Skydancer Exams (6)

Edit: Like I said in the past few chapters, light edits. When I get more time, I'll just rewrite everything.

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The android man held the congrats bot in his left hand like it was a dead chicken and looked confusedly at the people surrounding me. A slightly monotonous voice came out from his helmet, and the image of a cold robot he originally portrayed was destroyed.

"Oh, were you guys looking for this?"

The robot-like man smiled and handed the congrats bot to the closest candidate who happened to be the Cunning kind of person; Shiro.

"Who the f*ck are you?!"

Shiro yelled out loud in a supposedly smart ploy to figure out his identity. Shiro was the worst kind of Cunning Hugo had ever seen, his supposedly intelligent plots and schemes wouldn't work on people weirder and smarter than him.

"Oh, me?"

"Of course you! Who else would I be talking about, f*cking ghosts?!"

Shiro exaggeratedly yelled at the robot-like man, who clutched his thin mechanical arms and looked around him fearfully.

"There are ghosts here?!"

Shiro had never expected this kind of turn, weren't robots supposed to be heartless, unless... he wasn't a robot!

'Of course, he's one of those NextGen Evolutionaries who fuse with technology instead of monster genes! It makes perfect sense now, that also explains his weird appearance,'

Shiro assessed while staring at the android man's appearance. The fellow wore a spherical helmet on his head that showcased his facial features through blue digital icons on the material the helmet was made of.

His limbs were made of some sort of green metal alloy and looked very flashy, with bright blue lines crisscrossing across his arms and legs. Hugo reckoned that there were more on his torso as well.

What drew most people to his appearance though was his helmet and clothing. Like most other people in the artificial testing grounds, his sense of clothing was somewhat odd, this guy was wearing a sleeveless black suit with a white inner shirt and blue tie.

He looked like a futuristic DJ of sorts.

"Oh, sorry. Is my helmet inconveniencing you, I'll take it off for you."

The candidate was very courteous and did a couple of things before the other candidates could react.

"Swoosh."

A low swoosh sound was heard when he pulled off his helmet and several white streams of smoke accompanied the helmet coming off his head. Underneath the dark spherical helmet, a teen that looked about eighteen years of age stood. He had gravity-defying dark green hair and blazing yellow eyes.

The teen had bags under his eyes, meaning he probably stayed up late or 'slept' a lot, many people guessed it was the latter since he was a NextGen Evolutionary who tends to 'sleep' way longer than normal Evolutionaries.

"Hello all, my name is IA V-1. Sorry for the smoke coming off me earlier, the doctor told me that it was what they called 'fresh' back in his days.'"

The teen spoke mechanically, not with the robotic voice modulator, but utterly mechanical, it seemed that he had grown accustomed to talking like that, almost like he spent his whole life perfecting that way of speaking.

"Anyway, there are still some people on the other side, let's take a look there instead."

The green-haired youth turned, leaving the others speechless, this guy constantly made conversation with himself and didn't even realise it.

Across the artificial ocean, Hyena was still trying to walk over the water and was failing miserably. Everyone on Hugo's side watched the soaking wet figure prop himself back onto the beach part of the artificial testing ground and try to walk on the water despite all his past attempts leading to failure.

"Damn, I really pity that guy right now."

"Mhmm. Although he can't really accomplish this, I still admire him for his quick mind, physical abilities and determination."

"Yeah, such a person is the perfect person to Awaken and become a Skydancer."

Almost all the candidates expressed their admiration for Hyena's prowess and didn't insult him anymore. But such a pity, in this society, strength was all that mattered.

IA V-1 couldn't understand the sentiments carried by the rest of the candidates, and more importantly half of what they said.

"What is Awaken?"

The moment his last word dropped, every single person on the artificial beach turned to look at him. Some sighed, ignoring him and walked away to recover their strengths and sanity, others thought he was joking; after all, who didn't know what 'Awaken' meant.

Hugo however, had a strange light in his eyes whenever he looked at IA V-1

'He has this sort of innocence to him like he hasn't ever experienced the world before now, everything from his manner of speech to his behaviour indicates that IA V-1 is new to interact with different types of humans. He seems just like...'

Hugo's thoughts paused for a few seconds and resumed when he finally found the right person to use for his conclusion.

'... Me when I first entered into this black, grey and white world.'

Hugo wasn't exaggerating, the world was truly black, grey and white, this was both literal and figurative.

He was colour blind.

Hugo had always loved the colour black ever since he was a child, however, his inability to see other colours only accentuated the love he had for the colour.

Unlike most colour blindness, Hugo's "colour blindness" was different and only happened after a huge incident.

"You really don't know what an Awakened is?"

Hugo looked at IA V-1 strangely and spoke everyone's thoughts.

"Yes, I also don't know what a Skydancer and Evolutionary are."

When the green-haired teen noticed that everyone was looking at him incredulously, he felt nervous and blurted out questions simultaneously.

"What do they mean? Are they things I should know?"

"Oh, they're just simple things that make the world run you dumbass!"

"Have you been living under a rock all your life?"

"What the hell is this? A freak show? I'm not very normal, but compared to these people I'm like an average joe!"

People cursed, insulted and lamented, some were explicitly directed at Hugo and the other weirdos, others were directed to only IA V-1 and the rest just cursed themselves for being too normal in the midst of 1000 weirdos.

"These people are not gonna explain it, so let me just do it."

Hugo sighed and took it upon himself to explain what these terms were. He slowly led IA V-1 to a more secluded location on the artificial testing grounds.

"So, where do I start..."

"Anywhere you please."

"... Okay, but please tell me that you at least know of the giant meteor that arrived on Earth 100 years ago?"

"Of course, I'm not some dummy."

IA V-1 scoffed and gave him some sort of look that said 'Are you looking down on my intelligence'.

Hugo looked at his face and replied to him in the most basic way he could think of.

"Yes, anyway. As you may know, when the meteor came into contact with the Earth, all animals evolved and some dinosaurs were even brought back to life. During that period, humans were also almost wiped out twice, by the meteor and by the animals turned monsters."

"But on the brink of extinction, a new type of humans was born and later saved normal humans from dying. They claimed to have been Awakened by the meteor's descent. This event is called the Awakening.

During this period when people were Awakened with all sorts of powers, crimes also became more pronounced."

"Since many people with domineering powers thought only of the money they could gain from robbing banks and stealing. Many people without the aptitude to become Awakened could not do anything until a group of prominent scientists finally managed to figure out the technology behind the gene combination theories.

Using bombs and nukes, they killed a few monsters blah blah blah and found a few subjects to test this new technology on. These subjects were known as Evolutionaries and were fused with different ancient species of monsters."

"Evolutionaries defeated the few evil Awakened and with the Awakened who weren't evil, established a new occupation known as a Skydancer, who were comprised of Evolutionaries or Awakened who were tasked with enforcing the law, going on research expeditions and killing monsters.

This is the primary school definition of it all, go read up on more to find out more."

Hugo ended the explanation bluntly and waved the contemplating IA V-1 off.

"What the hell is that?"

A person incredulously exclaimed as he looked across the artificial sea and gave himself and everyone else the shock of their lives.