2. One Small Step

Zeik smiled as he handed the last paper with his signature over to the receptionist. "Thank you young man. Now here is your identification watch," she put a slim black watch on his right wrist the locked in comfortably. These watches were wired into a person's DNA and could do a whole lot of different functions, the main one being identification for bank accounts, travel, and many other things." Now if you will follow me this way you will be fitted with your A.I.M. eyeware," she gestured to her right at a door slightly behind her. Zeik followed and was seated in a chair where a big contraption hung a few feet above his head. "Now open your eyes wide and don't worry you won't feel a single thing." The lady's soft voice came from behind Zeik and he nodded before doing exactly as he was told. Soon the big machine came down and fit over his head making everything go dark. Suddenly, he felt nanites start their work in upgrading his eyes with the A.I.M. eyeware. The process finished in almost no time and the machine raised once again.

Blinking the software started up before a bright flash crossed Zeiks vision. Soon it cleared and new red characters were in different parts of his sight amazing him completely. First flashing words blinked superimposed in the middle of his field of vision.

[ Initializing...]

[ Welcome user, to your new Atomized Ion Monitor. The A.I.M. was designed to form a system the human brain can understand easily. From detailed statics to descriptions of monsters or items the A.I.M. is what makes you greater then you could ever hope to be before. ]

In the top left he had an HP gage and a Mana gage. In the top right he had an icon that looked like a barely noticeable menu. All kinds of details Now jumped into Zeiks line of vision different Stat numbers on everything when he focused on them some coming up as question marks which he guessed was because it was based on his knowledge. While exploring with his eyes they landed on his watch where his own stats came into view.

[ Name: Ezeikel Zmaj ]

[ Bloodline: Human ]

[ Health: 110/110 ]

[ Mana: 100/100 ]

[ Stamina: 105/105 ]

[ Stats: Str 13, Spe 17, Def 9, ?????????]

[ Hidden stats are locked for the user current ]

Basically everything looked like a video game come to life and Zeik was over the moon excited. Calming himself down he was lead out if the room and asked to wait for all the students to be situated before they'd be transported.

●●●●●●●●●

Over 2 hours later

Zeik woke up suddenly to a strong hand gripping his shoulder," good boy. Come on, up you get. You'll be late for the teleporter if you don't hurry up," Soon as those words came out of the burly man's mouth Zeik snapped to full attention awake and alert. He looked around to see everyone was gathering up their belonging and moving towards a pair of double doors on the opposite side of the large room. A flood of about 400 16 year olds moved towards the doors in an orderly calm fashion. "Thank you very much mister," Zeik thanked the man before scooping up his bag and walking along with the rest of the kids. The reason he slept was he'd read the skill book and it had taken alot of energy out of him to learn the skill. The book was absorbed straight into his soul and, if he'd stopped to check, the skill was added to his stats window.

He glanced up and saw at Mana bar was almost completely empty, ' so Mana in like energy. That makes sense. Why didn't that old man tell me that it costs energy like that to learn skills and such though?' Zeik was thinking to himself knowing why he'd passed out like that. He knew before hand that skills and stuff cost energy to learn but he didn't think it'd be that much. What he didn't know was the better the skill the more energy it cost. What neither him nor the old man knew was the skill he'd just learned was actually a really good one.

Pushing his thoughts aside, Zeik looked towards the towering, swirling blue vortex across the room that kids were neatly walking into and disappearing. His heart racing Zeik was over the moon that he was finally leaving. Soon his turn came and he stepped through the bright blue light. His body was sucked forward like a hook had snagged through his stomach and around his spine. Gasping he blinked hard as his feet landed on solid ground again. Slowly he looked around and gapped like a fish at the beautiful scenery around them. People were everywhere in a bustling marketplace smiling and waving at the new arrivals coming through the portal from earth. Huge walls surrounded the place that was as big as a small kingdom with things everywhere. Zeik took off at a run as he explored the stronghold he'd been sent to. There were thousands of these strongholds scattered all around Gumaria. When a traveler comes for the first time they are teleported to a random stronghold on the planet so no stronghold gets over populated and everyone's evenly distributed atleast to start. These strongholds were safe havens ruled by humans that kept out the monsters and hostile being of the world.

Zeik rounds a corner and stopped in his tracks staring at the huge castle like building at the end of the street he'd come to. before coming he'd done his research so he knew where he was going as every strongholds central marketplace was set up the same way with the Hunters Guild being in the same location on the outskirts of said marketplace. Ezekiel slowly walked into the huge building into a tavern like main room with a counter spanning the whole back wall. He walked forward and got down to business talking with the lady behind to counter to register as a hunter. Within no time at all thanks to the ID watches everyone uses the process was finished and Zeik became a F grade hunter. He set up a room for himself inside the guild and went to drop off his things inside of it. The room was pretty basic nothing to shout about. Just a bed, desk, dresser, closet, and a large storage trunk at the end of the bed. He put away all of his stuff before pulling out a short iron sword and a simple revolver from within everything. These items were held by the office for him of course until he left and were the only gear he had to his name. Items had different grades to them and both of these were only F grade the lowest and worst. He'd saved up a long time just to gain these measly things but he still couldn't help but cringe at himself. What's worse he barely had 50 rounds for the gun so it was even more useless seeing as it was loud but could barely take care of 4 or 5 larger beasts.

Shaking his head at himself he stopped being negative," all I need to do is completely some missions and explore. Hunters live good lives for a reason. Even the weakest and the worst live comfortably here." He smiled at himself before strapping his sword to his back and holsters the gun on his right hip. Grinning it went to leave his room," look out Gumaria Ezekiel is on his way at last!"