-Chapter Eleven-

New World

As the sunlight gradually encroached onto Taylor’s eyes, he let out a groan of frustration and turned over in his bed.

He barely managed to get sleep the whole night, because his mind was focused on trying to recall what he was thinking about during the Brief.

His mind remembers nothing, but it keeps bothering him. And whatever it was, it shook him up, because he could feel the anxiety in his heart.

It feels like he was tampered with. Like something messed with his mind.

His instinct was screaming at him that that was so.

So how dangerous could that be?

For his very own thoughts to disappear, and he won’t be able to remember what he remembers?

All he could remember was a distant voice, and a blurry image of endless darkness.

With another groan, he rolled out of his bed and trudged to his closet.

From habit, he took hold of his uniform, but stopped just as he was about to put it on.

But he recalled they were going back into the Woken World today, so they ought to dress in mufti.

He quickly changed into something casual and then approached his door.

He knocked at it somewhat softly before opening it, entering Mercy’s side of their shared space.

“Mmm…” Mercy laid on her side in bed, wearing a happy smile.

Taylor smiled to himself, feeling his ill omens melt away, before he sat down next to her.

“Mercy,” he spoke as he gave her a nudge, trying to wake her.

“Mmm…?” she suddenly groaned, before reaching up and rubbing her eyes.

“Taylor?” she moaned before yawning. “What time is it?”

“It’s morning. 7, I think.”

“We’re leaving at nine, so this is decent time to prepare. Thank you for waking me up.”

“Of course,” Taylor smiled to her. “I’ll let you get changed.”

“Thank you…”

He quickly stepped out the room, taking a breath and looking out his window at the trees outside.

It felt like no time had passed when Mercy called him back in.

“You can come back now.”

He reopened the door and entered, before stopping and blinking in surprise at Mercy’s outfit.

“Whoa…”

“How is it? Do I look like a Pureblood?” she asked, doing a twirl.

“…This is the first time I’ve seen you in casual clothes…” he took a step forward, before blushing.

“It looks good.”

Mercy suddenly found herself blushing as well, and she shyly turned away, hugging her arm.

“I’m happy to hear that.”

The two remained in silence for a short moment, avoiding each other’s gaze before Taylor finally broke the silence.

“Actually, I had something I wanted to ask you,” he began.

“Mmhmm? Sure, what is it?” Mercy responded.

“Last night, during the briefing, I was thinking about something… but I can’t remember what it was at all. Do you perhaps remember?” Taylor asked.

He knew there was a low-chance she could give him an answer, because whatever might be affecting him, may also be affecting her.

She took a moment to think.

“You seemed to kinda zone out when you got back from the bathroom.”

Taylor frowned.

He didn’t remember going to the bathroom at all.

“Yeah, you just sort of sat down quietly and stared off into space for a while. I remember thinking, you must have something on your mind,” Mercy wondered, as Taylor remained silent.

“I didn’t ask so I don’t know. I’m sorry,” Mercy apologised.

“No, no, it’s alright. Thanks, it still helped,” Taylor smiled, rising to his feet and turning away.

Something must’ve happened during the time he supposedly went to the bathroom. What could it have been?

He already spent the whole night thinking, and it got him nowhere.

With this, at least he has confirmation something is going on with him.

Taylor took a deep breath.

“Let’s go get some breakfast,” he turned back to face Mercy as she stepped up to him.

“Good idea. It’ll be nine o’clock in no time,” she agreed with a smile, and Taylor approached the door.

Mercy suddenly joined up by his side, hopping up with a cheeky smile and latching onto his arm.

“Hehe,” she giggled, while Taylor looked away quickly, feeling her touch up against him. The longer it went on, the more he felt his face heat up.

“Is… today special, or something?” he asked.

“Hmm… sort of! I was thinking last night,” Mercy began to say as they made their way to the stairs. “Now that we’re going into the Woken World to pretend to be Purebloods, we’ll have new identities, right? We can completely become new people. These clothes already make me feel like someone not myself” she said brightly.

“I suppose so, yeah. Because we will be living in a new society where no one knows us…”

“So… for our cover, to make things look authentic, I think…” she nervously brushed her hair out of her face.

“We should… act like a real couple.”

Taylor sharply inhaled and looked away again.

“Sure,” he simply said, before he frowned to himself.

Fuck, I think I sounded too eager there, he internally groaned. At least it was one word.

“Look,” she gestured at the mirror nearby. “We look good, don’t we?” she did a cute pose and twirl, still holding onto Taylor’s hand.

“We look like the perfect normal couple.”

Taylor smiled to himself, realising Mercy must’ve never lived a normal life before. It would explain why she was so excited.

“So this is practice?” he asked. “It doesn’t seem much different from the usual.” His eyes wandered down to her face to see her reaction to his words.

Her face had become quite flushed, but there was a dangerous smile parted on her lips.

Taylor quickly looked away, thinking to himself it almost looked predatory.

“I suppose it isn’t,” she giggled, and he looked back at her with skepticism to see her normal smile had returned.

But her arms were clutching much more tightly than before.

Nine o’clock, morning, was time set to depart, so all the Trinity Members had to gather at eight-thirty to discuss some final affairs.

Puria and Aira were at the lead, standing at the head of the twenty-six numbered group.

Seven members were missing, including Jason and Andrew. Puria said not to worry about any of them, and began to discuss their operation again.

“As you all know, we are making our way into the Woken World, where we will lay down roots and firmly integrate into society, to solidify our identities and hide away among the crowd. Naturally, we cannot allow any Purebloods to discover Magic. Additionally, I am banning the use of manifesting Combat Apparel, for reason of we need to remain discreet and the traces of Mana from that is far too exposing. Additionally, you only allowed to connect to your Atheneum if you are in life-threatening combat. No shortcuts in daily life with Magic, okay? We have to use something called ‘Public Transport’ now to get around, I believe. And so on. In other words, we are completely imitating Purebloods, and hiding our power as much as possible. I want no traces of Mana unless it is to do with our primary objectives,” Puria said firmly, before she fell quiet and her gaze began to scan the crowd.

“Taylor!” she shouted, upon spotting him, and waved for him to join her. He smiled to Mercy and gave her a nod.

“I’ll be right back.”

She sweetly smiled, and watched on as he ran to front to Puria.

She was ready for him, and began to speak as soon as he was coming to a stop beside her.

“Our current destination is a hotel. A place which houses people, I was told? Anyhow, we will remain there for a few days while we secure a permanent residence in a location of your choosing. You’re the only one with real life identification, and the headmaster told me you’re the only one who can legally rent rooms at the hotel, whatever that means. So I’m leaving it in your hands.”

“Oh… sure,” Taylor looked down at his hands to see Puria hand him a credit card.

“The PIN is 1000,” she said.

“Alright… but there’s only one problem though. Geez, did the headmaster not tell you that only people over twenty can rent a hotel room, by law?” he quickly reached his hand out and snapped his fingers.

His ID card appeared between them and he took it out, looking at his birthdate.

“I only just turned eighteen…”

“What? Oh no, what do we do?” Puria exclaimed, and began to panic. Taylor began to laugh.

“I see you’re the prepared type, but not the improvise type,” he remarked to Puria and her face turned red.

“You make a correct judgement. What do we do now?” she told him, swallowing her pride.

“It’s easy. We have Magic.” He tapped the card and suddenly, his birthdate was two years earlier.

“There, now I’m ‘twenty years old’,” he chuckled before winking to Puria.

“We’re all set. Let’s go.”

Puria nodded.

“Very well. I shall begin. Connect to the Superbia Atheneum - Dream Path!”

A familiar portal opened before Taylor’s eyes and he quickly returned to Mercy’s side, taking her hand tightly.

She looked up to him in surprise, and he smiled down back to her.

“This time, I’ll guide you through an unknown world.”

The group of twenty-six traversed in a large crowd through the portal, with Taylor, Puria, Mercy and Aira at the lead.

They soon came to the opening at the end, and stepped out into a trashy alleyway with no soul to be seen, aside from a few cars passing by on the road nearby.

Soon, all twenty-six of them had entered the Woken World. Some looked around with awe, as Taylor lead them out the alleyway, to the main road.

They could already hear the chatter of crowds, the sound of trains, announcements through the megaphones, big billboards playing ads, and the growls of car engines.

Upon stepping out the alleyway, they were immediately in a crowd of endless pedestrians commuting about their daily business.

“Over here!” Taylor called, leading them to a clear area by the roadside, and like the combat-trained, militaristic task force they are, they resisted their awe and gathered neatly beside Taylor.

“This city doesn’t look as architecturally advanced as ours,” Piper commented, looking around her.

“But what are those?” she pointed to the cars passing by.

“Haha,” Taylor chuckled.

“I wanna know too!” A few more members chimed in. “They look weird.”

“They are called cars,” Taylor explained back to them. “They are capable of moving at high speeds, making travel much more convenient and less time-consuming.”

“I see. Right, cause there’s no teleportation-” someone began to say but was immediately ‘shhh’shd by some other members.

“You’re gonna expose us, dumbass,” they hissed at him and he fell quiet.

“Hahahah,” Taylor laughed wryly. “Right now, we’re going to try to head for the hotel. Let’s see, where are we? And where is it? Hmm…” he looked around him at the signs, and then at the rest of his friends.

“Ah screw it, Puria, how much money is on this card?” he turned and asked her.

“Hmm… from the headmaster say, there’s about enough money in there to equate the wealth of a well-off country?” she recalled.

“Oh… I see…” Taylor chuckled, putting it away in his pocket. “Okay everyone, stay here for a bit! I will be right back!”

He made his way to the nearby phone store, and bought a touchscreen phone with a new sim card and a new mobile plan.

After half an hour, he was back at the side of the Trinity Members, and was grateful to see they hadn’t somehow turned the city upside down.

“Taylor’s back!” Someone called and Mercy came running up to him, giving him a hug.

“Hehe, missed me already?” he asked.

“Maybe a little bit,” she smiled back.

Taylor turned his attention to his phone as he gave her a headrub, and began to look up the location of the hotel online.

Soon, he had found the route to the hotel, and turned back to the group.

“Okay guys! Follow me! Also, save your questions for when we get to somewhere private,” he nodded and some gave him a thumbsup, and he began to lead them to the nearby entry to the subway.

It took a few minutes to gather them all in the corner, and purchase tokens through the kiosk for all of them, enough to get to the hotel, but eventually, Taylor had funnelled several dozens coins out the machine with the magic credit card. He soon began to hand them out to the Members, and got them to line up at one of the entries.

“Alright, this is how you use the token, okay?” he approached the rotating gates, put the token into the machine and entered.

Mercy was next to follow him through, and Puria copied what she saw her do, and the train continued until all twenty-six of them had entered the station.

Taylor then gestured for them to follow and led them through the complex walkways to the platform they needed to get to.

As they passed by other tracks with trains coming in, stopping and going before them, many of the members exclaimed and chattered excitedly in glee.

“The power of science is extraordinary,” Puria breathed as she looked at the trains.

“Technology,” Taylor corrected her. “But yes.”

Their train soon arrived, and Taylor had to try to get all twenty-six of them on-board somehow. Thankfully, they did it, while maintaining sight of each other. It was jam-packed and Mercy was squished up against him, but he kept his arm around her to protect her from the others.

She awkwardly and shyly remained up against his chest until their stop came, after a few stations, and he gently escorted her out, before trying to get the others off.

After doing a quick headcount and confirming they had the full twenty-six, Taylor began to lead them to the southern exit.

As they walked, he turned to Puria and asked her,

“Why in the world did we land so far away from our destination?” he asked.

“I had no control in our ending point, because it automatically tracks to wherever has no people at the time in the general vicinity, and this was the closest we could get. These cities have no places that are out of sight,” Puria sighed.

“Mmm,” Taylor hummed.

As they came out the top, it was only another few hundred metres’ walk to the hotel.

They arrived at a grand skyscraper, towering over them, and Taylor realised as they entered to check in, none of them had any luggage, and it might look suspicious.

He sighed, realising he was going to act like everyone’s mother now, and raise them from the ground up.

But that can happen after they check in.

“Wait here for me,” he told the others, including Mercy, and entered into reception.

After a brief exchange, Taylor had rented roughly sixteen rooms, he returned to the crowd and handed out the keycards to each respective member.

“To use these cards, you simply swipe the detection box. I will show you, since we all live on the same floor. Inside, we are going to take the elevator. I am going to send one group at a time, because it cannot hold many passengers at once.”

He led them to the empty elevators before pressing the button, showing the others how it’s done.

“Alright, now we wait.”

“Which one opens?” someone asked, and Taylor eyed the floor counter, before pointing to the one next to him.

“This one.”

They exclaimed in awe when it really did open.

“How did you do that?” they asked, and Taylor laughed.

“Figure it out yourself. I can only lead the horse to the water,” he stepped aside to let them file in until it was full, and he stopped the next person who was trying to enter.

“Alright, now what you do is, you swipe your card here,” he quickly took his card, in view of everyone, and swiped the scanner to unlock the upper floors, and then quickly hit the 20 button, and backed out the elevator, waving with a small smile as the doors closed.

“Whoa!” the remaining members exclaimed as Taylor called the next one down.

“Taylor!” Puria approached him, shyly fidgeting before she asked him, “can I try pressing the buttons on the next one?”

“Hmm? Of course. Sure. Come, step aside with me.”

The elevator doors opened and more members filed in, leaving one space for Puria.

“It’s floor twenty. Do you remember how to do it?” Taylor asked.

“I’m worried I might get it wrong,” Puria nervously admitted, swiping the scanner with her card and then hesitantly pushing down on the 20 button. Everyone watched on intently and it lit up at her touch. fingers pulled back in fright as she gasped.

“Did I do it?” she wondered aloud as the elevator doors closed, and Taylor couldn’t answer her any longer.

He turned around to examine the remaining members, to see it was none other than only Aira, Mercy and Piper remaining.

Mercy hopped up to him again, crashing into him and grabbing onto his hand and arm, giving him a beaming smile.

“It’s all very fascinating,” she said, and Taylor smiled back at her.

“You’ll learn to navigate it all in no time.”

The next elevator arrived and they entered, before riding it up.

“Whoa…” Mercy held onto the railing as they ascended, and the others stumbled.

“This is… incredible,” Piper spoke as they came to a stop and the door opened, revealing the corridor and sounds of chatter.

Taylor stepped out, leading Mercy and scanning if everyone had arrived safely.

They had.

“Alright everyone, on your card is a number. That number is your room. You can follow signs like these-” he pointed to a nearby marker. “-to navigate to your room.”

They all scattered quite quickly to their rooms, and Taylor took Mercy to their room.

The door opened into a spacious and luxurious king-sized double bed room, with the far wall replaced entirely by windows instead, overlooking the city and the nearby river.

Mercy ran up to it, putting her hands on the glass and looking out in awe.

“Pureblood civilisation…” she said, gazing onward and Taylor chuckled, taking a seat at the bed.

“Oh shit…” he realised, looking at the bed. “I gave us one bed….”

“Hmm?” Mercy turned, scanning the room. “Oh, it’s true. There’s only one bed…” she looked to him curiously. “Is it difficult to change?”

“No… I can go ask them right now,” he responded, rising to his feet.

“No, it’s fine.” Taylor looked to her in surprise, and she nervously wiped her hair away.

“We’re a couple, no?” she simply asked, and Taylor felt himself struggle to contain his grin.

“You’re right. It might be suspicious if we got two separate beds,” he grunted, regaining his composure and sat down.

“I’ll try not to toss or sleep talk,” he commented and she laughed.

“Much obliged.”

After a few hours, Taylor had managed to get each Trinity member a suitcase.

There were numerous comments about how strange the designs were, but it made sense, as Pureblood couldn’t use storage Magic.

Now that they had suitcases, it was time to go shopping for something to actually put in them.

Using the maps app on his phone, he finally arrived at a shopping mall with his comrades in tow.

“Where are we going now?” Piper asked Taylor, looking at the building ahead of them.

“Oh, that’s a mall,” Taylor replied to her while some of the others listened on.

“Oh! A mall!”

“Oh yeah, we do have malls where we came from…” Taylor realised and breathed a sigh of relief.

“I’m not really experienced when it comes to clothing, so it’s good you guys are familiar with this,” he groaned.

Mercy appeared at his side, giving him a beam.

“This reminds me of that one time we went shopping. Come on, what’re you waiting for?” she giggled and pulled him along by the hand to the entrance.

The others followed them in and the large group began to scatter, exploring around them with fascination.

“Return to this point at 2:00PM,” Puria called to the others, and they glanced back at her, returned a nod, then went back to their business.

After clothes shopping, they returned to the hotel to drop off their suitcases, and then went to eat lunch.

Right now, they were unable to split up from each other because they have no method of transport or communication. Magic was banned after all, and nobody else had something like a cellphone.

They returned to the mall to the food court and spread out across the large dome-like floor.

“What do you wanna get?” Mercy asked him as they scanned the stalls.

“Hmm… let’s just get some sushi. You okay with that?”

“Yes,” Mercy smiled back.

After the two finished buying their food, Taylor scanned the food-court to find Puria, and spotted her sitting with Aira and Piper at a table.

“Come on,” Taylor led Mercy to join them, taking a table nearby.

“Puria,” Taylor shuffled closer. “I need to discuss something with you.”

“Oh, yes, Taylor?” she asked, turning to face him.

“How are you guys going to get identification and bank accounts? Cause we can’t do anything without those,” he asked her in a low voice.

“Ah… yes, the headmaster should be arranging something. This evening, we will have to attend something.”

“All of us?” Taylor asked.

“No. Perhaps just you and Mercy can go. I will give you the time, location and person to meet,” Puria answered.

“Alright. I don’t know what I should be expecting though…” he wondered with a frown and Puria chuckled.

“The headmaster always behaves in this way. Whatever it turns out to be, I’m sure it won’t harm you. He didn’t disclose details to me either. He merely said it was related to our IDs.”

“Alright…” Taylor groaned, and returned to Mercy’s side.

“Well, you heard her. Will you join me tonight?” Taylor asked.

“Of course. The headmaster is a kind person, Taylor. Don’t worry,” Mercy said with a laugh.

“Yeah…” Taylor answered with a look of skepticism on his face, recalling the image of the strange man in his mind. “Sure…”