The Onboarding Kit

Lance came back to his senses as he saw Yu Yan looking at him with piercing eyes. Her cute look was gone, replaced by an expression of absolute fury.

"I-I'm sorry, I-I didn't mean to...", stammered Lance while hurriedly taking away his hand.

The damage was done. Yu Yan pointed her finger at Lance as she spat out, "You! I came to console you and this is how you repay me? With such a personality, you will always stay at the bottom! And I hope you do!". She stormed off in anger as the onlookers started laughing, ridiculing Lance for his behavior. Many people, mostly guys, kept their eyes on Yu Yan as she went back into the crowd. Hers was truly a beauty that warranted a second look.

And Lance had blown his chance with her. He smacked himself on his head as he muttered to himself, "Stupid! She approached you! If only you hadn't done that, you would be friends with such a beauty by now!".

He felt an arm on his shoulder and saw a dark skinned teen smirking at him. "Mistakes happen brother! I'm Darius. I would love to be friends with such an interesting guy like you!", he said in an American accent. He had bulging muscles and looked like the typical jock that one would see in American school parking lots.

Lance shrugged off Darius's arm as he hurried to enter the crowd. After he entered, he noticed that there were small round spheres floating around in the mass of people. He just hadn't noticed them till now.

The spheres were white and had what looked like an eye on one side of them which was looking around. Around the size of a man's head, the spheres looked a bit like eyeballs floating around.

"Go up to an IB and scan your retina. It'll give you your onboarding kit.", said Darius who had followed him.

"Ok. I'm Lance, by the way.", he said as he stretched his hand out. Darius shook his hand and pointed behind him saying, "I know."

Lance turned around to see a huge screen stretching to the ceiling at the end of the room. The room was a hundred feet high, so it could be imagined how big the screen was. What was strange about the screen was that at whichever point he looked, it seemed as if that point was magnified and he could clearly scroll through each name. There were three columns:name, points scored/300 and rank. As Lance looked toward the bottom of the list, he saw his name and the points he had scored:121.

He cursed the old man again in his head as he turned to walk towards the ball. The ball automatically floated towards him as if sensing his intentions and rose to eye level to scan his retina. After a few seconds, the eye opened in half to reveal an orange bag, like the ones everyone else were holding. Lance took the bag feeling repulsed at the idea of putting his hand into someones eye. The eye floated upwards after the bag was taken, almost like a balloon which had been punctured. Lance followed it with his eyes to see many balls dotting the ceiling.

"Those are interactive balls. Creepy right? Anyway, check out your kit. I got a cultivation manual specialized for my intrinsic nature! And an item which says it will speed up my cultivation when worn! What did you get?", asked Darius beside him.

Hearing this, Lance quickly unzipped the pouch. All he found inside were two items: a small book and an unsuspecting rock-like object which had a chain attached to it, probably to be worn around the neck.

Lance excitedly reached out to open the first cultivation manual of his life.