A Hero’s Entrance

As Arthurs fist collided with Victor the latter was sent flying backwards while smoking slightly.

Jacob looked at his saviour with his one remaining good eye.

"Took you long enough" he mumbled with a small lopsided grin.

Indeed, their rescue was also a part of Jacob's plan.

Well, less a carefully executed part of the plan and more just the result of him running in the general direction of the training room they came from and hoping they'd come out and help him at some point.

Knowing that this overpowered fighter that he had befriended was here Jacob finally allowed himself to collapse.

Only to be stopped by a small frame that easily supported his weight.

"Jesus…" Victoria muttered in worry as she held Jacob up.

A reasonable reaction considering the state he was in.

"WELL, WELL! Seems like the little coward has some friends! Oh- oh my! Is that YOU Victoria? Just what is my sister doing hanging around these low lives" Victor mocked.

Jacob was a little shocked to hear this, Victoria had never mentioned having a brother. Let alone the brother being Victor. In fact, one of the main reasons, they became friends was because he had punched him in the face.

"Well, I suppose it makes sense, birds of a feather and all that…" the bully mused as he looked at her with disdain.

Jacob waited for the resounding insult and arrogance that Victoria usually hit back with. Only to hear nothing, she simply held him up with a complicated expression on her face.

"Shut UP!" Arthur shouted as he flashed over to Vicent's location.

A doomed attempt, considering Vincent simply teleported away.

"Hmmm, you're a little troublesome. I was saving this for a special occasion, but now's as good a time as any I suppose" Victor said.

After making that statement earth began to well up from the ground, forming the vague shape of a sword, then condensing and hardening to the point where it resembled a proper weapon.

Without even thinking Jacob knew this was Victor's second ability from his Vass clan mana.

Thankfully it was Arthur he was up against. Arthur's face grew more serious as he summoned his relic before getting into a proper stance.

What followed was an almost two-minute battle.

Neither side was able to gain a decisive advantage until Arthur activated his healing ability.

Upon seeing his opponent recover from all his wounds and get stronger Victor quickly teleported away.

There was no fanfare as the bully seemed to understand that dealing his escape would simply allow Arthur to flash over to him and attack once again.

Having won the battle Arthur came over to Jacob and helped him to his feet.

"What the hell did they do to you man, I'm so sorry I took so long to get here. Victoria said I should give you space because of what I said when we were training and I'm sorry about that too and I wante-" Arthur rambled apologies.

"It's fine, just get me to the nurse's and let me sleep" Jacob grunted, cutting off the apologetic young man.

The two of them took Jacob to the nurse's office.

Thankfully the three people who he had 'dispatched' for lack of a better word, seemed to have been treated already and were nowhere to be seen.

The nurse was a little annoyed at seeing him again so soon but did her job anyway.

The entire time Victoria was quiet. Very unlike her usual self.

Jacob was feeling pretty groggy by the time the nurse was done.

He had been ordered to sleep there for the night, but he should recover just fine.

"Sooo… When were you going to tell us that Vic the dick was your brother?" Jacob asked Victoria causally once it was just the three of them.

She looked at him with conflicting emotions for a few seconds before sighing.

"We've been twins since we were born, obviously. We grew up as part of the Roozlen clan together in America. For a long time, we were happy normal kids, well as normal as you can be in a family of dreamers. But once we started getting older, he started to kind of fall behind. I don't know why but when it came to school or combat training or pretty much anything I could do it better than him. People started thinking of me as the star and him as the leftover, it didn't help that I liked to rub it in here and there." She admitted quietly, her usual arrogance nowhere to be seen.

"Eventually it came to the point where we should have become dreamers. It might not be a certain process but generally our clan has a high rate of children becoming dreamers around the age of 16-20. It was fine for a while but eventually the clan became antsy because I hadn't awakened. Since I was their rising star, they wanted me to hurry and become a dreamer already. Right when people were starting to get annoyed, Victor became a dreamer and a dual affinity one as well. After that the tables turned and everything went to shit" She explained.

Jacob was a little surprised, he hadn't heard her curse before, she always presented herself as above using the language.

"I hate to say it, but what you've experienced here is kind of a bubble. The good parts of dreamer society if you like. Outside of the university people can be brutal to others, especially ones in their own clan since the more powerful have more sway. A person's rank means everything out there, people who are rank 3 or higher are revered and respected while rankless dreamers are treated like shit. It's not like that everywhere but it's common enough for everyone to know about it. Even in the UDRD, there's discrimination, you just haven't seen it because we're all in this unit." She continued.

"What do you mean this unit?" Arthur asked.

"She means that because we could potentially belong to any clan and at any position people won't mess with us because once we finish, we may have power over them" Jacob explained.

It wasn't hard for him to connect the dots.

He had always felt that the dreamer society he was acquainted with was too idealistic and happy. Knowing the dark side of his new world was relieving. At least now he had an idea of what he was dealing with.

Arthur sat down with a frown as he processed the information.

"I'm going to call it a night guys see you tomorrow" he said.

"You realise there's no way in hell I'm leaving you on your own?" Arthur replied as he straightened the pillow on the uncomfortable nurse's couch.

"I'll be fine" Jacob insisted.

"Like you were walking home tonight?" Victoria said as she got a blanket out of a cupboard from who knows where and began setting up on another couch.

Jacob sighed in resignation.

He was too tired to argue anymore.

He just wanted…. To rest… his eyes… for… a… bit…