Weather went from cold to warm as winter passed and summer came.
Franz and his family's days following their revival were not comfortable.
Their bodies wouldn't listen to them properly, their new environment was unknown, and they were too attractive. It was inevitable that such attractive people like them would be noticed by the people around them. And being noticed was not always a good thing.
Even with important documents in place, they would have a hard time if true official scrutiny happened. After all, all of them had become incredibly talented and beautiful teens.
So how could they explain all of that under scrutiny?
Why was there no record of their existence in any official schools or such?
Even though the documents given by the Ark gave them a full new identity, the family still found it very hard to lie about themselves all the time.
Gaps were inevitable.
And life in general was new now. Their 40 year old mother now looked 16 like her children. And the children themselves were taller, smarter, and a lot different.
People might think different bodies didn't change a person much, but that was not at all the case. Hormonal changes, the way sleep and dreams went. It all changed for them.
And that change took time to become normal.
Not to mention that stuff like mutation and bloodline hadn't even become evident yet. Who knows what was to come?
This was all especially hard on Franz, who had to get used to living two lives simultaneously.
In such brutal times, they avoided all official matters and stayed fully under the radar. But even then, the amount of people that tried to hit on Liora and Cera—their mother—was insanely high.
Not to mention the people with sheer bad intentions.
Franz had never known Earth could also be so dangerous.
Though Franz's 6 ft tall presence hindered the easy criminals, they still faced some truly dangerous enemies in the days that followed.
In just the first week, they met human traffickers, who had tried kidnapping Liora twice.
And after being scared, they escaped from Kerala outright. But that was the worst choice they could have made—Kerala was one of the safest places in India.
They met people with bad intentions on a daily basis after they left and continued movement made it so that they no longer had a home of their own.
Days were cruel.
Food was scarce with no easy job.
But running from place to place, they soon found themselves in a relatively safe village with a low enough rent.
Without any degrees or certificates to show under his new identity, Franz could only work as a menial resource worker. And the income from that was small, so he barely earned enough to pay off rent and eat on a day to day basis.
Thankfully, after the first two weeks, his sister entered the modeling career and earned a pretty decent sum. But that did not last either. When she began to notice a bad energy and exploitation there, she abandoned the career entirely.
Franz forced her to.
But through her channels, Franz got into that career himself and got themselves a pretty decent living in Karnataka, India.
Days passed like that.
Before dying in that car accident, their family had been solidly middle class. Not rich, not poor. They even had a cheap car of their own. But their mom had gotten cancer around the time they died and treating that would have made them solidly poor.
Luckily, all of that was behind them now.
They earned enough money together to establish themselves and bought a small home back in Kannur, Kerala. And after about a month since they ran away, they returned back to Kerala.
But accumulated bad gazes from the modeling department followed them, and the regular threat from criminals that they attracted just by being alive seemed to never decrease.
Liora and Cera stopped leaving their home entirely.
And it was also inevitable that people learned the three talented kids did not have a guardian of age. That also brought officials to their house, bringing even more trouble.
All of their identifications told they were 16 or less of age.
Even Cera, their mother, was now just that old.
And that caused them to inevitably end up under the guardianship of a church where a Nun legally became their guardian.
Finally, the three began enjoying the benefits of their new bodies in a calmer environment.
Franz could now learn things so easily that he felt calculus to be a simple idea. And memorization of large text was almost intuitive.
The same went for the women in his family.
And they all spent at least 5 hours every day learning and learning alone. After all, they still remembered there was a game to happen soon.
Thus, Franz's days entered a new calm cycle of love and peace.
Wake up early morning. Drink mom's coffee, help comb Liora's always tangled hair, go to work. Return for lunch, wrestle to enter the toilet first with his sister. Watch anime when bored, read and learn useful texts online. Absorb mathematics, chemistry, biology, and physics like he had never done before.
Go bully people in the local football field.
After all, he was now a beast of a player.
How could he resist the temptation?
Then he would return home at 8'o clock and get spoiled by his sister's sweets. She was an excellent cook before death and now, that was even more the case. She could cook destructive sweets these days.
And according to her, it was also the healthy macros optimized kind of sweets.
He loved those.
She spoiled him too.
Then, it would turn 10'o clock and he'd sleep in the only bed in their home along with his family. Their Guardian had tried to stop that, but the three insisted they continued like that due to their fear of the eventual Game.
Days like those repeated with good and bad things happening in waves.
And slowly, the mental trauma left behind from death healed and they became expressive people again.
Even though there were bumps here and there, life was actually pretty good in retrospect.
And before they knew it—
A year passed.
It was a normal afternoon and Liora was preparing her hair for a bath. Franz combed her hair from the back and helped her apply oil.
"Franz, did you really have to buy me an I-Phone?" She complained. "I really don't like its OS, it's so restrictive."
"Android phones are cheap, Liora," he said. "I didn't want to give a cheap birthday gift."
"Arggh stupid, there are flagships that are just as expensive as this."
He frowned, applying pressure on his massage. "They all felt cheap in comparison for some reason so shut up and don't act so spoiled."
She glared at him with her ice blue eyes.
Mom walked in from the side, a plate of cake in her gloved hands. "He is right, if you don't want it just give it to me."
Liora immediately became protective. "How could you steal your daughter's gift, mom?"
Franz gave her a slap on her head.
"So you want it after all," mom said with a smile. "So just give him a smile and—|"
That was when it happened.
[The Arc spans across the entire Milky Way, selecting capable individuals into its ranks from all sentient populations.]
The voice echoed in their minds.
A blue screen appeared in front of all of them.
[We welcome you to your First Game: Power in Numbers.]
[Prepare yourself, as you will be summoned into the Game Space in exactly 24 hours. We hope you well in all your future endeavors.]
It vanished, leaving behind a stunned trio.
Franz stood up abruptly, then left the home in short notice. They had trained for this for the better part of a year, so the sister and mother also began their own preparations without hindering him.
7 hours later, all three met up in their room and used a sleep pill to force themselves into sleep. They knew they wouldn't be able to fall asleep without it.
And sleep would affect performance.
10 hours later, Franz woke up first and then forced the rest of his family awake.
They brushed, bathed, and warmed up together.
They left for the nearby football ground—it was an abandoned place and barely anyone visited here these days due to garbage being dumped here.
They played passing the ball with a football.
"Not much time now," Franz said.
"Yeah," Cera nodded seriously. "Liora, we have to work hard."
"I know mom stop being so preachy."
Time passed one pass at a time.
Liora smiled. "I bet you can't stop this pass!" She hit the ball, almost no girly stupidity in the kick. She looked trained.
But Franz still stopped the ball effortlessly.
"Too simple," he said with a grin. "Now your chance—|"
They vanished.
A wind made the ball roll forward.