Jelo's head blanked for a moment, but he recovered quickly. "Uh yeah, that… it's just a technique I picked up from a street fight," he said. "I haven't perfected it yet though."
"I could tell," Ken replied with a nod. "I could help you perfect it tho, if you don't mind."
Jelo still couldn't understand why Ken was hell-bent on being friends with him. "Uh… sure," he replied.
Ken smiled, then turned away abruptly and started talking to Mira.
Perhaps he's not interested in being friends with me, Jelo thought. Perhaps he's just friendly to everyone.
But even then, Ken's friendliness shouldn't extend to a rank F.
"You can go now," the female officer said to them.
The five students stepped out of the room and regrouped with the other recruits in the hallway.
They all now had ranks on their badges, and Jelo realized with some upset that there were only three rank F students among the recruits, him, Atlas, and a shy-looking girl with bangs.
"Great, I'm at the bottom of the food chain again," he thought bitterly.
Danny came to join them. "You guys can go to the dormitory now, at the joint hall they will give you your rooms."
He continued, "I still have some things to do, so I will see you later, recruits."
With that, he dismissed them.
xxxx
Several minutes later, they had finished receiving their accommodation and were all heading to their rooms. As Jelo was almost at his door, he suddenly looked up to see Ken walking to him.
"So, what's your room number?" he asked.
"019," Jelo replied.
"Oh, that's close to mine," Ken said, "just opposite actually." He showed Jelo his card that showed 020. He gestured at Atlas, who was walking several paces behind them. "I think he's your roommate though."
Jelo groaned inwardly. Jelo wasn't upset because of Atlas's rank per se, as a fellow F rank himself, he couldn't exactly look down on people. But the fact that he was an F rank as well was what made him not like the idea of being roommates with Atlas. If there was something people hated more than losers, it was a group of losers.
Now that he and Atlas were in the same class, rank, and room, they would inevitably be close and spend time together, which would lead the others to brand them as friends, which increased the satisfaction of bullying them.
He sighed and managed a smile towards Atlas, it wasn't Atlas's fault they were in this predicament after all, there was no need to be unfriendly to him. Atlas returned the smile tentatively and Jelo made a resolve. Even though he was rank F right now, he wouldn't remain that forever, in fact, he wouldn't remain that for long. He would grind to grow as fast as he could.
He opened his door and gestured for Atlas to enter. He then waved at Ken, his unlikely friend, who waved back.
"He's so cool," Jelo thought to himself and then caught himself. "You don't have to behave like a fangirl, Jelo," he muttered angrily and entered.
xxxx
A few hours later, they had settled into their rooms. The wardrobes were full of new clothes for them, mostly uniforms and a few recreational clothes. The uniforms were navy blue in color, they had a badge that had FMA inscribed on them.
Jelo wondered if they all wore trousers or if the girls had gowns or skirts.
"Look at you thinking like a pervert," he thought, shaking his head.
The room was quite simple, it had two beds on opposite ends, two wardrobes, and a joint bathroom which contained a toilet. It was painted grey, which Jelo felt gave it a depressing look, but it was clean and neat.
Now that he had settled in, Jelo decided he needed to go to the library. His reasons for this were two, firstly, he needed to find books on abilities, maybe one of them would explain his strange system, the other was that he had a quest he hadn't been able to complete yet. He needed three hours of sunlight.
The sun was still out for a few minutes, so he had only some more time to complete it.
He turned to Atlas, who was laid in bed, arms under his head and staring at the ceiling. He could imagine the boy's thoughts, he was scared and worried for life in this academy and the bullying that would come with it.
Jelo felt his lips tighten, not him, he would not stew in fear and self-pity, he would find a way to get more powerful than the bullies, and much smarter too, since intelligence was a rare thing among humans.
"Hey Atlas," he said, "I'll be off to the library, I have a few things to do."
"Uhm, can I come?" Atlas replied.
'So it starts, Jelo thought. "Yeah, why not?" he replied, and Atlas perked up, standing from the bed.
The two of them walked through the halls and outside. Jelo wondered how many more minutes of sun he needed, cause Atlas would be suspicious if they were just circling in the sun for long. Luckily he didn't need that many minutes, after five minutes of walking, the system notified him.
<+10 Ess>
Good, Jelo thought, now he had about 20 exp. He was 80 more exp from finding out what happened when he leveled up.
Then he asked a quiet-looking class 2 girl where the library was. He and Atlas then headed there.
xxx
The library was much bigger than Jelo expected. It had several shelves that contained lots of books. Jelo couldn't explain why, but he had expected the library to be much more modern and have a digital database, not physical books. After all, that's what the movies portrayed the military library as, but it turned out to be propaganda.
The librarian was a woman in her forties maybe. She had a white wig on and her red lipstick was a little smudged. "Hi, I'm looking for any books on abilities."
The woman gestured to the right without looking at him.
Atlas had gone to a different part of the library, and so Jelo was left alone as he walked to the area she had gestured.
He began to look through the shelves of various ability books. Suddenly a book title caught his attention.
It read:
Dragons: History and Extinction.
But the title wasn't what caught his attention, it was the fact that Jelo felt a strong conviction that he had seen the book somewhere before.
He racked his head trying to remember where, when it suddenly hit him. He had heard it just before he passed out from falling from the screen, he had heard something about a dragon system.
His heart began to pump faster as he grabbed the book and began to skim through it.
He learnt that due to the highly mythical nature of dragons, a lot of misconceptions about them existed, but they were quite intelligent and social and had habits that people didn't know about. For example, they needed a certain amount of sunlight to charge them up, this was because they were cold-blooded reptiles who couldn't self-regulate their temperatures and needed external heat.
As Jelo read this, his heart began to pound hard in his chest
"What?" he whispered. The phenomena he just read was quite similar to the system rewarding him for spending some amount of time in the sun.
"Am I a dragon?" he wondered as he closed the book.
He went to the counter and explained to the woman he wanted to borrow the book to his room. She raised her head to look at him for the first time and then nodded.
"Just like that?" Jelo said, a little surprised. "Won't I register or anything?"
The woman pointed to her glasses. "Registration all done. Now go." She looked back down to what she was scribbling.
As Jelo signaled for Atlas to leave with him, he thought about it and realized the woman probably had some sort of camera or face scanner in the glasses and she was able to capture his identity.
It was efficient and futuristic as he expected from the military, but he was a little scared, cause who knew who was capturing their identities or recording them without their knowledge.
He looked around the hallway. Which other hidden cameras were here?
"What are you looking for?" Atlas asked.
"Nothing… it's just that, don't you fear we're being monitored?" he replied.
"Why would they monitor us?" Atlas asked, confused. "We're rank F."
Point made, Jelo thought as his pride stung a little. Atlas was right of course, if anyone would be monitored, it wouldn't be them, they were too unimportant. He relaxed.
As they turned a corner, Jelo suddenly came upon a sight that made him and Atlas stop. There was a boy with a deceptively gentle face, in fact, he looked like the last person that would be a menace, but here he was, standing over a smaller girl who was cowering from him
"Don't make me repeat myself!" he said. "Hand over your meal ticket."
Jelo frowned. So it was mere food that made him bully his fellow student. He looked at the boy's badge and saw rank E.
He was a rank above Jelo, so he was definitely more powerful, and Jelo should definitely leave and not get involved since he was liable to being bullied himself.
Atlas even held on to Jelo's shirt as if to pull him away, but Jelo hated when the strong picked on the weak. He stepped forward to the guy.
The boy stared at Jelo with surprise. "What are you looking at, rank F? Get away from here."
Jelo's face hardened. "Or what?"
The boy was taken aback at first, but a smile grew on his face. "Oh, what do we have here? A hero? You know what, I don't want her ticket again, I want yours."
He shoved the girl away. "You can go."
He then turned to Jelo and walked closer. "So what do you say? Will you drop it willingly or forcefully?"
"I won't drop it at all," Jelo replied.
"Forcefully then," the boy said.
Just then the system came on.
Jelo's eyes widened. Forty Ess was half of what he needed to get to 100 Ess. So fighting opponents was so much more valuable than other quests he had done that day.
He was now more determined to fight the boy.
The boy noticed the change in Jelo's demeanor and for a moment he was hesitant, he then glanced at the F badge on Jelo's chest and regained his confidence.
He rushed at Jelo.
Jelo had analyzed the situation and decided that it was impossible to fight the boy, cause he was probably much stronger and faster. He would need to rely on defense and outsmarting the boy, and of course, fate.
As the boy swung his first punch, Jelo moved out of the way but it wasn't fast enough, he got hit in the shoulder and stumbled to a wall. "Damn, why is he so strong?" Jelo screamed internally.
He got up quickly and dodged the next punch.
"This is bad, I have to find his weak spot quickly," he thought.
The boy swung at Jelo again and it connected, sending stars up Jelo's face.
He collapsed to the ground in pain and spat out blood. "Man, why did I have to pick a fight with a rank D?"
He struggled to his feet and stood in a blocking stance, even though his legs were shaking.
The boy now had a cruel smile on his face. "I warned you," he said, "now everything you get will be well deserved." He swung a punch and Jelo closed his eyes, bracing for the impact, but then something unexpected happened.
Atlas, who had been watching the fight in fear, had done nothing. He watched as Jelo was tossed around like a ragdoll. But as the boy raised his hand to deliver the last punch, an urgency rose in Atlas and he quickly used his earth ability to trap the boy in place.
As the boy realized he was stuck, a look of confusion filled his face as he looked at the ground and saw the columns of earth holding him.
"Quickly Jelo!" Atlas shouted before the boy could break free.
Mustering all his strength, Jelo rushed and delivered a punch at the boy. The punch was not aimed at his face, however, it was aimed at his neck, in the spot Danny had hit Jelo a few hours earlier back in the bus.
The boy's eyes widened with shock and then went slack as he was knocked out. He dropped to the ground unconscious.
<+40 Ess>
Jelo collapsed to the ground, exhausted.