The AA (Awakened Association)

he then asks me "do you know why you are here son"

I reply "I think so sir because I awakened with the system, right?

He says "that's a part of it and the other part it to train you to get ready to fight against the wave.

"What is the wave" I quickly ask?

He then replies ominously with "you'll see".

He then walks out of the room and leads us to another group of people some with their system open and others in meditative states I can only assume training and me and my dad are led into separate rooms where I am asked to demonstrate what I can do. And they reveal a target that they tell me to hit with whatever. I look at it and it looks to made of steel, so I walk up to it and activate empower hands and punch it with all of my strength and surprisingly I make a sizable dent roughly the size of my hand but not without damage of my own. I pull my hand back stunned by what I did but then the dull throbbing pain hits and I start shaking my hand and I ask for some ice.

The guard with nods his head steps out for a second comes back and says "it's on its way".

As I am holding my hand while waiting for the ice the guard asks me "if that's all I can do".

I turn to him "no that's not all, but I will need more space and a place to land so I won't break my legs".

"Break your legs hmmm weird side effect but that can be arranged" as he says that a woman walks through the door carrying some ice.

"Finally," I say as I grab the ice bag and put it on my hand as I walk out, I see my dad talking to some officials.

He walks over to me and asks, "what they had me do".

"I tell him they just had me show off what I could do but I could only show part of what I can do the other thing requires more space".

"Well, what did you do" he asks?

"I used one of my spells to punch a steel target and I dented it around the same size of my first" I reply proudly.

"Steel?! How did you manage to dent solid steel"?

"I have a spell called empower fist that lets me massively power up my hand with mana, but it still hurts quite a bit afterwards" I whisper.

"Joel, we have prepared your space and landing pad so you can demonstrate your abilities" he announced.

As I'm walking towards him, I say, "actually they are called spells just to precise".

He says "Oh really good to know we will keep that in mind. Now step into here and make sure to aim for the landing pad after whatever you do".

"ok" I reply as I walk into the room

Walking into the room if that's what you can even describe it as. It seems like they demolished the floors above it for 3 or 4 levels. looking around i see the landing pad is a pool of water roughly 8 or 9 feet deep.

I turn to the man that led me into the room and ask him "how did you manage to get this all set up so fast".

He replies with "we already had this set up for other reasons and we moved the pool you see from somewhere else because we have several strength specialized awakened, so it really wasn't that hard".

turning away from him I walk to where I'm 2 or 3 feet away from the pool and then activate my leap skill and when I do I launch easily 3 stories high and then I focus on making sure I land in the water. when I do land in the water its surprisingly warm and when I manage to climb out there is the man waiting for me with a towel.

"That was impressive" he says

"Ya it was I didn't think I would launch that high, but I think with either more levels in that spell or more strength I should be able to survive the fall" I respond.

he nods his head then leads me back out the room back with the group of people he then gathers everyone into a half circle

Then says, "we will now be giving out ranks based on your performance with F being the lowest and A being the highest".

He starts saying people's names and eventually he gets to my dad and says "Ivan Gibeson C rank" then "Joel Gibeson B rank"

I turn to dad, and he also turns to me because we both got pretty high ranks and he also looks pretty excited.

He then announces "there will be a meeting in 15 minutes for all of those above C rank so anyone below C rank follow these ladies and gentlemen out and towards the airport where you can get plane rides back towards your family or your homes Now all qualifiers please stay in these room we will gather you in those fifteen minutes to fill you in on your training and what the wave is".

Looking over at my dad I walk over to him and we walk away from most everybody also and wait till everyone that was told to leave left.

"Dad I forgot to ask earlier but what did they have you do since you seemed to get done earlier than me?".

"Well they had me walk in the room and then asked me if it was alright if they looked at my stats and if they could click around a bit. Since I had no reason to say no I flipped my screen to them and let them go to work. After they got done they said I was brilliant and a marvel of a human and they showed me what they had written down. Not only do I have 20 strength and 14 stamina but I have a 2.5x increase in training strength and a 2x increase in training stamina".

"That's great do you know if that's normal or is there a reason why your strength increases more than your stamina?".

"No they didn't say anything they just lead me out of the room after that. If you are so curious ask them before we go into the meeting".

"Ok"

I turn around and start heading towards a person that I can only assume is a researcher and wait for them to finish talking with whoever and when they get done I clear my throat to get their attention and they turn towards me.

"Hello there and what do you need"

"I was wondering some things about the system and wanted to know if you could answer them" I asked

"Well first it depends on what you want to know and secondly it depends on your rank".

Well I have 2 main questions about how stat boost increases work and who are the other people with the magic stat?".

"Well that first one I can answer but if remember correctly you're a B rank so you can only know part of that second one".

He then turned around and motioned for me to follow me into a interrogation like room but flipped with the windows black on the outside and clear on the inside.

"So for your first question from what we've gathered so far the higher the original boost in an awakened stat the better the training increase. For your second question I can tell you how many there are but only 5 out of the 17 are you qualified to know of".

"Why can't I know of the other 12 are they just that important?". I ask quickly

"Well the first 5 are all C or B rank but the other 12 are already A rank" he replies

"Well are the first 5 out there" I ask as I point out the window.

"Yes they are and if you want I can point them out to you". He replies with a smile he then walks up closer to the window and points out five people

"The first one is Alexander he has a magic stat of 8 and two spells, the next one is Holly she has a magic stat of 9 with three spells and is half a step away from A rank the next two are the twins Abraham and George but Abraham likes to go by Abe they both have a magic stat of 6 but their abilities compliment each other really well, and the last one is John who has a magic stat of 9 but only one spell that is kind off like your empower hands"

With all this talk of magic stats and spells I decide to look at mine for the first time in a while. I pull up my system as I'm walking out of the room. I look at it and my Empower hands leveled up from 4 to 5 as I suspected and my leap skill is still at level 2. Looking up at my stats my intelligence surprisingly went up by 1 point that must be from the extensive training and my magic has reached 9. Looking inwards at my core it looks and it also has gotten to 16 inches squared. Finally looking towards all the other magicians I call them for now Alexander despite having a noble sounding name is a scrawny surprisingly tall kid standing in a corner with his system covering his face, Holly is a sweet looking girl talking with a group of people who ho I can assume she made friends with already, Abe and George are just a bit older than me it look roughly 17 or 18 and they are play fighting with what looks like wood swords a child would have made, and lastly is John who just straight up looks like Captain America and he standing off to one side talking to some other guys and just as I'm looking over to him I see my dad also join that group and he seems to be getting along good. Seeing how Alexander was the only one standing by himself I decide to walk up and introduce myself.

"Hey" I say while walking up to him

He moves his system from right out in front his face so I can finally see it and it is … completely normal looking. Did you think just because he had it in-front of his he would be ugly. Despicable.

"I was told by the scientist looking guy over there that you also had the magic stat"

"Really hmm he did that well since from what I've gathered we going to be stuck here for the next few months might as well get to know each other" He replied smoothly with a sly grin.

Right as I'm about to say something else a military man calls and says "the meeting is about to commence everybody gather into this room" he then points to a door to his left.

I break away from Alexander and go over to my dad we walk into the room find us a pair of seats and sit down. The same general looking guy I saw as I walked in before shows up with an even scarier looking guy behind him. They walk to the from of the room the the lights go dim as a projector screen lights up with a video ready to play. The video starts without a word and it pans over to the tower presumably from what I can gather quite soon after the mana explosion. Through the smoke i can make out a creature that is slowly making it's way out of the hole. It gets passed the lip of the crater and more and more creatures start climbing out from it . then after a brief moment of silence they all roar in unison and start charging towards the camera. after about half a second of delay the cameraman starts running back to what seems like a barricade line where more and more people are lining up with guns are just medieval looking weapons. The guns start blasting but they seem to be doing minimal damage that's when grenades are thrown and guns are cast aside with replacements of spears and shields and when the two lines collide the barricade holds and monsters start dropping like flies. After what looks like only a minute of struggle the barricade starts pushing further up and the wave of monsters slowly decreases to none as the humans reign victorious just as people are about celebrate a giant message appears before the tower. It says. People of earth you have done well with your little tie against the wave but with this meager force you are only left to cower in what the true wave will bring, so gather your forces and gather your men for a team or a godlike individual is the only way you will pass the pre-test.

The video stops and the general turns to look at us and says " you all are brought here to help defend against the wave in any way possible. what you just say was only a fraction of what we are going to prepare you against. luckily we have some insight to what we have to prepare for and we should i must stress this should be able to rouse the firepower to defeat this horde and bring temporary peace to this country. Any questions?".

No body speaks for a second as they process what they just say but i pipe up with the first question to come to mind "is the real wave going tp happen in three months just like the quest timer".

The general respond with "from all of what we can tell yes so be prepared for some hellish training and mental preparation".

Finally more and more people are starting top pipe up and the general yells "Quiet one by one you can ask your questions"

John is the first one to go "how are we supposed to train for something if we don't even know when or what we are going to fight".

The general goes "well we are going to get you as strong as possible within that 3 month time period and then when it is about to happen we will gather you in that spot you say and prepare for the worst".

Holly then says "when will the training start and will it be the same for everybody or be specialized for their stats"

The general then responds with "the training will begin tomorrow and yes depending on your stats your training will be different to maximize your potential and abilities. One more question before you are sent off to your rooms to prepare for tomorrow.".

One guy I don't know the name of stands up and asks the question I've expected the most "you expect us to fight those monsters with inly three months of training and a dream".

"Well son its either you fight and try to live or maybe die now with training or eventually fight and die some other time with no training now everyone your will be led to the dormitories where you can pick your rooms and prepare mentally for your training tomorrow".

The guy that asked the question and several other people slump their heads realizing he right and hopefully make up their minds to prepare as much as possible and hopefully survive against the horde.

After being led into the dormitories and after we picked our rooms I laid down in bed for a bit and not feeling very tired decide to train to help me fall asleep. Then just after 15 ,minutes of training the exhaustion of the day hits me and I promptly pass the fuck out.