Mystical Journey

As he was watching the news in his dorm, someone knocked on his door.

Garen switched off the tablet, stood up and opened the door.

Aier walked in with a rather angered look on her face.

“What happened to you?” Garen felt strange.

“It’s nothing. It’s just that I’ve got a clear picture of Mina’s condition back at home,” Aier closed the door as he sat down and poured himself a cup of water. “What were you doing? Why is there a strange medicine stench in the room?”

He frowned as he looked at the messy dorm. There were still papers left on the ground, which had previously been used to hold the stones a moment ago. There was still a little bit of remaining White Peacock Powder on it.

“Let me clean it up,” Garen rolled the papers on the ground and threw them into the dustbin. He then went to take a cloth and wiped the powder clean from the ground.

Aier watched Garen bustling about as he leaned onto the sofa and continued speaking.

“Mina’s family had failed their business investment and had lost a huge sum of money. They now owe a huge amount of debt.”

Garen recalled the girl who kept visiting him when he was admitted to the hospital. Although he didn’t have all of Nonosiva’s memories, he wouldn’t forget people who had treated him well. From his point of view, he could see that Mina was truly being friendly towards Nonosiva. There was no intention and she really just wanted to be friends.

“How much does it affect her?” he pondered for a while before asking.

Aier sighed as he was not surprised by Garen’s calm tone. Nonosiva had always been like this, quiet and introverted. For him to ask this much meant that he was very concerned with the topic at hand.

“It may affect her tuition fee next year.”

“Tuition fee…” Garen nodded. The Blackboard’s annual tuition fee was seventy thousand. It might not be a lot for the wealthy students but this amount was astronomical to the typical households. Seventy thousand was the entire income of a typical family for a year and there were many families who couldn’t even earn that much.

“I’ll think of something when I get back,” Aier stayed silent for a while before speaking once more.

“What idea can you come up with? Where’s Mina? What does she have to say about this?” Garen poured himself a cup of water, sat down and drank it.

“What else can she do? She plans to head out and work to earn her tuition fee for next year. There was another girl who was in the same situation as her. It was her junior and her family wasn’t well off as well and decided to work outside so that she could afford to study. The job was introduced by her junior.” Helplessness was written all over Aier’s face. “Before I came to your place, I’d visited her and she looked very tired and had lost a lot of weight.”

Garen nodded.

“Don’t get hasty with Mina’s situation. I may have some idea.”

“You? What idea can you have?” Aier’s voice was raised by a few octaves. “You yourself owe the professor at least a hundred thousand.”

As he noticed that Garen didn’t seem anxious in the least, he started to feel uneasy about the whole thing.

“You’re being impatient,” Garen shook his head. “Impatience won’t solve anything and will make everything worse.”

“Yes… I’ve lost myself…” Aier himself realized that he had lost his cool as he lowered his head and tone.

“It’s exactly because I’m a hundred thousand plus in debt that I have to think of a plan on my own…” Aier broke him off before Garen managed to finish speaking.

“Whatever. I’ll go home and tell my dad about it and hopefully he has some useful idea. You should take your time to rest.” Aier didn’t wish to speak further as he stood up. “I’ll go first.”

Garen watched as he stood up and slammed the door as he left. Afterward, he stood up, didn’t say a word and just sighed. There was currently social unrest as the state of the economy was heavily dependent on the policy of the government. With the policy being changed every now and then, this sort of scenario would surface every once in a while. This was the current state of the world where the people had no power and could do nothing but to stand around and be butchered.

**************

The Blackboard’s qualifier match was being held in the shadow underneath the huge battleship. This shade was Blackboard Academy’s safest place.

A silver circular light beamed down from the battleship above. From afar, it looked like a very fine silver gauze that could barely be seen. Inside the silver gauze was a huge circular arena that spanned thousands of meters in diameter.

The white arena had been segregated into a lot of divisions, and each division was surrounded by robots that constantly maintained a protective barrier. Teams from every faculty started to pour into the arena.

The teams walked in one by one as the cheers from the student spectators could be heard in all directions. There even were family members and students from other academies who came to witness the match. Cheers came in waves and there even were holograms of fireworks as well.

“The current teams that are entering the arena are the teams from year B2. The top three representatives are surprisingly all women and by comparison, there was only a male competitor who barely qualified. This year seems even more one-sided…”

The broadcast was filled with passion as it excitedly introduced each qualified teams.

Other than Garen who stood among the class C5 members, there also was Fervale and the second-ranked Sara who stood straight. Fervale, as the first ranker, stood slightly in front of her and these three didn’t stand out so much among the other outstanding contestants from other classes.

“Look at the class in front of us on the right,” Fervale suddenly whispered. Among the cheers from the crowd, his voice went directly into Garen and Sara’s ear through the communication device. “Be cautious of the black-haired woman in the middle.”

Garen and Sara’s gaze shifted towards where he’d mentioned and in the middle of the three-man team of that class, a black short-haired woman was patting a fragile looking fan with long pink hair on the shoulder as she talked to her. She seemed very relaxed and an unparalleled confidence could be seen through her gaze. Her hair was thorny and by her hand gestures, she seemed to be very bold and gave off a vibe of extreme confidence.

“That girl is Merseus, one of the top two in year C. I lost to her last year and didn’t last one minute against her,” although Fervale said this calmly, a glimpse of dissatisfaction could be seen in his gaze. However, no one really knew he was angry or sad as he didn’t express himself a lot.

“Merseus’ melee Control is at least Level Two and she is a very powerful opponent. Both of you are ranged shooters so be careful to not let her get close to you,” Fervale cautioned.

“Understood,” Sara and Garen nodded.

Garen had tested his combat capabilities without the Moonfang and he knew that he wasn’t even qualified for a level 1. With his actual skill, he could only run with the Mech but couldn’t evade any incoming attacks. Compared to the real elites, he was extremely weak.

His strengths were actual combat outside the Mech but he was a complete novice in the Mech. Although he had experience in controlling the Buddha Mother, this world seemed different as the spiritual control was totally different than of the Buddha Mother. In this world, Willpower seemed to be the will of every single cell and was related to the cells’ biofield.

Garen wondered if his Willpower would improve he increased his Living Secret Technique, the Hellfrost Peacock Technique to a certain level. However, the current him was still very weak.

With his current condition, his opponent, Merseus was considered a very powerful foe.

“Other than this person, there’s another person who is considered the strongest in our year C,” Fervale was telling them the situation inside the arena. His household held some incredible amount of power and he naturally had all these intel on the enemies. In order to raise his year’s overall rank, he decided to feed his team members the opponent’s information to slightly increase the chance of winning.

“His name is Bally Visalia, but everyone calls him Bally. He hasn’t arrived yet but that man is extremely powerful so you have to be extremely cautious against him!” Fervale started to look frightened even by just mentioning his name.

“Powerful?” Sara squinted her eyes. “How powerful is he?”

Fervale glanced at Sara, “Bally has a nickname called the Mech Grinder. At least half of his opponents have had eighty percent of their Mech’s body ground to dust with just his hands. His weapons are a pair of high-speed arc saws and have torn apart at least ten Mechs, killed three and heavily injured twelve people during the academy’s entrance exam.”

Huff…

Sara inhaled a mouthful of cold air. While the arc saw was incredibly powerful, it required a lot of energy as well. With two arc saws, a standard mech model could only last half a minute. This meant that the person who used this sort of weapon was either crazy or very confident with himself.

“Bally and Merseus…” Garen understood that he was determined to obtain the champion title during this competition. As a new student, he had his privileges where being the top three of a faculty would allow him to be admitted to the academy’s elite teams. He could also win a good amount of a hundred thousand Universal Unit as a reward or at least ten thousand Universal Units for placing in the top ten.

Rumor had it that one could even order a custom mech as a reward if one was placed first.

To have a personal Mech, especially the unique ones where it could be controlled by Willpower, was something very luxurious. Practically every Mech in this world was made with the biomechanical nuclear as the core, which could tap into a person’s Willpower. It was a very advanced technology.

Hence, even a Mech of the most basic model would cost at least a hundred thousands Universal Points.

Most importantly, the first placed would even be awarded a Mech Control Certificate. This certificate was as powerful as the other international certificates where one could legally own their own Mech, which was equivalent to a Pilot’s certificate.

What troubled Garen was that his Willpower was still too weak. Without the Moonfang, moving would be incredibly hard and the Moonfang was obviously not suited for a drawn-out battle.

“I can only end the battle quickly,” he was very determined.

“Now let’s welcome the representatives of the class C5. Among year C, the most promising student and top five student is Fervale, the class’ first seat…” it was their turn to go into the arena. Fervale led the way while Garen and Sara followed behind. The trio wore a unique red competition uniform as they walked on the black carpet, entering the circular arena through the entrance. Students of the same class shouted from both sides and there even were people whistling endlessly.