Chapter 66 - The Integration Process

Three days quickly passed by, as the big day of awakening ended up on a successful note without any hiccups.

8 juniors managed to awaken successfully after surviving the excruciating agony of the process. Some were known to have higher chances to awaken like Noah, Kenny, Olivia, and Sarah, while some managed to awaken out of nowhere, surprising the elders and their peers.

Jackson Maxwell was of them. A fog element user with the Spectral Owl bloodline.

No one believed that he was going to awaken successfully, as he fainted throughout the entire mock practice. Regardless, he didn't give up on awakening for real, and the elders weren't allowed to take his bloodline unless he explicitly agreed to give up.

Thus, they could only watch him risk his life, knowing that his chances were null. After all, he failed the mock practice miserably, it was only natural to assume that he was going to fail the awakening as well.

However, he defied everyone's expectations when he managed to remain conscious throughout the entire process.

When the elders asked him how he felt, he answered that it wasn't as bad as what he experienced in the mock practice. In fact, he wasn't the only one who said so, as the rest of the juniors who awakened successfully with him mentioned the same.

From this, the elders and seniors of those juniors realized that Felix and Charlotte were right in their tough handed approach.

It was much better to make the mock practice have the same difficulty as the real awakening during the last 5 days, as even if the juniors failed the practice, they would still have experienced the real awakening, and wouldn't be blindsided during the real test.

Not to mention, the casualties were at the bare minimum, since the majority of the juniors decided to give up after realizing that it was impossible for them to even survive the first 5 minutes of awakening, based on their mock practice results.

The only ones who went for awakening were the juniors who either succeeded in the mock practice or at least survived the first 10 minutes before passing out.

Due to those significant results, Felix earned some brownies from the parents of those children after saving their lives indirectly by his awakening practice approach.

But Felix didn't give a crap about their gratitude, as he saved them in the first place only because he had nothing to lose, and it wasn't much of an effort. Otherwise, he wouldn't even bother.

....

Currently, on the 35th Floor, Felix stood together with the 8 awakened juniors.

Some of them received easily noticeable mutations.

Such as Olivia who had a small growing yellow lily flower on the top of her head, making her cuteness reach a new level. However, the elders and Felix merely sighed after seeing this mutation happen to her during the awakening, as they knew that it wasn't possible anymore to pat her head!

The gentle-looking Flower acted like a protective helmet for Olivia, and she couldn't get any happier about it.

Then there was Kenny who received a somewhat low key mutation, as dark shades covered both of his eyes, making him even harder to read.

Meanwhile, some did not undergo any mutation at all, as they remained exactly the same. Just like Noah, nothing changed about him or added.

But, it was understandable since not everyone could receive mutations from an awakening with just 1%.

It all depended on luck.

The only certain way to get them was by increasing the dose of the injection as much as possible.

Nevertheless, Felix's mutation was still the envy of everyone, as the moment the elders left his room after their interrogation, they announced that he truly awakened under the supervision of Robert. They had to add an elder, otherwise, the rest would start complaining about favoritism.

However, the elders thought too much about it, since the juniors' brains excluded all those pity secondary thoughts, and focused only on one thing, and that was one of them truly awakened!

They had seen awakened bloodliners many times on the internet and UVR streams, but still, nothing beat seeing the real deal. Thus, they all rushed towards Felix's room, like a debt collector coming to pay a visit.

Felix already anticipated their arrival, since he heard the announcement as well. So, he left the door wide open and sat in the same chair, feeling like some endangered animal on public display.

As soon as they arrived and saw his new outlook, they went bonkers in his room, chatting and asking billions of questions about his process of awakening and mutations.

The boys envied the purple slits that made him appear dangerous and elegant at the same time.

While the girls never stopped harassing him to let them touch his hair or smell its natural spring fragrance.

In spite of that, Felix only felt annoyed by the whole farce, as he truly believed that his mutations were quite trash compared to what he saw in his past life.

Alas, those teenagers cared only about dashing mutations, and not about their usefulness in battles.

....

Meanwhile above the stage.

The elders kept viewing those juniors with a foolish grin, ruining the serious atmosphere of the gathering.

But who could blame them tho?

Every time they imagined the jealous looks of other families after seeing their 9 awakened juniors during the upcoming US National Team Battle, that grin gets fixed on their faces without any way to remove it.

Because based on Charlotte Intel, the majority of the business families in the US only had 4 awakened, while their true rivals had a maximum total of 7 awakened.

So for their Maxwell family to have two extra members on their rivals was truly a gratifying thing to see.

Charlotte fake coughed to wake up those foolish geezers from their imagination since everyone was looking at them weirdly. Too bad, her attempt didn't change anything. So, she could only walk up the podium and take it from there.

"It seems Elder Abraham is not on his peak form, so I will be the one who will inform you about what you should expect on the 2nd stage of the training camp." She paused for a bit to see if she had everyone's attention and added, "The 2nd stage of the camp will teach you how to integrate the remaining 98% without issues. In addition, to help you reach at least lesser purity before the 3rd stage of the camp. Keep in mind that not all of you will reach it."

The juniors were a bit skeptical at her certain tone, but Felix knew why she was confident in her claim.

Since in this stage, the goats would be separated from the sheep.

Or in other words, it's finally time to see, who was going to have a smooth path ahead of him, and who was going to struggle his entire life just to break through the purification realm.

The method the elders were going to use was simple actually, and that was to separate them based on their affinity rating.

Those with 40% or below would form the below-average group.

Those with 40% to 60% would form the average group.

Those with 60% to 80% would form the gifted group.

As for 80% to 100%? Humans born with that affinity were as rare as a triple elemental user.

The reason why the affinity rating was the true decider of whether someone was going to have a smooth path or not, was simply because the higher an elemental affinity a bloodliner had, the faster the body was able to adapt to the bloodline it was merged with.

After all, in every integration, the human DNA gets broken apart and reconstructed it again, but this time with the beast genes merged with it.

(Author Note: Just like the scene in the first spider-man movie, where peter parker got bit by the spider. I will post the link in the comment section.)

Thus, it was natural that an adaptation period, or what the majority called the cooldown period, was a normal outcome. Since the body wouldn't be able to handle, having its DNA constantly broken apart and rearranged again, without even taking a breather in the process.

However, the elemental affinity was able to hasten this adaptation period, to the point it could even remove it entirely!

This was one of the main reasons why humans were only able to awaken with beasts that had the same elemental affinity as them. Otherwise, the body would immediately reject the beastial bloodline, and either explode or enter a state of shock, just like it was rejecting an organ donated by someone.

If we reversed this reason, we can easily infer that the body of a bloodliner with a high elemental affinity rating would accept the foreign genes of the beast with open arms, nullifying the adaptation period, or even removing it entirely.

In a different sense, the integration process was the same as an organ transplantation operation, and the affinity rating was the decider whether the body would accept the organ or reject it. And if it did accept it, how long it would take before the body could recover its peak form.

Felix was desperate to raise his affinity no matter what, just for this reason. As he knew that with his 59% poison affinity rating, he would need at least 24 days cooldown period between each integration.

His cooldown wasn't even that bad when compared to bloodliners with a 1% affinity rating. Such a garbage affinity forces them to wait for at least 2 months before they could integrate again.

One should only imagine how long it would take them to reach the peak of the purification realm with such a messed up cooldown.

This was how the sheep were split from the goat in the human bloodline system, there was no such thing as born genius or prodigy, due to comprehensive ability or something in that sense.

The only thing that mattered was whether one was lucky enough to be born with a high affinity to smoothen his path, or born with trash affinity that would make his life hell.

It was all about luck and fortune.

Noah who had a whopping 70% affinity rating was beyond lucky, as it meant he was able to integrate every 18 days.

Plus, with his hard-working no bullshit personality. He would never idle around, or give up his bloodline path as the majority did after not being able to handle the continuous torture of each integration.

This was how humans cultivate or in this case 'Integrate' to obtain their strengths.

Even though their system was painful and long, humans still choose to tread it. Since the moment they stopped, the whole beast invasion situation would resurface again. But with a different race.

The universe did not accept weaklings, no matter if it was in the dark ages or the current SGA Era.

...

After Charlotte explained all the necessary information about the integration process. She separated the 9 juniors into 3 groups.

2 juniors were placed in the 'C' group because of their affinity that was below 40%.

5 juniors were placed in the 'B' group since their affinity did not reach 60%. Kenny and Felix were within it as well,

Lastly, the 'A' group had only Olivia and Noah as they both had 65% and 70% affinity respectively.

After separating them properly, she said calmly to the grumbling juniors who did not like those settings. "You don't have to be upset, as you can always climb up if you performed well, and also fall down if you remain idle and waste our resources."

Bored, Felix kept yawning with an absent-minded look, not focusing at all on what Charlotte was saying. He just wanted this gathering to end already.

But who could blame him?

Everything that she said, he already had knowledge of, and everything that she was promising as a reward, he could obtain better by himself.

At this point, the entire training camp had no meaning to him but a waste of time.

The merit shop turned to be a disappointment, The AP Bracelet that he planned to work hard to obtain, he already secured it before the camp even started.

So in a sense, it was quite meaningless to remain in the camp anymore. But he couldn't just go ahead and tell the elders that he wanted to quit, as they would skin him alive if he mentioned anything about lazing around while having a legendary rank bloodline within him.

Plus, Felix didn't want to ruin his chances of joining the earthlings' representative team, by going against the family board.

He would rather play house obediently with his cousins than to go on his way and struggle to reach the world representative battle by participating in public qualifications.

He wasn't a fool to let go of his family thigh, that had an already secured spot within the US national team battle, and go struggle within the sea of commoners, who were trying to do the same.

....

A couple of hours later...

Felix wore his pajamas and lay on the bed comfortably, planning to log inside the UVR and place his bet on the 2nd game that he remembered clearly on his mind.

Although there were still four days before its official start, Felix couldn't wait to empty his bank account on his bet.

He struggled inside the UVR for way too long, just to save each coin, in order to increase his earning after the game.

God knows, how many lines and queues he had to stay on during the past month.

Heck, sometimes he didn't even log in for three days to five days, just to not get lured to watch a movie, play an online video game, or even visit the red district.

Too many distractions were within the UVR and for a somewhat rich lord like Felix, they were the greatest honey traps.

Thus, he entered the UVR only when necessary in the past month. But now, the game he was waiting for desperately was finally here.

Felix couldn't but call eagerly in his mind, 'Queen Log me in.'

It was time to earn some free coins!