Arcana

Chapter 1

"Bee-dee-dee-deep! Bee-dee-dee-deep!"

The familiar sound of an alarm, ever so annoying for anyone who was within its area of effect. Even if I was the one who set it up last night, I couldn't help but furrow my brows in frustration as I wanted to continue with my slumber.

"Where is it?.. where is it...?"

Wishing to put a stop on it as soon as possible, I searched for it frantically. Without the aid of my eyesight, I tried to locate the source using my hands. Blindlessly touching the ground where I am currently lying down as I was certain that it was nearby. But it seemed that my assumption was wrong as I found nothing after repeating the same course actions twice. Soon enough my patience was spent up as I lifted my head abruptly.

"Bang!"

My head hit something hard, extremely hard, but the expected stimuli from my body didn't quite follow. Maybe it was due to the fact that I was sleep deprived these past few days, the condition of my body was deteriorating.

"Ouc--!.."

There it was, a good wake up call, more efficient than an alarm. Nevertheless, the drawback was that my head experienced an excruciating amount of pain that I inadvertently bit my own tongue. The pair of emerald eyes that was previously shut tight opened immediately, a bit of tears welling up from the side.

What I saw was the bottom of a machine. Various wirings and contraptions tightly packed within this confined space. A nightmare for an electronic engineer as all components were clumsily arranged, not even considering the fact that if this thing was broken, the chances repairing it were slim, almost nil.

But I couldn't do anything about it, after all i'm only an apprentice and my knowledge about this field was only from books, imagining how it works and not really particular as to how it looks.

Not too long after that, all of my senses were woken up at last. Adding to the previous pain I received, my whole body ached. My sleeping posture wasn't that bad and I had no habits of excessive movement during sleep. The only thing that could cause this was the fact that I was sleeping on nothing but hard, cold pavement.

"Auu... Damn it!"

I complained to myself as I crawled out of this hell hole, enduring the muscles that were screaming in pain.

It felt like I was a soldier trainee who was crawling under those barbed wire obstacles seen in military training.