Have you ever heard someone complaining about their life being too boring because it’s always the same day over and over and nothing ever changes?
How many times have I heard that… I don’t know, I stopped counting a while ago
Anyways, to you people who think that, allow me to say that sometimes, a normal life like yours is a blessing.
I still haven’t introduced myself, I’m Aren Valen, a 17-year-old boy and I’m currently attending the entrance ceremony of the Aegis Academy, I guess you could call it a “prestigious school” considering how important it is in this world
Yet I have been waiting for 20 or so minutes and the ceremony still hasn’t started I thought extremely bored of just standing there, and just as I was about to start complaining, an apparently old man with a long white beard and a few equally white remaining hairs, stepped onto the stage with a microphone in hand
The other students surrounding me began to whisper with evident excitement when they noticed too
It’s just a fancy way to say ‘welcome to your high school’ why are they so excited? I thought in annoyance, didn’t they know that silence was more than welcome at times like these?
“Ahem” as soon as the old man started to speak, the students’ murmurs and whispers ceased quickly “First of all, welcome to the Aegis Academy, we sincerely hope that our school will give you the chance to fully express your potential as Armor users. My name is Alaric Vaelmont, the chairman of the academy and I look forward to witnessing your improvements; grow, learn and experience, aim to become the finest Armor user this world has ever seen, and never forget your role”
His gaze then swept through the crowd, observing us,
“To protect your people from the menace of the monsters!”
The students erupted into applause.
Cheers followed, loud and sincere. Some looked proud. Others excited. A few clenched their fists like heroes in the making.
I just clapped lazily along with everyone else.
Protect people, fight monsters… yeah, this is what we’re born for, aren’t we?
Yeah, it is. The few like us, that are born with the ability of summoning an Armor, are meant to use it to protect the normal people from the monsters, able to use the magic that filled this world,
And to train the so called ‘Armor users’ academies like the Aegis Academy have been founded across the world, one for each city,
Some people wish for fame by becoming a legend with their Armor, but the only thing that I wish for is a peaceful life, I’m fine just by being considered a “normal” Armor user no different than anyone else…
But fate had other plans for me
The microphone was then passed to a visibly younger man, an instructor I supposed,
“Now then, in order to give a chance to the new students to show off their abilities to the academy, an exhibition match will be held between two randomly selected new students!”
As soon as the speaker said this, all the students got truly fired up, and started to cheer and applaud loudly, they clearly wanted to show off their Armor,
The only one who remained quiet was me
I didn’t want to stand out, as I said before, all I wanted was a peaceful life and being rumored since my first day here at the academy wasn’t in my plans, if I were to be chosen, then my Armor sure as hell would have made me stand out a lot
“The first student for the exhibition match is…” the speaker dramatically stopped and drew out a piece of paper from a nearby box “Darin Klose! Please step on the stage”
The called Darin Klose excitedly walked on the stage, followed by a myriad of applause, while I was lazily applauding, I was also silently praying that the next name wouldn’t be mine
Please, I beg you whoever rules this world, there are like hundreds of names that could be drawn from that box-
“And the second student is…” another dramatic pause stopped my thoughts from running too wild “Aren Valen! Please step on the stage”
Obvious…
I honestly thought of faking myself fainted or something like that, but it’d be stupid and useless, it’d only delay the inevitable so I stepped in the stage as commanded, standing by the left side of the speaker as that Darin guy, my opponent, stood by his right side
“Within 20 minutes, these two Armor users will show us what they can do, remember well their performance today and then compare it when they’ll graduate from this academy!” the speaker loudly announced as everyone else applauded
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Sorry, but in my case it’d be useless to remember my performance today I thought as I was finally allowed to get down the stage and go to the arena to get ready for the fight
They also asked me if my armor needed any kind of external resources, I said no to them, but to be honest it wasn’t guaranteed that I wouldn’t need them; as I thought this, I also had another thought: could it be that the extraction was rigged to make my name be selected?
I know it sounds like the thought of a pessimistic depressed boy, but considering my Armor’s power, it wouldn’t sound so strange
In fact my Armor’s power was…
No wait, before that, I should check my opponent’s Armor, which was possible by searching into the Aegis Academy’s registers that were open to the public
Let’s see… Darin Klose was it? Ah, there he is. According to the academy’s registers, his Armor, Espinas, is a very classic raw power one, but with a little bonus: his Espinas has also a horn on the top of his helm and a tail, both of them could inflict poison to whoever is touched by them; surely something to watch out, as for the rest, it simply made him a lot stronger.
Got only a 56/100 on the written test though… I noticed, meaning, he wasn’t all that smart
It shouldn’t be too much of a problem to handle him, although it didn’t depend totally on me, that being said, I was considering whether to actually lose on purpose… no, it’d be useless, the Aegis Academy’s instructors are no fool, they’d notice immediately if I held back that much and that would cause a lot more troubles than winning an exhibition match, people would forget about it in a few weeks and by the time the first trimester was over, no one would even remember who fought
So in short, it was better to just win this match and accept being at the center of the attention for a bit
As I was making this thoughts, I could hear the speaker announcing the beginning of the exhibition match
“Both Armor users step in the arena!” he loudly announced, and we did as ordered,
“On the left side, we have Darin Klose! His Armor, Espinas, can greatly boost his strength and don’t forget about its poisonous tail and horn!”
Loud cheers from the bleachers surrounding us filled the stone built arena, clearly a sturdy building since it had to sustain the damages from insane Armor’s powers
“And on the right side we have…” an evident moment of hesitation followed “Aren Valen! His Armor, Unknown, can… well, it’s impossible to know what it can do since it changes form each time it’s summoned!”
This time what followed the introduction were a lot of confused “Oh?” “Ah?!” “What?” and so on
Told you it’d made me stand out
It was an understandable reaction, in a world where an unwritten rule of each Armor is that no Armor can change from their first activation, yet mine keeps changing, it would be only natural to be confused or not believing it at all
To make it more easy to understand, my Armor’s form is like a roulette that is spun each time I summon it, not even I know what form it’ll take, but fortunately it’s not like they never repeat themselves, although it never happened to me that the same form manifested twice in a row, but it did happen that an old form of Unknown manifested again
As of now, I counted 10 different forms, each with its pro and cons,
“Now then, please summon your Armors” the speaker asked me and Darin, the latter did so first with visible excitement in his eyes as well as a wide grin on his face
“Appear, Espinas!” he ordered, and his Armor obliged, manifesting itself after Darin was enveloped in a bright light and then reappeared wearing a green Armor with a horn on top of the helmet and a tail at the end of his back, in other words, Espinas
“Come forth, Unknown” next was my turn, in my case it’s always been darkness to envelope me instead of the light, although that does change based on the type of Armor summoned, darkness has never been seen before the summon of an Armor
Great, something else to stand out for
Anyways, my Armor’s color was always the same: a black Armor with some faint red lines adorning it, glowing faintly, as for the form…
I got quite unlucky, I didn’t have any weapons with me in this form, I was simple and plain raw power
How troublesome, my attack options are limited and easy to predict, thank you Unknown,
But raw power against raw power can be decided by the minds behind those raw powers, but if the other side also had a trick under their sleeves, poison in this case, then it becomes a handicap match that I didn’t want to deal with
Luckily though, my opponent didn’t look like the smartest Armor user around, as his written test score made me theorize, so that made it more balanced
“And now, begin!” the speaker said before quickly getting out of the arena, and as soon as the signal to begin was given, Klose lunged at me with a wide swing of his fist, a counter was tempting but that would have meant exposing to the horn or tail, and thus the poison, so I opted for a simple cross arm block, which efficiently blocked the punch, but then Klose tried to headbutt me, or to be more precise, to hit me with his horn through a headbutt
It surely must have looked like a smart move from his perspective, but it definitely wasn’t smart at all, from this position all I had to do was sway my head away which I did and barely dodged the horn, but that was enough, I then proceeded to use Klose’s momentary unbalance to grab his face with my right hand
If I use my full strength, it should be more than enough to knock him out cold I thought, as I proceeded to slam his face to the ground with all the raw strength this form of Unknown gave me
However, just as his face was going down ready to collide with the ground, his tail appeared from the corner of my sight swinging at me from my right side
Did he act on impulse or was it calculated? Doesn’t matter Yes, in fact it didn’t matter whether Klose intended for this to happen, or if it was a fluke,
It was true that if the tail hits, then poison. If poisoned, reaction time slows. If reaction slows, attention falters. And I couldn’t allow that
But there was an easy solution that I had already thought before I caught Klose’s face
I just had to turn his body around to my right, which I did, and as expected, Klose’s tail tripped on his left leg as he was spun around, stopping before it could reach my face,
Next I turned him again so that he was now staring at the ground and then proceeded to slam him down with full strength
Klose’s face slammed into the arena’s ground with a heavy crush, forming a small crater on the ring, just like I expected, he was now laying on the crater his face formed, unconscious,
“Oi” I called out to the speaker that was watching us as a referee from the ringside “I’m pretty sure he’s knocked out cold” the speaker quickly checked on him and confirmed that he was unable to continue
“The winner is… Aren Valen and his Armor, Unknown!” he loudly announced while raising up my arm, loud cheers and applause followed afterwards
“Wow! This Aren guy is strong!”
“Unknown looks cool too!”
“Wasn’t he just lucky with his Armor’s form though?”
“If it works, it works, accept it”
Lot of comments could be heard from the bleachers, blending in with the applause
But I also noticed a person staring at me from those bleachers, I believe it was a girl, as she had long silver hairs, but I couldn’t be sure because she was too far from me
Oh well, I’m sure I won’t meet her again, right?
After the arena was cleared and the works started to fix the crater I made (oops), we were allowed to go to our dormitory rooms which were divided into two buildings, one for the boys and one for the girls of course,
I could finally lay on my bed and relax, after the fight, a lot of students came to congratulate to me, I treated them all with my natural cold and standoffish personality and after shaking hands and giving me their name, they left me alone only to then be bothered by another one, and so on for like 30 minutes
And of course no girl was interested in me at all, if anything they were avoiding me,
Honestly I don’t even care about all that dating stuff, it surely wouldn’t be peaceful at all,
Ugh, what am I even thinking about, I must be really exhausted if I’m thinking about this nonsense
All this because I was at the center of the attention…
And I was at the center of the attention because I won that stupid exhibition match…
And I won that exhibition match because of Unknown’s strength boost…
“Damn you Unknown…always forcing me into the unexpected, even when all I want is predictability…” I muttered as I started to change clothes and prepare for my first day at the Aegis Academy with my Armor, Unknown,
Yeah, Unknown, just like me
