Miss Mallor revealed a small smile before answering Lelia's question.
"It's a standard practice that occurs every year on all eight Nursery Planets in our Velron Republic. As some of you may know, most children born in our star nation grow up outside of the Nursery Planets. The children who were sent here were those who were adopted by the Republic at the behest of their guardians. Some would say the entire point of the Nurseries is to give opportunities to the underprivileged. Of course, the underprivileged does not only include those who were abandoned at birth. As such, some students who have experienced a difficult life in the Republic are given the opportunity to come here."
"But why only in the last year of school? That doesn't seem like much time for them to learn anything." Lelia questioned
"One reason for the delay is that most individuals born off-world awaken their abilities at a much younger age than those born on Earth. The other reason is most of those transfers aren't here to learn." The smile on the teacher's face grew wider as she answered. "If anything, you might learn a lot from your new classmates."
Victor frowned as he glanced back at the newcomers. 'Somehow I get the feeling these guys aren't open to teaching.'
Miss Mallor then turned to the board and began her lecture. "Today I am going to explain the basics of how to strengthen your abilities and, in small part, what a Game is and how it works before familiarizing ourselves with the abilities you awakened. In essence, a Game is an opportunity to collect ability shards by competing against other players or by completing difficult challenges. There are countless different types of games, so we will only cover the most common ones later this week to give you an idea of what's possible. If you haven't had the chance yet, please activate your [Join Game] function and navigate your way to the [Global] tab.
Miss Mallor paused to give time to the students who navigated the system function with unfamiliarity. "There you may notice that you have automatically joined [89th Graduating Class - World]. Take this case as an example that it is completely possible to be forced to join a game against your will. I will skip the description and give you an opportunity to read it in your own time, but suffice it to say most Games have either an objective or a win condition with the possibility of granting rewards."
"Some particularly large and overarching games can be comprised of smaller games. Imagine a scenario where a large objective consists of smaller ones. Keep in mind, those small objectives can be broken down further into even smaller objectives, causing Games to be nested inside of each other, sometimes to absurd degrees. Our world quest will serve as one example of this phenomenon. Everyone navigate to the first phase of our Game."
Victor swiftly followed the instructions before experiencing a minor surprise.
"The go-getters among you must have already realized there has been a change." At the bottom of the menu there sat another Game nested underneath the second.
"Sometimes the Game menu updates without warning. Oftentimes it will be up to you to keep up with the changes. This newly issued Game at the beginning of class to instill this habit in you. I will give you a moment to read through the description.
[Daily Check-In]
[Game Objective: Read through, and keep informed on the updates to the [89th Graduating Class - World] game.]
[Game Timer: Three Months]
[Rewards: 5 White Ability Promotion Shards per day]
Having already read through this game's description the first time, it was easy to spot the difference, so he was quickly able to discover the new updates. At that moment, he felt a change occur in his body. In that instant, he knew that the change had something to do with his ability. Although he was tempted to test out his ability right at that moment, he knew he couldn't afford to be sleeping in class right now.
The teacher waited a few more moments before continuing. "For example, in the latest game, most menus commonly include a description, a timer, and rewards as features. Sometimes certain games might include a fee to join or a penalty for those who lose. Most often the game rewards are [Promotion Shards], which are the key to strengthening your ability. For those of you who have completed your check-in, the shards are being stored somewhere within you. Currently, they are free shards and have not integrated with your abilities yet. It takes time and frequent practice with your abilities for the shards to slowly merge and strengthen the components of your abilities. If you want to increase the absorption speed, the most common method is to increase the saturation of shards within your ability space or train harder with your ability."
"Right now we are going to move on to exploring your ability." As the teacher ended her sentence, a pop-up appeared floating above the desks of all the students in the class.
"Due to the unpredictable nature of ability awakening, it would take too long to sit here gradually experimenting and puzzling out all the individual applications of your abilities. Plus, it is beyond the capabilities of our school to be able to see the core of your unique abilities. While there are people who are capable of that, they are incredibly rare and expensive to commission, especially for a large population. The good news is, we don't have to. Most of your abilities already have templates we can draw from, provided by various donors."
Curiously, almost everyone in class opened the recently transmitted documents on their screen.
"All of you will receive a maximum of three templates relating to your ability. Please review them carefully, as they will be greatly beneficial to your progress."
At that moment, Victor raised his hand with a confused expression. "Nothing appeared on my screen."
At that moment, Miss Mallor went silent with surprise before turning and tapping around on her holodesk before giving him a look of pity. "...Yes, it seems your donors declined to provide you with any referential material."
Victor momentarily looked at his desk with an aggrieved expression before composing himself and asking another question. "Who are these donors, and why am I the only one who didn't get anything from them?"
The teacher gave him a sympathetic look before she responded. "I don't know the exact reason, but I could list several possibilities. They could be missing, dead, or bound by a contract that prevents them from revealing their abilities, or perhaps they just didn't feel it was something worth doing. It is difficult to determine without knowing the full story. Therefore, none of you should hold too much resentment toward your donors." The teacher spoke carefully to the entire classroom, but it was obvious she was trying to sway them in a certain direction.
"As for who the donors are?" The teacher said reluctantly, "Well, two of them are your biological parents."
The whole class looked at each other with confusion. It wasn't the first time Victor had heard reference to his parent today, and apparently these people were more important to him than he originally thought. The two students sitting at the back of the class were uninterested in this lecture.
The teacher sighed before speaking to no one in particular. "I was waiting to give this lesson later this week, but it looks like we'll be getting a head start."
Victor's life changed in the next 20 minutes as the teacher went through a quick crash course on how babies are made and how abilities develop. He learned that apparently most people were made as a union of their two biological parents through a strange and disgusting process.
Only Doak and Kera apparently enjoyed this part of the lesson. Although it wasn't the content that made the lesson entertaining, it was rather the reactions of the other students.
"Most of you will be surprised, but your upbringing is unusual for most of the galaxy. Beyond the confines of this planet, most children awaken to their abilities shortly after they are born. Most children have a combination of the abilities of both of their parents, where each component is partially related to one of the parents. Occasionally the components passed down to the child are incompatible with each other. As such, the child might suffer from complications or even death related to their ability. Due to circumstances outside of the scope of this lesson, the further you progress in the development of your abilities, the harder it is for the child to awaken without facing such challenges, especially without abundant resources. This dilemma has led to many solutions, one of which is the development of this planet. As you know, it is one of the 8 nurseries built and maintained by Velron Union."
The teacher shook her head before continuing. "Anyway, getting back on track, the nursery provides a guarantee for all of you to awaken safely by using a third ability donor to bridge the incompatibility between your abilities."