Chapter 7 : Gearing up (Part 1).

 The Sunglade academy was a prestigious academy with students coming from all over the continent…and the said students were of varying background, but the academy didn't care about anyone's background; your parents could own a bakery shop, but if you had sufficient talent you could get in to his academy and be chummy with the prince or princess of a great kingdom. 

Masato thought of himself as an extremely lucky person to have even become able to attend this academy and even get placed in the Royal class, where folks like him with potential of S-rank were quite common.

With the academy's reputation, Masato had high expectations for it's armory and seeing the arrays of different items and artifact, he wasn't disappointed. The armory was probably as big as a football stadium from the old era - whatever a 'football' was.

'This place is probably enchanted…there's no way such there's such a big room here in academy…unless this is underground?'

There was no way to guess where this place was as there were no windows and only multiple doors guarded by people in some expensive looking armors with a blank black helmet and some workers.

Masato could also see many other students who were probably his seniors, and professors at various parts of the academy.

Some were looking at holographic displays-probably checking the specs of the items; which were arranged in rows and columns with all of them encased in a transparent glass with numbers hovering above them, diminishing their aura, but with thousands of such items, even the diminished aura made the armory have a unique feel to it. It wasn't suffocating, but still made one feel uncomfortable.

This aura made many students freeze up for a moment as soon as they went near the glass containers.

'I guess it's fine to use this here…' Masato thought to himself and went a little far from the group so his view wasn't obstructed by anyone; then he acted like he was fixing his tie but he was actually touching a necklace beneath it.

Suddenly, Masato felt as if his soul had separated from his body; which was just a illusion as time was simply moving too slow for him…which wasn't possible without his necklace which was actually 'protecting' him…

"Huuuu…" Masato took a deep breath after his vision 'changed'.

The armory which was normal save the intangible pressure appeared completely different to him now.

'Haha, this is completely different from what I thought…' Masato thought to himself.

The armory was now filled with ethereal threads of different color; some were black as night, some were white as snow while some were transparent to the point that Masato couldn't see them without squinting his eyes; which were hurting like hell…This was what the slowed down time for. As without it his eyes would have popped like a balloon and his brain would just explode…

'Well, maybe brain explosion wouldn't hurt more than eye explosion as one immediately dies after that…?"

Masato didn't have a definitive answer for that as only his eyes had 'exploded' back when he had first used this ability.

"Threads of fate", this was the name that had come to him the first time he had used this a year ago, but he didn't want to experience his eyes exploding again he focused on the threads connecting to him. There were many strings connected to him, but he wanted to search for a new one so he ignored all the others and found a new thread that had appeared.

"Grey huh? that's new…" Masato then followed it with his eyes leaking blood.

"Found it!" 

It was connected to a small glass container a bit far away from him, with a number 777 hovering above it. Masato then touched his necklace again and the pressure that he was feeling came back again and he lost his unique vision, which he had lazily named as "Threads of fate". 

Now, he felt like his soul was finally returning to his body, and he immediately wiped the blood at the corner of his eyes and listened to what Mr.Lucas was saying…

"This is where the academy stores most of the items and artifacts…including everything but soul weapons." Mr.Lucas said to the students while pointing at various glass panels.

Mr.Lucas seemed to have just started to explain stuff.

'He seemed to have waited for the students to get used to the pressure…' Masato thought with relief. It was glad that he hadn't missed anything.

"You guys can take most items from common to unique rank, and you also have to be able to use them, read the affinity restrictions for the items first. And don't worry about not finding an item related to your affinity; there all types of items here with all the known affinities." Mr.Lucas said with bit of a pride.

Nobody was surprised with that though, as it would have been strange for the academy to not have items catered to all of the known affinity in the world; which contained incredibly rare affinities like time, space, void, cosmic and other rare affinities.

Then Mr.Lucas went towards a terminal at the corner, which all of the students had missed and after some time a holographic list appeared in front of all the students. 

Masato realized that the list contained thousands of names of items separated based on their rank...plus there was even a search function for ease of access. There were tons of weapons divided into various types with some sinister names and while some items had simple names but were of ancient rank.

Masato was overwhelmed with all of the names of items... 

-Destiny breaker(legendary)

-Wounds of Sin.(rare)

-Bastion of light.(rare)

-Lament(unique)

-Bone scythe(common)

-Fate(Legendary)

Masato even saw a list of fractal artifacts with a option to customize a set number of fractals of the user's wish.

There were many types of fractals items and they were divided by how many fractals one could carve upon; the number went from a single fractal to a total of seven.

"Why only seven though? Why couldn't people attach more?" Masato wondered about this peculiarity...

Seeing all of the items Masato grabbed the necklace he was wearing. This necklace had a red gem embedded on it which looked very common and cheap, however, with the ability to grant the user a way to look at the threads of fate, something only a Demigod or a god may be able to, was anything but cheap…and it had other elusive abilities like granting him Mana passively, and the most useful was it's ability to turn into a tattoo etched on his body.

"This is a memento from your mother, it's yours from now on. You were supposed to get it later, but time's not on our side…"

This was only thing Masato's dad had said to him when he had given him the necklace, which was also the last time he had seen his dad, and only later did he realize his dad's horrible pun about 'time'. 

And he had given him another item as well.

"Now, this is my present for you." He had said that while smiling, but with an empty hand as if he was giving him something.

Then his had simply placed his hand in his heart and that was it…the child version of Masato had obviously picked up a fuss and got angry with his dad due to that.

But it was only later did he realize that his dad given him something invaluable…and it was still in his heart or rather it was floating around his soul.

Masato didn't regret getting angry with him though, as his idiot of a dad could have at least explained to him before disappearing.

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Headquarters of the Imperial Defense Department

Head officer's room.

-slam!

A door opened with a loud sound and entered a man wearing the imperial uniform with read stripes at on his chest, signifying his status as a captain.

"Sir! There has been strange occurrences everywhere." the captain addressed the man sitting behind the table who had a white strip on his chest.

"Give me the full report, captain. I can't read your mind you know?" the man said in a deep voice with authority. He had purple hair and looked to be in his twenties.

"Reporting to the major. We've received many complaints about people missing from all of our bunkers and the safety zones including our own camps. And the missing people seemed to be get forgotten by even their own relatives." The captain said with a pale face.

"What? You came here to report me such trifles? Don't you know that people always go 'missing' during the evacuation? And forgetting the missing person? Bunch of liars. They were probably petty criminals taking advantage of the situation and hiding." the major said with sneer.

"Yes sir, I'm aware of that. But the numbers this time is very high; it's already crossed thousands, sir. And our mages even used mind-reading spells along with lie-detecting machines but hey really seem to forget everything about the missing person."

 The captain said with gritted teeth, trying to hold his rage in at the major's dismissive attitude.

"Gods above...thousands...? I'll be damned." the major muttered to himself in disbelief.

"Yes sir, and this happened in the span of 30 minutes. Sir, something very serious is happening. We must look into it." the captain said warily lest he faced the majors' wrath.

"Hah...You're right captain. But we won't be the only ones since this matter is very important. So expect to see new faces soon." The major said with smile.

"What do you mean sir?" The captain asked with furrowed brows.

"Heh, you'll know soon captain...soon..."