The group introductions went smoothly when he heard a whisper. "Doesn't he seem too normal for a Cross?"
"Bro... I can hear you." Arthur, who realized that the mention of Cross was referring to himself, didn't look in that direction.
"A little louder... I don't think he heard you." Lucas complained without looking at the Flameheart, who was standing a head taller than himself.
"Yes, tell him..." Arthur almost nodded at the sound of Lucas's words.
"Maybe the crazy gene doesn't go as deep in the Cross bloodline," Lucas responded in an even lower voice when Arthur suddenly coughed, distracted from his memories, which he was still going through slowly as they all walked in the direction of the Sky-bus.
Unlike Arthur, Vihr, Nessa, and Myu, who only arrived at Nerfall Academy just a couple of days ago. Lucas and Henry had been in the Academy for at least a month before the Awakening.
So at the moment, the four ignorant newbies were being lectured on the Central district of the Academy on their way to the Skybus.
The distraction from Henry and Lucas's words didn't take Arthur's thought off the words whispered to him by Telmear.
"So... Arthur? What was it like up there?" Vihr suddenly asked, irritated by the heavy silence that had settled over the group. Not even the hot-headed Nessa was willing to speak a word.
He had assumed that if anyone would break the silence, it would be her. Given her impulsiveness and total disregard for any opinion but her own, the chances of her asking should have been high.
But they had been walking for at least fifteen minutes now, passing Transcendent towers of wildly varying designs and tastes, with absolute radio silence. So, Vihr just decided to ask himself.
"Hm.. It was fine, I guess, a little cold but the same as the rest of the Summits." Arthur responded lightly, avoiding the entire conversation. He wasn't about to tell a bunch of kids something that even the Principal was eager to hear.
That was why, during the entire walk to the Sky-bus, he'd been so focused on the memories he received. Trying to unravel as much as he could about this world.
At first, it had felt like watching a five-season series on fast-forward, with a flood of emotions being shoved down his throat alongside a mind-numbing pain that nearly made him pass out. Enjoying the story?
Noticing the abrupt silence around him, Arthur finally pulled himself out of his thoughts to look around. The disappointed looks and apologetic expressions on his companions' faces left him slightly confused—until Nessa spoke up.
Suddenly, seeing their disappointed looks and apologetic expressions made him a little confused, but with Nessa's next words, the reason became clear.
"My brother usually knows better than to nose around someone else's business. He should know a Transcendent's personal interests aren't to be messed with." At first, Vihr didn't understand the nature of what he was asking about, since the Tower experiences were not exactly a secret that couldn't be shared.
But Vihr, thinking back to his own experience on the Sixth Summit, realized the truth. True, his awakening might not have seemed drastically different from anyone else's, but the irregularities he faced—and the hidden insights he gained—were things most other Transcendents knew nothing about.
A copied chapter has arrived from www.NovelPhoenix.com without permission; the author's version there helps support their writing.
And in that sense, the information he had about awakening became a valuable resource, and there was no way he was just gonna tell it to others like some bedtime story.
Hearing Nessa clear up the misunderstanding, Arthur became even more eager to understand the nature of the world he had just been dropped into, and promptly dived back into his memories.
The walk over to the Sky-bus fell back into silence after that.
The entire Central district seemed almost deserted except for the various Isolated Towers of high-ranked transcendents.
Arthur had already been warned about them: these towers possessed individual defensive barriers. Any Transcendent foolish enough to cross within three miles without the owner's explicit permission would suffer a brutal backlash from the surrounding arrays.
And that was just the penalty for seasoned Transcendents. For the newly awakened, the consequence wasn't a backlash—it was instant death, or, if they were exceptionally lucky, a lifelong coma.
"How far do we have to walk before we get to the Sky-bus?" Arthur had to ask; the distance was too far to cover even with his body, which had undergone several trainings of different kinds in the Cross estate.
"..." Arthur's question was very confusing to the group; this was the same walk they took on their way to the Awakening grounds.
"What?" Arthur asked, seeing their confused expression. His method of arriving within the Tower was different, so while they all were familiar with the distance to the Sky-bus, Arthur wasn't.
"We all came to the Central district on the Sky-bus. It's almost impossible to forget how far we had to walk on our way here." Lucas was the one who decided to reply this time; he was still a little shocked to know that among the newly awakened, there was a candidate from the Cross Estate.
This kind of Information was hard to conceal considering who the Crosses were.
"Oh!!" Arthur replied with a simple, unsatisfactory exclamation before letting the group fall back into silence, deciding not to speak until he was done sorting his memories. You are reading on novelping . com, the official source.
Of course no one was stupid enough not to discern anything from Arthur's question, but if he was going to say nothing further, then asking was just willing to get into a spat with another Transcendent.
The walk gave him ample time to sort through his memories one after the other when he finally understood the significance of reaching the Final summit.
"I'm off to a great start then... as long as I can stay alive, I can slowly unlock the full potential of my authority." The thought was impossible not to get excited about; he'd only climbed to the Final Summit in an effort to wake up, but here he was.
Awake but not in the world he was familiar with.
"Only if I stay alive." Arthur thought to himself after realizing the gravity of the allure of the information he held to the other Transcendent families or aspiring Transcendents.
He was able to climb three fabled summits, one of which had a ninety percent chance of failure, which ended in death. And the last two summits were never explored in the time since the Tower's existence was discovered.
"It seems my stay in this world isn't going to be as peaceful as I hoped." He couldn't help but take a peek at Vihr, who seemed engulfed in his own thoughts,
While he was able to reach the Final summit, his ignorance and the fact that he'd had trial experiences before the awakening contributed to that fact.
But Vihr knew the dangers and was similarly ignorant of the true nature of the Tower challenges, yet he still risked his life to attempt the Sixth summit.
He had to respect the guts, especially when he looked back to the final moments of awakening and its horrors.
Finally, they all arrived at the Sky-bus in groups. The entire crowd of newly awakened boarded the Sky-bus after the Transcendent in charge confirmed their identities.
"The cost for this use of the Sky-bus will be free, but you'll all be sent to the Southern District. You better get your tokens, or you won't be able to do anything in the Academy in the future." The stranger operator instructed them sternly; he was required to do so as part of taking this task from the Mission Hall, or he wouldn't bother himself.
As proof, any subsequent questions asked were blatantly ignored, and as soon as the last newly awakened boarded the Sky-bus. He operated it, sending them soaring in the direction of the Southern District.