Wyatt gasped awake and gripped his chest. The soft white t-shirt and shorts he’d been sleeping in clung to his sweaty skin. He looked around for Angels or Devils, wide-eyed.

  Lucifer, Cameron, and Gabriel were nowhere in sight, nor were any signs of the Invasion force.

  “Thank all that’s good. Just a dream,” he muttered. Rubbing his aching head, he closed his eyes. The image of Lucifer he visualized felt way too real and moved as if alive. “Ugh. What’s going on with me?”

  The fever dream had a vividness he’d never experienced before. On top of that, he’d never personally seen Lucifer. Hell, stories of the Devil King were told to children to keep them from misbehaving back home.

  Aside from those tales, he’d never looked into anything regarding Angels or Devils. The dream’s uncanny levels of detail made no sense to him. Yet, something tugged from deep in his gut telling him… something.

  Brushing the feeling off, he thought about the studies he’d done into lucid dreaming recently. They intrigued him, but if they were anything like the dream he had, no thanks. The only thing he liked about anything that went down in that dream was learning that he wanted nothing to do with it.

  One time was more than enough for him.

  When his heart stopped racing like a million stampeding rhinos, he stood and looked back at the bed. Shaking his head made him dizzy, so he stopped. Not only had he sweat through his clothes, the whole bed was drenched.

  “Am I sick?” he wondered. A slight shiver of fear tingled down his spine, and he pressed the back of his hand against his head. “Huh, feels normal, but my stomach is upset. I wonder if there’s a stomach bug going around the academy. Could be… I’ll ask Cameron later.”

  And again, his stomach dropped like it knew something he didn’t.

  Ignoring the unknown feeling, he looked around and located the laundry basket in the corner. The blue lines running up the laundry meant he didn’t need to request new manastones anytime soon to charge the portable NaviSys.

  The dresser’s light dimmed to a low gray color, meaning it would need new manastones shortly. Having to go up to the admins made him want to get back in the sweat-soaked bed and curl up in the equally nasty bedding.

  Rather than becoming a vegetable and shirking his duties, he let out a frustrated groan.

  Dealing with the admins always left him annoyed at how inefficient everything seemed to operate around the academy, yet they chanted the mantra “efficiency is the key to success”. He didn’t disagree with the sentiment, but their methodology appeared quite… counterproductive to their goals.

  Their way of thinking focused on creating value with fewer resources and less waste was pretty easily summarized to “quit being wasteful”. For Wyatt, this meant using resources efficiently by applying them to whatever got the highest yield.

  The irony wasn’t lost on Wyatt that, through trying to become more efficient, the probationary academy had become less so.

  “And the admins keep making things worse!” he nearly shouted, thinking of how many resources he had the year before that he no longer had access to.

  He’d seen how many other students were wasteful, but he wasn’t them.

  Coming from a bordertown, he knew what going without felt like. Out there, the Meven Empire barely had a presence aside from making sure the people paid their annual tax.

  Back home, hunters brought in game from The Snarl—a great bestial forest bordering the Meven Empire. Of that, they traded with the monthly merchant caravans for wheats, grains, spices, and anything that wasn’t meat.

  About a year before Wyatt Awakened his first Ichor Hold and left for the probationary academy, things were the worst they’d ever been. Without the hunters, starvation ran rampant. He’d tried his hand at a bow and spear to join the ranks, as had so many others, but even the weakest of the game in The Snarl required more power than he or any of the others could manage.

  The worst hunting season in the history of the bordertown meant starvation ran rampant. All who could fight were forced to, even in the dead of winter. Same went for all who could gather. Starvation took many lives, as did sickness and biting cold. The beasts within The Snarl…

  Well, they ate well that winter.

  Food shortages were a large problem for all the bordertowns, but when added to the water and medicine shortages, there were no lack of hardships and suffering to go around out there. He’d experienced an insatiable thirst due to lack of medicine or clean water when he’d gotten awfully sick. Without water, food, or any spare cloth to go around, many had prepared for him to die.

  If anything were to be said about Wyatt by those who knew him, he’d bet money they’d call him a tenacious bastard.

  Annabeth often did. Or… used to. They didn’t really speak much yet.

  He pulled out a new change of clothes, a thick pair of black winter pants with a wide cuff, a white long sleeve shirt, and a black winter jacket. Lastly, purple underwear. After he set the outfit on the top of the dresser, he pulled new linens from the various drawers.

  Man, this place’s color scheme is depressing. White, black, black. Everything around us is white and black. A little bit of color here and there might do well to make things less awful, liven things up a bit.

  Even if the border towns absolutely sucked in terms of standard of living, there were plenty of colors to at least add a bit of beauty. Even if slightly, the beauty helped beat back some of the doom and gloom.

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  Wyatt clenched his teeth as he waited for the dresser. For whatever reason, whoever developed NaviSys decided they’d only do everything one at a time. And slowly, at that. So slowly, he wanted to smack his head against the wall.

  The dresser flashed and hissed after each prompt as the manastones powered the automation. Everything in his room were perfect examples of wastefulness. He couldn’t fathom the amount of manastones burned to fuel basic stuff like the hamper, dresser, lights, food dispensaries, shower…

  The list went on and on.

  When his fingers brushed against the soft clothes, he smiled. The simple appreciation of clothes that weren’t two sizes too small, torn and dirty without a way to patch them up or clean them off…

  He made his bed and smiled. He never felt dissatisfied like many of the other students with his life in Demer—aside from the idiotic administration and their integration of NaviSys into everything.

  “They waste so many manastones on automating everything, then they think taking away everything else will make them better? Morons. The only reason they even contend with other top academies for the tenth spot is because of their so-called ‘wasteful expenditure.’” He pulled the blanket and sheets from the bed and tossed them in the laundry basket. “Whoever is leading the academy or the project should be fired, really.”

  Luckily, even the teachers thought the admins were morons. If they didn’t, the academy would probably fall from grace and lose its prestige as one of the annual competitors for the regional rank ten spot.

  If that happened, the school would become the ass end of any and all jokes in the academic circles. Anybody coming from the school would likely be embarrassed, including Wyatt.

  He sighed in exasperation. Back when he’d been big on figuring out how to increase his own efficiency on an individual level, he incorporated the ideas and concepts to his core. The practice of continuous experimentation to refine his day-to-day schedule into four equal parts changed his life.

  The four key components included: gaining knowledge, gaining experience through the application of new knowledge, improvement of the body and mind, and last, but definitely not least, was the sustainment of himself—resetting his weary mind and body with fun, relaxation, and rest.

  They wanted to achieve an absolute efficiency value with zero waste, which meant they hadn’t incorporated the concepts on a deeper level. Without the balance of expending resources on quality teachers, different NaviSys upgrades, higher quality food, and all the other things in life that motivated people to learn, work hard, and feel pride for their accomplishments…

  “They’re such idiots,” he muttered as he peeled his clothes off and wadded them into a ball. Then he tossed the drenched wad of clothing into the hamper after the bedding. “Score.”

  He wiped his hand through his greasy hair and shuddered. The exhaustion of the night’s restless sleep and potential sickness robbed him of his normal enthusiasm. He wanted nothing more than to lay down, but he looked at the clock sitting on his dresser.

  “That sucks.”

  Dungeon diving with his new team started in two hours.

  Naturally, he walked into the bathroom so he could clean up and prepare for the day. He let the NaviSys scanner do its thing. Blue light passed over him and displayed the results on the sliding shower’s glass.

  Water started to spray from the overhead faucet, and a timer began counting down how long he had until the water would be at a sufficient temperature. The specifics of the setting were displayed as “deep wash needed”.

  After he got the water started, he went to the sink. It scanned him like the shower had and displayed another prompt, which he ignored as he splashed water in his face to help him wake up. After the grogginess of the dream wore off, he sighed and looked in the small, round mirror above the sink.

  “Hmmm.” He locked eyes with his reflection and pursed his lips. “That’s not normal.”

  Golden eyes reflected back at him and caused a minor stir of concern, like muted butterflies in his stomach, but the steam of the shower fogged up the bathroom and mirror. The timer beeped loudly to let him know the shower was ready for him, and another started counting down—supposedly the time he should take to fully wash so as to not cause any waste.

  Until he cleaned himself, the existential crisis could wait.

  “I’m not dead or dying, so I’m sure there’s a good reason.”

  He slid the glass door open, stepped into the shower, and slid the glass door closed, letting the water wash away the night’s fatigue. While he washed, he hummed a soft hymn to himself. The echoes of the song soothed the hint of uneasiness gnawing at him.

  When he finished, he stepped out, grabbed a hanging towel, and dried himself off. The last thing he wanted to do was get the carpet in his room all wet. Wyatt would rather not come back to the room and be greeted with the smell of mildew.

  The guild leader of Demiurge, Commander Marlon, would pinch any costs of maintaining living spaces and whatnot from his salary.

  An aching in his head caused his vision to blur. He blinked away the disorientation and shook his head. “Commander Marlon… was a figment of my imagination, just a dream.”

  The disorientation continued as he made his way out of the room and stared uncomprehendingly at the calendar on the wall. The last time he’d seen the almost-magazine with his idol, Dedric “Silver Sun” Matton, on each month had been back at his days in the licensing academy for new dungeon delvers.

  “What?” The sharp pain returned and hammered against the inside of his head. He looked up at the calendar again. “Why’s today so weird? I’ve had this calendar the whole year. This doesn’t make sense. Could it have been that dream? Should I skip class and go see a doctor?”

  The date was normal yet not, reading “the second dyad, year eight hundred and fifty-three”. The turn of the month had been two days ago and had fifty-two days just like the other thirteen months.

  This week would be mornings in Fundamentals of a Dungeon Diver with Instructor Plight. His evenings would be spent with Instructor Monaya in low-level simulations. Today, she planned to let them fight against some of the illusory creatures.

  Wyatt looked at the clock and resisted the urge to smack himself. Why was he ready to go for the day three hours early?

  Sighing deeply, he went back into the bathroom and leaned on the counter, his hands gripping either side of the sink as he stared into his eyes. Sure enough, golden.

  Aside from that, his brown, thin hair looked far healthier than he ever remembered, and his crooked nose had straightened. The scars from his time in The Snarl were gone, leaving his skin smooth and gleaming.

  Back when Wyatt was younger, the other kids his age always gave him a hard time because of his less than average looks. They used to tease him to stave off the monotony of life as a child in one the thousands of border towns.

  If only they could see him now, a strong Summoner—no, wait. That wasn’t right.

  He was a student in the probationary licensing academy. He’d go to class at eight, not six, and would usually sit next to Annabeth and Cameron. The girl he crushed on and his best friend, the prodigious Paladin who never showed anything but a vibrant smile…

  Yet, something told Wyatt that Cameron wouldn’t be in class today—or ever again. Something tugged on his heart and threatened to spill tears from his eyes.

  “Okay, something’s going on,” he muttered, staring into his eyes. “Could that dream have been some kind of freak premonition? Maybe if I ask Gabriel. He’s been pretty quiet.”

  Wait... Gabriel?