"cough cough"
"Where the hell am I? What is this incredible smell? And why does my body feel so bad?" a boy held back a scream.
He felt crushed, as if he were under a pile of rubble. The stench of rot and decomposition had discombobulated his sense of smell.
He tried to shake off whatever was crushing him, only to find himself unable to move.
After what seemed like hours, he somehow managed to pull himself up and out of the rubble.
Once he laid his head outside the pile, a faint light filled his vision and he involuntarily closed his eyes, turning his head to the side.
The stench of rot was even stronger, but the boy was almost numb at this point. He seemed to have lost his sense of smell because of how much stench he had breathed in over the past two hours.
Which was strange-where the hell had he gone? Why was he smelling this nauseating stench all around him? And what was this cacophony of strange sounds that permeated his surroundings?
Once his eyes had adjusted to the light again, the boy looked around. Then he finally understood.
"What the heck-"he could not even finish the sentence before a feeling of vomiting assailed him.
Yet except for a little liquid, nothing came out of his mouth.
With his eyes reddened, his head heavy, his arms trembling, and the rest of his body still embedded in the rubble, he finally saw him.
A dead body. A corpse lay there at his side, its limbs broken and blood, now dry, filling most of his body and clothes.
He reflexively moved his head, only to see another corpse, also filled with blood. Fear gripped his soul, his body reacted instinctively, trying to get away from it all, but he could not move, still stuck somewhere.
He lowered his head and, looking around better, finally realized where he was. He was not crushed by rubble, no. He was in a mass grave, crushed by the weight of other people's bodies. Some bodies looked fresher than others, but they all had one thing in common.
They were dead. There were no living beings there except him. Well, he was wrong. Surveying the surrounding scene in horror, the boy saw dozens of rats munching on the bodies, countless maggots hovering over the corpses, and untold numbers of flies flying around, making chaotic a place that was supposed to be as quiet as possible.
In their eyes this was a delicious feast.
With this thought in mind, the boy again gasped, but nothing came out of his mouth. His body was weak, devoid of strength, his mind a complete mess, and what he saw kept him pinned to the ground in terror.
"he...lp...me-e..." an imperceptible whisper escaped the young man's lips.
Yet, at that moment, a strong wind broke any possible hope of being heard by anyone.
That is, if there had been anyone nearby, but let's face it.
Who in their right mind should even be guarding such a place?
After hours trying to call for help, the bright-eyed boy fainted from exhaustion.
---
Ding Dong
The tolling of the bell marked the last possible day for boys under 18 to wake up naturally.
All kinds of students could be seen throughout the academy. Some were happy, some were less happy, some had a look of hatred and jealousy toward still other students. In short, there were a lot of feelings filling the courtyard of the academy.
In the center of it, a man with thick black hair and broad shoulders was flanked by a woman. The beauty of this woman was breathtaking, and all the students were enchanted by her. She was the principal of the academy.
Rose Redspine.
Hailed as a genius from an early age, Rose had awakened her class at only five years old, becoming the youngest awakened in the history of the Empire.
Not only that.
She had become the youngest principal of one of the four academies under the empire, earning her family not only prestige but also power by directly becoming dukes of the empire.
Count Redspine's family was never a weak family, and despite all the power they held and all the merit they earned, the empire never bothered to increase their status.
How so? There were dozens and dozens of families like the Redspine family, both in merit and power. None of them, however, could compare to the ducal families, the true swords of the empire.
All this changed with the awakening of Rose, who did not disappoint expectations and managed to reach Rank S in the shortest possible time. After all, her class was defined as the most powerful.
---
"Silence."
A mighty voice erupted from the man at Rose's side.
"Let only those who have not undergone a natural awakening come forward."
The black-haired man issued an order and, like trained soldiers, the young boys of the academy, those who did not naturally awaken, fell into line.
Agitation, hope and dissatisfaction were the main feelings that filled their faces.
Why should they be dissatisfied with awakening their power?
Simply because this method of awakening, called artificial, was not as good as the spontaneous method, also called natural.
Awakening could only occur in the first 18 years of life, after which the possibility of awakening was nil. Or at least in human history, not a single case of awakening after the age of 18 had been recorded.
Well, only one actually, but it happened so long ago that it was now a legend.
---
Emperor Ydra, awakened at the age of 24, was the only human being to defy what to this day was called common sense. In all textbooks Emperor Ydra was mentioned even when referring to his younger self. It was a form of respect for the strongest human being who ever existed.
Ydra was not born as an emperor, he became one. His legend still sung for generations and generations. The only human being to hold the title of emperor, despite being long gone. No one knew whether he was alive or dead, or whether he had ascended to another plane of existence.
It is his credit for unifying the human race under the banner of one empire, it is his credit for giving hope to living beings, and it is only his credit if human beings could enjoy this war-free life.
A man capable of subduing monsters of unimaginable power.
No one to date has been able to achieve such power.
Divine.
That was how his power was defined by human beings.
Nowadays, no one has ever seen someone who awakened once they crossed the age threshold of eighteen, which is why it was called impossible and not improbable.
---
Awakening was the name given to the process of obtaining a class.
Those who awakened naturally unlocked a stronger class in 90% of the cases than the artificially awakened. In the remaining 10% they unlocked an immensely stronger class.
The natural awakening ratio for humans was 1/100. That is, for every 100 humans, one of them was a natural awakener, and therefore significantly more powerful.
The Northern Academy was one of the four cardinal academies in the empire, it gathered talent from all the cities in the surrounding area, and the number of students graduating each year easily reached 10 thousand.
So statistically, out of 10 thousand students, there were 100 natural awakeners.
Specifically, this year there were 106.
Among them, few were ordinary citizens. Most of the natural awakeners were from noble families.
This was normal.
They had more resources at their disposal and received significant training and education from an early age.
And that is why the strong gained more and more strength and the weak became weaker and weaker.
In this world there was only one law.
The law of the strongest. The strong are winners, the weak are losers.
The academy was no exception.
The strong were revered, the weak blamed.
The only choice for an awakened ordinary citizen was to join a noble family or join the awakened guild.
Being noble did not imply that it was impossible to join the guild, but for those powerful families it was useless. Joining the guild gave you access to quests to earn money and materials, based on your Rank, and the most powerful noble families already had access to better materials.