Why were they treating me like that? Deep down, I knew the reason. The principal, whose name I still didn’t know, had certainly told everyone I was his personal disciple now.
So the guards gave me much better treatment than the other students. Still, I knew everything had limits.
They were nice, answering my questions, but I was still a student like all the others. I had to respect them, especially the teachers. Using the fact that I was the principal’s disciple to do "illegal" things or act rudely was out of the question.
Anyway, the guard led us through the main building. I paid close attention to every detail.
It had classrooms for students ranging from first year to last. I also saw a few locked doors with passcodes, which made me wonder what exactly was behind them.
Not just passcodes, either. There were guards nearby too, making sure no one got too close. They weren’t even hiding the doors. Any student passing by would see them and wonder the same thing I was.
The best place to hide things was right in front of everyone’s noses, I guessed.
"That’s the library," the guard said, pointing at a massive open door frame. "You can go read anything you want, but if you want to take a book somewhere else, talk to the librarian first."
"Thanks," I said.
Tom and I entered the library, and when we saw what the place looked like inside, neither of us could hold back the shock. It was huge. Like, really huge.
Looking at it now, I think half of the main building was just the library. It had three floors, shelves everywhere.
As for the books, most of them were related to awakened powers, dimensional rifts, monsters, secret places people had found around the world, that kind of thing. There were only a few fiction books, and some "normal" Earth books that had nothing to do with the current world crisis.
"What book do you want, Tom?" I asked him.
Tom looked like he was in a daze, staring at that many books. I wasn’t the type to judge someone’s appearance, but he definitely looked like someone who enjoyed reading a lot.
He walked over to one of the shelves and picked up a book.
"These are impossible to find online," he said. "This is why I wanted to become a student here. The knowledge we can get about powers, monsters, rifts, it’s massive."
"I’m looking for books about a new continent that hunters are exploring. Only a few hunters have gone on missions there, so it’s not public yet."
"And how do you know about it?" I asked him.
If it was something secretive, it didn’t make sense for Tom to know about it. He wasn’t a Hunter.
"My older brother is doing missions there, but he doesn’t tell me anything," Tom said.
Things were starting to get interesting. Tom came from a family of Hunters.
"What rank is he?" I asked.
Tom smiled instantly, like he’d been waiting for that question the whole time.
"S-Rank."
"..."
Before, all those S-Rank hunters were just names I saw on the internet or TV. Now I’d met Lion Heart in person, and now Tom’s brother.
"Only S-Rank Hunters are exploring this continent?"
"I think A-Ranks too. My brother said they’re only sending skilled Hunters for the first exploration, and then, in the future, they might send more people," Tom said.
I was honestly curious about it too. No one had mentioned a new continent on TV. They didn’t want to scare the general population.
"So how are we supposed to find books about this place? It’s recent, right? No one’s written about it," I asked him.
Tom started walking toward the shelves with the historical books, the ones written a long time ago.
"Apparently, even though the dimensional rifts appeared recently, this isn’t the first time it’s happened."
I was shocked, but I waited for him to finish.
"Dimensional rifts appeared before, like a thousand years ago. This library’s the only place with knowledge about it. And I think this mysterious continent existed back then too."
That was already beyond my comprehension. I was starting to doubt him. No one had ever said anything like that before, so maybe Tom was just making things up.
I helped him look anyway, scanning through the books on the shelves.
"If what you said is true, we won’t find anything here."
"What?" Tom frowned.
For someone who seemed knowledgeable about so many things, Tom was surprisingly naive.
"This sounds like top-secret stuff they don’t want anyone finding out about. Most hunters don’t even know about it, and I’m guessing you only heard it from your brother, right?"
"Yeah... I overheard him one time."
"That kind of knowledge is only for the top dogs. They’re not going to leave books about it on shelves where any student can grab them. We’re not finding what you’re looking for here."
"And I don’t think you should share this with anyone. If it gets out, I have a feeling they’d try to kill you or your brother."
A fucking mysterious new continent, probably packed with dimensional rifts and unknown monsters, maybe even different humans living there, and on top of that, rifts that appeared a thousand years ago and then vanished? Yeah, that sounded exactly like the kind of knowledge that could get someone killed.
Tom finally got it. All it took was someone saying it out loud.
"You’re right... But I know there are books about our past somewhere. So how do we find them? If they’re hiding this from everyone, it has to be important. If the rifts appeared long ago, why did they disappear? And more importantly, why are they back now?"
I didn’t have answers for those questions.
"The only way we learn more is by getting strong enough that no one can hide it from us. We need power to protect ourselves," I said. "So, what do you say we go train for a bit? A 1v1, get some practice in today."
Tom thought about it for a second.
"Yeah, why not? We should train and grab something to eat after."
Classes didn’t officially start until tomorrow, so we had the rest of the day free.
Tom and I walked over to the practice rooms to fight. I wanted to test myself against another student, not against the principal, who was way out of my league.
Could I win against Tom?