Thursday, 25th January, current year.

“It’s been a while,” Pras mumbled as he gradually shifted from his dreamworld to being fully awake. He wondered how long it had been since the last time he felt that relieved. Though he knew there was still good among people, even strangers, he still chose to tread carefully.

Perhaps too carefully.

“I wonder if we can meet her again,” he said while his hands scratched the area behind Galung’s ear. Unusually, the cat was sleeping on his side instead of the area just above the pillow.

Pras remembered that after their first meeting, he tried to return to the same area several times whenever school hours were over just for a chance to meet her. She never showed up again. Once Pras built up his courage to ask in the hospital regarding the girl, one nurse who vaguely remembered her said that she was moved to another hospital a few days after their meeting.

“I want to thank her properly, at least once,” Pras sighed as he rose up from his bed.

Before he went for shower, he quickly shutdown his computer. He forgot to turn it off after researching the two beasts mentioned by Steven. The glimpse of the wiki page he opened last night caused his mind to be preoccupied by the information about the two beasts throughout shower, breakfast, and even the journey to school.

Both Togo the pristine peak alpha and snow jaguar were some sort of an exotic beast that was rather hard to tame. Players had mentioned that taming them in a normal way results in weird stats that seem to not reflect the true nature of the beasts. As for snow jaguar, it even had its stats being half of its supposed stats. This was typical for a special kind of companion beast.

Hunter players had long thought that the two were special pets related to a certain path like the silverback gorilla and komodo dragon for Beast Mastery path, griphon vulture and true khan tiger for Mimicry, or steward falcon for Hawkeye. Predator’s Tactics was the suspected path that should have either beast as a special pet.

The problem was, there were not many hunters that mained Predator’s Tactics and the restriction on beast taming was a great hindrance. A hunter could only change their companion beast every three weeks, limiting the chance of experimentation.

It was only recently that a player finally solved the requirements for Togo. Apparently that black furred snow hound required a player to perform 5000 PvP kill assist before being able to unlock its full potential.

It was a rather accidental discovery made by a hunter maining Predator’s Tactics path who tamed the wolf and brought it to open world PvP many times. He realised his wolf had changed performance and visual effect after he reached the required kill assist. To put it further, apparently Togo was also able to exert its full potential if it was tamed by hunters of different path choice. It gave different requirements for each path and also gave a different buff and mechanic once fully unlocked.

Snow jaguar, however, was an entirely different case.

Unlike Togo’s slightly longer than typical elite creature spawn rate, snow jaguar could take a whole real world week to respawn when killed or around 54 real world hours if tamed. This added more problems for those trying to unravel its mystery. A hunter needed to abandon his or her companion beast for several weeks before they could try to tame another beast. Due to its bizarre spawn time, trying to tame it is a huge risk for a lot of hunters.

Not to mention, a failure would mean they ended up with a beast that only has half the fighting power for three weeks. It was a risk too big to take for many players.

However, there were still many theories proposed regarding the snow jaguar. One was that there was a mistake in the mimic being used, which was quickly debunked by many.

Another more compelling theory was regarding the place where the jaguar was located. Nefelein Valley was a place in the Farenoth Continent which housed a weird rock formation. And the snow jaguar was located at its exact centre.

Some players with scholar and scribe based professions managed to decipher the message around the rocks which said, “Only those who bear the mark of a noble sacrifice and a wild heart blanketed in valour shall be worthy of the true cunningness of a feral spirit.”

Pras had to admit the clue was very obviously talking about the snow jaguar. Though, understanding it was another challenge entirely. Funnily enough, due to the clues, some hunters let themselves be killed by the beast in their effort to tame it. They failed of course, since Pras believed there was a huge difference between ‘noble sacrifice’ and dishing themselves as a jaguar meal.

A lot argued that the ‘wild heart’ part could refer to Mimicry or Beast Mastery instead of Predator’s Tactics. However, others argued that the two paths already have at least two special companion beasts while Togo is available for all paths.

Pras himself tends to think that it might be really for Predator’s Tactics considering Steven told him to look for it.

Nevertheless, Pras saw the picture of the beast and it was very cute like the perfect mix between a snow leopard and a jaguar with the size of a Siberian tiger, or might be even bigger. He’d love to tame the beast first then think of the way to unlock it’s true potential. Half the strength won't matter much since Tier was not a DPS focused character anyway.

At least he might treat it better than other hunters who tamed it for cosmetic or looks only.

When he reached school, Pras went for archery training first. There were still few people there, thus he helped them prepare the target practice board. He didn’t train for long, since more members came soon after. Naturally, they needed to take turns because of limited space and bows being shared or inherited among half of the members. The richer ones had their own bows of course.

When he walked towards class, Pras saw more students had arrived at school. Quite a number of them chatted along the corridors of the buildings. This time he saw Mana standing near the door of their class.

She was leaning against a wall, her right hand was supporting her chin, and she was frowning like in some sort of deep thought. Pras might be hallucinating, but when she saw Pras, she seemed like she wanted to say something.

“Manda, where’re my chemistry notes again?”

Her intent was foiled by Eggi who suddenly appeared from the class.

“Owh, right, wait.” She nodded, then walked into the class. Perhaps the thing Pras saw earlier was really a hallucination.

Yet, such interaction between Eggi and Mana, who also happened to be childhood friends, had always sparked jealousy within Pras. Despite Mana being the student with the highest overall score on her academic mark, Pras often saw her borrowing Eggi’s chemistry notes.

Pras suspected that she indeed had some sort of feelings for Eggi and perhaps wished that they were not just childhood friends. To Pras' defence in reasoning, there were a lot of love stories that started with childhood friend tropes.

My… Pras wondered how it would feel if Mana borrowed his notes instead. Would that close the gap between them? Though he quickly threw away the thought since such a thing would be impossible considering even morse code would be much easier to read than his handwriting.

“It’s still morning, my man, what makes you so down?” asked Eggi, who apparently was still standing outside waiting for Pras.

“Just tired of training,” Pras avoided telling the truth.

“My man, what a diligent boy.”

“Shut up.”

As usual, Pras spent the rest of the morning before studies started by playing card games with Ega. To do that, on their table, Ega often had to borrow Fathan's chair and turn it around. This gave a lot of reason for Alvin, who was also Fathan’s deskmate, to keep pestering Ega. He sometimes would go so far as trying to signal to Pras whatever card Ega had on his hand with weird hand gestures or cryptic sentences.

For example, Alvin would hiss and waved his arms as if he had three heads to signal Ega’s favourite hydra monster card. This definitely triggered Ega to start a quarrel in such mornings. Eggi, Fathan, and other boys would happily jump in to heat up the tension.

As the class president, Pras supposedly tried to defuse the situation. However, he was forced to this role ever since they were in tenth grade, therefore he would not bother much for such responsibility.

Let them be, loud as ever. Even louder than the ringing school bell that signalled the start of the day’s lesson. No one heeded the bell, they kept heating up the situation.

Such chaos had made Pras feel at ease from the many feelings inhabiting his heart since his dream last night.

Suddenly, the class door slammed open. Everyone was stunned thinking that was their homeroom teacher, who’s also their math teacher.

Luckily, or not, depending on the point of view, it was actually Pitoy who appeared. He was sweating profusely and still brought his backpack, an unmistakable proof that he had just arrived.

“It’s buzzer beater Pitoy Marbun!”

Eggi roared in excitement, the whole class shook as the boys celebrated Pitoy like those epic basketball players who scored three-pointers at the last second to make their team win.

“The noise of a rocket launch site pales in comparison to this….”

The whole class fell silent as a female voice was heard from right behind Pitoy. There stood a female in her mid 20s, wearing a long sleeved blue shirt and trousers, as well as the same coloured hijab. It was her, their homeroom teacher, Miss Dian.

In that instant, everyone returned to their seats without much noise. Only some whispered jokingly that the madness was Pitoy’s fault.

Miss Dian didn’t start the lesson right away. As she walked towards the teacher’s desk, her eyes were scanning the students’ seats. Accompanied by a menacingly sweet smile, she clapped her hand once and said, “In commemoration of the belated new semester, we’ll need a fresh new start. Your seating arrangement shall be reshuffled!”

“But Miss….”

The class started to rumble with students protesting such tyrannical command. Pras was about to join the protest, but he chose to not say a word considering the tendencies of their current homeroom teacher. He proceeded to just look outside to the sky, hoping a freaking F15-EX would pass by.

“Uhum, yeah, I can’t hear you… or perhaps you’d prefer a quiz from the last chapter of this semester with the extra time we have without seat shuffling?”

“I don’t mind the quiz.”

Nobody dared to answer, except Pras and Mana who answered almost harmonically.

“Both of you don't count!”

Half of the class protested at the Pras and Mana, Eggi and Ega was the first one to sound their protest.

“Whatever,” Pras shrugged and looked back at the sky.

“Alright,” Miss Dian clapped her hand once more. “Since the class lead and secretary are not counted, that means you all agree with the shuffle. First, Ega to Fathan’s chair, Fathan to Winda’s, ....”

“Hmmph.”

Pras almost burst to laughter when he heard Ega being moved next to Alvin. Either Miss Dian was oblivious that they were nemesis or reactive like halogens meeting alkalis, or she did so because she knew. Eitherway, it was hilarious.

Since Miss Dian kept moving people around in chains instead of switching two student’s positions, Pras wondered about who would be stationed as his deskmate. A rather insane wishful thought passed through his mind. What if Mana would be the one for him to share a desk with?

Pras almost burst to laughter again. The idea was so crazy that even he found it bizarrely funny.

Ah well, he decided to watch over the commercial planes that looked like they were going to land at the Soekarno-Hatta International Airport. The existence of the wind turbines - which were actually combined with tidal power generators - had caused problems if Kota Seribu was to have its own airport. Therefore they would still need to go to Soekarno-Hatta if they want to take a flight. Though taking a train or bus to that airport itself is not much of a problem due to the extensive public transport network between Kota Seribu and surrounding cities.

“... now, the last one….”

Pras, busy with watching aeroplanes and the cute shapes of clouds, didn’t listen clearly to what Miss Dian had said. He just knew it would be the last one. Weirdly enough, Eggi and Ega were coughing as if making fun of something. He didn’t bother much. He continued to gaze at the cheesecake shaped cloud for a moment.

“Alright, that’s all, let’s start the lesson.”

This sentence from Miss Dian was more clear than the one before. Therefore, Pras stopped his sky gazing and returned his focus to the class, especially the whiteboard. But before that, he did think that it would be a nice courtesy to greet his new neighbour. Though since they are always in the same group of class since tenth grade, it won't matter much. They all knew each other.

Yet, he froze when he turned to look at the person sitting next to him. Especially when the person greeted first.

“Hello there, deskmate.”