NOVEL NEXT Chapter 4: Clearing Rewards
The awakening of consciousness wasn't the only by-product of the mutated Dungeon Incident thirteen years ago.
When the young Specimen 401 woke up in the middle of what was left of the laboratory, he had no concept of Dungeons and Espers. And the child couldn't even read the characters of Tesseris.
But to anyone who could read, it would say:
[CONGRATULATIONS! DUNGEON CLEARED]
[LEVEL: MUTATED]
[CLEARING TIME: 00:01:39]
[REWARD: INTEGRATION WITH MUTATED DUNGEON]
No one ever learned of this mutated Dungeon, as it was closed almost as soon as it opened. And because the lab had been scheduled for scrapping, no one paid too much attention when the entire thing vanished, leaving a lone child in its wake.
Lucas' memories of this period in his life were hazy. Most of his life was shrouded in haze and bubbles. After all, he spent most of it inside medical tanks.
But he still remembered his time in the Orphanage. There, he first learned about human society and humanity's good and bad sides.
Lucas was a beautiful child. So, his initial experience of being in the orphanage was great.
It was not surprising for him to be adopted first. The combination of his looks and his equally timid yet adorable personality made him the apple of everyone's eyes.
But then, his adoptive parents encountered an uncanny tragedy. His adoptive father rampaged just a week into his adoption, and his death took a toll on his adoptive mother.
In less than two weeks, Lucas was back at the orphanage. Every one pitied the child who had to witness such a scene. And so they consoled him and vowed to find him another loving family.
And he did because Lucas was too adorable to ignore.
But then it happened again.
And again.
After three similar cases, the orphanage director tried investigating the strange phenomenon and finally zeroed in on Lucas.
Lucas was tested, and the results were unexpected.
The child had awakened as a Guide this early. And his powers were too strong for low-ranked Espers to bear.
Researchers also discovered that Lucas could not put a lid on his Guiding. He was leaking spiritual power that initially felt like a gentle breeze, which is why no one noticed.
But this gentle breeze could accumulate on the bodies of Espers, who couldn't disperse it fast enough, causing mania and then eventually a rampage.
This was the turning point of his life at the Orphanage. From then on, he could only deal with non-awakened humans.
The other orphans started fearing and blaming him for the lack of interested parents coming to their orphanage.
From learning and playing, his memories were marred with things being thrown at him, getting locked up in random lockers, and being called a murderer.
This greatly confused the child, who did not understand how this was possible when he had done nothing.
He had so many wounds that he got used to the constant feeling of pain. But there were times when children could be more brutal than adults.
A group of orphans who hated him for being too good-looking, too fast on the uptake, and too kind decided to push him into the lake.
Aside from the cold lake waters, Lucas had already been weakened before the incident. He tried his best to resurface, but his body felt frozen. Lucas felt the end coming but was oddly comforted by the idea.
However, instead of drowning as he expected, his entire body was suddenly transported into a different space.
He was submerged from the neck down, but the water had turned into a sparkling shade of crystal blue, so clear that he could see the bottom of the lake.
The water temperature also changed drastically, from that biting cold to this refreshing range.
Lucas was dumbfounded.
The entire view was unfamiliar. And the large clearing and the far-off expanse of the forest were all new to him.
The orphanage wasn't in the heart of the city, but it was definitely not in a place as beautiful as this.
When the boy paddled to the lake's edge, he realized that his body had been relieved of fatigue, and even the bruises on his arms and legs had vanished.
This became Lucas' refuge, his only safe space. Whenever the other children looked for him, he would hide away in his space. And that was precisely what he was doing when he disappeared from the Academy. He wasn't getting bullied yet, but being seen by them at that point would be worse.
His space was still beautiful, and seeing it with his own eyes was something he hadn't done in years.
He could only visit using his consciousness when they imprisoned him for monitoring in a tank. It would be weird to just suddenly disappear, so all he could do was access it via his spiritual sea.
Luca slumped against a tree, wishing to just jump into the lake and fix all his body aches. But the first time he did it with his new body, he almost died from the pain.
His meridians were so overwhelmed with spiritual power that they were ready to burst.
Luca then understood what they meant by spiritually barren. His new body was so dry that it couldn't handle the sudden influx of power, but he knew he needed to use the water.
He decided to use it like a patient who couldn't drink water yet. He'd drop a bit on his skin just until the onset of that stinging sensation.
It was tempting to do that now, but he usually passed out after using the lake water, and he was still stuck outside, so that would be unsafe.
He could have traveled while in his space with his original spiritual power level, but his current body made that impossible. At this point, he'd come out where he disappeared. So he just decided to wait it out, gathering as much strength as possible before walking the remainder of the way.
Luca felt the refreshing breeze he had missed for so many years. He was so comfortable that he was on the verge of falling asleep when his terminal vibrated.
He prayed that it was some other notification because if his guess were correct, he would only have 30 minutes before the curfew was implemented.
But alas, it was really the alarm he set in advance.
Luca forced himself out of his comfort zone, trudging with his body toward the school dormitories.
If he had been more aware of his surroundings, he might have noticed how the indicators on the surveillance cameras flickered as he appeared.
But that's for later. Who would care about surveillance cameras when the main problem was dropping dead without notice?