'...right those bastards that attacked me on the train. That was all just a test.'
He wasn't sure how he felt about that. Angry sure, but more disappointed than anything else, that it had been so easy for them to put him in that situation in the first place.
Even though he had been warned that the academy ran differently from the rest of the church, he just hadn't expected them to be bat-shit-crazy different.
He let out a deep sigh. "Still, I can see why they'd come up with a crazy test like that. "
The heretics they were bound to face eventually could come at any moment. In fact, when the Shadowkin attacked his home city there had been no warnings. They just appeared out of nowhere in the dead of night.
The point was, they had to be prepared to die before giving in to their corruption.
But death wasn't an option for him. Not until he could release his parents from that curse.
He glanced down at his wrist. 'There has to be an easy way to activate this even when I'm tied up.'
'Wait... where is it,' he thought, noticing that it had disappeared.
He rubbed the dirt off his wrist, as if the moon tattoo could be hidden beneath.
But still nothing.
Just as he was about to start panicking, he noticed something on his other wrist.
'Huh?'
It was a different tattoo. This one depicting a sun with tentacle-like rays stretching from its center.
"It changed?"
He ran his fingers over it.
...
『It is nighttime. You have been appointed as a widower of Light.』It was that same angelic voice he had heard when he had first summoned the pistol rite.
『Your virtue is strengthened within the dark of night. But beware the shadows of foreign light.』
Moros furrowed his brows. "Wait."
"You can't just leave me with that. Explain these powers to me. Why did my spiritual rite change," he shouted.
But as expected, the voice was already gone.
"Of course. "
He looked back at the tattoo. It felt... warm. Like something was hugging his wrist.
'A different spiritual rite... but why?'
Just then, a wave of heat shot up from beneath him, blowing his hair up. Like a jet stream of hot steam rushing past him.
When it finally subsided, a rusted bronze sword lay in his right hand.
"A different weapon too," he whispered, holding the weapon up to get a better look.
"It's almost weightless," he whispered in awe, taking a practice swing. "And it's sturdier than it looks."
Still, it looked ancient and broken down. And the trails of rust along the length of the blade made it look like discarded trash. "Is this really a holy weapon?"
He took a few more practice swings, unconvinced that its dulled blade could actually deal any real damage.
"Can this thing even cu..."
His words cut right as he tripped over a pile of uniform on the ground, bashing his head over the bed's corner.
"Fuck!" he grunted. Warm blood trickled onto his neck, then onto the floor. For a few seconds he just sat there, screaming silent insults as he clasped the side of his head.
With a deep sigh, he picked himself up; the pain having subsided to a dull throb. "Who put this uniform there anywa..."
His words caught in his throat as he got a look at the bed.
"What. The. Fuck."
The bed had been slashed in half, the two severed ends glowing deep red, and sending out streaks of smoke.
He looked to his sword, then back at the bed. "They're going to kill me."
He quickly swiped his finger over the tattoo, sealing the weapon away before rushing to try and save what remained of his bed from burning away.
A few dozen stomps on the enflamed areas, and the cracking embers were snuffed out.
He slumped onto one half of the bed and let out another deep sigh. "Well, at least this weapon isn't as useless as the fire armament," he whispered, raising his arm to stare at the tattoo.
"But who's ever heard of spiritual rites suddenly changing with the time of day?"
That's to say, he was certain he was some sort of anomaly. But was that a good thing or a bad thing? Sure, this probably meant his spiritual rite was special in some particular way, rare for certain, and possibly even super powerful. But at the end of the day, it was different.
And different came with risks.
More specifically, the risk of being branded a heretic. As advanced as the church was, they didn't take too kindly to things that deviated from the norm, especially when it came to things related to the faith. And even if they were more accepting of unique rites and denominations, titles like 'widower of light' and 'son of shadows' didn't exactly sound clean and holy.
He let out another sigh. "I need to do some research. At least find some indication that I won't be executed as soon as the church finds out."
As he stared at the tattoo, streams of smoke began to billow right at the edge of his field of view. He jolted up, ready to stomp on his bed again... but there was nothing there.
He looked around the room. And the smoke moved with his field of view.
"There's a smell. So I'm not just seeing things... but where is it coming from..."
His eyes widened as he caught a glimpse of himself in the mirror above his table.
The side of his head was... on fire?
He smacked at it, rolling onto his sheets in an an attempt to snuff it out. But that just spread the fire to his blankets.
"Fuck!" Thinking quickly, he dragged his sheets to the ground and stomped on them. But that just ruined his uniform as well.
However he didn't have time to whine over that, the side of his head was still on fire.
'There has to be something I can use...' he thought, eyes frantically scanning the room.
They landed on his dirtied uniform.
'These have to be enchanted right?' He grabbed them and rubbed them against the fire. A few moments later, the flames were snuffed out and he sank to the floor, mentally drained from it all.
"If any of the staff come into my room I'm so screwed," he sighed.
After taking a moment to process everything, he stood up, and walked to the mirror to inspect the damage done to the side of his head.
He found it odd that he'd been on fire so long but hadn't felt anything. Though he assumed that was probably because his mind was all over the place.
"Wait... there's no wound?"
"Apostles aren't fire proof are they? At least not newly awakened ones."
He stepped closer to the mirror, moving his hair around to make sure he wasn't just looking in the wrong place.
"No. Nothing."
Even the wound from when he had bashed his head earlier was no where to be seen.
"What's going on here?"
Just then someone knocked on the door.
He fumbled to pick up his charred sheets, searching around the room for somewhere to hide them.
The knocking got louder.
"Fuck. The bed," he whispered hoarsely, right as the door knob twisted.
He tossed the sheets on the bed, poorly masking that it was severed in two.
"Moros?"
It was a boy, barely older than Moros, wearing brown uniform with an orange badge over his chest.
"What are you..." the boy whispered, looking at the bed, then at Moros.
"You know what, I don't even care."
"Suit up, you're being summoned for orientation and class allocation."