Chapter 66: To the Dream City
Yesterday after some small talk Sara left unwillingly, casting an envious glance at Blade, Lilith, Eve, Sage, Death and Lucy,who immediately began another game of chess.
Of course, they didn’t forget to eat dinner, but it wasn’t purchased from the System Shop; it was the takeout he had picked up from the Academy cafeteria.
Wasting food was not a good thing, after all.
Everyone ate without much complaint. Of course, he also bought another five sets of fifty Apple Juices.
[Cash: 4,310,309,507 SC (4.3 Billion)]
It put a tiny dent in his bank balance and he would soon need to find a way to earn more cash to maintain this lifestyle.
But looking at his energy reserves, he felt it was definitely worth it.
[Energy Value (EV): 7,992]
These juices helped him efficiently recover his EV.
Every cup he and his friends drank helped regenerate his reserves. After the intense battle at the city wall, it had dropped to 4,875 EV.
Hence, he felt it was worth the cost.
He felt a little like a ’Pay-to-Win’ player right now.
Night: (¬‿¬)
Tomorrow, he would be needing those reserves again, as he planned to farm as much EXP as possible at the city wall.
Unlike the others, he would have to gain six times the experience of a normal person for each level. If he didn’t want to lag behind the rest of the class, he had to start aggressively grinding.
He went to the bedroom and slept. He needed sleep, unlike his friends who seemingly had no need for such things.
Apparently, summons only needed rest if they took damage; if they were perfectly fine, they didn’t require sleep at all.
As for Blade... well, she was a Unique lifeform, so maybe she just naturally needed less rest.
Soon night drifted of to sleep....
Night:
( ˘ω˘ )zZ
...
When he woke up with a wide yawn, he looked up at the vintage alarm clock he had bought from the System Shop yesterday before sleeping.
It was 6:00 AM right now. He had set it to ring at 6:30 AM just in case he slept in.
He got up, disabled the alarm and went to freshen up.
He changed into a white hoodie, white shorts and flip-flops. He had bought them and a few other casual things in the Shop yesterday.
They were mundane items and came incredibly cheap.
When he walked out into the main hall, he saw Sage, Lucy, Eve, Lilith, Blade and Death all intensely focused.
On the magical chessboard Sage, Eve, and Lilith’s pawns were on one side, while Blade, Death and Lucy’s pawns were on the other. Both factions were currently engaged in an epic fight.
He raised his eyebrows in surprise.
Lucy and Death were actually on the same team?
When he looked closer at the board, he quickly realized why.
Despite appearances, they were in fact losing and losing pretty badly, too.
The way Eve and Lilith’s pawns moved now was worlds apart from what they had been capable of just yesterday.
And Sage’s pawn moved with a fluid finesse he didn’t even know was physically possible given the game’s difficulty.
While Blade, Lucy and Death had undeniably improved a lot, it was nothing compared to Eve, Lilith, and Sage trio.
Rubbing his eyes, he wondered exactly what was happening.
Night: ( ⊃ω- )
He wanted to stay and see how the match would end and to gauge just how much they had improved.
After all, improvement in this game directly translated to improvements in real life as well.
But looking down at his watch, he saw it was already 6:40 AM.
Sighing, he left for class.
Now he understood how Sara had felt yesterday.
...
In the classroom, shortly after that flash of silver light had streaked past the window, Teacher Mike had left in a hurry.
He even abruptly declared today a holiday, repeatedly emphasizing to the students to go straight back to their homes safely.
He also told them that something important might happen soon, so they had to remain combat-ready just in case, but he completely refused to explain any further.
....
Outside the Academy, anxious parents had already arrived at the front gates in worry. All of them were powerful Awakeners themselves and they had noticed the flash of silver light stopping very close to the Academy grounds.
....
Night returned back home, only to see Sara waiting for him in the living room with a worried expression. She had even forced the gang to pause before they could start another chess game.
As he entered, Night asked, "Are you not busy? You must have a double load of work to deal with because of that flash of light that happened today."
Sara nodded, looking visibly exhausted. "This is not my real physical body. This is a Soul Projection."
Night blinked. "Soul Projection?"
Sara sighed. "It’s a little too soon for you to know about it."
Night gave her a questioning look. ( ﾟ.ﾟ) ?
Sara shook her head. "I am not joking. Besides, I have come here with an urgent matter."
Blade crossed her arms, interrupting. "Let’s hear it already. I refuse to admit defeat to these kids who are not even a year old yet!"
Blade: ( ╬ Ò ▃ Ó ) ⚔️
Night’s lips twitched. So you guys lost after all. Even after talking all that big stuff about being ’Unique Being’ the other day.
Even Sara managed a soft chuckle. Even she had been shocked when she saw the state of the board upon arriving.
These robotic twins and that tiny baby monkey were absolutely no joke.
She turned back to Night and grew serious. "Something seems to have happened in the background and the World Council has suddenly ordered us to open the Inheritance Ground today; a month before the originally set date."
As the others listened closely, she focused entirely on Night. "Yesterday, I told you that to awaken a new Aspect, you needed to enter a Tutorial, survive a Special Dungeon or encounter some insanely lucky opportunity."
"This Inheritance Ground is that kind of possibility."
Night immediately looked excited.
Sara continued her explanation.
"Every time the Inheritance Ground appears, it operates under a strict set of rules. One rule is always the same: a person can only enter it once in their entire life. But the other rules fluctuate and are different each time."
"This time, when we activated the Inheritance Ground’s gateway, we got to read the new rules."
"It is a little concerning... especially for you."
Looking at him with worry, she said, "The primary rule this time is that no external support is allowed. Meaning, your summons cannot join you inside."
Night instantly grew cautious. "Is this Inheritance Ground really that important?"
Sara nodded firmly. "It’s a System Event, very similar to the initial Tutorial, but it generally involves far less direct fighting and is much more of a luck-based and trial-based event."
"After you return safely, I’ll teach you exactly how to join a Tutorial, but this specific event is too important to pass up."
Night looked back at his summons. Eve stepped forward, her robotic eyes glowing softly. "Master, please be careful."
The others also nodded encouragingly.
Lucy added fiercely, "Spend all the SC if you need to survive!"
Blade crossed her arms. "I would have given you a special blade for emergencies; unfortunately, this trial bans external support. I can only wish you luck."
Sara advised, "This trial will go on for one week. You can recall your friends into your soul space just in case."
Night shook his head. "They would be far too bored locked inside there for a week."
Death stepped close, "Master, I would never be bored inside you."
Death: ( ¬ ‿ ¬ )
Night expertly ignored her and said, "You guys just enjoy yourselves out here in the house. In case something truly dangerous happens, unsummon yourselves immediately to be safe."
While he was at it, he transferred one billion SC into Lucy’s personal account, just in case they needed to buy anything while he was gone.
Sara smiled. "The main entrance to the Inheritance Ground is located in the Dream City. The other students will be traveling there with their parents. As for you, I will personally be dropping you off."
Night thought about that for a second. I wonder how it feels to actually have parents.
While he technically had fragmented memories of a past life, he genuinely couldn’t relate to the feeling of having a caring family.
Noticing his slight daze, Sara smirked warmly. "Don’t worry, with me here, you don’t need any lousy parents anyway."
She patted his back comfortingly, nodded to the others in the room and placed one hand on his shoulder. "We will be leaving now."
As Night waved a quick goodbye to his friends, Sara teleported them away.
...
Looking at the empty spot where they had just stood, the remaining group was left in silence.
Blade sighed heavily. "What the heck do we do now that we have an entire week of nothing to do?"
( ˘▽˘ ) =3
Death replied, "Going outside into the city looks incredibly risky right now, judging from what Sara just said."
(◕‿◕)
Lucy hummed thoughtfully. "If only we had something addictive to pass our time indoors..."
( ˘ω˘ ) ﾌﾑﾌﾑ
She slowly turned her gaze back to the chessboard, which now resembled a destructive mini war zone.
"Would you guys look at that? I seem to have a game artifact that is nothing short of divine!"
( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)
Blade smirked, cracking her knuckles. "Hehe... I like divine."
( ≖ ͜ʖ ≖ )
Death raised her chin haughtily. "I am divine."
( ✧ ≖ ͜ʖ ≖)
Then, the three of them immediately resumed their brutal match, completely forgetting about the outside world.
Looking at their competitive antics Eve, Lilith, and Sage quickly hopped back onto their side of the board and got into action as well.
(ง ͠° _ ͠°)ง ⚔️
....
In a flash, Sara and Night appeared in a massive hall.
The other academy kids and their parents watched them materialize and looked surprised, probably recognizing the Headmaster Sara.
Night looked around in awe. He saw thousands of students gathered together. It seemed like the students from all twelve cities had been summoned here.
Sara leaned in and whispered, "All the elite students from every Academy on Earth are here." She then added seriously, "Soon, the adults will have to leave the premises, and only you students will be allowed to remain here."
"Zora should be responsible for opening the gate today. You should follow her lead from now on."
"She is the ruler of this Dream City. Also, take this."
She discreetly slipped a small charm into his palm, whispering, "As long as you keep this on your person, even she should not be able to detect anything abnormal about you."
Night took the charm and securely tucked it deep into his pocket.
He was immensely grateful to Sara for remembering; he had completely forgotten about the issue of him appearing as a disaster in detection arrays.
Then, he and everyone else in the hall heard a pleasantly voice echo through the massive room: "Everyone, please assemble near the front platform. We will be opening the gate shortly."
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