Chapter 01

Good morning.

My name is Espen Ronning, I am an 18 year old male senior in high school.

I have deep yellow blond hair with deep blue ocean eyes, however I am actually considered normal in my country. As many people have these types of features in the country of Denevil.

I am 1.69 metres in height and my looks could be considered average when compared to a really handsome male model, so I guess you could say I am presentable in normal people standards.

I am currently in my class listening to a lesson by one of my teachers. I am seating in the second row, third seat, in this position a lot of information passes by me, thus I really like it.

I have good grades when it comes to my schooling, I am in the top 10 in my class after all, I am actually number 10.

I guess in a school with 5 senior classes with an average number of 30 students per class, I am doing well for myself.

In my school I have three close friends, well one of them is actually my girlfriend if that counts, we have been friends since we started high school.

We live in the same city, which could be considered the second capital city of the county of Denevil, whilst Winslet is the political centre and is the official capital of the country.

Roone is the economic centre of the country and many consider it the second capital of the country, many people who live home to try and get rich always come here and try their luck.

In my class I have one of my friends together with me, her name is London Olson. The girl is number 09 in the class top ten, before I forget London is the one who is my girlfriend amongst my close friends.

London had short black hair that is always cut neat with beautiful grey coloured eyes, London's height is similar to mine at 1.67 metres. Her chocolate coloured skin makes a very striking contrast to her grey coloured eyes.

Apart from the contrast with the her skin and eyes, my girlfriend cannot be considered a beauty by modern standards.

But I don't mind that, we always make jokes that we were meant for each other with our averageness, and that I agree.

And most importantly, really beautiful women just bring trouble and I do not want trouble in my normal ordinary life.

London is a very serious person, she mostly behaves like an adult, as do I, you could say we matured very early, and maybe that is what made us gravitate to each other.

Today was the last day of the final exams, the year will be ending soon.

I just hope my results will be enough to get me to the university that I want to go to.

My dream has always been a job that will not make me stress too much, where I can work 09:00 to 17:00 and have the weekends off.

Thus I applied for a simple management cause in university. The same cannot be said about London, the girl wants to do a Mechanical Engineering course, and most importantly she has the ability to be so.

We have been dating for a while now, and we study together thus I know that she has the ability.

I don't want to sell myself short, I too have a similar ability, else I would not be in the top ten. But I am the type who would like to use the finished product than actively try and design it.

If someone were to ask me, what is my talent, then I would say management, that was the second reason that I applied for the Management course in university.

The final reason why I chose such a course in university is because I don't want to die.

I want to have a full life.

The world I live in is a very special place, whilst there is technology that created things like cars, sky scrappers, air planes and etc.

As far as the world can remember the world has had something we call Exotic Energy that seems to pour out in higher dimensions. In different ages, people called it different names, but the fact it exists did not change.

The main ability of this energy is to mutate the environment.

What that means is that everything in planet Ozios is mutated under the effect of this energy. Plants are more resilient, animals are more powerful and humans are born with what we call Traits.

Ever since we passed what most people called the dark ages the scientists of this world had studied the effects of Exotic Energy thoroughly.

Many experiments to try and understand the Exotic Energy were done.

One such experiment was to deprive animals, plants and humans from this Exotic Energy, they found that these creatures would weaken after a long time not exposed to the Exotic Energy.

I will focus on Traits as I am a human after all, humans are born with Traits and these can come in many different shapes with different power levels

However the world is not fair, unlike those protagonist I read about in my spare time, I was not born with a powerful trait.

I was born with E rank ability, [Thrown Weapon Affinity], the ability is practically not very useful.

It just means that every time we plan darts, I always manage to win. Which seems to make London happy when we team up to beat our other two friends.

Honestly, I would not have it any other way.

All of the student and teachers in my high school have F and E rank abilities, which happen to be the lowest of the ranks.

As much as our country can be considered to be a good country, discrimination is very rampant.

The schools in our country are separated into ranks they allow, it was said to be better to allow certain schools cater for certain rank children, and I could not agree more.

In different countries, bullying is rampant when students with overly different ranks in their abilities are in the same school. I guess you could say I would rather be discriminated than physically and/or emotionally bullied.

Like our Aeolia Number 03 High School which takes in F and E rank students.

A person would ask me, 'Espen does that mean rank cannot increase in this world?', and my answer world be 'Yes'.

I have read many novels in my spare time with my writers hoping that it was possible to increase the rank of an ability.

I guess those people hope to be like the protagonists they write about. I digress.

Since our school is number 03, it means that there are number 02, number 01 and number 00 Aeolia High Schools that cater for students with ranks, D, C, B, A and S.

Even will all the respect that students in lower numbered schools get, I would not want to be like them.

Those people's lives are very difficult, hardship follows them everywhere.

I would rather marry London, get some kids and live my life in mediocrity than follow their life style.