"Hmm… This is?… Awkward."
He sat stranded in the middle of nowhere. Well, not quite nowhere. It was a room. A plain, unfamiliar room with a single locked door and no windows. The silence was deafening, the stillness unsettling. Confusion weighed heavily on his thoughts as he tried to piece everything together.
But then again, could he truly call this 'nowhere'?
This place… it had a name, didn't it? Not this exact room, but the world itself, its general identity. That much he recalled.
Origin Expanse.
Yes, that was it, if his memory served him right. Though considering how unreliable memory could be upon waking, especially after what had happened, he wasn't entirely sure. Still, the name echoed through his mind like a whisper tethered to the truth.
Nathan Lockwood born long after Gaia once called Earth collapsed into chaos. Technology, government, structure… all of it had crumbled centuries ago. In its place rose a new order, one led not by politicians or scientists nor entertainment celebrities but by beings known as the Awakened.
Who were they?
The full story was hazy, half-remembered from stories told in the safe zones. All Nathan really knew was that after Earth fell, the Awakened had taken charge. They built safe cities and protected the remaining fragments of humanity. They were the heroes or so they were claimed to be.
The hot topic. The buzz of every conversation.
From what Nathan understood, becoming Awakened meant hearing a voice. A calling.
"A voice? Right, I did hear a voice…"
[Congratulations, Individual Nathaniel Lockwood]
That was the exact phrase etched into his mind as though branded by a divine whisper. It hadn't spoken aloud, yet he'd heard it in his head, as clear as thought itself.
The next thing he recalled was "An invitation".
[You have qualified and are invited to Origin Expanse]
Right, Nathan is on point now. Things are getting through. What followed after the invitation notion was...
"The opportunity to choose."
[Transport to Origin Expanse]
At the time, Nathan had been sleeping deep in slumber, nestled beneath the warmth of his blanket. So naturally, when the question appeared, he dismissed it as a dream. He hadn't thought twice before replying, "Yes," as though agreeing to a prompt in a video game.
Only, it wasn't a dream.
What followed was a warning.
[Teleporting to the world of Origin Expanse…
[Initiating tutorial for first-time Awakened...
[Transporting individual Nathan Lockwood to the tutorial stage…
[Be sure to survive to gain access to the land of riches and opportunities that is the world of Origin Expanse]
That about sums it all up.
So here he was. The mystery unravelled at least partially. Nathan, now an Awakened, had been thrust into a tutorial phase, a trial to prove himself before he could fully step into this new world.
"Hmm… and this? This must be the proof of being Awakened."
A translucent screen hovered before him, flickering slightly as he read its contents:
[Age]: 15
[Race]: Human
[Blessing]: —
[Soul Power]: Unawakened
[Existential Point (EP)]: —
[Existential Value (EV)]: —
[Aspect]: —
…
He studied it in silence.
"Oi-!"
"So this is what every Awakened sees? Or… what an incomplete Awakened sees?"
"Oi-!"
His name? Correct. Race? Obviously human. Blessing was blank, but that applied to those who hadn't yet passed the trial. Soul Power? That was the marker of potential. A measure of how powerful one could become. As far as he knew, it remained constant for an Awakened throughout their life.
"Oi-!"
Then came the Existential Point and Value, EP and EV. They were growth indicators, like levels in a game. And it was the rank of Soul Power that determined how high an Awakened could raise them.
"Oi—!!!"
A rough kick landed squarely against Nathan's side, toppling him over. The screen blinked out of view.
"You deaf or just dumb? Are you ignoring me?!"
The voice belonged to a man no, a thug by every visible definition. Thick muscles, a gold neck chain, and… a nose chain? Nathan blinked at the absurdity of it. Wasn't a nose just for breathing? Apparently, it had fashion potential too.
"I said are you fucking ignoring me?!"
Without waiting for an answer, the man grabbed Nathan by the collar and lifted him off the ground. His fist trembled with intent, one wrong word and it would fly.
"That's going too far!"
Another voice. Calm. Restrained.
A man stepped between them, freeing Nathan from the thug's grasp. He wore a black suit not fancy, but formal. Likely an office worker. A pushover, maybe. The type who helped out of some moral obligation.
"He's just a kid," the man added, glancing back at Nathan.
Nathan stumbled back to the floor, catching his breath. Before he could thank the man, another voice spoke up, frail, feminine, and wise.
"I agree. This is no time for infighting. We need to understand our situation."
The speaker was an elderly woman with grey hair, leaning heavily on a wooden cane. She approached slowly and offered Nathan a hand.
"Boy, are you alright?"
Her kindness warmed him, but he declined the gesture with a soft shake of his head. Given his weight on the robust side and the fact that she needed a cane just to stand, he didn't want to risk injuring her.
Nathan pushed himself up and finally took stock of the room's other occupants.
There were five of them in total.
A thug with violent tendencies.
An office worker with a hero complex.
An old woman gained in years and no doubt very soon to death from Nathan'd evaluation point of view.
Himself a recluse, overweight and out of place.
And lastly… a girl.
She leaned against the wall, silent and observant. Roughly his age, maybe younger. A black hoodie obscured her face, but her figure slender yet strong carried the quiet poise of someone who belonged here. Unlike the others.
Unlike him.
In that moment, Nathan felt it, the creeping doubt, the whisper of inadequacy.
The tutorial was meant to test the Awakened in groups. But this group?
It felt like a mismatched collection of broken pieces.
A thug.
A worker.
An elder.
A failed society shut in.
And a girl with mystery.
Nathan frowned. If this was the team destined to face a world of survival, then the future seemed… bleak.
But then again, what did he know?
He was just a recluse. A shut-in. A nobody tossed into a world that didn't wait for the unprepared.
And now with these four, he had to survive.
Hopefully that isn't the case.