Universal Energy Vision

"..hey," Luna finally uttered after psyching herself up for the past two minutes.

"Hm?" Emmia broke out of her daydream and turned to Luna. The two of them were currently seated in a corner of the cafeteria, away from the crowds.

Personally, Emmia didn't mind the rush, but Luna had insisted that they sit away from all of it.

"...you know that we agreed to study the topics....that you didn't do yesterday?" Luna reminded Emmia.

"..oh? Oh. OH," Emmia finally remembered what she had promised Luna yesterday in the library.

"I -uh, I mean," Emmia stuttered faced with this sudden situation. "This food is good right?" Emmia suddenly said.

Luna narrowed her eyes ever so slightly as if to say, 'Don't divert the conversation.'

Averting her gaze, Emmia pursed her lips while looking at the ceiling.

"...Emmia, we are going to finish those things today...it's better for you in the long run," Luna concluded while raising an eyebrow internally.

"Sureee," Emmia sighed, agreeing with Luna in the end.

Suddenly a thought struck her. 'I just hope I brought my notebooks today.'

During both of the two classes in the morning, Emmia hadn't taken out a single notebook, either because she was too bored or because she didn't have any need to.

"I don't think that I need to cover maths," Emmia mentioned causally.

"Mmm," Luna murmured her agreement. Emmia was indeed talented at maths. It would end up just okay even if she didn't cover the subject separately.

When the pair got back into the classroom, Emmia checked her bag for her notebooks required for Combat Theory...and ended up with a bag full of textbooks relating to forest crawlers and her trusty sketchbook.

"...." Emmia stared into her bag, speechless.

Turning to Luna, Emmia saw her take out her notebook, textbook, and pencils, and meticulously prepare for the class.

'I'll tell her when we get to the library,' Emmia decided with a single thought, postponing the trouble to the future. Taking out her sketchbook, Emmia started to sketch a new design, one that had been floating around in her head for the entire day so far.

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Chase stood alone on the rooftop of one of the buildings in Nova Academy. The wind blew softly, carrying with it a warm scent of the food coming from the cafeteria just the next building to his.

Chase's peerless facade of a face could currently be seen, a facade to hide his true figure.

Standing there, Chase lifted his hand to run it on the seemingly smooth skin. Yet all he was met with was rough and patchy skin, with multiple divots and scars.

His eye slightly twitched due to the irritation, both physically and mentally at the act of feeling his own face.

'Soon...' Chase grit his perfect teeth.

All he needed was to charm Emmia and then he would be able to get what he wanted.....

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Emmia stared at the sketch that she had made. Currently, she and Luna were in the library, just after all the classes for the day had ended.

While Luna was surprised that Emmia had forgotten her notebooks twice in a row, she was more surprised at how Emmia was so unbothered by the same fact.

It was as if, Emmia's mind was elsewhere....

'Haaah,' Luna heaved an internal sigh. Glancing at Emmia's face tilted downwards at the sketchbook. Luna found that it was scrunched up in concentration.

Her ruby red eyes were slightly downcast, lashes outstretched, lips pulled up into a line, and a few strands of blond hair framing her face.

Realizing that a simple glance had turned into something much more, Luna hurriedly looked away.

'Did I stare too long?'

'Was that weird? Did she notice?'

This time, Luna took a proper glance at Emmia and found her in the same posture, still deep in thought.

'Yea... never mind, I don't think she noticed anything,' Luna reassured herself.

Emmia was truly oblivious to everything at the moment.

The sketch she had drawn was her best attempt so far. The design was so very close to an actual design that Emmia suspected that even Ulmolg would accept it. But...

'Something just isn't right.' Emmia thought to herself as she stared at the design. While everything was 'correct' in a sense, the design just didn't have the feel of an actual forest crawler design.

'It feels the same as when I just copied the design directly to get a feel for it,' Emmia noted.

Emmia had indeed drawn a forest crawler design by copying directly from the textbook. But even that for some reason didn't have the same feel as the actual forest crawler design.

'I'm still missing something,' Emmia thought to herself. Surprisingly, Emmia was totally calm. It was as if she was submersed in an ocean of cold water, everything around her felt distant and almost irrelevant.

Emmia's brain churned as her ruby-red eyes scanned her design. Taking out the textbook, Emmia looked at the actual forest crawler design as a reference.

'There. I just can't put my finger on it. There's some feeling coming from the design that I'm not able to re-create.'

Emmia narrowed her eyes ever so slightly and stared at the forest crawler design.

'Something...'

'Material...'

'Design Pattern...'

'Universal Energy....'

'Experience...'

Emmia listed out things that she could be lacking in until something finally clicked.

'Universal Energy?'

'How could it make a difference...I need to know..'

'But I can't actually see it....'

'What if I could...'

Suddenly a memory resurfaced in Emmia's mind.

Moments before fainting in the Universal Energy class the other day, Emmia recalled the feeling.

Going through the memory in slow motion, Emmia recalled every detail and every sensation that she was feeling.

'I was sitting on the floor in a meditative position. My arms were placed on my knees, but not much energy nor interaction was being made through them. The buzzing in my head was from the excess universal energy density in the room. My body was burning because I was trying to do what Icarth was doing at that time. The buzzing in my head got louder and it started to hurt, from the back of my head to the front. My eyes caught fire, most likely due to the excess universal energy pooled there, all-natural which is interesting. Then the pain exploded from the back of my eyes to the rest of my head which led me to black out.' Emmia's observations rang out in her head systematically and sequentially.

'I need to rewind. Just moments before my fainting, what did I see? Black...no...not black..'

Emmia shut out all other thoughts and focused on that one singular memory that was bugging her. The ocean around her slowly turned dark, blotting out any light reaching her.

'It was a mixture of black and white...like one of my sketches...each line was vibrating and glowing.....'

Emmia opened her eyes in the ocean and found herself surrounded by floating sketches. Some of them were 3 dimensional and others were flat to the view. Each stroke, each corner, and each intersection, all glowed with a certain intensity, some shining brighter than others.

'Universal Energy.' Emmia noted with fascination. The sketches just floated in the ocean, never straying too far from a fixed location.

'This.' Emmia thought while focussing on two sketches.

They were both flat and floated next to each other.

One of them was vibrant, with thick and thin strokes leading to a glowing masterpiece illuminating the dark ocean.

The other was a dull set of lines, all mechanically drawn, with little to no light at all. In fact, this sketch almost couldn't be seen because of the other one.

'So that's the difference in the sketches...fascinating.....'

Emmia couldn't finish that thought when she felt herself being pulled out of the ocean.

'NO....just a little longer!....'

Emmia thought frantically before she broke free to the surface. Then she was on the floor gasping for breath, trying to fill her lungs with as much air as she could with each breath.

"*INHALE* *EXHALE* *INHALE*," Emmia continued to suck in air. Only after a good minute, did Emmia feel she could slow down, her lungs burning from all the sudden exertion.

"-MIA" Emmia heard a voice yell her name. Though, through all the blood pounding through her head, Emmia could barely make out the voice. Her eyesight which had been black from the suffocation, finally started to clear out, with light piercing through the darkness.

"I-I'm *INHALE* fine...." Emmia managed to make out right before her eyes rolled back into her head. The lightheadedness finally caught up to her and forced her to shut down.