02 - Blessed

Everyone who had ever seen or heard of Noah always thought he was useless, always thought that the Blessing he received was useless, but only he knew the truth. The truth is that in this world where humans receive blessings from some gods and have the opportunity to have firepower powerful enough to destroy a small town, Noah himself didn't have, and never truly had a conventional Blessing.

Yes, while some of his classmates awakened the Blessings of the gods they prayed for during high school, others were only envious because they were not chosen by the gods to receive a Blessing as well and become a Blessed.

Blessed was the name given to the people who received the powers of the gods. Obviously, some Blessings were stronger than others, so in order to make it easier to distinguish each one in terms of strength, the Blessed were separated among several Rankings [F, E, D, C, B, A, and S]. After awakening their own Blessing, the Blessed could apply for a test of Blessing where an evaluator would test the person's aura to see if he or she had really been blessed. Once a Blessing had been detected, he or she would have to go through a test to find out how lethal or useful that person's Blessing was and what the potential of that person's Blessing was for the future; Blesseds were separated by Power Rankings in this way.

In Noah's class, there was even a boy who awakened a Rank B Blessing, and as expected, he became the school idol. Of course, the school principal didn't miss the opportunity to publicize throughout the city that in his school a student had awakened as a Blessed Rank B. The student soon became a star, and Noah even saw him appearing in a commercial on TV for a local ice cream parlor.

Of course, just receiving a Rank B Blessing wouldn't turn a person into a monster with the power to destroy a village. No, all the Blesseds started from the bottom, but what limited a person's future was precisely the Rank. If a person with a Rank A Blessing were to train for a year, they would probably move from Rank F strength to Rank D strength without any problem. As for a person in Rank D, it would take decades to eventually reach Rank D strength. After all, the Rank of one's Blessing only tells them the maximum potential they can achieve with their Blessing. So, a person with a B Ranking Blessing would obviously be treated as an idol, since it would be easy for him to reach the D or C Ranking in a few years, thus already gaining considerable strength.

This was the level of prestige that a good Blessing would give to a person who was lucky enough to be blessed. However, Noah was not one of those lucky people. While his colleagues were blessed, Noah remained a normal person for several months. That was until the day Noah finally lost hope and gave up praying to the god of rain, a god he had prayed to since he was a child since he had blessed his mother.

The feelings that arose in Noah's chest were not at all good. Anger and hopelessness started to fester in his chest. After dedicating himself so much, after praying for so many years, worshipping the god of rain so much, finally, Noah accepted that the god of rain never cared about him and will never care to the point of giving him a Blessing. Noah wasn't demanding; he only wanted at least one Rank E Blessing. But if until that day he still wasn't blessed, there was no more hope.

In a fit of anger, he grabbed the statue of the rain god over his head and prepared to throw it on the ground, when suddenly a message appeared in front of him.

This message hadn't arrived on his WhapZapp. No, the message had appeared on a floating screen right in front of Noah's eyes. He was still in the process of throwing the statue of the rain god, so with the image appearing out of nowhere, Noah took a fright and knocked the statue to the ground.

"What is that!?" He said with a tone of doubt and a pinch of fear as he looked at the floating window in the middle of the air.

Once his blood cooled, Noah came to the realization that he had just desecrated a god. He had heard about cases of gods that hurt the humans who spat in their temples, so now Noah was worried that the rain god was angry and wanted to take revenge.

For a few moments, Noah panicked and looked around the room in fear that some kind of curse would strike him from the god of rain. Fortunately, after a few minutes pause, nothing had happened. He figured it might have something to do with this strange singularity in front of him and so turned his attention to it.

In front of him there was a window with a background completely black like darkness itself with letters written in red like the most destructive intense fire he ever saw. Leaving aside the appearance of the screen, the message displayed surprised Noah several times more:

[Like Lucifer, you feel anger towards the god you loved so much. You dedicated so many years serving and giving your best for this god and, in the end, you were only rejected by him because he loved another more than you. Your feelings are perfect for Lucifer's Descendant System.

To demonstrate your determination, you must complete a simple task before you receive Lucifer's greatest blessing. Go through multiple life and death situations, and never give up improving. Do you accept?]

'Am I being blessed?' At first Noah was extremely happy! But after a few seconds, he realized that the Blessing he received was different from the Blessings others received.

First of all, people usually only receive blessings from the gods to which they prayed. If someone always prayed to the god of wolves, the only Blessing he can receive would be from the god of wolves; the other gods wouldn't bother to bless a mortal who didn't pray to them.

Secondly, from what he had already seen from videos on the internet, the Blessings themselves didn't offer the right to choose. After you were blessed, you would instantly be able to exercise the power of the Blessing you received as if it was something natural. Of course, you would still need to train a lot to be able to use that blessing well, but he never heard of any case where the blessed could accept or refuse the blessing, much less heard of any test where he would have to pass to finally be Blessed.

Not to mention the fact that Noah had never prayed to Lucifer. He had heard about Lucifer and the Catholic God in ancient history classes since in the distant past, before the world was dominated by Fortresses and monsters, people still prayed to this so-called Catholic God. That was until after the monsters appeared. Once that happened, the other gods began to bless humans and since the Catholic God never did anything, people lost faith in him and practically forgot him with time. Now he had been blessed by Lucifer, the Catholic God's main fallen angel, the one who was already considered the most powerful angel in heaven, and with a test?

Thinking that the delay might irritate Lucifer, Noah readily accepted the task given to him by this angel/god.

[During the next 4 years, you must fight with everything you have against the fortresses.]

And so the screen disappeared. For days, Noah waited to see if the screen would appear again, but alas, it never appeared again. Noah even thought he was hallucinating, that all this was caused by his subconscious trying to comfort him for not having been blessed by the god to whom he always prayed.

But knowing that if this task was true he could finally be blessed, Noah decided to do what the task had requested. Maybe he would never have a chance in life to be blessed again, so this time he would give the best of himself, for her sake. His will reaffirmed itself while he looked at a picture frame on the table with the photo of a beautiful black haired girl.

The next day, Noah went to his neighborhood's Blessing Test Center. Because of the large number of teenagers arriving to be tested, the center staff divided the service into 4 rows. Then, finding the line with the least people, Noah, with much trepidation, found his place.

It is important to know that the test itself was not free. Even if nothing was spent to carry out the test, the government had to declare a fee of 50 dollars per test so that people would not come every day to fill the lines with hope that the day had come where they would have awakened their Blessing and just hadn't known.

And Noah, having lived the last few years of his life alone, obviously didn't have much money to spend so the $50 fee would be sorely missed that month. But, with faith that what he saw last night wasn't false, Noah signed his conviction to perform the test and to hope that the machine would detect him as being Blessed. And with that, he would finally have the right to enter into fortresses.