Chapter 2: A Familiar Time |
“Was there something else you wished to speak about?”
Cal blinked sluggishly, wondering who this guy was… and where this place was.
He shouldn’t be wherever here was, but the problem was that he didn’t know why he had that feeling.
“Trainee, is there a problem?”
Trainee. Cal felt that should mean something to him. Something significant, judging by the excited jump of his heart.
“… I must be feeling under the weather,” Cal mumbled, his legitimate confusion helping greatly to sell his claim.
“Right on Selection day? How convenient.”
Selection day. His heart was thundering in his chest. He could practically hear it, and apparently, so could the only other person in the room.
“Uncertainty,” the man spat, “is not an excuse I will accept. You have already delayed your Selection once before, and the only way I will allow another is if you get a permission slip from the Overseer!”
“Would that really be enough?” He couldn’t stop the question from leaving his lips even if he wanted to. He remembered asking this before. Just like he remembered what the reply would be.
“Please, I welcome you to give it a try,” the man said with a mocking smile.
Cal had to stop himself from collapsing in shock as the rush of information slammed into him like a runaway train.
The man was called Jon, a plain name for a man with a matching, plain appearance and personality. He was the bean counter, the minder of Trainees like Cal, making sure they were accounted for and did as the Celestial Order demanded of them.
In other words, a failed Initiate that was forever stuck in a role nobody aspired for.
But Jon wasn’t important.
He was a blip in the hierarchy of the newly created Celestial Order. A grand name for a very ordinary guild within the Union Territory. No, instead of caring about Jon, Cal needed to make sure he wouldn’t make the same disastrous mistake he did—or would—in the near future.
Cal had the memories of what was to come and his fate—a pointless death—if he didn’t make any changes. He was given a second chance, and he wouldn’t waste it.
He purposely pushed aside the clear memory of the two beings—gods, world masters, time mages, whatever they were—resetting time. He also pushed aside the fact that he remembered a life that he wasn’t supposed to—according to the beings’ words.
“If that’s all, I have better things to do than stare at you.”
Cal’s eyes caught a glimpse of Jon’s annoyed expression before he turned to leave. Another image lay over the man’s face in his mind. Blank, unseeing eyes staring at the sky as a hopeless fight raged around Jon’s dead body.
He left the small, standalone building and walked out to a vast, isolated training ground where other Trainees like him were being ’taught.’ Of course, that description was questionable since he was aware of the high failure rate to get into even the most basic [Class].
Most guilds within the Union had an attrition rate of around fifty percent among their Trainees, while the Celestial Order had over ninety.
The Order claimed that this was due to their selective nature, but Cal’s death to another guild’s ‘low-level’ member proved that was a blatant lie.
He could be considered the cream of the crop here, and that was telling of the scraps the Celestial Order had to work with once the more powerful guilds in the Union had their pick.
“Cal!” A lanky, bright-faced young man ran towards him. “Did you get to delay your Selection again?”
He couldn’t help but stare. This was Oleg, a formerly close friend he hadn’t seen in years. After failing the Selection, Oleg had given up on having a [Class] and settled down to live a quiet life.
Cal had scoffed in disgust at that decision when he heard of it and wrote Oleg off as useless, but now, it sounded… heavenly.
“Cal? What's wrong? Did Jon say something? We can get one of the masters to tell him off for talking back!”
He snorted in amusement. He had forgotten how much of a little shit he had been, running off to others to fight his battles, even if they were minor.
“What do you think about getting out of here?” Cal asked almost dreamily, thinking of living a peaceful life away from the endless death and carnage that would inevitably come from joining the Order.
“Now?” Oleg frowned. “The Overseer is already furious about the comments the higher-ups are making after Jon allowed you to delay your Selection last month. It might not be a good idea to make him angrier.”
Cal obviously didn’t mean just the training field but leaving the guild and all of its nonsense behind. Thankfully, Oleg hadn’t taken it like that. It might have been trouble if he had since there was absolutely no chance the guild would let their prized Trainee—Cal Maddox—leave so easily.
This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.
He needed to devise a plan to escape before the guild pulled him too deep into its grip.
Failing the Selection was not an option. The only reason he had previously asked for a delay was to get a better [Class]. There was zero chance he would actually fail, and they all knew that.
Jon, the Overseer, the higher-ups. Everyone.
The first time around, Cal did as Jon mockingly suggested and asked the Overseer for another delay. This would be the first change he would make.
There were some [Class] options that would let him avoid the guild in every way that mattered while also giving him enough time to plan an escape before everything went to hell. It would place him in a menial position he would have previously raged at, but now, he didn’t care.
Oleg escaped with his life last time, likely ending with a wife and some kids like most mortals that didn’t have the luck to have a [Class]. That would be Cal’s new goal.
He no longer wanted to dominate the guild. It would have been nice if that was an option, but it wasn’t to be. He would have liked to use his knowledge of the future to change himself drastically, but he had only been a member of a ‘third-rate’ guild, as the girl often mocked before his death.
He wanted the quiet, happy life he turned his nose up at in his first life.
“Seriously, you’re off today. I think you should get yourself checked by the healer, just in case.”
Cal waved off Oleg’s worried comment. “It’s fine. I was debating if I should bother delaying again. I don’t think I will. I’m ready.”
“Really?” Oleg perked up. “That’s great! We can enter the guild together!”
No. We won’t.
Cal replied with only a closed-mouthed smile. He prayed this didn’t somehow give Oleg the will to perform better in the Selection. For his sake, having his hopes fail was for the best.
“Hm, that would be nice,” Cal said noncommittally as he looked around the training ground. For the life of him, he couldn’t recognize any other Trainees here, which was fair since out of the few hundred spread out over the ample space, only twenty or so were qualified to enter the Celestial Order, even though it was a third-rate guild.
And of the few that did enter, Cal couldn’t remember ever interacting with anyone present. They had likely been crushed by the competition within the guild. Simply entering the Celestial Order wasn’t the end of the struggles. It was just the beginning.
Even more of a reason for me to get away.
“If you’re looking for Tavia, she’s on the other side.”
Cal snapped his head to Oleg, ignoring the shit-eating grin he had on his face before following to where he was pointing.
Tavia was a name he had long forgotten but one he had been intensely focused on as a Trainee, much to her displeasure.
Cal could see her at the edge of the training ground, head buried in a book with a few friends chatting beside her. Now that he could see her again, memories of the annoyed frown on her face as she tried to understand complex concepts reappeared, causing a small smile to form on his lips.
“Should we head over there?” Oleg prodded from beside him.
Cal noticed one of her friends saw him staring and alerted Tavia that he was looking. She glanced at him—lips thinning in irritation—before quickly ignoring his existence.
She never did like him, and now that he no longer thought of himself as some god that graced everyone here with his presence, he understood why.
Tavia was a diligent Trainee who did her best to prove herself to be one of the best among the group. She succeeded, and that had caught his eye.
It also helped that Cal thought her diligence only made her more attractive than she already was. But that was all he knew about her since he never cared to know more than her surface qualities.
Tavia was another that Cal had never seen after the Selection… which was strange. He had not seen her go through the test in his first life, but he couldn’t imagine that she had somehow failed.
“You really have it bad for her, don’t you? I’ve never seen you zone out this long.”
Cal blinked rapidly and looked away from Tavia. “Nothing like that. It’s just the Selection occupying my mind, nothing else.”
“Sure it is,” Oleg snickered as they walked to their usual spot at the center. “I’d believe that if you weren’t practically drooling at her.”
Cal shrugged, not minding if that was what Oleg assumed. It wasn’t like he could admit that he had lived through all of this and was constantly getting hit by buried memories that were distracting him.
“Let’s leave Tavia alone,” Cal said when they stopped, hyperaware of the eyes on them. "It’s time to stop playing around.”
“… That’s a first. And speak for yourself. I’m not the one constantly bothering her.”
He met Oleg’s eyes with a raised brow. That was an exaggeration… or maybe not. His self-awareness at this point in life had been close to zero, and only when he was humbled close to the end did he realize how his actions were viewed.
“Fair enough,” Cal nodded. “Let me rephrase that. I intend to leave Tavia alone.”
“Sure you will.”
He ignored Oleg’s doubt as he locked eyes with the Overseer, a man with sharp, angular features that gave him a somewhat hollow appearance. The Overseer's robes hung loosely on his body, highlighting his overly lean frame.
It was strange, but he had never learned the Overseer’s name, even in his first life. Their only one-on-one interaction was when Cal asked for the second delay, which wouldn’t happen in this life.
The Overseer broke eye contact after a moment and continued to watch over the Trainees.
“When was the Selection supposed to start?” Cal asked as he glanced at a Trainee close to them that yelped in pain. A bone was sticking out of a girl’s arm—nothing serious.
“… It should be any time now,” Oleg said, looking a little green as he avoided looking at the injured girl.
Cal was confused as to why until he realized that his view of what a ‘serious’ injury had been skewed by his experience. Oleg had never seen death.
“Halt your training! It’s time for the Selection to begin!” The Overseer’s voice boomed. The area he occupied rumbled slightly before a blood-red pillar rose from the ground to tower behind the Overseer.
Cal had forgotten about this. All the Trainees had been frantically practicing their spells and reviewing concepts before the Selection since the Celestial Order didn’t tell them any information of how it was done.
It hadn’t been amusing at the time, but Cal had chuckled at the memory of the Trainees turning red when they were told all they had to do was touch the pillar.
“Today is when you will discover if you were blessed at birth. And for those who weren't, if your hard work made up for your deficiency. The activation pillar behind me is the decider. If you activate your interface, your rank will be automatically raised to Initiate!”
Cal hadn't gone through the Selection with this batch, but the reactions were the same. Confused grumbling.
“Form a line before me!” The Overseer ordered. “I hope that many of you join my guild.”
A few Trainees shifted in place but didn’t make a move.
They’re nervous. I can use this to put more pressure on Oleg.
“Come on,” Cal spoke up. “We don’t want to look like cowards. We’ll be the first ones to go.”
“What—Wait, Cal!”
He ignored Oleg’s protests and walked confidently to the Overseer. It wasn’t necessary to look back and check if Oleg was following. There was no doubt that he was.
Cal didn’t know what he had done to deserve Oleg’s friendship, but he wouldn’t squander it this time. He would start by making sure Oleg failed the Selection… again.