Ephurium

Chapter 1

One's lifetime flows by like the wind. It will all go after a breeze.

Unfortunately, I have never had the chance to see my parents in my lifetime - not even small fragments of their existence existed in my mind. Until now, I've been supervised by the government, which definitely gave anyone I met with the impression of being a depressed child or a lifeless loser. Eventually, I adapted towards it through time. Initially, without realising, I lost the most basic emotion - happiness.

"Time is up! Everyone, drop down your pens!" The ferocious voice of the female teacher who I encounter everyday announced.

My consciousness of the 3-dimensional world suddenly returned to me. I realise I was sitting on a chair inside my classroom and the semester two biology test was concluding its session. I slowly descended my trembling eyeballs downwards and a drop of cold sweat rolled down my forehead as a blank page of unselected answers glared at me in despair. Although I have encountered countless similar situations in the past, I still experienced the burning nerves of self-disappointment. But in order to complete an exam, I must do the exam.

Closing my eyes, I focused all my attention into my consciousness, completely ignoring the enraging presence of my science teacher next to my desk who was demanding for my paper submission. Within the darkness of my vision, blue particles of glowing mana formalised in the distance before scattering towards me.

"Ace! The bell is going to ring soon and I'm getting pissed off by your delay! Handover your test paper right now... why on earth is it blank?! Why are you always misbehaving?!" The teacher screamed into my ears.

As the glowing particles of mana faded through my consumption, I slowly opened my eyes and looked around the stationary world around me. I knew that time wasn't stopped, as the trillions of atoms in the air would prevent me from moving - time simply slowed down by a thousand times.

Grabbing out my pen, I glared back at my answer sheet and annihilated through its difficulties, completing the sixty questions which were designed to be challenging in ten minutes of my time, giving me a remain of forty minutes which I rendered it useless. Considering the importance of accuracy to maintain a great set of grades, I checked my answers with Stella, who sat to my right.

She was someone who contrasted with my theory of people, which was that everyone was born with the same number of skill points, which was then divided into five categories that compose a human: socialising quality - which assessed one's communication abilities, social intelligence - which assessed one's problem-solving abilities, academic intelligence - which assessed one's academic knowledge, external appearance - which assessed one's natural appearance and their maintenance on that, and lastly internal health - which assessed one's natural health and their maintenance on that.

Based on my observation, she possessed the most talents. Her psychological properties of socialising quality, social intelligence, and academic intelligence were on another level compared to normal humans. Commonly, she would volunteer in evaluations of academic questions in class and explain her methods on the blackboard but also compete for first place in year 9 in all subjects with me, as well as participating in co-curriculum competitions and receive countless achievements. But most of all, her language abilities were far above the human level.

Not only students from our year group, but also the junior years desperately want to have a talking session with her. Commonly, her friends would request advice from her for their life issues, such as being alienated before group selection for assignments. Even I was shocked by how useful her suggestions were. Her physical properties of health and appearance were abnormally high. Considering that she already excelled in her psychological properties, my theory was no doubt demolished, or simply she was a major outlier.