Chapter 72 The truth
"Ahem, well that was unexpected, to say the least."
After the shock of Malachi's decision settled down, Professor Will recomposed himself and carried on to the end of the enrolment.
"Finally, we have the joint winners of this exam."
He announced, with everyone quieting down after he spoke.
"Pick whichever university you like, Alex, Mira."
Finally, it had come to their choice.
Professor Will didn't even need to raise his hand this time.
It was obvious which university they were going to pick.
He had read both of their applications when they first piqued his interest.
He knew what their first choices were.
"Capital Prime." They both said in unison.
***
With the formalities over, everyone returned back to their assigned quarters on the ship. The place seemed much emptier with over half of the original applicants being dead.
Everyone but the top 10.
The ones ranked 4-10 were given recommendation letters from their professors, which acted as an entrance ticket to the elite class exams.
That left the top 3... except for Malachi.
He had gone off with the Professor from the Federal Military Academy to speak in private.
"As for you guys, we have something even more special to reward you with."
There were only 4 people left in the huge hall.
Professor Will and the three who had been accepted into Capital Prime.
There was no need for the other professors to be present.
"Kiara, we'll start with you." Professor Will asserted.
"Your reward for reaching third will be an E- rank beast core."
"..."
'...'
The silence after Professor Will spoke was so palpitating that Kiara, Alex and Mira forgot to even think.
'That's it? I work so hard just for one measly E- rank beast core which I could have easily earned myself if I put some effort in?'
"So far, we have only found that only beasts naturally have these classifications, with each beast having a significantly higher amount of strength and intelligence than that of a beast lower down in the classification."
"However..." Professor Will paused.
"... when the first Mutant beast was killed, we found a mutant beast core inside."
"From this, we found that humans can attain dramatically more strength by absorbing these beast cores compared to the ordinary beast cores we'd been absorbing up until that point."
"With this, we have differentiated the world of Awakened into two parts."
"Ordinary awakened, who only ever know about Ordinary beasts and ordinary beast cores up until the day they die."
"And Enlightened Awakened, who know the truth of the beasts and have even had the chance to absorb a mutant beast core, or perhaps even higher."
Professor Will basically dumped the whole lot of information on them at once, which was a lot to process for these kids who had barely even touched the fruit of adulthood yet.
'So this whole time, I've just been at the bottom of the barrel of the real world of Awakened?'
Alex was having some conflicting thoughts of his own.
This new information came as a big shock to him.
But it also revealed a potential new path to higher strength for him.
'Now that I know these beasts can't exist, I can't ignore them! I have to obtain their strength!'
"Why separate the world of Awakened into two parts though, why not let every awakened know about the classification system?" Kiara raised up a very valid question.
The other two were very interested in the answer to this as well.
"We only reveal such information to awakened who enrol in university, as through the tests and exams they have proven their will and drive to strive for a higher strength. They can handle the weight of such heavy information, and even use it as motivation to further their strength even more." Professor Will explained.
"But what about the awakened that don't make it to university, you may ask? Well, since they didn't make the cut, they probably wouldn't have reacted well to such information in the end anyway. Plus, if they were still driven to prove themselves and increase their strengths even after being rejected from university, they'd eventually come across this information on their own anyway."
With this answer, Alex and the other two finally understood.
Most awakened were actually not much different from the normal citizens.
They just wanted to live peaceful lives, not bothered about improving their strength and whatnot.
So it was best to leave them to it.
"Sir, you said only beasts can 'naturally' have these classifications, does that mean that by absorbing these higher classed beast cores, we humans can also raise our classifications?"
Mira thought to herself for a while before she picked up this key bit of information from going back over what Professor Will said.
Hearing this, Professor Will smiled.
"I was hoping one of you would pick this point out. Yes, that's correct. In fact, I myself am a Variant class B+ rank awakened."
'He just keeps dropping bombshell after bombshells...'
Alex wasn't even surprised anymore.
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