*BEEP BEEP BEEP*

Sam’s heart races as he looks around in a daze, “Shit shit shit, is that the notification?”

He falls out of bed onto the ground, the bed-sheet tangled around him as he crawls towards the source of the noise.

It’s coming from underneath the bed, he grabs at random things avoiding the sticky old food and grabs something emitting a beeping noise. It’s a small circular object by touch, he pulls it out as it’s making a loud amount of noise.

*BANG BANG BANG*

“Is everything ok in there?”

The bangs came from the door, his mother came from the other side so she must be awake already or this thing is louder than even he expected.

Sam looks at the object, he pushes a button on the side before flipping open the face.

“It’s fine! Go back to bed.”

“What was that? Can I open the door?”

“You can open it, I forgot the name of it.”

The door swings open where his mother is standing, she’s still a young lady at heart but her body is getting on in years. Her appearance is a short brown hair with blue eyes, Sam has a similar nose to her.

Sam holds out the object, the face of it is open where it’s just flashing some 0s.

“Ah, that thing. It’s something your father picked up just after the last major invasion. It’s when we had to abandon the old cities so it’s something from then.”

“Oh, weird. I thought that everything from that time was mostly junk designed to make money by breaking quickly.”

“Haha, well true, that’s still true today so I’m glad you know that, ” his mother reaches forward and roughs up his hair, “this thing I believe is just a stopwatch.”

Sam presses the button on the side but nothing happens, his mother takes it from him and shows him how to operate it before passing it back. Sam has a frown on his face as he sits on the ground, his mother is smiling as she sits on his bed.

“It really is just a stopwatch? Why is it so loud then?”

“Well this wasn’t one of those bits of junk from back then, the fact that it was still counting down until now suggests that it’s special.”

“Special how?”

“I don’t know. I can only recall some limited edition time telling devices… there was something special about their power but I can’t recall it. Your father might but he’s already at work, we could message him.”

“It’s fine, I’ll work it out now that I know how to work it.”

“Good to hear, well make sure you get ready for the day. There’s those rumours floating around, I don’t want you to be unprepared, you’re already low-classification…”

“It’s fine, I’ll just get an awesome monster from the ceremony and everything will be fine. I can just feel it.”

Sam’s mother pats his head as she stands up, “Of course, you’re my little guy.”

Sam feels a burst of energy as her hand holds there before she lifts it and leaves, “You have a busy day today, better get to it.”

She closes the door without giving him a chance to reply, he is left confused about what she means.

“Well time to get ready I guess…”

Sam dresses for the day and eats breakfast, his mother has gone somewhere which is fairly normal as she herself is a Stage 2 fighter, she needs to train or she could simply run off somewhere with the massive boost of speed each stage provides.

The TV is on blaring some inane program about something, Sam’s attention is drawn to the flashing pictures as he’s eating his food.

“This year we’re led to believe that there’s over twenty million people scheduled to undergo the ‘Coming of Age’ ceremony, that’s a 660% increase from the last time it was performed, why is that?”

“Good question, ” the expert on the news starts to speak as he shows some graphs, “well besides the obvious reason, we can also see a sharp increase in the power levels of each generation of beginners at ceremonial time.”

“The obvious being?”

“The ceremony hasn’t been conducted for the last 8 years.”

“It’s truly 8 years? I thought the government was reporting it was only 1 year…”

“Look, this government has only overseen 1 of year of that period of time so what we said isn’t technically untrue.”

“This government has been in power for nearly 20 years of the last 25…”

“Not the government led by this current leader. I suggest you return to your script.”

“Right, sorry Sir. So you’re saying that everyone is getting stronger?”

“That’s correct, most people after the ‘Coming of Age’ ceremony will achieve at least Stage 5 cultivation in their lifetime. As you can see on that graph, this year with such a large cohort we hope to see an even larger success.”

“I have also heard that there is an exciting new weapons program that has just started for the soldiers too?”

“That’s true, we will be equipping our soldiers with newly adapted technology uncovered from pre-collapse times, that will enable fighters at stage 1 to fight with stage 3 beasts. It’s amazing how far things have come so quickly, even I’m amazed.”

“It truly sounds like things are looking positive in the future, what about activities from the beasts?”

“There have been no movements recently. We are monitoring things closely but so far they are still too afraid to come anywhere near the containment line. These are the historic containment lines that were decided upon by the accords.”

“That is great news for humans, we will truly take back our lands once more with the leaders in charge, I personally hope the best for all the new beginners that are tuning in today. You are the future so please lead us to glory.”

“We here at Channel 6 send our best wishes to all people about to undergo the ‘Coming of Age’ ceremony, we hope that you will get the best result and if you need support in your future career then look to our sponsors…”

Sam tunes the television out as it displays some weapon advertisements and an assortment of over-produced, over-priced junk.

He has his own weapon in mind, it’s similar to his parents who both decided upon the same weapon upon their initial training. It’s nothing special, just a special type of dagger that is able to pierce through the hide of Stage 5 creatures.

They’re made of some unknown metal that only the government can provide, but that’s not the important part as Sam recalls how his parents both use it. They have their own styles but they use the same weapon.

His mother will throw it delicately and manipulate it through the air, ensuring that each dagger hits the intended target. It takes more time overall but it ends up with nearly all lethal hits, she does this at the expense of her mental energy reserving her physical energy.

His father is different through, he looks simple and not able to do much but he’s able to throw over 20 daggers in each swipe of his hand, each swipe will take less than a blink of an eye. He has only personally seen his father use his skill once.

He used 55 daggers in 0.4 seconds, over 80% hit the target with 40% of those on a lethal point.

Sam couldn’t work out how he does it but his father always says that it will come in time. He has his own daggers within his room but the box is still sealed as he feels he isn’t ready to use it yet… his mind wanders for a few moments as he finishes his food.

His parents are both Stage 2 powerhouses but their powers manifest in two different ways, his mother bonded with a large hawk that is able to start a fire where its shadow lands, its in the wild until she calls it back.

His father’s animal is unknown, his mother doesn’t know about it and there’s no record of it existing so it’s possible that he doesn’t even have an creature which is possible during the ceremony but it’s rare that they’ll be able to reach stage 1 power at all.

The tv draws his attention again as he’s thinking about the power levels.

“Here we can see the heroic scenes of the hero Stone Bull, he faced the horde that intruded the gully of Gains Peak that feeds over two million people.”

The scene shifts from the report in the studio to a scene of a distant recording, it shows a large creature running towards a crowd of dots before zooming in and showing the full scene.

A large grey-coloured bull is running towards a group of small creatures that looks like insects, Sam can recognise them as the monsters of the eastern cities.

The bull charges towards the creature, a glowing shroud surrounds the bull and the tiny rider on its back as it approaches the creatures.

A large flash takes over the screen when the bull collides with the creatures, the camera goes shakey for a moment as it refocuses on the scene.

The large bull is standing there, it seems slightly hurt but there’s nothing moving around it as thousands of creatures bodies pile up.

The camera zoom out slightly revealing a larger creature appearing from somewhere, Sam furrows his brows wondering what it is.

*BZZT*

Sam gets a message on his phone, he pulls it out and checks it. It’s one of the people from his class, they’re friendly but not that close.

‘Are you watching the tv thing on Stone Bull?’

Sam replies, ‘Yeah, it was just on TV so I left it on, what do you think?’

‘His creature is low powered but he is able to pull out over 500% standard performance, each move is a standard skill. They’d never teach us that sort of stuff.’

‘That’s still nothing compared to the Stage 5 talked about on TV, they make it sound like we’ll get it with almost no effort. If we reach Stage 6 then we don’t even need to use a creature, we get our own powers.’

‘Don’t you know there has only been a total of 6 people that have reached stage 6? We need to be careful.’

Sam frowns at this last message, ‘We just have to try hard. My parents both reached stage 2 so I should be able to reach Stage 3 atleast.’

The tv shifts scene, “That was the last fight released of the hero Stone Bull. We mourn his loss every heroes day along with countless other heroes, reserve your tickets now for heroes day and show your support for the country.”

An info-graphic plays on the television, it displays a showcase of memorable moments of the fighting force that is against the monsters on the frontier. It shows the human’s valiant efforts to drive back the beasts from the hordes and give them this piece of land that they currently enjoy.

The scene shifts to a classic video that Sam has seen thousands of times, it’s a video of the hero Light Sword, he is facing off against the evil overlord of the eastern seaboard. He controlled a territory of over 40 billion km, making his power almost reach Stage 7.

Light sword is bloodied as he stands at a distance from the blob like creature, it’s able to command a huge amount of creatures and the water itself in the atmosphere.

A light gathers in Light Sword’s hand, the blob like creature summons a giant water ball above it.

The massive water ball is too large for the remote camera to capture as it almost pierces the atmosphere, the glowing light leaves Light Sword’s hands and travels towards the creature.

The water ball falls from up high causing drastic issues in the atmosphere, the camera blows about for a moment before cutting out.

The camera comes back a moment later but the scene is entirely different, the large creature has disappeared while large chunks of meat float about the place. The camera is at an entirely different angle while the sun is high in the sky.

“Light Sword, Second General, Hero of the United Republic, forever remembered as a hero of the country” a voice says with a tone the relays confidence.

Sam’s phone buzzes as the Tv continues, ‘Can you believe that he was Stage 5?’ it reads.

Sam takes a moment to respond, ‘I could… but we never see his creature so I wonder how much that played a part.’

‘I heard the rumour is that he had a Stage 4 creature, one of the country protectors now.’

Sam raises an eyebrow, ‘I thought the protectors couldn’t be contracted?’

The message takes a few minutes to be responded to, ‘It doesn’t mean they weren’t. It’s all just theories anyway, theories about the past. None of them have attacks like that now because we would have heard about it. We have all their manuals atleast.’

‘True, but what do you mean by we have all their manuals?’

A large attachment takes several minutes to download as the TV program continues with more news that is essentially old government clips, Sam watches them from time to time waiting for the attachment to finish downloading.

Sam quickly opens the attachment when it opens he is stunned by the contents, there’s hundreds of manuals of different schools from around the countries and ancient times. These things are usually protected by the countries and the people that learn from it, vowing to kill anyone that isn’t worthy to learn it.

‘What do you think? Which one of those do you think Light Sword used?’

Sam responds, ‘I don’t know, why do you care so much?’

‘No reason, I just thought it was interesting. The guides are important, you need to find which one works best and then learn the basics before undergoing the ceremony. You gotta try all you can and see what’s comfortable.’

‘We’re undergoing the ceremony soon, why so sudden?’

‘I cannot say much more than my uncle knows.’

‘Ok thanks, anything else?’

‘Nah, I’ll see you at the ceremony.’