2 - Awakening

"Ooh? He is waking up!"

Deimos heard a familiar voice. Slowly he opened his eyes only to be blinded by the light.

'Oh right I guess I'm back.'

Little by little Deimos eyes regain their focus. He realized that I was lying in bed. Slowly he moved into a sitting position, with his back resting on some cushions, he took a glance around.

'This must be a hospital room. Makes sense I don't really know how much time I spent in the inner void. Harran was quite pissed so it wouldn't surprise me if a few months has gone by.'

A blue door opened and a familiar figure entered the room, Deimos elder sister Chiara. Before he could ask anything she picked up her phone. After a few phone calls she finally spoke to him.

"I have called everyone available. Don't ask questions as soon as your friends come here they will give you the answers. Don't move too much, at least wait for the basic check-up"

As she finished warning Deimos, she started walking toward the back of the room.

"Wait for a bit. I'm going to call the nurse and doctor for a basic assessment of your health."

"Sigh"

After more or less 40 minutes 6 people were standing in the hospital room: a doctor, a nurse, Chiara, Mase, Albert and Samuel. Samuel didn't really like his name so everyone addressed him by his nickname:"Lele".

The doctor performed a quick check-up to verify that everything was in order and that Deimos wasn't suffering from amnesia or similar post traumatic syndromes. Subsequently they simply walked out of the room.

The atmosphere was quite heavy. Deimos broke the silence by asking the critical question.

"So how much time did I spent in a coma?"

Albert stepped forward to answer. He was quite the oddball, despite being a handsome guy with blonde hair and light blue eyes he still shared the uncommon hobby of Mase and Demios. He in fact was the extroverted friend that linked the two together.

"15 days."

Deimos face turned into a mixture of stupor and incredulity.

'he must be shocked.' Everyone in the room shared this thought. Little did they know that it was because of the amusement that Deimos felt.

'I have never felt so exhilarated! Not only it took me less than a month,but I also completely smashed the bet! That's why Harran was pissed! I can feel her cursing me right now.'

"I know you have a lot on your mind, but there are a few things that you must know."

His eyes were dead serious Deimos and Albert had been friends for over 6 years and he never saw his friend using such a grave tone of voice.

"The world is changing. Some people that we call Awakened now have special abilities. In short: Magic exists."

'Well I kinda expected that something similar took place. Since I don't know if what happened with Harran is special or average I should probably act surprised even if these are my closest friends.'

"Wait? Wait! You are basically telling me that we are in a game/manga scenario right now?"

"Well if you want to see it that way, yes. First thing first, I suspect you are awakened. The reason behind my suspicion is that you didn't report any physical injuries during the bus accident. It has already become common knowledge that people during their awakening are surrounded by a mana aura, which is almost impossible to penetrate for a few seconds. Mase survived the crash unscratched thanks to this mechanic. Well verifying is simple enough, try saying 'Status' exactly like in a video game."

Without a glint of hesitation Deimos said "Status."

A blue hologram appeared in front of his eyes.

[Name: Deimos ][Mana Density:???]

[Class: Aspect of Thunder, Voidbringer]

[Passive: Gamer Grindset, (???)LV MAX, (???)LV MAX]

[Skills: Void Weapon LV1, Thunder ManipulationLV1]

Everyone in the room was staring at Deimos with a look of excitement and anticipation.

"So what is your class and skills?" Chiara impatiently asked.

"What? You guys can't see?"

"No one can see someone else's status unless you own a special ability that allows you to do so."

'That's good, at least it's not going to be too hard to hide my status from prying eyes.'

"Before we talk about that… This is basically a confirmation that I'm Awakened right? Where is mom and dad anyway?"

Simultaneously all the presents in the room stared at the floor to avoid eye contact.

"Well…" His sister felt the duty to be the one to deliver the news.

"Are they dead?" Deimos asked with an ice cold tone.

"No, but you can't make physical contact with them."

The boy felt extremely relieved. The clump in his throat disappeared. 'In the first place I hate physical interactions so as long as I can still talk to them is fine'.

"Why is that?"

"Well these last 2 weeks where insanely chaotic a lot of stuff happened so I can only tell you what the scientific community has figured out."

"That's plenty."

"We don't exactly know what mana is, but for sure it is a form of energy or radiation. There are people like you, Mase, Albert and Lele which can actively harness its power: the Awakened. The second group is people like me who can't use mana, but we can feel it and it doesn't cause us any harm. Lastly there is the group of people that can't handle mana at all for example… Mom and dad."

Even if Deimos' sister tried to act tough, she clearly struggled to say the last sentence, biting her lips a few times during her speech.

"What about your little bro Albert? What about Isaac?"

"Isaac is in France. Currently almost every country has sealed their borders so he is blocked there for now. My bro is also fine, he is simply recovering from mana depletion. By the way, this is going to sound weird, but you should probably ask Lele any question related to this crazy world and power."

"Eh?" with his mouth agape the patient tried to process that information.

Lele was not only Deimos' cousin, but also a close friend. Albert was barely 20, even though he graduated from high-school just 1 year ago, he had already achieved a high position in a tech company. Albert was basically the mom of the group: serious and responsible. Lele instead was only 15 and he was a funny light-hearted dude.

'The world must have really changed a lot.'

Deimos fixed his gaze on Lele. 'In terms of attitude and personality he seems the same but… I felt a strange pressure, it was like facing a lion head on. If I multiply this feeling a billion times then it could probably be close to the aura that I felt from Harran.'

Lele chuckled and stated.

"Well they call me the invincible titan after all."

Deimos felt betrayed. He felt the same way you would feel, when the only day of the year that you skip school literally everything happens: from brawls to teachers throwing textbooks.

"Just what the heck happened in the last 15 days?"