The awakening ceremony(3)

Inside the base everyone was moving. Firstly, a worker would move a students from the bunk beds to the first desk. At that desk, another worker would find the appropriate student file and pin it to a small document. After that, the student would be moved to the next station, where a worker would put a F tier mana crystal in their hand and send them to the strange device known as an awakening pedestal.

For the final step, a staff member would close the hand of the student holding the crystal and put his other one on the big blue-ish crystal in the center of the foundation.

This would then make the first year's inner traits appear.

When awakening, the person's inner traits, which are the caracteristics that are innate to the person, would be revealed in the form of severals flying orb on top of the pedestal, with one being of the orb being the gem. Those traits couldn't be known by anyone other than the person himself but, those traits could be differentiated by two factors : The color and the size. The color is an indicator of the rarity of the trait and it's initial power. The color ranking is, from worst to best, grey, green, blue, yellow, orange, red and purple. On the other hand, the size, which was classified with letters such as F, E, D, C, B, A and S, meant the growth potential of the trait.

For example, the [Sound manipulation] trait that the woman had was a B Orange trait, which meant that it was a rare trait that could be nurtured to become quite powerful like hers, but if the trait had been a C or D Orange, she wouldn't have been able to make hundreds of people go to sleep with only her voice.

When the process is finished, the worker would write down the main trait with it's size and color on one of the pages of the document.

Well, this was the last normal step for the other school, who didn't bring their students to another world.

For Falheim, the last step was to get approval of the applicant director, who was the second year teacher.

What you needed to be accepted, was either good traits or good background. Most student who applied had both and passed the preliminaries easily but for those who didn't meet either of the requirements, a dire faith awaited them.

-"Oow, a bad seed! Well, don't worry dear, we'll make you useful." she sighted out in a half disgusted, half sad tone.

She placed the student in a chair and left the room to go to a more secluded one. In the other room, she grabbed a syringe that had a golden tip and went back to the seated student.

She gently pushed the students head forward and lifted his hair so that she could see his neck.

She then stabbed the syringe in his neck and sucked in a blue liquid.

-"It's always a sight to behold, liquid pure mana!" she said while taking a deep look at the syringe.

Near her, a worker turned towards her and asked a question.

-"Miss, I know why we do this but, aren't we messing with the lives of these individuals?"

-"Their lives wouldn't amount to much anyway, so let them help us at least once."

-"Aah!" the worker mumbled.

The woman took the syringe and put it in a box that had cushion inside, it was specially made for these.

The testing was coming to an end as there was only a fifth of the students left to test.

It was now Calvin's turn and the same process was applied to him.

They brought him from the bed to the first desk and did a background check. The worker was quite surprised to see the son of the Melhearts.

He was then transported to the awakening device with a mana crystal in his right hand as they put his left one on the ocean blue crystal that stood atop the pedestal.

Usually, the crystal would change color according to the highest graded color someone's trait was and would shine brighter if its growth potential was higher.

A normal awakening or testing would've been, for example, the crystal turning shining blue or yellow in a small radius around the gem but when they did the awakening for Calvin, something weird happened.

When his hand touched the crystal, the crystal quickly changed color to grey with a small light coming off of it but it soon changed to green with a bigger light radius and then blue with an even bigger radius and yellow and orange and red and then it went to purple were the light could almost fill the room and it ended with a bright white light filling the whole room, looking as if a flashbang was thrown in without regards for the workers.

This grabbed the attention of every staff member in the base as well as the teacher's.

She turned around to see what the hell was happening and saw that one of the awakening pedestal was broken. The crystal in it's center was cracked with the fissure starting from Calvin's hand.

Next to the sleeping student was the worker who had been knocked out by the powerful lights hitting his eyes.

-"Does someone know what the f*ck just happened!" she shouted out in a mix of anger and bewilderment.

It wasn't the first time an awakening pedestal broke or stopped working, but it was the first time she saw one show the rainbow to the whole room before imploding on itself.

She regained her composure and manners and asked:

-"Is everyone ok at least? Well apart from Mike who's been knocked out."

The staff members quickly nodded yes, with some still massaging their eye lids.

After making sure everyone and everything was alright, they went back to work as they didn't have much time left and discarded the incident, thinking it was only a defective device.

They put Calvin on the side for now and finished with the rest of the students.

Then, when every students had been taken out of the base, the teacher told the rest of the staff members to go home as they deserved it and said she would manage the last student.

Her name was Eleonor. She was renowned for being a good attack-support in expedition and had earned a role as a teacher at the Falheim academy eight years ago as the specialised teacher in the same role department.

She had had a long career as an adventurer but her years as a teacher were the ones where she learned the most and one thing she learned as the applicant director, was that when a device broke it didn't flashbang the room.

So she decided she would do the reevaluation of this special student herself.

She put a mana crystal in his hand, moved him to the new pedestal, shoved his hand on the big crystal and waited to see what it would be.

As she saw purple earlier, she really wanted it to be true but the chances of that were minimal.

But, the moment Calvin's hand touched the big crystal, a warm feeling came to him making him look more peaceful and a message he couldn't read yet appeared in his mind:

[Condition complete: be re-evaluated by someone else. Reward: [Concealment] has been acquired.]