Chapter 5: Class Awakening!

[Conditions Met For Class Awakening......]

’What?’

[Analyzing Target’s Soul...]

Damon felt like he was boxed in from all sides by an invincible force. It didn’t feel like he was in his body; he felt formless, like he was in a waking dream.

In the same span, he felt a similar wave to the one that had spread through the world earlier, running through this form of his, and reaching into his very essence.

"Where am I?—what about that beast?"

"Oh—Harvy."

Damon couldn’t see anything else in whatever space he was currently suspended in; he couldn’t even feel his body, all he could see were these glowing words from the origin system.

Still, he could think, and his thoughts were both of relief and concern.

He could still clearly visualize the state his butler was in when he had shot the creature dead. He could only imagine what the man must have gone through in that short span of time as the world was thrown into such a state.

Yet, he also wondered how his butler came into possession of a gun, or how he was such a great shot that he effortlessly struck the creature right through the center of its skull from such a distance.

There were no memories of his butler being such a badass; all Damon remembered was him always being efficient and cool, never really saying much and doing his job with utmost efficiency and poise through the years.

Though, in hindsight, Damon realized he never really knew much about his personal butler and nanny as well.

"Hmm—and what is this now ?"

Damon wondered as he observed the system with its glowing words, and strangely enough, it appeared to be—

"Is this thing stuck?"

[Analyzing Target’s Soul...

Analyzing...

Analyzing...]

Damon did not know for how long he had been in this suspended state and in this space, or how he had happened to have fulfilled some type of condition necessary to awaken a class.

He wasn’t even sure what that meant. was all this just some game ?

[Analyzing Target’s Soul...

Analyzing...

Analyzing...]

Though Damon enjoyed the peace around him and the feeling of being half asleep, he still wanted to wake up to at least confirm that Leo was okay, as well as his butler and nanny, the latter of whom he had a feeling might also have remained in the penthouse.

Recalling what that mutated creature looked like and that it had managed to reach his room, Damon could only infer that some, if not all, of the party guests his cousin had brought over might have turned into those creatures.

"That’s really bad."

Damon understood the gravity of the situation; his penthouse was the most secure apartment in the whole skyscraper building, which contained several floors.

It would have been difficult for those creatures to make their way into his penthouse, even with their inhuman strength. But what could he do about those that were already inside the penthouse suite?

Damon needed to confirm the state of things; however, no matter how much effort he put into waking up from this half-trance suspended state, he found he was apparently stuck here, at least until whatever was happening with the system resolved itself. And it was taking an incredibly long amount of time.

[Analyzing Target’s Soul...

Analyzing...

Analyzing...]

Time began to slowly lose meaning to Damon in this space, and he found himself falling deeper and deeper into a long, satisfying rest, only being drawn back to what he calls a soul-conscious state by the continually bathing waves of that strange force, as he felt himself forming some type of unseen bond to something unfathomable.

And then suddenly—

[DATA ERROR!.]

[INCOMPLETE SOUL STRUCTURE.

UNABLE TO ANALYZE.

DETECTING ROOT......]

"Oh, common. What does that even mean?"

[DETECTING....

DETECTING....]

[ERROR! ERROR!

DETECTING DORMANT TRACES OF ⟦ ⟁𐌀⨳⩚ : Θ̸̵̷̡̢͜͠⟡⟁//Ϟ⩚𖤐 FRAGMENT]

[BEGINNING COMPLETE TARGET ERASURE....]

"Wait, what ?"

Damon was being bombarded by flashing reds on this origin system, and the last line of text was particularly concerning.

He didn’t know why they were trying to erase him, or what they found, but he was unwilling to be erased just like that, without any sort of explanation.

However, suddenly, in that moment, Damon felt a foreign wave flood his very soul.

It was very different from the one before, yet strangely similar.

[ERROR! ERROR!

⟦ ⟁𐌀⨳⩚ : Θ̸̵̷̡̢͜͠⟡⟁//Ϟ⩚𖤐 RESISTS ERASURE!]

[ERROR! ERROR!

⟦ ⟁𐌀⨳⩚ : Θ̸̵̷̡̢͜͠⟡⟁//Ϟ⩚𖤐 CANCELS ERASURE!]

[Class Awakening Failed!]

[Exiting awakening space.]

"Phew—at least I wasn’t erased."

Damon mused as he felt himself being pushed out from where he now understood was an awakening space, and that connection- the bond that was being established with something unfathomable- began a process of rapid severance.

"Failure isn’t anything new to me."

He added, accepting his fate; whatever forces were at play here were beyond his imagining, so what else could he do?. He didn’t even know what class awakening meant for him.

However, just when Damon thought he would soon be returning to his physical state—

His soul abruptly shuddered; a near-physical tremor spiraled through his entire being. The same foreign wave that had washed over him prior was now acting up again, affecting even the awakening space around him.

[SYSTEM CRITICAL ERROR!.....

⟦ ⟁𐌀⨳⩚ : Θ̸̵̷̡̢͜͠⟡⟁//Ϟ⩚𖤐 ........]

[CRITICAL ERROR EMERGENCY!.....

CONNECTING GAIA!...

ERROR!.....ERROR!.....

CONNECTION FAILED!]

[CONNECTING FREY!...

ERROR!.....ERROR!.....

CONNECTION FAILED!]

[CONNECTING XERON!...

ERROR!.....ERROR!.....

CONNECTION FAILED!]

[ERROR! ERROR! ERROR!

⟦ ⟁𐌀⨳⩚ : Θ̸̵̷̡̢͜͠⟡⟁//Ϟ⩚𖤐 .....!]

[FORCED AWAKENING INITIATED!.....

⟦ ⟁𐌀⨳⩚ : Θ̸̵̷̡̢͜͠⟡⟁//Ϟ⩚𖤐 ......]

[INVOKING ZERO PROTOCOL!]

[THE ORIGIN STIRS......]

[THE ORIGIN APPLIES PENALTIES TO AWAKENING.....

THE ORIGIN APPLIES PENALTIES TO ⟦ ⟁𐌀⨳⩚ : Θ̸̵̷̡̢͜͠⟡⟁//Ϟ⩚𖤐]

[⟦ ⟁𐌀⨳⩚ : Θ̸̵̷̡̢͜͠⟡⟁//Ϟ⩚𖤐 RESISTS THE ORIGIN!

⟦ ⟁𐌀⨳⩚ : Θ̸̵̷̡̢͜͠⟡⟁//Ϟ⩚𖤐 RETURNS TO SLUMBER!]

[System Stabilizing....

System Stabilizing....

System Stabilizing....

System Recovering....]

Damon found he was unable to focus on a single thought process through whatever had just transpired.

He felt like an invisible war had just taken place on a level he could not even perceive; both waves of energy that had been ravaging through him had suddenly settled down, with the second one almost completely disappearing, yet he could tell it was still there.

Another change was that the connection he felt being severed appeared to have been reestablished in full, and much stronger than before, as he wafted weightlessly through the awakening space, watching the system repeatedly spam through the process of stabilizing.

"What was that ?"

Damon murmured, recalling the indecipherable characters that appeared to have interfered with his awakening, but as he did, his thoughts suddenly became foggy, losing a connection to that particular line of thought.

"That’s weird."

It was as if the more he tried to think about it, the more he forgot, so Damon stopped thinking about it entirely, and right at that moment, the system bombarded his vision with an announcement bathed in gold—

[Awakening Successful!....]

[You Have Awakened The Unique Hidden Class— ’Rich Man’]

"Well, that’s unexpected."