01 - Awaken

"Go boy, you just need to cut off his head," a 30-year-old man dressed in a military uniform told an 18-year-old next to him as he pointed to a mutated cow lying panting on the ground.

The boy looked at the cow and took a deep breath. He thought he was prepared for this life. He had tried to prepare himself as best he could by watching videos of people killing monsters like this beforehand, but having to do it in person was completely different from seeing an online video of someone doing it.

After 5 seconds of taking deep breaths, the boy finally squeezed the knife in his hand and approached the half-dead cow on the ground. Without even blinking, the boy drove the knife into the cow's head as he forced his eyes to stay open and see exactly what he was doing.

Finally, 4 seconds after he stuck the knife in the cow's head, she stopped breathing.

[You have successfully killed a monster. Your talent will be decided based on your life experiences within 2 hours.]

A message appeared on a floating screen in front of the boy, and as soon as that message appeared, the boy finally cracked a smile on his face as he turned to look at the surrounding soldiers.

"I can tell from your smile that the message appeared, right?" the soldier who spoke to him earlier said with a smile.

"Yeah," the boy responded excitedly.

"Very well. How long until your talent will be decided?" the soldier asked, as his companions began to dismantle the cow to remove any valuable materials.

"The message said it will take two hours," the boy replied.

"Two hours… is neither long nor short; hope it's something useful," the soldier said before helping his comrades to cut up the cow for materials.

The boy watched from afar, watching them doing this to learn as much as possible, since the next time he was going to go through something similar, he would have to do it alone.

The boy's name was Leonardo, although almost everyone called him Leo. The world Leo lived in began to be invaded by monsters hundreds of years ago, causing the world to descend into chaos. To deal with this, governments began to start calling in reservists to help deal with the monsters, but while weak monsters would die to ordinary knives and ammo, the more powerful monsters were tougher and needed something different to be able to kill them.

Years passed and the world economy began to deteriorate, until 3 years after the emergence of monsters, some soldiers who killed monsters managed to awaken special abilities, and these abilities were able to evolve enough so that these people could kill the most powerful monsters.

So the governments of the major countries began to call these people "Awakened", because they managed to awaken powers to protect humanity.

Even people who weren't soldiers could be empowered through awakening and be able to fight monsters. To encourage such people, the governments started buying valuable monster parts to create weapons capable of killing the most powerful monsters, thus giving rise to an extremely dangerous new job, but equally profitable.

Children who once dreamed of being singers, doctors, or judges now dreamed of becoming powerful "Awakened" so they could kill monsters and become famous.

Leo was one of those kids in this generation, who was caught up with the idea of ​​becoming a powerful, famous, and rich Awakened one day, mainly because his older sister had become a powerful Awakened One with high rank in the army. However, she had mysteriously disappeared while invading a Platinum Level Area of Danger (P.L.A.D).

Both Leo and his family were horrified by this news, but it only made Leo's conviction grow even greater to become an Awakened One, no longer for fame and glory, but rather to discover the truth of what had happened to his sister.

Sadly, because of the tragedy of having lost their daughter, Leo's parents died a few years after his sister disappeared, leaving the boy alone in this world, with only the conviction of finding what became of his sister one day.

Now, Leo has taken his first step towards becoming an Awakened: kill a monster. He would need to wait two hours to know what his quirk would be, but since his sister had received a powerful quirk, he knew he could too.

While normal people had to venture out of cities alone to kill monsters, or pay Awakened to protect them, army soldiers had a duty to help other soldiers' families awaken, so for Leo it was much easier.

Usually this is a task given to the family members themselves, but with what had happened to Leo's sister, other soldiers were sent to help him in her place.

The soldiers' job to disassemble the cow was quick, as this was just a Bronze 1 Star monster, one of the weakest monsters out there, which made this type of monster ideal for helping ordinary people awaken.

The only truly valuable thing on this cow was the horns, which could be sold for around $100 a pair to anyone interested in making a weapon; the rest was practically useless. Monster meat was not edible for humans, but other monsters could eat it and get stronger, so they just left the cow corpse there so as not to completely mess up the monster ecosystem in that location. After all, it was one of the best places to awaken people.

After the soldiers finished dissecting the Mutant Cow, the three returned with Leo to the city.

"Remember, even if your Awakened quirk isn't that powerful initially, don't give up and build your strength little by little. One day you might be able to become a Silver Awakened, or even a Gold Awakened," the Soldier said to Leo with a smile on his face.

That soldier was a Bronze 5 Stars Awakened. After reaching 5 Stars, a person would only need to make one more advancement before moving up to a Silver 1 Star Awakened, which would give a significant improvement to that person's strength, as well as the ability to call up their Status and many other bonuses afforded to humanity, but most people never managed to achieve this in their lifetime, obliged to remain a Bronze 5 Star for the rest of their lives.

"Alright, I'm in no hurry," Leo said with a calm smile on his face, pretending not to worry too much about it, but deep down he knew he needed urgent strength, as every second he spent weak here meant his sister was more likely to die wherever she was.

"Very well boy, good luck. If you need me you can call me. Your sister already saved my ass once a few years ago. As my strength wouldn't help her much, I couldn't repay this debt to her, but with you I can still be a little helpful, haha," the man said as he waved his arm and left.

Leo smiled at the man and returned home with his heart warmed by the man's concerns. The youth lived in a rented apartment, the rent on the apartment being paid by the army because of his sister, but aside from the rent and a small allowance, Leo didn't have much money left.

All these years he had lived alone without much luxury, just studying about awakening: how to improve, get stronger, efficient ways to evolve, that kind of thing. But after experiencing a real fight, he knew that everything he'd studied wasn't as useful as he originally thought.

Curious, Leo looked at the screen he could now call up again.

[You have successfully killed a monster. Your talent will be decided based on your life experiences within 1 hour and 12 minutes.]

It only took the group 50 minutes to get back from where they were until they got home, so there was still a little time left. In that remaining time, Leo decided to take a hot shower and watch some videos about Awakened to make the time go by faster. Unfortunately, his anxiety wasn't letting him. Every 30 seconds Leo kept looking at the screen seeing how much time had passed to see what his quirk would be.

After what seemed like an eternity, Leo couldn't take it anymore and tried to play a video game he'd bought. He was too lazy to think too much while playing and didn't like to focus too much on getting better at an online game, so he just bought a hack for that game and was killing people through cheating to pass the time.

By the end of the match, Leo had killed 46 people and had not died once, earning him the MVP of the game. In the game chat, people were cursing him for knowing he was using illegal programs, and saying they would report him so he would lose his account, but none of that affected Leo. If he really had the free time to dedicate himself to this game to improve at it, he'd do better to stop playing it and use his time to study Awakened to get stronger in something really worthwhile.

Finally, the message changed drastically while he was playing.

[You have successfully killed a monster. Your talent will be decided based on your life experiences within 3 minutes.]

There were only a few minutes left. Leo was excited, but when he looked again, the message changed to something strange.

[You have successfully killed a MoNsTeR... Your tnelat will be DeCiDeD... based on your efil.... experiences... within 2 minutes.]

"What's going on?!" Leo yelled in shock.

Without thinking twice he searched the internet about this phenomenon, but there was no response from a similar case.

"Shit, don't tell me the system crashed right now for me and something bad could happen?!" Leo was startled as he saw this strange message floating in front of his eyes.

[You have... SuCeSsFuLly..... dellik a.... monster. Your tAlEnT..... will be decided... based on your.... life secneirepxe... within 1 minutes.]