"Alright, class, I have an important announcement to make. The preparations for your first Portal outing have been completed. It's time for you kids to go explore the Universe a bit more."
Before Vincent informed the students about the Portal training, they would be participating in. He needed to explain to the students how the portals worked. After all, it would be a first for nearly every student there apart from a few of them.
Portals allowed humans to travel to and back from locations that they had been to before. They were often used to travel to other planets.
Another great contributor to the war against the Scarab Demons. Some people assumed that he had an ability of some sort that helped him along the way, but these were just rumours, and no one knew for sure.
However, one thing was certain: he was a great man. Once he had found this technology, he distributed it not only to the military but also to private companies. He made sure that such power wouldn't just end up in one group's hands.
Back then, the world and humans were fighting together, but who knew what would happen once the war had ended?
In today's world, there are generally three different groups of people who have owned portals. The military was the first group.
Next were private corporations. They usually had powerful originals backing them; many of these companies would also form a faction, a group of powerful Travellers just for exploring other planets.
And lastly was the group known as Pure, a group that didn't believe in the use of abilities.
There were three types of portals, each identified by colour: green, orange, and red. Each colour represented a different portal function.
Green meant that the portal led to a planet that had already been explored, with human shelters available. This portal allowed people to travel there to live or just stay temporarily.
The next was Orange, which meant that the planet hadn't been fully explored yet. There were some Shelters in place, but the level of the beast could be too high in certain areas, or they just hadn't explored everywhere yet.
And finally, the Red portals, these were unexplored planets. There were no shelters for regular humans to live in. Only travellers or military personnel would usually go into these portals for exploration, and the worst thing about them was that they didn't know if the Dalki were on the planet as well.
"And that is all the information you need to know about portals," Del said.
Vincent then closed the presentation that was playing behind him.
"Now for the important part, the portal expedition will take place next week, but before even that, you will be required to form your own team of five. Although on this trip you will travel as a class, you must have a squad and stick together. Even the green portals are a dangerous place filled with beasts, and the trackers on your watch will not work outside the academy; we will have no way to come and save you."
The student once raised his hand, and Vincent.
"Yes."
"Do you know where we will be going?"
"That information will be revealed to you on the day, many of you here have family members who, if they knew where you were, would send guards out to protect you on these planets, but that wouldn't be fair, especially since we will also be assessing you on this."
"Now, if there aren't any more questions, your combat classes for today are cancelled. Today, you are to form a team of five and report back to us by the end of the day."
Vincent then left the room to attend to other business while allowing the students to form their own groups of five.
Vorden then turned his head immediately.
"Hey Quinn, you want to be on the…."
But standing by Quinn's side already was Layla, who had sprinted from the front of the class to the back.
"Hey, do you want to make a team with me, Quinn?" Layla said, smiling.
"Err, sure," Quinn answered.
Truthfully, Quinn wanted to ask Layla to be on the same team; they didn't know how long their first assessment was going to take.
Even if Vorden didn't like it, he knew this was going to happen.
"Hey, Quinn, you mind if I join as well?" He said, smiling, trying to hide his annoyance.
"Of course, and Peter as well."
Peter's face was a little shocked at hearing the sound of his name, and at the same time, his feelings were confused.
"Yeah, that would be good," Peter said.
Then, when the others were just thinking about who the fifth member should be, Erin had approached Vorden of all people in the room.
"I want to make a team with you."
Not only were Quinn and the others shocked that Erin had approached Vorden, but so was the whole class. In Vincent's class, Erin was the strongest student there; nearly everyone wanted her on their team, but over the last few days, when people had tried to approach her, she had always given a cold response.
It seemed like she was uninterested in everything apart from getting stronger.
"I'm sorry." Vorden said, "But I've already decided to make a team with these guys."
Vorden's response to Erin seemed to be even crazier to everyone else as well.
Erin then looked at the group of people that Vorden pointed at, to be honest, she didn't seem to recognise any of them.
"Who are they?" Erin said.
"What, we took the test together!" Layla complained.
The truth was, Erin never took the time to remember people's faces; she only cared about those who were strong. When she saw how weak they were in the test assessment, she didn't even bother with them any longer.
Although there was one person who had caught her eye other than Vorden, and that was Quinn. She remembered him
The first assessment and future assessments in the portal outing would determine their final grade. For those who had a cosy family to get back to, it didn't matter too much, but to rest was determined by their future.
The grade they got when they left the military academy would decide whether they could join a strong private company, or whether they would just end up joining the bottom of the barrel, being treated even worse than now.
"I don't care about the grades, I just want to have fun while I'm still in school," Vorden replied.
But Erin was determined not to give up.
"Fine, I can accept the girl and the strangely strong boy, but I can't accept him," Erin said, pointing at Peter.
Peter's heart suddenly started to thump louder, and a fear started to take over him as he heard Erin speak these words.
"Why do we need you anyway?" Vorden said.
"Wait a minute," Layla interrupted, "I think she would make a good addition to the team, besides Vorden, doesn't your ability rely on those around you to be strong as well. As far as I remember beast doesn't have abilities, so you would have to rely on us, and we don't exactly have strong abilities."
"Layla, I understand what you are saying, but for once I agree with Vorden," Quinn replied. "I don't care how strong she is; she can't just come in and kick one of us out. She can join the team, but only if Peter stays."
It was good to have strong allies, but at what cost? If Quinn were to kick out Peter to replace him with a stranger, he would just be as bad as everyone else who had treated him like crap just for being weak. He didn't want to change into one of those types of people.
Erin then started to look around the room before looking at Vorden once again. There didn't seem to be a single person in Vincent's class who matched up to him.
"Fine, I will join, but I wish for the five of us to have a re-testing to see where we stand," Erin asked. "Perhaps we can go visit the training centre, display what we can do to the rest."
Layla and Quinn looked at each other with a half-worried look in their eye.
The five of them then headed down to the training centre.
Right now, the room was filled with multiple people from all sorts of different classes. All the other classes had also been informed about the upcoming test and had decided to find out what each other's abilities were.
This would give them the best chance of defeating and capturing as many beasts as possible and increasing their chances of survival.
"Well, what do you want us to do?" Vorden asked.
"I've already seen your powers, but I can't remember too much about the girl and the other two. Perhaps the girl can go first on the strength machine."
Layla went up as asked and went to the large circular strength machine. She concentrated her mind and threw out her fist at the same time; she used the force of her telekinesis to push her hand as strongly as she could.
The numbers slowly went up on the machine's display until it had eventually reached number eight.
"Damn it, same as last time, looks like I haven't improved much," Layla complained.
"For a level two, that's quite a weak strength score, but judging by the bow you're a ranged user anyway, it will be quite handy to have someone like you on the team," Erin said.
She then walked up to the two boys, Quinn and Peter.
"Well, I'm hoping that both of you can at least get the same score as her."
Quinn was starting to get annoyed by all her taunts, but he took a deep breath and held it in. With her on the team, it would cause fewer troubles with the others. Even if they did defeat beasts and obtain their crystals, there was a high chance that another team might target them and try to steal them.
But just having Erin on the team would stop that.
Peter walked up to the machine holding the mud staff in his hand.
"Looks like he's still level 1 then," Erin said.
Level 1 earth user didn't have the
The ability to extract earth from the ground; all they could do was reform the earth in their hand. They could only control the earth they were touching, rather than the earth around them.
As Peter went to punch the machine, the earth around the pole started to form around his fist. As he hit the machine, the numbers started to go up, and finally, it stopped at eight. The same score as Layla.
"Well, what are you waiting for?" Erin said, looking at Quinn.
As Quinn walked up to the strength machine, all he wanted to do was punch the machine as hard as he could. He wanted to shut up the arrogant Erin, who felt like she was better than everyone else. Why did she choose to act like this? Simply because she had a better ability than others?
Because her family was well off enough to buy her a strong ability book?
He looked at the machine and started to wonder, if he performed a hammer strike using all his strength, would the number rise? Surely the number would be above his 40 strength.
He readied his fist and redid his footwork. Shadows begin wrapping around his hands, and Quinn lets his fist out. He tried controlling the power output, hoping to achieve a similar score to the other two.
*Bang
His fist collided with the large drum-like machine, and the numbers slowly started to rise.
10..20… and then finally the number had stopped at 30.
Quinn estimated that if his current strength was 40, then he needed to use half his strength when hitting the machine to get a 20. But such macro-level control was nearly impossible to get right, and he had managed to go slightly over.
"Hey man, didn't you get stronger!" Vorden said, surprised, "I thought you got a 20 on the test last time, you've been working out or something?"
Quinn started to laugh, trying to come up with something.
"Is this okay then?" Layla asked.
"Yes." Erin replied, "I still wish to join your team. I believe even with the extra luggage we have on board, with Vorden and me, we can come out as the top team during this assessment."
After testing everyone's strength, the group decided to discuss a few things. Such as formation and what to do. Although the discussions didn't last for long. If they were to travel as a group, Layla would stay at the back for support, and Erin and Vorden would be at the front.
Usually, the physical damage dealers would be at the front of the squad, while elemental users would be in the middle. But in this scenario, Peter was considered so weak that they placed him in the centre for protection.
Erin felt like it was quite useless to practice anything else after finding out how weak the other two abilities were, so the group's meeting had ended early, and she decided to go off on her own to train somewhere.