Aron had found himself alone with Rina’s mother just after attending his final state funeral. He had spent 72 hours nonstop visiting the funeral locations, prompting discussion among the people about whether he was among the blessed or simply superior to “normal” humans on a genetic level.Many people easily “debunked” the possibility that Aron was among the blessed, as it was obvious that he wasn’t in a medical pod in the process of receiving a blessing. In fact, he seemed perfectly fine as he flitted here and there, attending state funerals. Even though the wave of fainting people had begun a few days prior, even those who were among the first to be blessed were still in the medical pods and showing no sign of the process being complete anytime soon.So that left the second option. It was an open secret that ARES soldiers were genetically enhanced, as they hadn’t even tried to keep their performances to mere human levels. Thus, there were thousands upon thousands of video clips show

“It should be any time, now,” Nova said. She was in the secure pod vault with Aron, watching over Rina as the final stage of her awakening was progressing and documenting the changes in her.“I’m actually a bit excited... and curious, and nervous. I didn’t get to see anything happening during my upgrades at all,” Aron distractedly replied.Just as he was about to continue, Rina’s pod beeped, a notification that movement had been detected. She was waking up.Rina stopped absorbing the liquid mana in the pod, so Nova stopped the mana feed and allowed it to drain out of the pod and into the room, where it evaporated and joined the rest of the mana in the atmosphere. The mana density in the pod vault was so high it would awaken any five people, but to Aron, it was akin to a warm breeze on a hot day, practically unnoticeable.After a few minutes of outward inactivity, Rina blinked open her eyes and released a low groan. Due to concerns about interfering with the awakening process, Nova had

Aron brought up Rina’s status screen. It was similar to the one his system generated for him, as he had used it as the core inspiration for the runes he’d used in its creation. It displayed everything that was known about her, like her name, height, and so on. It also included two entries showing whether or not she was awakened, and what system of magic she had awakened to. The field showing her individual magic system was blank at the moment, however, as it had yet to be discovered.But none of that mattered just then, because the most important and attention-grabbing field—at least for Aron and Nova—was the affinity section of her status, which read “Affinity: neutral”.The excitement on Aron and Nova’s face couldn’t be hidden, prompting Rina, who had yet to understand the importance of mana affinities, to ask, “What’s got you two so excited?”“Having a neutral affinity is wonderful! Based on what we know, we expect that the majority of awakened will have an affinity to a certain ty

As people’s attention was split between the media’s reports on the growing economy and the progress of the Three Percenters receiving their blessings, a breaking news story intruded into the public consciousness via a link on everyone’s devices and a special report on every television screen and radio station. Following the link took people to a report about a bright light discovered in space headed toward Earth at an almost unimaginable speed.Located a few days before by a member of Australia’s Anglo-Australian Observatory in New South Wales’ Siding Spring Observatory, it had at first been dismissed as a scanning artifact caused by a glitch in their system, or perhaps even a smudge on the telescope’s lenses. After taking the telescope offline and cleaning the lenses, they scanned again, only to make the alarming discovery that a meteor of unconscionable size was rapidly approaching Earth. But Australians being Australians, the discovery was met with a resounding “meh” and they simpl

After Aron faded away, billions of people rushed to the Akashic Record to read about the space elevator for themselves. The emperor was, after all, the most famous, not to mention powerful, celebrity on Earth. And as they read, more and more discussions sprang up on Pangea that ran the entire gamut of opinions. Some bashed the empire for attempting something so dangerous that it risks wiping out humanity with Ceres like Chixculub wiped out the dinosaurs, while others countered with the idea that he had obviously practiced it thousands of times in the so-called universal simulation. He must be positive that it would work, since he is also on Earth and wouldn’t escape if the shit hit the fan... or the meteor hit the planet, as the case may be.Still, both sides agreed that it was a risky plan; the only thing they disagreed on was whether or not the risks had been taken into account and mitigated.Astronomers, physicists, and engineers, on the other hand, were among the many excited, but