XXVI
"When does your next class start?" Titus asked, tilting his head sideways, curiosity etched into his voice.
"Let me check–" Caecus pulled out his soul phone, and infused it with his soul essence. He opened the Psychéion app, and looked at his time table.
It was 10 AM, and the Exploration class started at eleven thirty, in the same room.
"I got one and a half hours left," Caecus locked eyes with the taller boy.
"I got another two hours, so we got enough time, what do you wanna do?" Titus asked. They were on the ground floor of the first year building right now, sitting on a bench.
"I… I don't know." The blind teen's expression was showing his obvious dissatisfaction.
"All that free time, just to be bored…"
Sigh.
"You really can't be not bored without me huh, Caecus…" He felt an arm be put around his shoulder. It was a very familiar female voice...
Obviously when he heard the voice, he shrieked together immediately, and when he felt a touch out of nowhere that he hadn't sensed, he accidentally reacted exaggeratedly, and hit the person who did that in the face.
"..."
When he noticed who it was, he froze, hand still on the girl's face.
She just removed it gently, and smiled at him, but beneath that smile… there was something.
Caecus didn't sense it though.
"You are a lucky boy Caecus… if I wasn't rank three, and hadn't received my bodily enhancements yet, I could've been harmed." Nyx said, with a tinge of aggression beneath her voice, but she still hadn't removed the smile from her face, and neither did she do it with her arms.
'I didn't know the bodily enhancements starting at rank three would be that strong… I mean they are supposed to prepare your body for metamorphosis, but… that makes me excited! Oh…'
When Caecus realized that his focus was on the completely wrong thing, he shifted back to reality.
"I-I'm so sorry!" his eyebrows were raised, guilt very transparent.
But to his surprise, Nyx didn't get mad at all, smile not fading.
"It's okay. Although…if I'm honest, you gotta get a little stronger to actually hurt me." she said, voice teasing. "If you wanna fight me, wait till after classes are done, then I'll duel you."
Titus sat there, conspicuously eyeing her arm that was around Caecus, her hand ending up close to him.
Noticing Titus glance at her arm, she shifted it even closer to Caecus, as if she expected that reaction.
"Haha… I'm fine…," he uttered, words coming out strained, the laugh hesitant and forced.
Her smile didn't change, but her eyes tracked Titus for half a second longer than necessary.
"Um… Nyx, I'd appreciate it if you'd leave me a little more space." Caecus scratched his cheek with his left hand, which was on Titus' side.
"No."
Cold sweat started running down the blind teen's back.
"Why not..?" He carefully asked.
"Because, he's here." She glanced at the Titanus heir briefly, before leaning closer against Caecus, her hair touching his cheek now, as if trying to confirm something only she knew.
Titus' eyes widened for a moment, and then he let out a -cough- in quiet awkwardness, looking away from them both.
'I'm sorry Titus…'
…
As the school break finished, he returned back to his classroom. Rank 333 was already sitting next to his seat, and just stared into the air blanky.
Caecus lowered himself on the seat where he sat last class, and took his things out of his bag.
When the teacher for exploration class arrived, he knew immediately that it was an experienced soul realm explorer, a high ranking one at that.
He had clearly undergone metamorphosis, as he could tell by his physique, but he still was covered in scars.
Your scars, or most imperfections in your body would be removed immediately during metamorphosis, but if you got scars after, they would stay until you undergo your second metamorphosis at rank nine. Although the people who are at that rank, and alive today, were less than twenty.
His most apparent scar was a cut that went right over his face, from the right corner of his forehead, down to the left corner of his mouth.
Most scars were pretty deep, so even Caecus could sense them with his echolocation, mainly things like tattoos, or scars could not be perceived by him because they didn't really have a difference from the surrounding skin other than the texture or color, which Caecus wouldn't be able to tell.
He had his hair in a buzzcut, and stood two meters tall, with a compression shirt, and some cargo pants on. Jaw and mouth were shaved clear, not one hair coming out– a trait common for people of Caelum.
'He looks to be thirty, but he could as well be eighty for all I know.'
After undergoing metamorphosis at rank five, people's aging slowed down significantly. If you manage to do it before being fully grown up, it slows down right after your body has reached maturity.
Although nobody ever managed to do that.
The bracelet was from Caelum.
'Well… that's a surprise I guess.'
Caecus honestly didn't care either way, since relations inside Caelum were rather heated, which was normal among the bigger corpora, but the point was that he didn't expect any extra treatment.
'He might even take me on extra hard, so I "don't sully the honor of our corpus."'
The teacher just let out his soul essence leak out, showing his aura, which gathered the attention of everyone in this room.
'Rank six probably.'
Caecus perceived a new color, which he couldn't put a name on, but the surrounding students already did that job for him.
"Gray?" He heard a few of them mumble.
"I am Constantine Caelum, or Mr. Constantine for you. I'll be instructing you in exploration class, which is a mandatory class for the first years, but you'll be able to choose to not have it next year, since the job of Explorer is clearly not made for everyone."
He sat down on the teacher's desk, and stared right into the crowd, gaze tough as a monolith.
"Can anyone tell me what explorers do, and why there is a shortage of them?"
No one talked, since everyone (including Caecus) was slightly intimidated by him.
But after two seconds of nobody doing anything, a girl raised her hand. She was one hundred seventy centimeters tall, and had glasses on. You might've thought that she was a nerdy looking person like a certain someone, who was sitting next to Caecus, but in her eyes… there was something.
Extreme conviction.
Mr. Constantine seemed to find her interesting, as his eyebrows raised slightly, but then he nodded his head towards her.
"Rank one hundred seventy three." the teacher said.
When she heard her ranking be called out, she began talking immediately, her voice loud and clear.
"As noticeable from their name, explorers have the job to explore, specifically explore the soul realm. It's important, because on our continent, we have limited resources, and the soul realm's size and scale is so vast that it is impossible to be able to explain it, which makes it perfect for gathering those resources." Before saying the next sentence, she gritted her teeth, and the conviction from previously, changed into something that bordered hatred.
She inhaled, and then continued. "The reason we have an explorer shortage is because it's inhabited by soul beasts of endless variants. Here on our continent the soul beasts are limited, because animals, and species here don't change. But over there… because of its scale, there are so many different lifeforms that we are unable to know them all. As known… Soul beasts are dangerous. This causes the majority of them to die, or receive trauma."
Mr. Constantine nodded, but then spoke again. "You are very correct about most of the things you said, but there are a few things lacking. Can someone tell me what?"
Caecus was surprised when he felt the boy next to him raise his hand.
"Yes, Rank 333?"
"First of all, the population is increasing, and we don't only have limited resources but also limited space. The soul realm promises us infinite living space. Second of all, unlike here, there is neutral soul essence everywhere. This allows for a lot of different things, like absorbing it, and using it to reinforce your soul core."
"Yes! That was what I was waiting for, let me expand on what you said. The reinforcement of your soul core through neutral soul essence, harbors different results than advancing. The intricacies of it are still unknown, but they definitely make you stronger. Now let me ask you: What do you think you'll be learning in this class?"
The boy who sat next to him raised his hand again.
"I think we'll be learning how exploration works, and about the known regions in the soul realm, along with the known soul beasts. Also, the things you need to know for survival over there."
The teacher nodded again, and looked back into the class.
"That is correct, at the end of the year, we'll be making an expedition to the soul realm, where we will visit the current camps and the regions that we currently conquered. This serves as one last view if it's something for you. In the final exam, we'll be simulating exploration of the soul realm, by using our forest here, and releasing multiple rank one and rank two soul beasts."
Murmurs went through the crowd, and people exchanged looks.
"Expedition into the soul realm?" he heard multiple people say, and conversations started to take place, which agitated the teacher.
"Silence!" He said, brows raised. "In my class, you only talk when I tell you to. Understand?"
'Well he is certainly irritable…'
The class went on, and they talked about basic theory, such as the soul beasts that inhabit the first region– the blue plains. Most of them were able to be killed, but there were still "wild zones" so that the species doesn't go extinct, since they still wanted to research them, and containment of multiple entire species is impossible.
"That is it for today's class." Mr. Constantine said, and everyone packed their bags.
This time, Titus didn't come to pick him up; It was Nyx. As she walked in, she used her weird skill to make her presence go unnoticed by the other students, so that she appeared behind Caecus before he noticed her.
He heard a whisper in his ear out of nowhere. "Just let me lead you out of here."
As a normal person would,.Caecus felt like he almost got a heart attack when she appeared out of nowhere.
They walked out, and reached a place where there were less students, sitting down on a bank, just like before.
"Nyx, can you please stop appearing out of nowhere like that?" He felt her silhouette manifesting before him.
"Haha sorry~ we'd get unnecessary attention if I walked up to you with everyone noticing though." She slightly leaned against him.
'Well she is right… Rank 2 of the year, hanging out with Rank 300 would be perceived as weird.'
Caecus noticed now that they were all alone, since the few students that were around them had already left for the cafeteria.
'This is my chance. I need to ask her about what she really wants from me.'
Nyx on the other hand just looked at him silently with the edges of her mouth slightly raised, as if expecting what was to come.
No one was there but those two.