Walking past the angry Nat, Atlas calmly took his stance opposite Aurelia.
'Stay calm.', it was hard to stay calm with noises and mumbled words coming from Nat. With all the noise, he was finally able to stay calm, after all, he has been training for nine years. If he was unable to stay calm, then the years spent training would have all gone to waste.
'Illusions are basically meant for trickery, this shouldn't be hard.', with that thought, he ran towards his opponent.
'Brave.', Aurie thought as she waited for her opponent to arrive. She had placed herself beside a bulb, in order to blind her opponent. Behind her eyes, several thoughts and calculations were running through her mind.
Calculating the amount of time she had left before her opponent arrived, she divided her mind to calculate the time and to figure out her opponent's next move.
She thought of several ways of using illusions, but none of them were battle starters. Feeling that she had ran out of time, she decided to focus on defense.
Atlas had crossed the gap between in a few seconds, he bent down to give Aurie a punch to the stomach. His fist easily connected, pushing his opponent back a bit.
'Fuck!', from Aurelia's perspective, Atlas had simply went in for a simple punch to the face that could be easily blocked and that's what she did. She blocked, but Atlas, or the illusions, dissipated into a puff of smoke and she suddenly felt pain on her abdomen.
She lost her footing for a bit and immediately tried to recover it, but her opponent obviously didn't give her the chance.
Atlas continuously rained punches over her body without taking a break. Feeling the pain all over her body, she immediately focused on the bulb beside her to blind her enemy.
Before she could detonate the bulb, Nat immediately came in to end the spar.
"Why are you ending the match?! I almost got him!", Aurie fumed.
Looking at the resemblance between her attitude and Aurelia's, Nat grinned.
"Well, it's obviously because you lost.", Nat paused to take in the sight of Aurelia's anger boiling. With her smile widening a bit, she added, "Even if you decided to break the bulb, it wouldn't have done anything."
Aurelia was able to calm herself down and took a glance at Atlas with a questioning gaze. Feeling her gaze, he activated his ability and in front of eyes, another set of eyes were formed.
Aurelia finally understood how she would have lost the match. The extra set of eyes were illusions that blocked Atlas vision. So even if she managed to detonate the bulb before Nat called the match off, it wouldn't have changed the result of the fight. Aurelia signed as she pondered.
"What's up with the minute long fight?", Dom asked as he walked to the group.
Both matches had taken a little more than a minute to end. Dom had expected both matches to go on for way longer than that. He couldn't help but feel disappointed.
Nat's mouth opened and closed back. She didn't want to say something she'd regret saying.
"Yeah, yeah. It's not like you last a minute with Nat.", Aurelia said. Without waiting for Dom to respond, she added
"It's already late, we have to get to our Dom before curfew."
"Curfew? Since when was there a curfew?", Atlas asked while playing with his illusions.
"On the timetable, there's a curfew attached at the bottom.", Aurelia signed as she began picking her things.
" Shit, I didn't even look at that.", Dom awkwardly scratched his head. He wasn't the only one that didn't pay attention to it, both Nat and Atlas just skimmed through the dates and left it.
They agreed to meet the next day at the entrance of the Hall and began packing their things. They said their goodbyes as they made their way to the exit. By that time, only a few people still remained in the training Hall.
.....
Dom entered his room and immediately jumped on his bed to lay down. He was tired, not physically but emotionally, due to the revelations, wrong revelations and stress in trying to activate his ability.
While the others were sparring, Don focused on trying his best to activate his ability but it just kept ending up in failure.
"When are you going to activate for abyss sake.", Dom cursed. He felt that the closer he got to not activating his ability, the likelihood of him crashing out.
In the end, he just sighed. He got up from his bed, dismissed the stress and headed for the bathroom.
"I forgot to take their number.", he said as he placed his contact lens on the sink. He brushed, took his bath and went back to bed.
...
'Is this a dream?', Dom didn't know how long he had been stuck in his dream. There was nothing but darkness in his field of vision. No matter where he turned, there was nothing else but darkness.
After what felt like eternity, he was finally able to a different colour. Squinting his eyes, he saw what appeared to be a dot of white in the darkness. Over time, the dot grew bigger and bigger until it finally filled the darkness.
...
Dom slowly opened his eyes, the light of the sun almost blinding him. Finally gained back his sight, he looked at the clock and noticed the time was already a few minutes past seven.
"Shit! Assembly is at eight!", with that, he immediately ran to take a bath. Opening the huge wardrobe, he brought out one of the 8 uniforms that was already placed in it.
He quickly put on his uniform and lens and headed out of the room.
...
[At the entrance of the training hall]
"Mr. Tardy finally decides to arrive.", Nat said as she looked at the approaching Dom. Without waiting for Dom to take a breath, they all began running to the assembly.
No words were exchanged between friends and they finally arrived at the assembly, a minute close to being late.
The Hall was bustling with students making a cacophony of noises. Dom and his group took their seats and not long after, a man adorned in a suit, walked in.
The room was silenced as the students felt the aura of the man that just walked in. Now that they were Awakened, they could feel the area and threat posed by him better.
He calmly walked to the stage. "Good day everyone, I'm Ken and I'm your new assembly head.", the man, named Ken, announced.
The students already expected a different head since Aziel made it obvious that he was going to be removed from his post.
"Congratulations on your awakening. No matter how useless you think your ability is, it is still useful.", Mr. Ken continued.
Dom failed to pay attention to Mr. Ken's speech, because unlike the others, he was able to sense something else from Mr. Ken, something sinister.
Surrounding the assembly head, was a kind of gaseous substance, coloured navy blue, that was his aura, but behind the aura, there was also a completely black smoke radiating out of Mr. Ken.
He was pulled out of his thoughts by a sudden nudge from Nat. "Hey, you okay?"
"Yes, I'm fine. I just thought of something.", he replied.
"Mind sharing?" Nat curiously asked.
"No." Dom plainly said and focused his attention back on Mr. Ken.
"And that will be all for the assembly. Let's begin your first lecture.", behind Mr. Ken, a huge screen slowly descended from the ceiling.
'I didn't even hear what he said.', Dom signed as he activated an in his lens to keep track of what Mr. Ken was about to say. The app was a recording app that was able to differentiate between noise and different voices. He simply had to pick the voice that matched Mr. Ken's.
"From now on, I'll be addressed as Professor Ken and I'll be the one taking you General knowledge.", Mr. Ken, now Professor Ken, said as he looked at all the students.
"I'll be taking you on common terms known to Awakened.", he began. "First we have the term arcanum. I'm pretty sure most of you keep referring to it as your ability, but it's called arcanum.
Arcanum is what you refer to as ability or power. There are cases of awakening their Arcana. Arcana being the plural of arcanum.
It is possible for someone to awaken more than one arcanum. The highest amount of arcanum held by a single individual is four.", he paused as he looked at all the students. "Any questions?", Professor Ken asked.
What Professor Ken was teaching his students was common knowledge that they had already been taught, so there was hardly going to be any question.
"Go on.", Professor Ken said as he looked in the direction of a boy who held his hand up. He was sitting in the secluded part of the class.
The assembly that they had decided to use for the General Knowledge class was huge. Seats were arranged in a descending manner. The seats took half of the class, while the other half was partly taken by the huge screen and the stand with a huge space between the seats and stand.
Even with the huge number of seats, almost all seats were taken, except for the seats surrounding the boy who just raised his hand.
"What happens to those who don't get an ability.", noticing the error in his words, the boy immediately corrected himself. "So-sorry, I mean arcanum."
Dom heard a few laugh from the right side of the class. "Orphan slum.", he heard someone say. Hearing those words made Dom grind his teeth together, anger rising within him.
He wasn't the only one that reacted that way, almost all the orphans that heard those words immediately became angry. They looked at the right side of the room, where their polar opposites, the rich kids were seated. Their eyes throwing daggers at their sworn enemy.
"Well, if after the awakening, you don't get any arcanum, then there is still a chance of re-awakening", Professor Ken replied.
Hearing those words, Dom dismissed the rich kid as his ears perked up, his full attention now on the professor.
"Some of you were probably not informed, but there is a chance of re-awakening. People who have an arcanum from the first awakening also have the chance of re-awakening to have another arcanum.", hearing Professor Ken's words, there was a sudden uproar from the left side of the class.
Dom had attended public institutions and he wasn't informed about the possibility of re-awakening. Considering the type of institution he attended, where the teachers were just lazy individuals who were paid minimum wage, it wasn't that shocking that he wasn't informed.
To stop the sudden uproar, Professor Ken simply applied more mental pressure, from his aura, on his students.
'I need to learn how to do that.', with the noise settled, Dom went back to paying attention on his lecturer.