16 Chapter 16: Relations

While Isaiah looked out the glass window it was snowing pretty heavily. His brother had decided not to go to school today. Sighing, he looked around the class before paying "attention" again.

' At least Nicole is here, but everyone else(his brother and friends) just had to stay home...'

The class felt like every second hours past by, luckily he got a break halfway in his class for the day to go eat lunch. As Isaiah sat down and went to eat his fried chicken, he someone sit down in front of him. looking up it was Nicole.

"Uh-Hey"

"hi, guessing your friends didn't come to school ether huh?"

"Yea"

They both talked all lunch and ate their food. As they sat, there was a pause of words. Isaiah tried to think of something to talk about.

"Um so I heard that you have a pretty good chance of getting a good rank?"

"O, yea my family is pretty happy about it,"

"Are you?"

She didn't say anything in response and there was a feeling of tension in the air. Isaiah stared at her, Nicole never was a person to try and get a lot of attention, she just wanted to graduate and depending on what she felt ether go become a hunter and make enough to live a normal life or go get a collage type job/career. When Isaiah had heard about her gaining the power of high rank, he was worried about how she would take it, especially with all the people starting to pay attention to her.

"Nicole, are you happy about it or not, you know I worry about you."

"I-i don't know, everyone has gotten high expectations of me now, and suddenly everyone is looking up to me. My family started talking to me more but only really about my future as a hunter and nothing else. They started getting me gifts finally even though they been pretty wealthy for a while, at this point their tryna make me like them before I move out so I'll probably take care of them."

As Isaiah heard this he slowly felt anger build up as he wanted to hurt the people who caused her to stress out, but he forced it down. He couldn't let that get in the way right now.

'I need to become stronger. Strong enough where I can protect her, enough where I can let her live the way she wants.'

"Nicole"

"Uh-yea?"

"I'm gonna become strong, so strong that no one can bother you or the way you want to live!"

Nicole's face had a slight blush to it and she smiled. She started giggling when she heard this. It felt like he was tryna confess to her or something. Well, if his goal was this, she won't stop him, however, she didn't think it was likely.

The power in the world has greatly changed since the appearance Era(The time period before the system was given to people). The Militaries had grown stronger and more dangerous, Wars had stopped as often and instead turned to small conflicts. Wars were too dangerous to the world now. social structures had adapted and even schools have changed on what they teach. People's interactions with others changed. Games stopped being played as often and become a more uncommon thing for people, but only to a degree. Technology had advanced a bit but not too much as many countries had fallen and people were lost in the initial entrance of monsters. The lunch bell rang witch catching Isaiah off guard fell over. Nicole laughed at his fall before taking their stuff and throwing it away.

"ow...." Isaiah got up and walked back to class with Nicole. As they were walking in the hallway there was a loud bang as if a machine had failed, following by the lights going out and a loud drown out sound of the power turning off. The hallway was almost pitch black besides the small light let in through the windows but it was a blizzard and nothing could be seen farther than a few feet away. They both stared out a window. As they were on the second floor of the building they could barely see the ground and they could only see a few feet forward.

Nicole spoke reassuringly, "It's probably just the storm that took out the power, common let's go and check on everyone else."

Isaiah nodded slightly ".. k"

Isaiah agreed but he felt like something was off. If the power went out shouldn't the backup generators have come on by now. No, something was definitely off. As they walked down the halls they saw other students in confusion of what's going on. When they got to the class the teacher and their classmates were in the room.

The teacher looked at them as the two entered, " O good, you're all here."

A student in the back spoke up worried, " What's going on? why is it so dark?"

As the students sat there in the dark wondering what happened all they could hear was talking and the snow outside. Isaiah looked towards one of the walls that was a large glass window, all he could see was snow, and occasionally he could make out maybe the ground. But then something passed by the window quickly as if a huge bird flew past it casting a shadow on the window and bolts of lightning could be heard outside. The students started to panic about what they think they had seen a few remained silent others yelled and some talked to each other. Isaiah felt as if a strong presence had appeared above the building.

"Nicole watch everyone here," Dashing out the classroom he shut the door and ran through the halls. Turning the corner to go up the stairs he quickly ran up the stairs and shoved the door open. Walking out the door strong gusts of wind blew into him and the cold nipped at his skin. Throwing up his hoodie and looking around he couldn't see much. the gravel on the roof and snow underneath him crunched with each step. When he looked up he saw a large bird-like shadow in the sky with electricity flashing around it and in the distance lightning crashed and crackled. The bird circled the building and flapped its wings. quickly after it dived down and landed on the roof of the building making a loud bang and cracking the roof a bit where it was.

As he stared up at the creature, it towered over him. Its height was practically five times as high as him if not six times. The wingspan was so long on the bird is covered the roof in shadows and dipped a bit over the edge. He felt like his chance of beating this monster was low. But he had to. No one was gonna be there to help him. If he relies on people all the time, can he really call himself strong? Taking a deep breath he stared up at the monster...

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