Awakening

Upon entering Adam's office, she looked around and simply thought.

'Nothing changed.'

The mahogany desk with piles of paperwork along with 2 monitors and displaying continuous email notifications. The filing cabinet was overfilled with important documents. Even the old but luxurious brown chairs and coffee table were the same.

Even in the 22nd century where technology is at an all-time high with the introduction of mana and artifacts, the Rose family's mansion, in particular deeply resembles the middle ages with the dresses and the architecture. This was mostly because, in the 22nd century, historical items were incredibly important to everyone.

During the Eclipse where numerous buildings were razed to the ground a lot of history was also destroyed in the process. This included numerous libraries and museums that stored items with historical value were destroyed. While some may say that it doesn't matter, after all, the idea and all of the information of history itself is stored on the internet. That wasn't necessarily true.

The demons weren't stupid. They were overwhelmingly intelligent. Through simply reading any civilian's mind at the time of the Eclipse, it was painfully obvious what was important to the people, the internet.

The internet which is known to be one of the most innovative ideas in the 20th century grew to be an incredible creation that connected billions of people across the globe. Thus the demons did what anyone with malicious intent would do. They disabled the internet.

Through the help of 'The Hermit' one of the 22 demon lords and his unique ability, he thoroughly erased the existence of the internet forever.

This simply led to the creation of 'Orbis' a substitute to the internet that functioned just like the internet and on top of that was superior in every shape and form. However, all of the information on the internet before the creation of Orbis was permanently lost. At the creation of Orbis, those who remembered certain snippets of history began to recreate them, however, through all of the mixed information and numerous disagreements regarding the events, the information was never the same.

Which leads to the lifelong question of, 'What part of history even is real and what is fake?'

What became lies through the fabric of time and what holds the truth.

The system, given to all of the awakened and allowed for functions such as the inventory and status window, the system also allowed the identification of artifacts. This led to three common artifact types.

Artificial artifacts, which are all made by humans. Examples are the awakening crystal which was artificially made. Another note is that humans have only ever been able to artificially create artifacts to A rank.

Dungeon artifacts, which are artifacts that appear from dungeons and are also sometimes called natural artifacts. These artifacts come in various ranks and forms with some simply being useless junk and other times being a national treasure.

Last but not least,

Historical artifacts, are items that are transformed into artifacts over time. The older the item the stronger and higher grade the artifact will become. A simple stone weapon from the prehistoric era would be infinitely stronger than any rifle in today's standard. Historical artifacts would even exceed items in the same grade as itself.

However, this doesn't mean that any item would instantly become overpowered through time. Importance and significance also play a part. A rock from the prehistoric era may be an S rank item, but it would still be utterly worthless.

Anyways, all of the items inside Adam's office were historical artifacts. Sylvia's dress was also a historic artifact that gave a bonus to the wearer's beauty and comfort. The house itself is a historic artifact and was one of the few houses that survived the onslaught of flames during the Eclipse.

Sitting on Adam's desk along with the computers and paperwork was also a briefcase. Sylvia involuntarily gulped as she knew what was inside.

Even if she had potential that anyone else could dream of, she still ended up feeling nervous and anxious.

Adam simply grabbed the briefcase and placed it on the coffee table as he gestured for Sylvia to take a seat across from him.

As he opened the case, what appeared in front of Sylvia was an A rank awakening crystal, this was of course no surprise to her. Even if the price of an A rank awakening crystal was 100 million dollars, her father was the guild master of the Rose Guild and an A rank awakening crystal was a drop in the bucket.

In his eyes, at least, the crystal was a long-term investment to his daughter that would later join his guild after sufficient studying at Hope, at the moment, it didn't seem like a waste at all.

"You know what to do right?"

Her father asked as he looked her dead in the eyes with a cold glare devoid of all emotions. Sylvia simply nodded in response as she reached out for the crystal in front of her.

When her soft hands made contact with the crystal, a bright light enveloped the room and Sylvia felt her body temperature rising and she began sweating.

What soon followed her body burning was a sensation within her as if all the cells in her body were conforming to one spot in her chest. Now feeling chest pains she grabbed her chest in an attempt to alleviate the pain but there was no use.

She bit her lip to prevent her from screaming in pain and blood began dripping down her mouth from biting too hard.

The pain was indeed expected, the more potential one has the more hellish of an experience they would suffer when awakening, and she had the highest potential out of any of her predecessors.

The pains in her chest went on for 5 minutes longer as she endured the pain with tears in her eyes as her father simply stared at her pained state with sweat running down every pore in her body.

Finally, it was over, the pain slowly faded and she was left heavily breathing as she now felt a foreign presence within her, mana. The chest pains weren't for nothing, it was for the formation of her mana core.

As she took a moment to recollect herself, her father simply stood up and went to the door. Confused by his sudden actions she looked towards the door and saw her father looking back and simply muttered.

"Disappointment"

Seeing her father's fleeting figure she soon realized an anomaly in the process. She quickly opened up her status window which every awakened had access to.

[Status Window

Name: Sylvia Rose

Age: 7

Mana Core: F-

Elemental Affinity: null

Unique Ability: Pause

Skills: null]

She simply stared at her Elemental Affinities stating that she had no affinities.

All hope of becoming strong went down the drain. Without Elemental Affinities, you were deemed useless and defective.

During the process of awakening, orbs were supposed to appear according to the number of affinities you held. The average person only had one affinity and she, a genius awakening at age 7, was expected to have at least 3 affinities. Yet she was worse than even the average person.

For the rest of her life she would be unable to learn any skills as to learn skills in the first place you would need an Elemental Affinity then you would be granted options to choose a new skill corresponding to it.

Now, she would be stuck with only her Unique Ability and even if she raised her mana core she would be miles behind those of the same rank and was destined to suffer.

She sat still in her father's office as tears rolled down her face as she came to her fate.

The words of her father at the dining table resounded in her mind as she gradually deformed her former dignified posture to a feeble position with her feet on the chair as she put her head down and wrapped her arms around her knees and continued her muffled cries.