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05 - Awakened Registration
🕑 Added 2024-06-22 23:07:03 +0000 UTCModak woke up to the incessant ringing of his phone. The sunlight was shining through the cracks between his blinds, and an involuntary groan escaped his mouth. Modak grabbed his phone and turned off the alarm, before swinging his feet over the edge of his bed. His body felt heavy, but he still had to get up.
He moved his hair out of his eyes and sluggishly walked past his desk, still covered in tiny screws, pieces of plastic, wires and circuit boards. They've been lying there for a week now, gathering dust. But Modak hasn't really had the time and nerve to keep working on that. For now, he made his way to the small bathroom across the hallway to brush his teeth. As Modak did that boring, rhythmic motion, his green-brown fingers stuck out to him. He probably stood here for fifteen minutes last night trying to scrub off as much of the motor-oil as he could, but it just stained his skin like hell, so he couldn't get any more than this off. At least it should be enough not to taste it if he accidentally touches his lip, so it could be worse. By the time Modak moved on to brushing his tusks, he noticed how quiet it was in the apartment. The only thing that he could hear was the sizzling of oil coming from the kitchen.
Modak rinsed off his tusks, trying to ignore the deep, dark circles under his eyes, and then took a turn to the left as he stepped out of the bathroom. He pushed open the next door, seeing two young boys still dead-asleep in their beds. Rolling his eyes, he scooped up one of the backpacks off the ground with his foot and kicked it over onto the closest bed. With a startled yelp, the young boy shot up.
"Huh, what?!"
"Get up already," Modak said, watching his other brother slowly rise from his bed as well.
"Oh come on... just five more minutes..."
"Zigg, don't make me pull you out of bed again," tapping his foot on the ground, Modak looked straight into the tired boy's eyes.
Groaning loudly, the boy pulled back and responded, "I'm not Zigg, I'm Mogh..."
"No, you're not, now get up already."
"How would you know?"
Modak left the room and shook his head annoyed, yelling toward the boys as he walked down the hallway, "For the last time, you're fraternal!"
As Modak entered the combined kitchen and living room, he saw his mother put down a plate of eggs and sausages on the table.
"Morning, honey," she said, smiling lightly, "Thanks for taking the boys to school today."
"Of course," Modak yawned, "Their school's on my way to the store anyway."
As he sat down at the table, he quickly started to eat. Before long, his siblings started streaming into the kitchen, sitting down at the table as well. Even Zigg and Mogh managed to roll out of bed. Once Modak was done with his food, he glanced over to one of his brothers, seeing massive cracks on the screen of his phone, "Oh come on, Pock, what happened?"
"What? Nothing," Pock replied defensively, pushing his phone under the table to hide it.
"He fell off a skateboard while trying to impress his ~girlfriend~," Gilik, another one of Modak's brothers said with a broad, teasing grin on his face.
As his face quickly turning a dark green, Pock stuttered out, "She- She's not my girlfriend!"
Gilik grinned at his older brother and was about to make another retort, but his mother quickly gave him a light, playful tap to the back of the head, "Stop messing with your brother."
Modak raised a brow and held out his hand toward his brother. With a grumble, Pock revealed his phone again and placed it into Modak's hand, as he quickly took a look. There were some pixel errors and the touch screen didn't work that well anymore either.
"Hm... alright, I'll swap the screen out later. But seriously, I've told you a thousand times, just put a damn screen protector on it already," Modak said, giving the phone back to Pock, who just silently stared down at the table, his face still dyed by that dark blush. Modak glanced down at his brother's leg, "Did you hurt yourself when you fell?"
After a few moments, Pock shook his head. With a smile, Modak got up and grabbed his blade, roughing up Pock's hair while walking over to the sink, putting the plate inside. He looked over at his mother, "Do you need me to drop off something from the store later?"
After a few moments of thinking, she nodded her head, "If you could grab some pickled mandrake, and maybe some more flour, that would be great."
"Of course," Modak smiled, slowly walking back to his room while taking a note on his phone to buy eggs and look into a replacement phone screen. Right before he could walk through his door, his sister Kora walked down the hallway, scratching her belly while still half-asleep. Modak raised a brow, "Up already?"
Glaring daggers at Modak, Kora replied, "How can I not with how much you're yelling. Pretty energetic for someone who came home like three hours ago."
"... I was helping out dad," Modak replied, but Kora raised a brow confused.
"Wait, I thought you went over to Ryan's place."
"Yeah, but when I came home, I saw that dad was still at the garage, so... what was I supposed to do?"
"He's a grown ass man, Modak," Kora sighed, "It's not your job to pick up after dad."
"It's fine, it wasn't that big a deal. We managed to finish pretty quickly anyway," Modak replied, stepping into his room.
Kora looked at her younger brother with a concerned smile, "Just... take it easy, alright? You're looking really tired these days."
"I'm fine, but... thanks for worrying," Modak replied, and slowly closed his door. With a longing glance at his bed, he walked over to his closet, grabbing basically the first thing he saw to change into. As he was changing, though, his phone started buzzing.
Picking it up, his trousers in his other hand, Modak saw a text that he didn't expect.
***
Ryan
Yo, who wants to go shopping with me? Going to a dungeon soon
Silvia
Wtf you awakened like yesterday
Ryan
Yeah and I'm itching to go already
You
Don't you have to register to go to dungeons?
Ryan
ya
already getting ready to go to the awakened centre rn
Yanna sent me some stuff to prep me beforehand
Silvia
but why do you want to go to dungeons anyway? They're so icky
Ryan
I was watching a video about a dungeon that formed in town recently, and Maximus gave me a quest to go take a look
so I figured I might as well
it's a low danger dungeon so yk
Silvia
ooh damn, another quest?
sounds fun then
count me in! When are we meeting?
You
I'll join too, but I've got an early shift so it would have to be after.
Why are you guys even awake already? It's 6:30.
Silvia
never went to bed in the first place <3
Ryan
same lol
@Modak when are you off work today? Let's just meet at the store at the end of your shift, there's some stuff I want to get from there anyway
You
I'll be done at 4pm
***
Modak tossed his phone onto his bed and finished getting dressed. At least buying stuff shouldn't take Ryan too long later, so Modak should be able to come home and just go into a coma without any trouble.
Once he was fully dressed, Modak waited for Zigg and Mogh to finish getting ready and walked with them to the nearby subway station. As usual, they were messing around, so Modak had to walk behind them to keep them in line. He pushed them forward a bit as he wrangled them into the train cart, making sure he always had them in his sight amidst the crowd that flowed into the train. It would take a while for them to get to their station, so Modak pulled the small book out of his bag and started to read.
"Ew," Zigg stared up at his brother, past the book's edge, "Why'd you read on the subway?"
"Because it's the only place where you two can't run off while I'm not looking," Modak replied, his eyes flowing over the pages.
"We're not dogs, ya know?" Mogh scoffed, but Modak just rolled his eyes with a slight sigh.
"Yup. 9 year old dogs tend to actually listen."
"Whatever," Zigg replied, already moving on, "Can you help us with our homework again tonight?"
"...You don't even know what homework you're getting today. Try to do it on your own first, and if you don't understand something, I'll help you out. Deal?"
"Fiiine..." Zigg groaned. The rest of the train ride was a lot more quiet, at least in regard to the twins. Once they reached their station, Modak pushed the boys out of the train and the three walked up to the street level. They followed the crowd of other kids walking to school, and before long, they split up. After Modak made sure that the twins were actually inside of the building, he started to walk to his part-time job.
Since university was on break, he was trying to work as much as he could to make some extra money, which meant getting up early every day. It was just a nice feeling to have some spending money when he went out with Ryan and Silvia, and being able to support his parents a bit more was nice too, of course.
The walk to the store Modak worked at took another fifteen minutes. It was originally a specialty store with foods from different cultures outside of Rivera, and they carried a lot of very specific foods for species with more specific food requirements as well. They even sold some specially-produced stones for some Avian species to keep in their gizzards. Generally, his work was fine, though dealing with customers was sometimes a bit awkward and uncomfortable. But since Modak was a bit more on the taller, stronger side of the spectrum, he worked in the warehouse and item sorting section most of the time. His manager was fairly relaxed as well, so as long as it didn't negatively influence his work, he was allowed to listen to music, or what he did most of the time, listen to some audiobooks. It was actually a decent opportunity to catch up on some stuff he had pushed back.
But work itself was really quite monotonous, and eight hours would pass by agonizingly slowly. Though, Modak was sure it was a lot better than what Ryan was dealing with right now.
***
***
***
A long yawn escaped Ryan's mouth as he stepped into the Awakened Centre. It was a large, clean space that allowed any Awakened to get the support they needed. Depending on the direction that the Awakened wanted to go, they also offered classes for specific licenses, an emergency room that was capable of dealing with an Awakened's strengthened body, as well as training rooms that could be rented. Though, the training rooms didn't seem to be used that often.
Also, compared to other bureaucratic and government buildings, it was so much less busy. Compared to the ten million people living in New Riverside, there were only about 40 thousand Awakened spread all throughout, so that made sense. There was a reason why Ryan's tiny hometown didn't even have one of these; awakening was so rare that it wouldn't make sense.
There were a couple more people in here, but considering its size, it might as well have been empty. Ryan walked up to one of the counters. The clerk was a Strigan woman with pure white feathers, looking at him with a gleeful chirp.
"Good morning, my name is Aurora Carlyle, how can I help you today?" she asked in a happy voice that seemed to practically invite Ryan in. He quickly replied, though he was nervous about what was going to happen today. Yanna told him that he would probably end up having to fill up a ton of documents and even go through some tests, since he had a unique class, so he really wasn't all too excited about that. But if he wanted to go to a dungeon, he had to deal with it. Not having to pay a 100 Gild fine for not registering in time was also a pretty good incentive, of course.
"Good morning! I'm here to register, I awakened yesterday."
Aurora clapped the small talons at the ends of her wings together with a quiet hoot, "Congratulations! In that case, please follow me to a private room where we can complete the registration," Aurora quickly stepped up from behind the counter and led Ryan to one of the elevators, which they took to the fourth floor together. Once there, Ryan was brought to a small office. The desk had a small name-sign reading 'Aurora Carlyle' on it.
"Alright, in that case, let us get started. First, we need some generic information; name, age, place of residence, contact methods, and so on," as she explained, Aurora pushed a keyboard over to Ryan and turned the monitor toward him, so that he could quickly fill the standard information out.
Simultaneously, she seemed to be typing in some things on a separate computer, and as Ryan was done, took a look at the basic information.
"Perfect. So, Mister Aglecard, what is your class?"
Ryan let out a nervous sigh, "So, yeah... it's called 'Spirit Keeper'? I couldn't find any info about it online, so I think it might be a unique class?"
Aurora tilted her head to the side for a moment, and then quickly snapped her sight back to her screen, as though she wanted to hurriedly check something, "I assume that is s-p-i-r-i-t-space-k-e-e-p-e-r?"
"Yes, exactly."
After checking things for a few more moments, Aurora turned back toward Ryan, "We will be verifying this information later anyway, but this is completely accurate?"
"Uhm, yeah, of course... Is there a problem?" Ryan asked nervously. If this class really did turn out to be a dangerous class that only psychopaths could get... maybe he would be locked up right away? Of course, that was ridiculous, but considering Aurora's shocked expression, that might as well have been the case.
"No problem at all! Once again, congratulations on attaining a unique class! At least as far as our database is concerned," Aurora didn't look away from the screen at all, hurriedly typing and clearly opening tons of documents, "However, this being the case, the process will be a little different today."
"How different, exactly? My friend has a decently rare class, and she told me that she had to take a bunch of tests... will that be the case?" Ryan wondered, and Aurora slowly looked over.
"Yes, and no. The tests that we will be taking are different depending on the actual specs of the class and the specific circumstances. Now, especially for unique classes, while we would like to learn as much as we can, anything beyond the basic information is a voluntary process. That means we will record the exact stats you automatically gained access to as well as your skill information. The only part that is slightly different is that, because we are lacking that data, we would like to ask that you periodically give us information on your current stats, levels, skills, et cetera," Aurora explained, and Ryan raised his brow a bit surprised.
"I don't need to show you my skills?"
"If you would like to, of course. However, as you have a class that has not yet been recorded otherwise, we have to act under the assumption that your class is tied very closely to your individuality. As such, even more so than for other classes, it is considered protected information. So, we will only proceed with any tests beyond the basic information as long as you agree."
As Ryan took a moment to think about it, Aurora moved some more documents over to the screen in front of Ryan.
"Please just fill these out and then we will head back out for the tests."
As Ryan looked over the documents, he quickly glanced back at Aurora, "Oh, and I would like to apply for a Dungeoneering license as well, if I can."
"Of course! Though, that does require you to pass a simple test so we can make sure you know the rules and regulations surrounding Dungeons, together with a small fee."
Ryan stopped for a moment, looking at the woman in front of him nervously, "How much would that fee be?"
"That would be 100 Gild total, including the processing fee as well as the printing fee for the actual physical license."
"...Sounds about right..."
