Family Love

As james was waiting he saw the two girls reading the skills list with confusion written across their faces.

"What exactly is Lord of Darkness? What does it do?" the elvish girl shook her head before showing her own status screen

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Name: Aviesta Rowena

Age: 16

Race: Obsidian Elf

Awakened Level: 3

Awakened Rank: 2

Strength: 15

Agility: 30

Endurance: 10

Energy: 40

Health: 20

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Skills-

Dark Senses lv2: Your vision is not hindered by the dark within a certain area around you, additionally your sense of hearing are enhanced by 10% within the shadows. (Effect increases with skill lever)

Void Element Attunement Lv1: Your dark/void based skills will deal an additional 10% damage and you deal 10% more damage with dark/void affinity weapon.

Dark Step lv3: This darkness skill allows the user to teleport up to 20 feet. The distance that can be covered shortens the brighter the area around the user is.

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"See? I don't know what it is but your skill descriptions seem different from mine" aviesta nudged the gray and she presented her own status screen

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Name: Ki'iekla Maas

Age: 17

Race: Malarian

Awakened Level: 3

Awakened Rank: 3

Strength: 5 (+6)

Agility: 15 (+6)

Endurance: 10 (+6)

Energy: 60

Health: 20

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Skills-

Void Magic lv3: Dark/void damage is increased by 20% of max energy count

Dark Body lv2: All physical stats are increased by 10% max energy and energy regeneration rate is increased by the same amount. This effect doubles at nightfall.

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"Aviesta and.... kie.. ki.."

"Ki like kill and eekla but call me keke please its easier." She looked down in embarrassment.

"So would you two be able to tell me about this test that is coming? They said we'd have a week to grow our strength and prepare for the test but they didnt really explain the test."

Aviesta shrugged and began to explain, "well they will let you enter low tier dungeons with a guardian either an upperclassman or a teacher but either way you can stay in the dungeon as long as you want over the week to gain experience and increase your level. Once the time is over they will test your skills and you will get a grade based on your skills, its not a rule but most people follow a hierarchy around these grades."

"Well when can i go to a dungeon? The faster I level up the better right?" James jumped up excited for the grind to come.

"If you're really this ready to go then i can take you to the gates but be careful ok?"

James immediately stood to follow the elven girl as she brought him to a lift. On the way she pointed out a few facilities that would be important during his time there, but after a few seconds of riding the lift they had arrived at an open room full of students and their guardians preparing to enter their very first gate.

"Now we just look for a guardian so just go sign in and you'll have one pretty quickly" she pointed to a desk with large monitors on each side. In front of each monitor were large groups of students watching for their names.

The chattering students were soon hushed by the desk lighting up with instructions on how to sign up for the guardian system. The entire process was done through their wrist watches using an academy's app and as each one finished they rushed to the monitors to wait for their names to be selected by a guardian.

Once he had finished his own signup he began to explore the different sections of the app; seeing the forums, an online market and even a database of information about the different topics students had learned. During his exploring he found a page showing the same information as the monitors.

He decided to take a seat by the walls and watch his own screen like a number of others had chosen to do. One by one the others were whisked away to gates by their guardians and over half were gone by the time an alert showed a guardian had selected him and requested to meet at Gate F-2.

James quickly went to that rhe designated gate and found a young man barely older than himself waiting, on his back was a large sword and in his hand was another sheathed sword though smaller in size. "James M'kesh?"

"Yeah thats me, are we going into a gate together?" despite his efforts James still had a hint of excitement for the coming experience.

"Yes we are, now lets enter so we can get you leveled up." The guardian entered the clear gate but before he could enter james recieved a prompt from his system.

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An entity plans to test your will. Do you accept?

yes

no

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Seeing the prompt left him confused but after some internal debate he accepted the test.

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The deity Keku acknowledges your bravery and wishes you good fortune in your test.

The deity Keket grants you a boon of twilight to your test for your bravery.

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Seeing the word bravery concerned him a bit before he witnessed the clear gate slowly bleed into black. From the gate he felt a cool embrace like he had when he would rest in the dark so he quickly entered.

After he entered alarms began to blare catching every student off guard. Barging into the area was the humanoid feline headmaster who forced students away from the gate, "How?! How did this happen?! Why is there a black gate here we only use clear F rank gates in this section!"

A human woman approached with a tablet "sir look at this, it isnt a black gate it was a clear but somehow an anomaly occurred.... the data is saying that a god may be involved"

As he read through the information and saw a recording of the few minutes before he arrived his expression could only be described as, horrified. "Notify the families of every student who entered this gate... they should pray to whatever gods they worship that we can find them before they die"