"Now, the real question is," The man said and continued, ignoring my silence.
"Are you ready for more?" And that question, THAT VERY QUESTION, was enough to terrify my very existence. With another ever-scribbling white grin on his masked face,
"If you are, then we need to talk." He spoke and pushed forward the ominous golden clock towards me; the clock was none other than the CLOCK OF FATE.
With a deep breath, the man leaned back before his gaze landed back on me.
"This," the man mumbled and continued.
"This contains my power." The man said when the clock of fate floated right in front of my face, inciting me to grab hold of it.
'I should grab hold of it. If I have this, then my powers will return, and I won't have to worry about things going wrong ever again; if they do, I will just kill myself and regress to the past, making things right. Yeah, if I have this...' With those thoughts in my mind, I looked back and forth at the man and the clock with the slightest hint of hesitation.
And then I grabbed it,
"Hahahahaha. Go along." The man abruptly laughed. It was a charming laugh, but it was enough to send chills down my spine.
'This contains my power.' The man's words resounded in my mind again, and with a violent shudder, my grip around the clock loosened. Because as far as I remembered, every horrible thing that happened in my life was due to this clock, and with that thought, many other thoughts began to run amok, with many what-ifs overwhelming my mind, and amid those, my entire life flashed in my mind, thousands and thousands of years of suffering, up to the movement where my Frost Devil form cracked, unable to handle the divinity, everything flashed in my mind, and extreme rage, at a level I never thought I would feel, bubbled up in me,
Only to burst and disappear completely by the next instance.
"You are most intriguing." The man said with a laugh and released an unbearable amount of killing intent, forcing me onto my knees as my entire consciousness trembled violently as if it would break apart anytime soon.
"Now, let me tell you a story." The man mumbled, walked towards me with his hands in his pocket, and gazed down at me with an indifferent look on his masked face, but I could feel that the man in front of me was extremely disappointed in me and was feeling disgusted by my pathetic state, as rage bubbled up in me again for reasons I didn't know. It was only then that I realised that I was feeling different emotions even though I was away from Isha.
But as if ignoring my pathetic existence, the man continued to look down on me, releasing an unbearable amount of killing intent that seemed to render me unable to breathe.
"Long ago, this naive vessel of mine spoke about devising new spells and bringing new forms of magic into the world, so he did, unable to contain his curiosity, and devised many new spells and spread them across the divine realm, hoping for the betterment of humanity, but did you know?" The man said and abruptly leaned down, glaring at me.
"That the gods never forget? And that every new thing they learn becomes their trait from the past?" He asked, and before I could muster up the courage to answer, he continued.
"Due to that being the case, all the new spells and different magic devised by my vessel turned into skills that those gods then began to grant to their recipients as if they were the ones who created it, and" At those words, the intensity of the man's killing intent rose sharply, and that ominous grin on his face widened.
"It wasn't long until a heaven-defying destruction descended upon the world, which then created," The man said and leaned back as his killing intent continued to rise until I was on the verge of losing my consciousness.
"Me." That was the last word that I heard before losing my consciousness.
***
A week later.
News about the village massacre incident began to spread across all the powerhouses, and though they were slightly wary about the being who did that, if they had a chance, they would put a leash on him and pin him down to their families.
Since the territory wars among the noble households were at an all-time high, they needed all the power they could have in their hands; if only the academy didn't restrict scouting talents, almost all the commoner, talented students would have already had at least one noble house's backing.
All the surviving people of the other world were teleported directly to the Academy's entrance, which was the set teleportation destination, after which they got admitted according to their experience in fighting against monsters and humans. If spoken bluntly, they were awfully disappointed with the people of the other world; many seemed to have lived very comfortably under someone else's protection that they didn't even know how to protect themselves properly against unpredictable beings, such as humans, sentient beasts, and monsters.
Though many claimed that even the monsters in their world were unpredictable, almost none believed them. Of course, why would they believe them when they couldn't even defeat a single Rank-A spectre, even though that monster does nearly no physical damage?
Only after thorough evaluation did they understand that the levels of monsters in the other world were lower due to mana being relatively lower in density compared to their world and that the "beasts" in their world were called "monsters" in Earth.
If compared to Earth's ranking of people and monsters, a Rank-AA monster on Earth was ranked C in their world, and if compared to humans, a Rank-SSS player on Earth was a Rank-A hunter in Antinoüs. If that wasn't enough, the levels and ranks of all those who came from Earth were lowered to the lowest point at which they could survive against a, at most, Rank-E monster if they fought in a group.
On the planet Antinoüs, Rank-SS monsters were something that should be fought by a group of Rank-SS hunters. It was like that for all the other ranks too; for a ranked monster, a group of the same ranked people were required, and since the strong only targeted the strong, there weren't any problems for the lower ranked hunters to grow.
***
A beautiful black-haired woman walked in the corridor that led to her dormitory room, with a few women's envious gazes drilling holes in her back, which were thoroughly ignored by the woman as she was lost in her own thoughts. She wore a black, formal suit with a choker around her neck—that wasn't really a choker; it was just her pocket system that she wore on her neck since her gaze was getting attracted to her wrist when she wore them there. Thinking that it could distract her when she's in the middle of a fight, she wore it as a choker.
'Why hasn't Eshwar appeared in the academy yet?' Isha muttered with a deep frown on her face. She was in class E, the lowest-ranked class that didn't receive much proper training on anything except the physical one, and almost all of the boys and men in that class were already fanning over her.
She had already adjusted completely to this world, unlike all the other people; since it was once a place she had been in, it was only natural that she gets adjusted to it first. But she was still slightly sceptical about this whole academy thingy, because this was the first time she had been to an academy in this world, and it had been merely twenty years since she died in this world. Though a lot had changed, nothing too much had really changed, if she remembered correctly, she needed to be wary of the "factions" in the academy if she didn't want to get caught up in something disturbing.
And even though there weren't any restrictions on the ages of people joining the academy, most of the older people felt like it was an humiliation to learn among kids and hadn't joined the academy, which was similar to even those that came from the other world, from Earth, together with her; only those that had recently left the academy due to Switch Academy being closed decided to join the academy, while the rest decided to find homes and join mercenary or guilds or any other groups to get stronger as they got used to the new world, which was a good decision from Isha's perspective.
'I'll see you 'there.'' Suddenly, Isha remembered hearing Eshwar mumble when the so-called tutorial began when they were getting teleported to this planet.
"Don't tell me he really went 'there' first?" Isha mumbled under her breath as she glanced back, unintentionally making the woman gazing at her flinch before taking a step back with an audible gulp.
"Sh*t!" She cursed and zoomed towards the elevator.