"Very well. Welcome to the Second Selection, Kazuki Matasuragi."
"What!?" He shouted.
"That's right, however, till we can properly gauge your Soul-Energy. You'll stand as a D-rank Soul-Hunter. That's how you'll introduce yourself at the second selection when it starts tomorrow."
"W—wait what!? Tomorrow?? But I only just woke up, I don't think I'm in any condition to take it!" It was soon, a little too soon.
"Well, that's what you get for falling asleep throughout the whole day, but don't worry about it, tomorrow is just an introduction to the second selection so you won't be doing much. But what you need to worry about is developing your Soul-Energy in the short amount of time you have. That reminds me, that friend of yours, he came by here often with a girl. I think her name was Ka-Kazui? No that wasn't it."
"Kazue!" His memory picked up on what he tried to say. It turned out, the previous owner of his body had a sister — the only member of his family he had left.
And he loved her deeply. Having mutual feelings for his mother in his past life, he couldn't stop himself from responding to them.
"Ah yes, Kazue, sounds like you know her, is she your girlfriend or something?"
Kazuki jumped out of the bed, he remembered now that it had been a full day since he last saw his sister, and she must be worried sick.
"Captain, please I need to go home!" Kazuki pleaded.
Hiro smiled, he understood his situation completely, after all he did a background check on him, and he discovered that he lost his parents to the Soul-Beasts during the last advent.
So he only had one family left.
"Livinus." Hiro called out to his vice, and Livinus understood immediately.
"Temporal Soul-Technique: Astral Gate."
As Livinus raised his hands, the air shimmered, and a glowing blue portal opened beside Kazuki's bed. It pulsed softly with energy, like waves of light breathing in and out, casting gentle reflections across the room.
"This should take you home." Livinus said, taking a deep breath.
"Thanks!"
At that moment, the doctor walked in, and he dropped the tray he held in his hands as Kazuki ran into the portal, and it closed up behind him.
"Hey! You can't leave yet! We still haven't figured out what happened to yo-"
"Let him go doctor." Hiro spoke on his behalf, crossing his arms as he watched Kazuki run out of the hospital with a smile on his face.
"Y-you're... The captain of the 11th Soul-Squad and the vice captain too... Why did you let him leave? The Soul-Hunter's association requested we hand him over to them the moment he regains his consciousness."
"You might not understand this doctor, but when you see someone with that kind of passion in their eyes, you have to let them soar and let their passion burn hotter, only then can they reach the climax of youth. Don't worry about the Soul-Hunter's association, I'll handle them." He assured the doctor before leaving.
..
Another portal opened up, and Kazuki emerged from it, and found himself in the living room of a building. He immediately recognized it as his home and rushed towards Kazue's room.
As he pushed open the doors, he found tissues scattered across the floors and even on her bed.
She was crying.
Who could blame her? Kazuki was the only one she had left, losing him was not an option.
"Don't worry Kazue, I'm here now. And I promise, from now henceforth, nothing will ever separate from each other again." He kissed her forehead and slid her blanket over her.
He couldn't protect and save his mother in his previous life, not now. Now that he can — he wasn't going to let history repeat itself.
He left.
Back in his room, he sat at his table, hand pressed against his jaw. Everything happened so fast, a little too fast, and now a day had passed in the blink of an eye.
What worried him wasn't the selection the next day, it was the last thing he saw before he passed out.
The Orange gate and the Soul-Beast that emerged from it.
In this world, there were four types of gates, with each divided by their different colors and their attached names.
The first, a blue gate — typically referred to as a dungeon. They were your classic dungeons that hunters raid to get experience and obtain the essence core of magical beasts to develop their weapons.
The second, a red gate — The most powerful dungeon. It easily scaled up to S-rank in terms of power, and it even required at least five to six S-rank Soul-Hunters to raid.
The third, a yellow gate — A dungeon break, a dungeon break was simple, if you leave a dungeon long enough for it to develop, the blue gate turns yellow and releases the magical beasts from that dimension into the human world. In the history of mankind, there has only been a total of five dungeon breaks.
And finally.
A black gate — The Colossal gate, it was the end results of the conditions being met. The conditions? Five consecutive dungeon breaks, the energy released from the five dungeon breaks are combined into one single entity — The Colossal gates, which contained the beasts that nearly wiped out of all humanity decades ago.
But an Orange gate? Something was wrong, especially since a strange beast emerged from it. An orange gate never appeared in the story.
At least not this soon. He had little knowledge of this character from the novel, so he had no idea which events were altered.
But one thing remained certain, it hasn't affected the story yet. Which meant one thing.
The final selection was were THAT event would happen. And only those who were strong enough would survive it — most especially Takashi.
At his current level, he wouldn't. So he needed to get stronger. "Status."
The translucent panel materialized out of thin air, revealing his bio-data.
______________Status_________________
[Name: Kazuki Matasuragi]
[Age: 18]
[Occupation: Soul-Hunter]
[Level: 5]
[Experience: 4]
[Dexterity: 4]
[Stamina: 5]
[Agility: 5]
[Strength: 5]
[Intelligence: 5]
[Soul-Energy: 70/200]
[Soul-Core: Shadow Soul-Core]
[Rank: X- Rank]
[Abilities:
• Primordial Shadow Beast — Kuriyami]
- Skills: Raisen (Level 1)]
[Stats point: 2]
_____________________________________
From his bio-data, one thing was obvious. He was still low on Soul-Energy. "Damn... Summoning that dragon took a toll on my Soul-Energy, I don't think I can be able to summon it more than once. And I seemed to have recovered just a bit of my Soul-Energy."
"I just have only one skill if I exclude summoning the dragon. Raisen? What is that?" His memory from his battle with the Soul-Beast was still foggy, so he couldn't accurately describe the ability.
[You have reward items that are yet to be opened, do you wish to open them?]
"Reward items? Oh that's right, it's the glitch from earlier. It gifted me the rewards for the daily quest? I'm starting to like this system errors." It didn't matter to him if the errors affects him in the future, for now, it was a huge help.
[You have received 500 credits!]
[You have received a key to an instant Dungeon!]
"An instant dungeon?" It was the perfect way to level up, in all the system novels that he has read, raiding dungeons was the most ideal way of levelling up.
"I guess I'll just save this for later." Despite sleeping through the whole day, it didn't change what happened, his Soul-Energy was too low to even consider raiding.
He needed to recover his Soul-Energy in the short hours he had left, because tomorrow.
Tomorrow was the start of the second selection.