" God is Dead " - Friedrich Nietzsche
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I looked down at my IDX (eXperience and ID).
____________
Name: Heaust Azure
Scriptor Rank: 14 million
Provider Type: Unique
Chronos Density: Very Low
Magic Aptitude Estimation: Average
Provider Pay Grade: Minimum
____________
My Scriptor Rank, the measure of my programming ability, went up by 2 million since the last test.
A scriptor rank of 14 million is generous since almost all of the world competes, more importantly it would let me take the Magic Conversion Therapy despite my low provider pay grade, so I was in a pleasant mood.
Even though, I had a provider type that was above even "Rare", the highest I've ever seen or heard anyone get, that only meant my heart produced all types of chronos but since it didn't produce very much of it and stack that with the difficulty of separating the chronos from each other, It wasn't much cost effective to say at the very least, resulting my provider pay to be "Minimum" which was minimum wage...
The Magic Aptitude Estimation is a new addition, "Average" didn't bother me much, everyone starts somewhere right?
Magic Conversion Therapy (MCT) claims to make the entire nervous system like a pseudo chrono-crystal, so theoretically those who had gone through it can control chronos by just thinking!
The concepts behind it are so complex that one person can't hope to wrap their minds around all the technicalities given their whole life. That said the Adventurers (those who successfully undergo MCT) are expected to know how things work and they need it to be practically digestible since most of their time will go to training.
This was solved by the "Magic Theory", the use of chrono-control by Adventurers is called Magic and the entire theory is just a system to navigate the concepts without getting into technicalities. It is widely popular and only extremely passionate research graduates go into the actual technicalities.
My parents were against this decision since the test has a 10% absolute mortality rate, "absolute" meaning they couldn't be revived with chrono-tech. I'm independent now though, so it is my decision and I know the risks but I simply can't sit on the sidelines, perhaps that's why they're called Adventurers.
As I was lost in thought my IDX buzzed
____________
Heaust Azure,
Please report to your assigned MCT venue,
Failure to report in 20:00 minutes will result in your disqualification for this round.
Do Not Reply.
Regards,
Chrono-X
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The timer started counting down, Finally, I took out the state of the art specialised chrono-crystal I was gifted for my birthday, It's called a transfer-crystal, it can teleport people to the very few places in the world that have a transfer-receiver installed.
The MCT venue happens to be one of them.
I activated my crystal and the view around me changed, my small apartment room was now gone.
I was standing in a wide circular hall, looking up I found the ceiling to be a dome, the architecture was roman, as was characteristic of important government buildings.
Around me were 3.. 6.. 8.. 12.. 16.. 17 people, most of them clearly extremely well off and had a behavior that screamed nobility, the people with the top pay grades, I was probably the only one there that had been accepted because of their scriptor rank and not their pay grade.
I walked towards the central information desk and stood before a lady that looked to be in her 20s. She had the uniform and hat characteristic of a help desk server, her badge read "Emiris Parson"
Before I had the chance to greet her she held out her hand, "Your IDX please?", she said smiling.
"Oh sure here you go", I handed her my IDX.
She ran it through the verification sensor and hesitated for a short moment,
"You can still opt out if you want.", her tone was nervous, I wondered what she saw on her screen.
"I would rather continue if that's okay", I dismissed it to be routine verification, as I said that I saw her smile turn almost anxious.
"No really you should reconsi-", she halted mid sentence as she peeked over my shoulder
I turned my head and didn't see anything out of the ordinary, just people making their way to the desk.
"Door Number 16, the last one clockwise", she directed coldly, she wasn't smiling anymore.
I didn't think much of it, there was a lot of discrimination based on pay grade so I thought it was that.
I was a fool.
I should've heeded her warning.
I should've got out of that place.
I should've ran till my feet bled and then should've kept running.
But what I did next was the worst possible thing I could've done.
I took my IDX back and walked to door number 16.
The door scanned my IDX and I went through.
Prologue <- Table of Contents -> Next Chapter
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