Alesha joined the crowd of students as they meandered in the general direction the wizard had indicated, forming a sloppy line. She could pretty much understand what was happening (she had read about this phenomenon called "hero summoning" many times in various manwha and online novels), but she couldn't understand how she had gotten here.
She thought back to her misadventures on the island where she and some other participants had been forced to play an altered version of the classic 'Werewolf' game. After that, she had fallen asleep, dreamt something about floating fake stars, and then… was that when she'd transitioned to dreaming about Derek and Deer Doctor Hyde? She'd definitely been asleep for that. Sure, it was strange how lucid that dream had been, but unless Zorhellian had conducted the Story in some sort of dream space… actually, that was possible, she supposed. Though it didn't seem likely. It was much more plausible that the strange events that had kept occurring lately had triggered an unusual dream.
As the haphazard line inched forward, Alesha continued trying to figure out what had happened while she was sleeping for her to end up here. What was going on? Had she been summoned on top of a summon? Maybe this Hero Summoning had mistakenly brought her here along with all these students, and she had escaped Zorhellian's death games?
No, if that was the case, then why was she in a student's uniform as well? On top of that, she was pretty sure she'd heard Zorhellian's name among the various whispers earlier. With that in mind, it was more likely that this "Hero Summoning" was the Story the participants were being forced to act out this time. It was certainly a popular storyline in Old Earth literature. Was it popular among aliens as well?
[Ughhhhh,] Rogork groaned once more. That's right, Rogork! Maybe it knew.
Hey, Rogork! Alesha thought. Do you know how we ended up here? What happened while I was asleep?
[hgrmfmrmrmrmmr,] the System said unintelligibly.
…Huh? Alesha asked.
[... I dunnooooo,] the System whined, sounding loopy. [Somethiiiiing's wrong with meeeeeee]
What the heck? Alesha thought. Since when could the System have something wrong with it? It had always worked perfectly before, even when it chose to be obstinate. She tried several more times and asked questions in a bunch of different ways, but Rogork's response was always either some kind of unintelligible nonsense or childish complaining about its condition being off. She had a bad feeling about this.
Turning her attention to the front of the line, she could see the first few students talking with various suit-wearing attendants, then being led to another part of the room to wait. The attendants seemed to be sorting the students. She was curious as to why and could think of a few possible categories (by Class type or specialty, for example), but from this distance, she couldn't tell what it was for sure.
An excited shout drew Alesha's gaze to the front of the line again. "He's a Symbiotic Mage!!"
At that, a ripple of excited whispers went through the natives in the room. The King rubbed his beard and nodded in approval. The "Hero" in question, a skinny young man with dark hair and taped-together glasses, was swarmed by attendants and practically dragged to the back of the room. Alesha hadn't noticed this before, but now that she looked again, she could see that each group that the Heroes were sorted into had a world native standing patiently.
The Symbiotic Mage was brought in front of a woman clad from head to toe in white. Her face was hidden in the cowl of a snakeskin cloak with a feather accent, beneath which she wore a sleek mask whose only holes were the eyes. She wore white scale armor, including a breastplate, greaves, armor skirt, and gauntlets. Underneath the armor was some kind of white cloth. A simple rapier sat on her left hip, peeking out from the depths of her cloak. Nervously, the boy tried to start up a conversation, but she curtly told him to wait for others to join.
At her response, the room seemed to break out of a trance and the Appraisals proceeded as before.
There were a few other Classes that the natives seemed to get especially excited about. These included Dragon Knight, Elementalist, Master Alchemist, Great Sage, and Saintess. Alesha was really curious about what other Classes people had, but unfortunately, except for the ones that made an uproar, the Classes weren't announced.
As she waited, Alesha noticed several things that she hadn't before. First was the sheer quantity of other "Heroes." Were there usually this many people caught up in "Hero Summonings?" There were easily over a hundred students here. Another thing was that a good portion of them were visibly not human. She could see several people with animalistic features, such as a cat's ears and tail, the head of a lizard, or antelope horns. She had never heard of a Hero Summoning where the Heroes were anything other than human.
That made her wonder about her own species. She'd already subconsciously noted the lack of her draconic features (namely, the feathers, wings, scales and tail that had appeared in her last evolution), but was she human? She had been feeling somewhat sluggish. While she had at first assumed that was due to exhaustion or being half-asleep, she was fully awake now, and her continuing lack of vigor gave her a nagging feeling that something might be going on. She still wasn't sure, but the fact that she was missing her draconic features reminded her of Zorhellian's first "Story" in his cruel "Storytelling Games." The same thing had happened then; her species had temporarily become human (well, werewolf, if you wanted to get technical) for the sake of the "plot." Was her current weakness due to having had her species changed again?
She tried to summon her Status Screen in order to check, but to her horror, nothing happened. What the hell?? Suddenly, she remembered her dream, in which Derek had been annoyed by an endless series of "glitchy windows" that appeared whenever a Soul was Harvested by one of his Paranormal Events. Those glitchy windows had looked very similar to what she would expect the Seed of Chaos System's windows to look like if they malfunctioned.
Was this somehow connected? In her dream, Rogork was broken, even if Derek hadn't known anything about Rogork to begin with. Now, in reality, Rogork seemed to have either regressed to the mental age of a young child or somehow gotten high and loopy to the point of incomprehensibility. More worrisome still, even though Alesha knew how to summon the Status Screen, it wouldn't appear. It scared her more than she would have expected.
What the hell was going on?!?