The Awakening Unknown - Chapter 3

“What happened out there?” Alec asked.

“Upperclassmen playing another prank!” I replied

“No–not that, I mean what happened on the train?”

“That old lady was staring at us, along with that, her skin was fake and they disappeared soon after I told you to stop talking.”

He was completely drained, after coming back here from the train; we walked straight into our upperclassmen pranks.

We were sprayed with water, tied up by a rope, and chased for around two minutes before we hid.

He took off his jacket and hung it on the clothes rack. Our dorms were rather large, if anybody were to see the college’s dorms they would think it was a condo or apartment instead.

After carefully placing my shoes at the entrance, I laid on the couch exhausted from all of the walking and worrying.

“Tomorrow, we’re going to be preparing for the raid coming up in two days. To be honest, I’m a little excited.” He said.

“Yeah, in all honesty, I’m nervous,” I told him.

“Nervous, huh? It’s not like you to openly express your emotions like that, so what’s wrong?”

“…on that train, I saw two people. One was an elderly old lady, whose skin was prosthetic. The other was a middle-aged man wearing a long brown trench coat, he wore a torn brown hat, and also had filthy white gloves on.

When we began talking about the raid, I noticed the old woman look back first. The man tried pretending as if he wasn’t listening to us, but the train was still moving when he disappeared, soon after so did the lady.” I told him.

“I’ve rather seen you this concern with something like this. Do you want to report this to the school tomorrow?”

“It will probably be fine.” or so I thought. “I’m just curious as to who those people were.”

At that very moment, we heard a soft knock at the door. At first, it wasn’t very noticeable, the sound drowned out by the sound of our voices.

But the second knock was more firm and slightly louder.

I stood back up from the couch I was sitting on and walked over to the door. Looking through the peephole, all I was able to see was a figure of a female.

Unlocking all of the locks that kept the door close, I twisted the round doorknob opening the door.

“Hey, Abis!” the female said. I looked down to see Oma, one of my other friends I met in high school.

Looking at her, I asked, “Why are you here?” she looked up at me and moved me out of the way.

“You two got lucky being paired together in this large dorm!”

“Is your dorm any different?” Alec asked.

“Hmm, oh, no. But I wasn’t paired with anyone I know. Plus the girl that I was paired with is never there, so I can’t even make friends with her.”

She turned me, looking up at me she said, “I was hoping I could sleep here for tonight.”

“….Huh?”

“Why do you want to stay here?” Alec asked.

“We used to have sleepovers all the time, back when we were still in high school. Can we not now?” I said.

“Where will you sleep? This isn’t anything like high school.” I told her.

“You have that couch!” She said pointing, at our couch.

“I’m not letting a girl sleep on the couch! If you give me one good reason why you should stay here, I’ll give you my bed.”

“…I feel like I’m being watched.” She told me. “Every night when I go to lay down, I feel a pair of eyes staring at me. They feel lifeless and cold. And has been bothering for months.”

I looked at her, her story was so convincing. Her eyes spoke the truth, yet her voice did not.

At that point in time, I couldn’t tell whether she was lying to me or not. Even though her voice spoke lies, her eyes told the truth. Something was bothering her, so I gave in.

“Sigh, fine you can have my room. Just let me clean up first!” I told her.

“Wait! Where are you going to sleep, Abis?” Alec asked.

I scratched the back of my, opening my door. “The couch, where else will I sleep?”

In my mind, I knew what Alec was thinking. He too believed that whatever was watching Oma, would come here as well.

***

Arriving in class, there was already a large project set-up in the classroom. There were seats filled with strange orbs, paper with ancient markings written on them, but evermore, there were no desks in the classroom anymore.

The classroom was quite large. The room was designed to hold at the bare minimum of sixty-three students. Most classrooms outside of this university are not that large.

In fact, there were no dorms or even schools the size of the Uu0026A let alone classes.

Today we were going to prepare for our raid tomorrow. We were going to do things like sharpening and polishing our weapons, go over everything we learn this semester, practicing formations, and learn as much as we could about the gate we will be raiding.

“Alright, class, can you all follow behind me.” Professor Johnson said, leading us out of the classroom.

We walked through the wide hallways of Atum University.  Alec was beside me, and Oma caught up to us.

Oma wasn’t in our class, but she was also a first-year and every first-year was forced to be a part of this.

“Today you will start the day off relearning everything you learned through the course of this semester.” He told us.

Inside were the same chairs that were in the classroom when I first came in. The only noticeable difference being they had headsets attached to these. They were all lined up against the wall with the same amount of space between each of them for us to relax properly.

“All of you will attach yourselves to these headsets and will probably return even more information than you had before today. This machine will tell you everything you need to know in ten-minutes or less. It will explain everything about the gate we will be entering, the type of monsters, and even your weaknesses. Understood!”

“Yes!” We all said in unison.

Every seat had a designated person. Alec was seven seats down, but luckily Oma was right next to me.

“I guess mine will be two minutes because I have no weaknesses,” Oma told me.

I couldn’t help but let out a chuckle at what she just said. Ever since I met her, she has always been confident in her abilities. She was small but incredibly agile and strong.

She is also very skilled at many things, such as knitting, drawing, and anything precision-based.

“I’ll give you nine minutes!” I told her.

Two other professors walked into the classroom. One was Professor Smoker! Smoker was a nickname he earned before becoming a professor, and the other I forgot his name.

Professor Smoker was tall, built, and hairy. He always wore tightly fit shirts, and always kept his arms crossed. He had a scar that his stubble naturally covered and was once known as the great Tank Smoker.

The other professor was of average height, he had short brown hair and classes. He was very skinny and had no scars or blemishes on his face or body.

“Okay, now put the headset on!” Professor Smoker yelled.

«Headset on»

My surroundings looked identical to space. But instead of an empty black void with stars, it was blue. There were stars all around me and in front of me was a small blue screen.

«Name: Abis Uzun

Age 19

Height 182cm

Eye Color Crimson Gold (Rare)

Rank Unranked

ERROR, ERROR, ERROR»

For some odd reason, the blue screen that withheld all of my information became distorted, and a robotic voice screaming error appeared more and more the longer I stayed in there.

I tried tapping the screen to leave the space, but it became too distorted for me to touch.

«Malfunction, the system must be rebooted»

All I felt were three hands grabbing me. When I came too, everyone was already finished with their learning and were now staring at me.

“What went wrong? This machine was made specifically for him!” Professor Johnson said.

“Maybe it’s because he doesn’t have any abilities!” The other professor said.

“No that can’t be right! All of the other students without abilities were able to finish the tasks.” Professor Smoker rebuttal.

I opened my eyes to Oma and Alec sitting right beside me. The three professors were talking at the entrance of the door and all of the other students had already left.

“Are you okay Abis?” Alec asked me, while I was trying to sit up.

When I lifted my head, both Alec and Oma forced me back down onto Oma’s lap. “You may not like to be treated like this, but you almost died. You need to rest.” Oma told me.

“Almost died? I feel fine.”

“The machine malfunctioned for some strange reason. We tested your seat to see what the problem was, but everything was fine. Do you know anything that would be helpful?”

I looked at the professor and shook my head when I sat up my head became dizzy and it was hard for my focus.

“Out of nowhere, the machine started screaming Error into my ears. I tried to leave, but the screen became distorted and I couldn’t touch it anymore. I fell unconscious, and when I woke, you were all here.”

“Mr. Uzun, are you able to participate in tomorrow’s raid?” Smoker asked.

“Yeah, I’m fine. I just need some sleep.”

「End」