7 The Awakening Stone

Kaden's heartbeat was beating fast in anticipation of what was coming up.

'The Awakening! Finally, it's time!' He thought excitedly inside his mind.

Kaden was not one to get excited over things much less something connected to a school environment, but this was different. The awakening was a once in a lifetime opportunity for everyone in this world no matter who you are.

Ever since the world changed all those years ago and beasts started roaming the world people at random started awakening powers or otherwise known as a "Class" each supposedly pre-determined by birth. This was fantastic for many people as they would awaken things such as a swordsman class and in some rare cases someone could get something spectacular like a holy warrior class which had some of the same aspects as a swordsman class but with extra features added to it.

Things such as that lead into the way we differentiate each power that people have such as who has a more valuable class and who has a less desirable class. Lucky enough the powers weren't the only thing to come when the beast arrived. Each person along with their class was given a "Screen". A screen was a holographic like image that appeared in front of a person at will that labeled everything to do with their powers and their stats as a person.

A persons Screen could not be seen by another person unless the owner of the screen gave access mentally for another to see which is also how people can compare each other's class rarity but of course a classes rarity isn't necessarily everything. Although it can be a huge determining factor for some people in the world who only accept people with a highly rated class.

The ranks for a class go from the rank F- all the way to the currently highest-class owner "Terror" who currently has a class potential ranked at SSS+ and their current rank is also the highest of anyone last recorded at SS-. Though they have been gone for a long time now for some mysterious reason. Anyway, the rank that is given once a person awakens is always F- because the class rank that everyone reads is the potential of the class which is always in parenthesis beside the current rank. Also, even though there is a potential for a class it doesn't mean the person will reach it or even not surpass its potential all of this depends on circumstance that Kaden didn't have much knowledge of yet.

Kaden watched as a teacher pulled out what seemed to be a blue type of stone from behind the stage causing many students to gasp in excitement. This wasn't just any stone this was the awakening stone which is one of the main reasons this school is so sought after. From current knowledge there are only 3 of these stones in the world one of them being owned by America, another by Canada, and the final one being owned by Japan.

These stones were found in a beast filled cave thousands of feet underground by a team of adventurers led by Terror the highest ranked person in the world. The team was investigating a rising influx of monsters coming from the cave located in Canada. At first the Canadians tried to deal with it on their own but after losing many rank A ability users and finally one of their few rank S adventurers they recruited the help of America and Japan which ended up with them getting to the end of the cave and finding the stones inside of a secret cavern towards the bottom of the cave. Since there were three stones and three different countries present it was much easier splitting the shares evenly between them.

At the time none of these countries knew exactly how powerful a stone it truly was until each country took the stone to a person with an appraisal class which allowed then to figure out with the use of these stones, they could forcefully awaken someone's power at will allowing them to have their class earlier than expected. Though such a stone was something amazing and cherished by both countries there was something about the stone that none of the countries knew until later.

Each government did their own series of test with the stone starting with elderly people which resulted in people above 50 not having any reaction and not gaining anything while people between 30 and 50 which were tested gained their dormant classes without any repercussions which excited many.

Up until this point none of the countries tested the stone on people below 30, that was until Canada had the idea to use the stone on newborn babies and raising them in facilities to later be used as a personal guard of the country and extreme weapons. Though the idea in theory was terrible but still genius the country gained no fruits for its labor besides piles of dead children inside their country.

It seemed that if the stone was used upon an infant the baby would have no adverse reaction at first but within the next three days have their veins turn a purple like color with an extreme reaction until finally the veins burst killing the child.

The Canadians tried to cover their tracks as much as possible by trying to have something show for their efforts. They did this by changing the test subjects age slightly older to see if the effects were different.

They were wrong.

One by one the age difference went up from a one-year-old to a two-year-old and so on killing innocent kids and people. That was until they got to the age of 16, defeated and tired the Canadian government finally had some light when they tested a 16-year-old male and after touching the stone he awakened his class. Not only this after keeping the kid under top surveillance for 3 days he had no reaction much less even a single vein turn purple during the entire process.

Finally after all that blood shed they had results.