Believe in God?
Too many religious fanatics whether Christians or Catholics asked that question. And although there were no excesses in Seoul, Korea, he always avoided the question; The first times I responded with denial, they attacked me verbally or physically.
Why believe in a god you've never seen? When ignorance was at its peak, rain, storms, droughts, deaths, diseases, seasons, practically everything was credited to a greater entity just for the mere fact that they could not find a logical explanation with bases.
But this wasn't that kind of world anymore. Now, for pride and for my own good, I would have to avoid religious idiots. You might wonder, what changed?
The gods.
A year ago the weather, simply put, went crazy. There were more frequent storms, the winter was harsher, and the spring and summer were more pleasant. The culprits were the early incarnations, as they were originally and popularly called. Zeus was reborn into a homeless man in Manchester, England, just as Persephone was reborn into an American environmental activist. She was on the news when I saw it. Their identities were revealed when they both had to face "monsters", yes, those from stories, comics or manhwas. Eventually, and at the same time, they realized that both were releasing absurd amounts of a new energy, which the otakus were ahead of the rest in naming by calling it mana, which caused those who were around them to end up waking up with inhuman abilities or falling into a stretcher in a hospital; Everyone was affected by those energies in the same way.
My case was one but in secondary school. My maternal uncle was reincarnated as a notorious Tengu from Japanese mythology. He didn't know it until my mother collapsed in the middle of preparing dinner with him and started convulsing. Since then she remains connected to a device and my uncle 'slaves' as an official of the Awakened Association in order to pay the hospital bills, support us and... and also send me to an academy.
And here it was.
Imposing bars with thick well-polished bars, the main building as magnificent as a national capital museum, blue banners and young people between thirteen and eighteen years of age crossing the entrance with carelessness, arrogance or nervousness. I had been observing all of this through an 80% tinted window since we arrived ten minutes ago.
"Young teacher, in half an hour they will inaugurate the new classes," he recalled with evident physical tremors resulting from his nerves. Chong-Seo was always like that in my presence, which was when I saw him. He was my uncle's driver, who was absent without surprise. I'm sorry the teacher wasn't here like he promised. He...
Broken record.
He handed me a small, simple oblong cardboard box without too many ornaments or embossed patterns. I grabbed her lightly and said goodbye.
"Thank you for being kind enough to bring me, Chong-Seo. Be careful on the way back", I told him sharply, victim of my mixed feelings.
I opened the door and stepped outside. I didn't forget anything, I already had everything in the backpack on my back and I was wearing the uniform ironed by the Yamagawa official's servants. I continued on my way taking the first reaction of the three that was chosen to be used in this place, nonchalance. I couldn't appear weak or happy, my father was weak when he left and my mother was happy when she didn't pay more attention to my uncle.
I had been thrown into a pack of monsters in human skin.
Surely the smartest or most competitive ones already analyzed the others from the beginning.
Sure, no, I felt them, I felt their not very friendly glances on me.
The road to the plaza located in the middle of the academy territories was not long
The path to the plaza located in the middle of the academy's territories was not long. I was able to get there thanks to the large and obvious audience of young people who were going in the same direction.
A fun memory emerged. I had the need to internally mock myself for those who still remained at the entrance unloading their dozen luggage.
I stopped suddenly when I saw a back half a meter in front of me while I still had my backpack in one hand on my back. I soon found myself surrounded by people looking in the same direction, a dais on whose sides stood ten adults in distinctive clothing, most with serious expressions.
A woman, whose age killed in cold blood the cliché of an old man with a bushy beard, looking like the director, took the stage with pink hair tied in an elegant bun pierced by two black toothpicks. Seeing almost a hundred new entrants gathered in the plaza behind the main building and half facing a light forest, she opened her lips.
"Give your best, novices," he murmured out loud, not because of his raised voice but because of placing a finger on the side of his neck. It seemed like magic. Just that she said before stepping off the stand and walking directly to the west wing.
One of the ten standing in a row came to replace him awkwardly. He said something that only he understood. He ended up asking for a microphone urgently but he ended up being helped by another magician who used the same trick as the director.
My legs hurt.
The man at the beginning of his middle age and with almost absent hair spoke—S-sorry about that, guys. The director is usually direct and brief, but don't confuse her with someone unpleasant.
»"As you know, this place, the Pandora academy, has been dedicated to training awakened young people with severity, efficiency and safety for a year. Us..."
He continued talking for the remainder of the twelfth hour of the day, twenty minutes. Numbness attacked my legs. The bald man mentioned the unexpected arrival of the mythological incarnates, which did not exceed almost three hundred throughout the world, the spatial fissures from which monsters came out or the places already infested by them without any explanation, the discovery and investigation of artifacts and the glorious purpose of having converted a park under construction into this academy in a quick and hasty manner. If only they said that the craving was out of greed and not the intention to protect.
By the time the speech ended, every student uniform present in the square was added by a small symbolic shield on the right side of the torso. I grabbed the hem of my jacket and found an analogue symbol of Merlin. I had been assigned to magic.
I wasn't surprised.
Admission tests were held during the annual registration period at the Seoul Awakening Center. I made mine with Cheong-Seo accompanying me. In the energy sensitivity room I caught my uncle in the room from where both the process and the result were observed and analyzed. They took longer than the rest of the teenagers to give an accurate analysis. The meter would surely have broken down. As I left, I barely heard the amount of mana I had.
As I left the place, the square, I saw uniforms with the same or different shields. As far as was known, there were five main classes, fifteen sub-classes, and three unique classes discovered so far. The sub-classes served as a tuner for your pros. The unique classes were, as their denominator said, something that stood out and remained between the awakened and the incarnated, although further from the latter than from the former.
I, as part of and on equal terms with the crowd in which I found myself, did not know where I was going specifically. Our luggage, which was left in the circular room with a transparent dome as a roof, was no longer present. Strangely I felt the need to stay in the same place like a few while the rest wandered here and there between the four corridors. It seemed that if you had a bad hand at remembering things you would obviously get lost countless times in the academy; It was terrifyingly magnificent.
And it was just the main building.
A tiny point of yellow light floated in the air in front of me. He approached with perceptible jumps in the direction of my face. I wanted to take a step back but when I was considering the possibility I could notice a tiny face on the small, apparently conscious body. The surprise of the new entrants was evident, as was mine.
I had only heard about them through videos. Not everything that crossed an opening was with murderous intentions, the Lightcrowlers were an example of that; peaceful, friendly but shy and above all symbiotic.
I fumbled around in my pockets for something, pulling out a small packet of peanuts. I opened it and took one out extending it towards the Lightcrowler. In response, he grabbed it and let out a playful beep, then spun around and jumped into the air. I followed her. By the time I looked over my shoulder I found that others were going at the same speed as me while the rest imitated us, a minority of whom panicked because they didn't have food on hand.
Between the echoes of my footsteps and seven others around me, the itching at the back of my knees and my fingers constantly bringing peanuts to my lips, I was able to see the long hallway better. No color was intense, always white and gray, but the rule was broken with blue. Soon the environment evolved into a darker one.
I heard an abrupt scream followed by a heavy fall. Six of us had passed the frame in which the exhibition of mythological paintings ended, whether copies, originals or made this year. When I turned around I found that a wall that was not very transparent had violently pushed the seventh of the group, who, unlike the rest, he didn't have a Lightcrowler with him. He looked at us scared and with a hint of embarrassment before clumsily getting up and running in the direction he came from.
It was probably Warrior class.
The wizard class were not exactly the most famous since to do so you had to have an intelligence above average, which is why there were so few of us in the new year. Warriors required strength, speed and, in rare cases, honor. With archers it was sharpness and stealth just as it was with assassins, with supports I had no idea.
"I wouldn't laugh if I were you, even magicians have fallen into the same misfortune," a female voice commented with some inverse mockery.
"Uh?" She questioned with confusion, turning around.
"Park Casey, your senior. Since you are the new entrants and I am your experienced one, I will have to guide and advise you. "Come on, don't get so serious," she prompted with an awkward smile, giving a friendly elbow to a girl of about fifteen with a mop of raven hair. "We may be magicians but that doesn't mean we should be bitter," she joked in rhyme, only causing one of those present to laugh.
»"Follow me."
He snapped his fingers.
Silence.
A wall appeared behind him. Another one behind me. Those on our sides disappeared in fluid movements and with little gross noise. It looked like a living labyrinth. The changes continued to happen like a rubic cube, with walls rising or moving, all until a room the size of the plaza appeared in front of us and to our sides.
"It's you, isn't it? The creator of the Minos labyrinth", I suspected and I was right.
Not every incarnation was precisely mythological. The mythological halves circulated among them, and examples of them were Achilles, Buddha, King Arthur. But she stood out not for combat, but for her monstrous ability to change the environment at her whim and make it a labyrinth... and even summon the legendary monster that haunted it. Labyrinth.
"Here and now I am Park Casey, no matter how many memories or abilities I have of the original Daedalus," she responded with reluctance and a hint of irritability.
At least he wasn't the only one with trauma or family problems here. The feeling went from lonely to comforting.
The atmosphere changed, at the initiative of the senior, so as not to make the rest of the novices uncomfortable.
"Choose the room you want, they are all the same after all. She—she followed her path, trusting us to follow her obediently while we took curious and excited glances around us like children in a candy store. Everyone should go to bed before ten at night and wake up not so early to go to class at eight.
Too thoughtful, but not so considering that now we would live here until we graduate.
"Tomorrow Professor Gwydion, who is in charge of our general class as wizards, will give you a proper welcome."
And he continued straight with part of the novices.
I looked over my shoulder and found a wall just like the rest. The road we entered no longer existed.
I should be thankful that Daedalus, I mean, Casey isn't a divergent ranker. It would be a pain in the ass for my uncle.
The entire place was, observed with dedication, the interior of a large tower. Twenty stories high and six rooms in each with doors numbered in silver. From outside the academy it looked like a simple residential building.
Pocket magic with Daedalus mobility mechanisms. I knew the second when the rooms moved like a puzzle with two empty spaces until I safely reached the first. The door to the room opened, letting a second-year student out as if nothing had happened.
Hopefully it's impossible to open the door until you reach safety or the magic class would last longer against rank four monsters.
The Lightcrowler returned to my field of vision. Dios jumped up more excitedly and made imperceptible noises similar to those of a happy baby in the arms of her parent. In a moment she acted as a guide again and dragged me to what seemed to be my room.
"Its busy!" a voice on the other side shouted irritably.
The Lightcrowler played a sound of inconstant laughter causing me a hint of irritability. I apologized and tried another, finding the empty one. It was spacious. It consisted of what was necessary without reaching eccentricity.
One step and the darkness that wasn't there before surrounded me like a thick blanket in the middle of the night. Except that it seemed to be nighttime now and he was surrounded by nothing but what appeared to be a training field.
A light came on. I turned around and it turned off instantly. It happened with another, playing that heavy ignition sound. I fell into it about two more times until I caught one in time. The floor did not creak or emitThere was no sound before his retreating footsteps, he could only hear and feel his heart pounding.
"I hope it's a typical welcome."
She wanted it. Truly, she wished it were.
He might seem like a frivolous 17-year-old teenager with no desire to make friends, but he was just an emotional wall that threatened to falter before the monster in front of me. Twisting his wings with his hands at their ends and letting out squawks as he murmured something, most of the time he repeated a phrase.
"Richard Wagner must be turning in his grave when he sees that the Valkyries are not as he painted them."
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