"Hey! Wake up quickly, this isn't the time to sleep, you know!"
The voice of an unfamiliar woman broke the silence. Nova Aldridge felt his body being shaken roughly by someone. His heavy eyelids slowly opened.
*A woman's voice? Who?* he thought.
"Ahh... who are you?" Nova mumbled while rubbing his eyes, his voice still hoarse from just waking up.
"Ena Selvan from SMMA, 11th grade!" answered the long black-haired girl in front of him. Ena had blue eyes and wore a black school uniform with a long black skirt.
Nova wore the same thing - a black school uniform with long black pants. Nova had fairly long hair and black eyes.
Nova blinked several times, trying to focus his vision. "11th grade? Wait a minute..." He raised an eyebrow, confusion beginning to fill his mind. "Isn't 11th grade on the second floor? Why are you in my classroom?"
Nova's memory began to spin. Earlier, he had indeed been sleeping at his desk during a free period. Their teacher hadn't arrived yet, and all his classmates had gone down to the first floor to spend time while waiting for their teacher to come. Today their teacher was indeed running later than usual. Nova himself was an 18-year-old 12th grade student, while 11th grade was for 17-year-olds. It was natural for him to wonder why Ena, who should be in a different class, was here. The 12th grade was on the 3rd floor.
"What do you mean talking like that?! Can't you see with your own eyes?!" Ena snapped with an annoyed face, her hand pointing in all directions.
"What's wrong anyway?" Nova rose from his sitting position and began to look around. His eyes widened when he realized the scene that made absolutely no sense. "Huh?! Where is this?!"
What stretched before him was not the familiar classroom with wooden desks and green blackboards, but an expanse of dense forest with tall towering trees.
"How would I know! Why are you asking me?!" Ena replied, her voice sounding frustrated mixed with panic.
Nova slowly stood upright, his eyes continuing to move, scanning this strange environment. The trees around them were so dense that sunlight could only penetrate in the form of thin lines.
"This is strange, why did I suddenly end up here?!..." Nova whispered.
But before he could think further—
CRACK!
The ground beneath Ena's feet suddenly cracked and shook violently. Nova reflexively grabbed Ena's right arm and pulled her away.
"What—" Ena couldn't finish her sentence when she looked back.
From where she had been standing, something terrifying emerged from within the ground. A figure like a giant snake with dark brown scales and red eyes. Its colossal size—even larger than their school bus—made the ground around it shake every time it moved.
"What is this? An earth snake?" Nova commented with a flat expression. "Its face is so ugly."
"Hey! Do you know that your words could make it angry?!" Ena shouted while stepping back several steps.
"Angry? There's no way it understands human language," Nova shrugged indifferently. "Besides, its face is really ugly anyway."
As if understanding Nova's insult, the giant earth snake let out a deafening roar. The sound coming from its throat was so loud that Ena had to cover both her ears with her palms.
"See! It's really angry!" Ena screamed in panic.
"Really?" Nova's face still looked flat.
"What do you mean by 'really'!"
The earth snake began to move aggressively. Its long tail like a whip soared high into the air, ready to strike them both.
"It seems it's really angry, huh?" Nova muttered while observing his opponent's movements.
"You're just realizing this now!—HAH!"
Nova pulled Ena to the side again, just as the snake's tail struck the ground where they had been standing before. Earth flew everywhere, leaving a hole one meter deep.
"What should we do now?!" Ena asked.
Nova stared at the earth snake with a cold gaze. "There's no other way. It's been a long time since I fought, but that's not a problem."
"Zero!"
[ I know. ]
The bodiless voice made Ena jump in surprise.
"Where did that voice come from?!"
The plain black bracelet wrapped around Nova's right wrist suddenly changed shape. Its material flowed like thick liquid, forming a black ball with one red eye in the center. The strange ball floated in the air, spinning around Nova's body while emitting red light from its eye.
From that red eye, a bright beam of light shone on Nova's face. Instantly, a plain white mask with two white eye holes appeared and attached perfectly to his face. Along with that, a black sword emerged from the red eye of the black ball. Nova caught the sword's handle with a natural movement.
The earth snake didn't remain idle. It attacked again, this time by making several sharp earth spikes emerge from the ground surface, heading directly toward Nova and Ena.
"You really seriously want to fight me, huh?"
Nova's voice changed completely. Now it sounded deeper, colder.
With astonishing speed, Nova lunged forward. His black sword sliced through the air, cutting all the earth spikes launched at him with ease. Earth fragments fell like rain, but Nova kept advancing without stopping.
The earth snake looked surprised to see its attack easily broken.
Without giving his opponent a chance to attack again, Nova jumped high. His body soared in the air for a moment before diving sharply downward. His black sword swung in one perfect movement, slicing through the giant earth snake's neck.
THUD!
The snake's head fell to the ground with a loud thump, rolling several meters before stopping.
Ena could only stand silent with her mouth agape, not believing what she had just witnessed. An ordinary student like Nova could defeat that terrifying monster in just seconds?
The earth snake that had lost its head was still trying to move. As an earth creature, it should have been able to regenerate its body using the earth elements around it. But strangely, that ability didn't work. The part cut by Nova's black sword seemed locked, unable to reunite.
Slowly, the giant earth snake's body began to crumble into dust and mix with the soil. In an instant, there was no longer any trace of that terrifying monster's existence, as if it had never existed.
"It's finished," Nova muttered while looking at the dust remains scattered on the ground.
Nova lowered his sword, the white mask on his face slowly faded and disappeared, and Nova also put the sword back into the black ball's eye.
Ena was still silent, her brain trying to process what had just happened. Who exactly was Nova Aldridge?
Author: Sorry to everyone who has read this novel before, I had to delete all the chapters I had uploaded and rewrite them. I made a lot of mistakes back then, so once again, I apologize.