Arin opened his eyes slowly, confusing him.
'Hmm? My eyes usually snap open, but now...'
He was even forcing his eyes to open quickly, but it was to no avail. His eyes felt heavy. Realizing that there was nothing he could do about it, he allowed his eyes to open slowly without forcing it anymore.
Finally, his eyes completely opened, but a transparent screen was right in front of him.
[Congratulations, Arin Vale! You have successfully learned The Third Innate Skill of a Progenitor: Blood Armour.]
[You are very close to Ranking Up!]
Arin read the two notifications as a grin formed on his face.
'Finally... No wonder my eyes felt heavy,' Arin thought.
As for the second notification, he knew that the System was referring to his Vampiric Rank.
"Good progress," Arin muttered.
He stood up from the floor and noticed that Roxanne's eyes were fixated on him, to the point that it looked like she didn't even realize that he had already stood up.
Her eyes suddenly widened as she stumbled backward. "Oh~uhm, G... Greetings, Master."
Arin squinted his eyes. "Is this your first time seeing the Blood Armour?"
Arin felt like she must have seen Liora use the Blood Armour Skill since all the Progenitors could use it.
"No, it's not," Roxanne replied as she regained her composure. "Yours is just... different."
"Different?" Arin raised a brow.
"I mean, it's a Skill that all Progenitors can use, but the appearance differs for the Progenitors.
"Like, Progenitor Liora's Blood Armour is fully red without any additional colors, while Progenitor Darius's Blood Armour is also red but has a few patches of white here and there."
"Oh, I understand," Arin said.
Curiously, he walked towards the mirror to see his appearance.
His entire body, from head to toes, was covered with the Blood Armour. Spikes were protruding from the left and right arm sides of the Armour. Spikes were also protruding from the right and left shoulder sides of the Armour.
But apart from that, there was a red gem-like object embedded in the chest area of the Armour, which he had no idea what it was used for.
The Blood Armour was a mixture of red and black, and there were patches of purple on the Blood Armour, though it wasn't really much.
'I guess the purple patches are due to my Chaos Element,' Arin thought.
"That's the only reasonable answer," Seraphine said.
Arin nodded as he turned to look at Roxanne.
"So, what is the major difference between mine and that of the other Progenitors?" he asked.
"There's more than one major difference," Roxanne said.
"First of all, that red gem in your chest... None of the Progenitors have that in their Blood Armour," she began. "And secondly, none of the Progenitors also have those long spikes on their arms and shoulders.
"You're also the only Progenitor with purple patches on their Blood Armour," she added. "But that's not a major difference since the Blood Armour of all the Progenitors differs."
'Why is mine so different, though?' Arin thought.
Without wasting time, he began asking the System if it knew anything about it. Though, he was already expecting that the System wouldn't respond. But then...
"Wait, it actually wants to respond?"
The System screen appeared in front of Arin, making him smile as he waited for the notification. The notification finally came.
Arin's eyebrows twitched as he resisted the urge to punch the mirror. "You fucker..."
"Well, I guess nothing comes easy."
"Who are you talking to?" Roxanne asked.
"Oh, it's nothing," Arin said as he deactivated the Blood Armour Skill and walked into the bathroom, ready to freshen up.
"Well, I'll find out why mine is so different by myself," he muttered. "And I'll actually have to carry out some experiments to be able to achieve that."
The most intriguing thing was that red gem embedded into his chest, and he felt like it was really important.
A few minutes later, Arin was ready to leave. He wore the bracelet as he stared at Seraphine.
"That grin on your face..." he muttered. "I hope you aren't planning to do anything unnecessary when I leave."
"You've gotta trust me a bit more, you know?" Seraphine grumbled.
Arin shook his head as he closed the door and left the dorm building, heading towards the Main Academy building.
In a few hours, the class ended, and all the students were already gathered in the training space.
The fights went on as usual, and Hector even fought. He managed to win the fight a few seconds before the three minutes would elapse.
Immediately after that, Arin's name was finally called.
His opponent was a girl this time, and her choice of weapons were daggers, which was quite unusual for Mages.
Arin gripped his wooden sword as he dashed forward toward the girl.
'I think I should do something very non-main-character-ish,' Arin thought.
He let out a battle cry as he dashed forward, making most of the male students cheer for him.
'Hehe, a battle cry, just like a normal random background character would do.'
Main characters usually stay calm and don't even say anything when battling. They usually have a cold expression and battle so elegantly without a single word most of the time.
But letting out a very random battle cry like that was what a perfectly normal single-scene character would do.
Yes, single scene. That one character that would be lucky enough to get mentioned in just one chapter of the entire novel just to give the readers an example of what was going on or what was going to happen in that scene.
Arin dashed forward as he gripped his sword.
Water Spikes instantly formed behind him, and with his command, they rushed towards the girl who was also dashing towards him.
But before his Water Spikes could reach her, she suddenly swung her hand, and the wind picked up, changing the trajectory of the spikes.
'No matter what you do, I'll still win... easily.'