"Good day, students. As you all know and as you have all come very prepared for, today will be the day of your awakening. And as you also know, awakening only happens once. If you fail this test, there will be no second chances."
Headmaster Raven's voice rolled through the vast assembly hall like distant thunder, heavy and unavoidable. It echoed off the stone walls and pressed down on the hearts of the twenty-five students seated below him.
Every student stiffened.
It wasn't that they hadn't prepared for this speech. In fact, most of them had heard some variation of it their entire lives. But preparation did little when the reality was dragged right in front of their faces.
They had been trying to clear their minds, to steady their breathing before the test, but the reminder of failure, spoken so plainly, shattered that fragile calm.
"Don't worry," Headmaster Raven continued, his tone softening just slightly. "If you fail the test, there are still many jobs for normal people. Honest work. Necessary work."
A few students exhaled in relief.
Then Raven raised a single finger.
"But…" he said, letting the word linger. "Why aim for normal, when you can be extraordinary?"
The hall fell into a suffocating silence.
The pressure doubled in an instant.
Among those who nearly caved under the weight of that speech was Oliver Mori.
This was the reality they lived in.
In this world, everyone needed to awaken a strong talent just to survive. Talents, inhuman abilities that had first appeared at the dawn of the apocalypse decades ago. They were the very reason humanity still existed today. Cities stood, monsters were held at bay, and civilizations endured only because a few had awakened power when the world was ending.
Those without talents?
They were disposable.
People who failed to awaken were treated as lesser beings. They were given low-tier jobs, little pay, and almost no voice in society. And when standing before a Talent Awakened, they were expected to bow their heads, figuratively, or sometimes literally.
That was where the fear came from.
That was why the twenty-five students in the hall were trembling.
It wasn't just about awakening.
Talents were ranked, from the common F Rank all the way to the absurdly rare SSS Rank. Awakening alone wasn't enough. Awakening weak was sometimes worse than not awakening at all.
An F Rank Awakener was mocked, pitied, and treated as dead weight.
Oliver Mori remembered this pressure all too well. He sat quietly in his chair, fingers digging into the armrests as the memories resurfaced. His breathing was steady, but his heart beat with a familiar heaviness.
Yet compared to the others, he was handling it well.
Why wouldn't he?
This wasn't his first life.
Oliver was a regressor. He had lived through this moment once already, so there was no reason for panic to take hold.
'I already know how everything ends,' he thought.
His head turned slightly to the left, eyes landing on the girl seated beside him... His girlfriend, at least for now.
Trisha.
On the surface, she was perfect. A gentle smile, clear eyes, and an air of warmth that drew people in. She was a prodigy, born into wealth. Even after her family lost a significant portion of their fortune, she never lost her poise or her kindness.
At least, that was what the old Oliver believed.
Oliver clicked his tongue quietly at the sight of her sitting there so comfortably.
'The me from before was blind. The me of now knows exactly what kind of snake this bitch is.'
For a fleeting moment, a murderous thought crossed his mind.
'I should just kill her now… but—'
He exhaled slowly.
There was no gain in that, at least not yet.
On his other side sat Kyle.
His so-called best friend.
Another bastard Oliver wanted to strangle on the spot.
'The Oliver of now doesn't know,' he thought bitterly, 'that this bastard and his lovely girlfriend have been screwing each other since the day they met.'
The memory burned vividly.
Kyle, standing over him years later.
A sword pressed to his throat.
A mocking smile as he confessed everything—right after Oliver had killed Trisha for trying to murder him.
Back then, Oliver was nothing more than a lonely eighteen-year-old who had lost both parents to the Great Apocalypse on the same day. Grief had dulled his instincts. Loneliness had rotted his judgment.
He wasn't good at reading people.
And so he trusted them.
He trusted Trisha.
He trusted Kyle.
A relationship with Trisha and drinking with Kyle had seemed like medicine for his pain. Distractions that helped him forget the emptiness of coming home to silence.
In reality, they were poison.
"This time will be different," Oliver muttered, his grip tightening around the armrest.
Trisha noticed immediately. She straightened and gently placed her hand over his, her touch warm and familiar.
"What's wrong, babe?" she asked softly. "Don't let the pressure get to you."
Her voice cracked slightly when she met his cold, emotionless gaze.
"C'mon, Olly," Kyle chimed in with a laugh, throwing an arm around Oliver's shoulder. "You're the star student. If you start panicking, what are the rest of us supposed to do?"
Oliver said nothing.
He let the moment stretch, his silence unsettling.
The truth was simple. Oliver... The current Oliver, was the star student of their year. That was the only reason these two clung to him so tightly. They were betting on his future, hoping he would awaken an A Rank talent… or higher.
If they failed, they planned to use him. To manipulate him to their advantages and live comfortably under his shadow.
'What a pair of sorry excuses for humans,' Oliver thought.
'If I wasn't ten years older in my mind, I might've fallen for all this bullshit again.'
"Now!" the Headmaster began once again, already standing before a large stone-crafted podium tattooed with various intricate carvings.
It was the Awakening Dais.
"Once I call your name, please step forward, climb the Awakening Dais, and awaken."
The Headmaster's words almost fell on deaf ears. Everyone present in the hall was busy ironing out their final resolve, forcing stiff backs and hardened expressions onto their faces.
This was it.
There were no second chances.
Then the Headmaster began to call names of the students present there.
The first person to walk up to the stage was obviously terrified.
Especially as he climbed the Dais.
Each step felt heavier than the last, as though the stone itself was judging him.
The moment his foot touched the center of the platform, the entire Dais illuminated with a brilliant blue light that shot upward like a pillar, stretching all the way to the roof.
For a brief moment, time itself seemed to freeze.
The male student stood rigid, eyes wide, breath trapped in his throat as the light swallowed him whole.
Then slowly the glow subsided.
Left behind was a visibly agitated student, and floating above him in the air were glowing letters and numbers.
[Name: Bob Riley]
[Rank: E-Rank]
[Class: Shepherd]
The room swallowed hard.
Bob stared up at the words, his pupils trembling.
Then his knees gave out.
He collapsed onto the Dais, hands digging into his thighs as his head drooped forward. A broken groan escaped his lips, followed by sobs he could not suppress. Saliva dripped from his mouth as the reality crushed him.
He knew it.
His life was over.
A few security officers moved in quickly as Bob refused to stand. He struggled violently, his voice cracking as he screamed—
"I can still! I— I can!"
No one heard him finish.
One of the awakened officers struck the back of his neck with practiced precision, knocking him unconscious to prevent further disruption.
Bob Riley was dragged off the Dais like discarded cargo.
The hall fell into a suffocating silence.
The students felt their stomachs churn. The fear they had spent years suppressing finally clawed its way to the surface.
For the first student to fail so woefully—
It was a terrible omen.
And many feared they would share the same fate.
Oliver, however, remained calm.
He had already lived this moment once before.
'A Shepherd class isn't bad,' he thought coldly. 'Monsters are naturally attracted to them. Big organizations would have paid six figures if he was at least a decent D-Rank.'
Too bad.
Oliver's gaze shifted as the next student stepped onto the Dais.
This time, it was a female student.
She looked even less confident than the first.
Unfortunately for her, after she stepped onto the platform—
Nothing happened.
No glow.
No numbers.
No letters.
The Dais remained silent, clearly she was shit no doubt.
She stood there as nothing more than a regular human being.
Her reaction was simply freezing in place.
Her mind couldn't process it.
Security removed her just like the first.
Oliver watched as, again and again, students walked up to the Dais only to fail woefully.
Some awakened with pitifully low ranks.
Others didn't awaken at all.
Overall, it was shaping up to be a disastrous year for Kalem Academy.
This much showed clearly on the Headmaster's face. His long, feather-like mustache twisted downward into a deep frown, his cracked lips tightening with each failure.
'Over ten students failed,' Oliver noted silently. 'Nothing has changed from the last time.'
Then, finally, a student walked off the Dais on his own.
Floating above him was a respectable result.
B-Rank. Wind Knight.
The tension in the hall eased slightly.
The Headmaster sighed, brief and weary, almost as if thanking the heavens that things hadn't gone completely wrong.
Kyle hurried back to his seat, grinning from ear to ear.
He shot a glance at Oliver, then turned toward Trisha.
"I did it! I actually awakened a B-Rank talent!" he exclaimed.
Oliver almost laughed inwardly.
So that's how it was.
How obvious it seemed now, how those two had something going on right under his nose, and he hadn't noticed for once.
'How foolish I was.'
"That's nice," Trisha replied, doing her best to conceal her excitement.
Kyle puffed out his chest.
"I'm sure Oliver will get an S-Rank talent. After all, everything I know, I learned from him."
He flexed his hand slightly.
A small gust of wind brushed across Oliver's face.
A silent mockery that many would mistake as friendly teasing.
Oliver noticed.
Well, there was no point dwelling on trivial things.
'Revenge will come,' he thought calmly. 'But first, I'll grow insanely strong… stronger than I was in my first life.'
'And this time—'
'I'll do it solo.'
Finally, Headmaster Raven spoke again.
"Oliver Mori."
The name echoed through the hall.
"Step up to the Awakening Dais."