Chapter 2: CH. 2 | Future Fragment

A few hours passed before Theo opened his eyes and realized he was lying in the village clinic. He turned his head and saw he was in a ward-like room with eight other patients.

He tried to remember what had happened earlier. He’d passed out right after the awakening, faced with the fact that he was classless.

Right! That was probably the fitting word for it, classless, someone who had no class at all, someone who never got one.

Has anyone ever gotten something like this before? I feel like I’ve never heard of it.

One of the nurses came into the ward, noticed Theo had woken up, and went to call someone. Not long after, a black haired girl walked in. It was Maya.

"What happened to you? You had everyone panicking," Maya asked.

Theo turned to look at her. He shook his head, not sure what had happened to him. Still, he remembered clearly the system panel that had appeared right before he blacked out.

"The pain wore my body out so much I passed out," Theo answered.

"Right!" Maya said, "About that pain. I already had the healer check you over. She said your condition is perfectly fine."

"You’re seriously strange," the girl grumbled.

The young man went quiet for a moment, then leaned his back against the pillow and stared ahead, dreading what his future might look like now.

"The awakening’s over, and I got classless. That means I’m not a mage, and I’m not a knight either," Theo said.

"The academy’s looking into it, but they don’t really seem to care," Maya replied, "There have been plenty of cases where an awakener ends up classless."

"Then... what happens to them?"

Maya shrugged, a simple sign that she didn’t know either. Still, she gave her opinion that class mattered to everyone, and without one, a person had no real place in society.

"I don’t want to bring you down, but the kind of work a classless person can get is basically just rough labor, whatever odd jobs come along."

"But some places still require a class as a basic requirement. I don’t know, Theo," Maya said.

Theo tried to calm himself down. He was frustrated that his classless status wasn’t a good thing, but what had happened had already happened.

Now it was time to find the best way to still have a place in the community despite his limitations.

"What about you?"

"I got the knight class. The Freyjorn Academy wants to recruit me, but I still have to pass their entrance exam first," Maya explained.

"That’s great, Maya!"

"At least I won’t get beaten up anymore back at the orphanage," Theo said.

"You... you’re going back?"

He cleared his throat briefly. Too much had happened today, and he didn’t know how to process any of it. Still, the sisters at the orphanage would probably be able to lift his spirits, remind him that classlessness wasn’t the end of everything.

"Yeah," Theo answered, "I’m classless, where else would I belong except home?"

Maya agreed, her face looking sad, Theo could see it clearly. Even so, she kept up a cheerful front, as if she didn’t want to show that sadness so Theo wouldn’t keep dwelling on it.

The young man got up from the bed and walked out of the clinic with Maya. On the village road, Theo’s attention kept drifting whenever he caught bits of gossip from people passing by.

Their voices were faint, but Theo could make out a few words here and there, like Theo, orphan kid, classless, and useless.

"Look! Isn’t that useless classless trash?"

A young man blocked Theo’s path. Maya immediately stepped in front of Theo, pointing rudely and cursing at them.

"Leave him alone. Don’t you have any shame?" Maya snapped, "He’s already had a rough day!"

"Oh, you’re right, he must be really crushed, but classless is still classless, nobody’s going to hire you," the young man answered.

"Even cleaning a sewer requires at least a support class. You? You’re not even fit for the lowest kind of work!"

PUNCH!

Theo was caught a little off guard watching Maya land a punch straight to the young man’s face. Her fist hit so hard he was thrown backward, his cheek turning red and blood trickling from the corner of his mouth.

"Bother him again and I’ll beat all of you down!"

The young man held his bruised cheek, "You’ve got nerve, you damn whore?! Get them both!"

Before Theo and Maya could react, five more people came closing in around them. They weren’t especially big, just ordinary eighteen year olds, but there were a lot of them, and they’d shown up carrying wooden clubs.

"Let this teach you, strength isn’t just about the individual, it’s also about numbers!" shouted the bruised young man.

Maya sucked in a breath and clicked her tongue, then turned to Theo, "Get as far away as you can, Theo."

"What about you?" Theo asked.

"Don’t worry about me," Maya said, stretching out her wrists, "I’ll use them for practice!"

Theo stood frozen. He didn’t want Maya protecting him. Maya was a woman, it should’ve been Theo protecting her, not the other way around.

He did have some self defense skills since Maya had kept drilling it into him, even though he never really liked it because she was so rough about it. But surrounded like this, it would be hard to fight them off, let alone beat them.

What should I do? There’s no way I can let her fight them alone.

As his eyes locked forward, Theo was startled to see several system panels appear before his eyes, like some kind of infographic.

[System has detected a threat]

[Authority of Mystic Eyes Triggered!]

[Host: Theo]

[Authority Level: 1]

[Skill Foresight (Auth Lv. 1) Unlocked]

[Desc: The ability to see a limited span of the future, determined by the skill’s level. Using this ability carries the risk of shortening the host’s lifespan by an amount equal to the time viewed during activation. This cost increases the more the skill is used]

The system panel appeared before Theo’s eyes, its text matching exactly what he had seen during the awakening earlier, right before he’d blacked out.

Through his eyes, he watched the world turn gray, and he could make out faint shadow-like movements coming off of everyone around him. Theo’s eyes widened as he tried to understand of this strange skill.

There was a real body and a shadow. Their real bodies looked like they were moving in slow motion, while the shadow versions of their bodies moved fast.

Is this what foresight means? The ability to see the future?

In the first ten seconds, Theo saw Maya attacking them, the young men taking hits and getting hurt. But by the twenty second mark, Maya started getting overwhelmed, the young men turned the tide, gaining the upper hand.

Theo watched the whole sequence play out in order, memorizing exactly when he’d need to strike and when he’d need to dodge, holding it all clearly in his mind.

At least I can remember what’s going to happen twenty seconds from now.

He closed his eyes, and when things returned to normal, Theo watched Maya land hits on them exactly the way he’d seen in that glimpse of the future.

Theo moved fast, right as the moment Maya would start getting overwhelmed arrived. Maya glanced to the side and saw clearly as Theo shot forward with precise, calculated targets, as if he had no hesitation at all.

"Theo?!"

"What do you think you’re doing, you idiot?!"

"Get out of here before you—"

PUNCH!

Maya’s words cut off. Theo drove his fists into the stomachs and faces of the young men, one after another. He turned and caught a swinging club coming from his blind spot, something that should’ve been nearly impossible to dodge.

Theo’s hand gripped the wooden club, wrenched it away, and slammed it into the young man’s head hard enough to draw blood and knock him out cold. In under a minute, all five young men lay sprawled on the ground groaning in pain. Theo’s hands ached too from hitting them, but that was a fair trade for winning.

"You... why are you so strong? Aren’t you supposed to be classless?"

"How did you know where I’d strike?!"

That was it! Theo, the classless one, had won against them. And now, he was starting to like this skill, or whatever it was, that had been granted to him, not through a class, but through this strange authority instead.

"H-How did you do that?" Maya asked, walking closer to Theo.

"Ah, that’s... maybe it was just instinct," Theo answered.

"Instinct? What are you, some kind of wolf?"

Theo smiled, then looked over at the five young men, a swell of pride in his chest at having beaten them, even if it was thanks to the foresight skill.

I can’t let myself get too comfortable using that foresight skill. If the cost is real, it could end up killing me faster than I’d ever expect.

"I don’t know," Theo answered, "But I think I’m starting to like who I am right now."