the data as if his life depended on it.
The man was thin, wearing a lab coat with a set of black clothing underneath. There was a messy stubble on his face and there were dark circles beneath his black eyes. Interestingly, there were faint dark green lines on his skin and similar streaks among his black hair.
After a while, the man's movements halted. Apparently, he had gone through the whole data. The man then slumped in his chair before contemplating.
"Still nothing," the man said to himself. "Why is it so difficult? It's been years and no one even came close to the requirements. I know it's just empirical data, but it should be close enough to the actual data! At least the margin of error should be less than ten-percent. But even by overestimating the actual data with a twenty-percent margin, there still hasn't been any lead! Damn it!" the man shouted frustratedly.
Standing up, he walked around the room while mumbling and cursing. Then as the man seemed to have finished venting his frustration, he took a deep breath and exited the room.
Outside the room was a dimly lit hallway with multiple identical doors. As if to optimize space, the hallway could barely fit three people side by side and lack decorations. The man slowly entered another room which looked like a resting area, unlike the previous room which seemed like an office.
In the room were multiple sofas with small pillows, a coffee table, a fridge, a countertop with a coffee machine, and several other items which were meant for leisure.
The man poured a drink from the fridge and sat down on the sofa. After gulping his drink, he put down the glass then lied down along the sofa, his arms covering his face, looking tired.
"All my research… for what?" the man said helplessly. "In the end, it turned out to be a fruitless endeavor. Even after all the alterations, at its mildest it remains deadly! Even with my personal guidance, the potential requirements for it are just too much. There's still several days but will anything change? It will just be a series of disappointments just like last year and the year before it…
"How many years has it been since I've started searching… only to find nothing…"
The man was lost in his lament. His previously fierce eyes became dull, searching for an answer from the void.
Suddenly, the comm on his wrist rang. The man glanced at it but didn't answer the call. He couldn't bring himself to care about other matters today. He wanted to escape from life for a while, at least until he could find a reason to move on. The call continued to ring even after several minutes. This made the man stupefied and angry as he wondered who could be so obnoxious and couldn't read between the lines.
In his vexedness, he wanted to block the caller. But as he saw the caller ID, he was stunned.
'Quincy? The guy who's always holed up in his tower like a hermit and never shows up to conventions is waiting so long for me to answer his call?' the man thought perplexedly. He knew Quincy well. Quincy would rather mate with a beefaro than waste his "precious" research time. Then, as if having a premonition, the man hurriedly answered the call.
"Quincy! Tell me, what do you have for me?" the man urged.
Surprised yet delighted by the lack of cumbersome greetings, Quincy replied amusedly, "Yo, Ravi. Your boy, I have him. Vee informed me just now. Pontia, Drai Varz. He should be out with the scouts soon. I'll send you the details after this call."
Ravi was stunned momentarily, not believing what he was hearing. Fate sure was fickle. Just when he decided to stop searching, Quincy said he found him.
'But how did he know I stopped looking?' Ravi thought suspiciously. 'Is there a bug somewhere in here or did he plant one on me when we last met? Ah, whatever. In the end it helped me anyway.'
"Pontia? Drai Varz? Are you sure?" Ravi questioned doubtfully as he knew how seemingly impossible the benchmark was. He was elated to hear the news but didn't want to be overly expectant just to fall into disappointment again later.
"I'm ninety-percent sure even after calculating the potential empirical and human error," Quincy answered confidently. "Consider this my overdue payback for your help with the triangulation in my PSC-integration research. When the results are out, you can bring him to visit me. I'm also intrigued whether your research turns fruitful and replicable on a larger scale. I'll give him something nice in return regardless of the results."
"Thank you, Quincy. I'll make sure to stop by," Ravi gratefully replied. Although Quincy said this was payback, Ravi knew what he did back then was a rather minor matter, at least by Quincy's standards. Yet, for Ravi this was the key to his life research, his magnum opus! At this moment Ravi felt that Key Quincy truly lived up to his moniker.
"Okay, I'll be going then," Quincy said flatly after which he hung up.
'It seems like now I owe Quincy one,' Ravi thought. 'I better hurry since Pontia's quite far. Luckily, it's still inside the country. No time for shower. When I let the boy know what's in store for him, he'll gladly bear with this stinky old man,' Ravi thought gleefully. His dull eyes seemed to regain their luster.
Then, Ravi rushed out of the room, preparing to depart for Pontia.
***
Drai was currently staring at a vast emptiness. He was a mere passenger here in his subconscious, unable to control his awareness nor the surroundings.
Then a scene slowly emerged. The backside of a burly man wielding a giant double-bladed axe could be seen. He was walking through a sparsely grown forest of towering trees before stopping in front of one and started hacking it down. His axe whistled, traveling in an arc before smashing the tree trunk with a thundering clap. Even with such a powerful blow, it only whittled the trunk by less than a tenth of its width.
The man continued to hack repeatedly until it reached a point where the whittled trunk was struggling to bear the weight of the tree. Then the man lifted his axe above his head with the flat side facing the trunk before bringing it down, slamming it onto the unsteady trunk.
With a cracking sound, the towering tree finally came crashing down, smashing into the ground with such force that the land trembled. The man steadied his breath before turning around.
"Hahaha! How is it Drai? Daddy's strong, right?" Daro shouted smilingly while waving his huge axe.
Then the scene blurred and changed into a new one. It was a fighting arena in a colosseum. A blonde slim woman was battling a big man in the middle of the arena while being watched by thousands of people. They were fighting barehanded, but their strikes shimmered as if showcasing their might.
The woman was agile and moved around gracefully while hurling a flurry of blows. On the other hand, the man was barely moving but was able to defend his weak points while tanking the rest of the blows with his body.
The woman seemed to have an upper hand as the man was put into a passive stance. Then without warning, the woman's punch which had repeatedly slammed into the man's upper arms was met by the man's fist instead.
This one punch smashed the woman's arm away, making her stumble groggily due to the momentum of her arm and the pain accompanying it.
It was at this moment that the man dashed forward and grabbed the woman by her neck.
"I… I've… lost," the woman struggled to speak while being choked. She knew that the man could've ended her badly just by pressing down on her neck. If this were a death match, she would've died the moment his hands got a hold of her.
The man released the woman then checked out his bruises before looking at the audience and raising his arms victoriously.
A figure suddenly flew into the skies of the arena. Smiling widely to the audience in his glamorous robe, he declared loudly in an exaggerated fashion, "Our winner tonight…! Once again showing us what overwhelming strength could do… give your applause to the one and only… MIGHTY MIKE!"
A rumbling applause ensued before the scene blurred once more.
In Drai's subconscious, scenes of memories kept appearing one after another. Drai was immersed in witnessing these scenes, not that he had any control whatsoever. But amidst his immersion, he could feel something bubbling inside him. It was as if each scene triggered a reaction from deep inside his soul.
This feeling was barely noticeable at first, but grew stronger with each passing scene. And when this feeling became slightly overwhelming for Drai, the currently ongoing scene blurred again.
A new scene emerged which surprised Drai because it was not one of his memories.
He was looking at a white light traveling across the outer space in such speed that the nearby celestial bodies he passed by became blurred streaks. The scene followed this light for a while until it stopped a distance away from a particular planet. The planet was similar to Gaia as it was blue and green, indicating oceans and landmasses.
The white light turned out to be a person. From his back, he could be seen sporting a skin-tight white suit. His skin was glistening silver and he had spiky white hair. His body was toned but not overly burly like Drai. And interestingly, he was releasing a white flame-like aura unlike anything Drai had ever seen. Drai suddenly felt that this person wasn't human, or at least not part of the human race of Gaia. To Drai, this person's disposition felt otherworldly and ancient.
This person seemed to be staring at the planet as if in contemplation. Then what happened next baffled Drai.
The person roared and the aura surrounding him erupted. Then, his size grew rapidly. From what seemed to be a normal human height, he grew to 10 meters and didn't stop.
20 meters… 50 meters… 100 meters… 500 meters… a kilometer… 5 kilometers…
Finally, after 10 kilometers in height, the growth stopped. Besides his size, the person looked exactly the same as before. It was strange how his clothes didn't rip apart. But Drai didn't have the capacity to notice this small detail as he was currently feeling dreadful upon seeing this massive being whose presence signaled an impending doom. If Drai weren't being forced by his subconscious to witness this scene, he would've instinctively run away bawling like a toddler.
Although by human standards the person was as huge as a tall mountain, he was extremely tiny compared to the blue planet in front of him. However, this didn't seem to bother the person as he gathered his right fist in front of him and flew toward the planet.
The scene didn't follow the person closely though, so Drai watched as the white light became smaller and smaller until it disappeared into the atmosphere. Then Drai saw a small flash on one of the landmasses. This flash turned into a massive explosion which could be seen clearly even from outer space, launching debris containing as much mass as that of a continent into the atmosphere. Then cracks appeared on the surface of the planet before a blinding light covered Drai's vision briefly before fading away.
Drai was figuratively sweating buckets as he stared at the space where a blue planet was recently situated. Scattered across the space were remnants of the devastated planet, leaving Drai with a heart-rending feeling.
A sense of loss enveloped Drai. With just one move from that being, a planet along with its countless inhabitants were obliterated.
'How many lives were lost? What led that person to do this? What if this calamity appeared before Gaia?'
Drai was left with many questions. He even tried convincing himself that this scene was fictional as its implications were tremendously horrendous!
While Drai was struggling with his thoughts, a white light suddenly appeared and grew larger until it stopped a distance away from Drai. The person was still in his transformation and didn't seem to be injured. The person floated in the silent space, looking right at Drai.
Drai shivered despite knowing that this was happening inside his mind. Then he suddenly gained an epiphany.
'This is strength… the pinnacle of strength that I have always been pursuing. And such tyrannical toughness too. The might to crush a planet in one move. The durable body able to freely navigate outer space and withstand the impact of his move,' Drai realized astonishedly.
'Can I reach such heights?' Drai began to wonder. 'If only I could reach it... is it even possible?'
'No matter what, I'll try to reach it! I want to be this powerful!'
With the birth of this desire, something inside Drai stirred. The previous bubbling feeling turned into a vortex, churning and changing the essence of Drai's existence.
As if noticing this, the otherworldly being smiled. Then he vanished along with the scene as Drai's vision went dark again.