Chapter 1 - Chapter 1: Ah, to be a Savior.

Monotonous. Textbooks define it as "Tediously uniform or unvarying", Soren would describe it as his life. Prior to this day and age, the way things are going for Earth would be seen as far from monotonous, however, Soren isn't the only one with that sentiment, and the average person around him definitely wouldn't be seen as normal, compared to what had been previously perceived as such. Afterall, for the last decade, Earth had been fighting against space entities that have made increasing attempts over the years to enslave Earth and especially its inhabitants. While at the same time, any one at the age of 15 and over, had a chance at receiving a system interface from seemingly thin air, and for no particular reason. These people would gain skills and abilities from their systems upon killing a monster sent by the invaders, and in other cases by doing difficult tasks. However, in the midst of all of this wonder and spectacle, Soren still found himself discontent with how his life was going. This was mainly due to the fact that, although he had been lucky enough to gain a system, the ability he got was minor clairvoyance, which wasn't even rated on most ability tier list sites. He had been excited when he first saw it, but quickly grew bored of its use. For one, he barely had any control over it, and it hadn't really gotten any better after two whole years of having it. Secondly, when he had finally gotten somewhat of a hang of it, and was able to control it at least moderately well, it objectively wasn't very good. He occasionally could see a couple of seconds into the future, his all time record being a whole minute, but that had only ever happened once, because it took quite a lot of focus. Another use was that, even without directly activating the ability from the system interface, Soren was extremely aware of his immediate surroundings, even if he wasn't looking directly at something. For example, there had been an honestly alarming number of times where an object, usually a ball, would be speeding towards him. Before the ball could hit him though, he would feel its presence coming towards him, and he would just follow his instincts and dodge. He had also hoped to be able to read minds with his ability, but he hadn't found much success. There have been a couple of times that he could sort of identify the emotions of small animals, but he wasn't completely sure if he was just imagining it or not. Soren's thoughts had been cut off by a knock on his door. "Come in…" he said in a lazy tone, slight dark circles under his eyes, contrasting quite a bit against his pale white skin. The door knob twists, and in comes his mom, already looking annoyed at him. "Soren, you should have been dressed like twenty minutes ago. I have places to be, so hurry u-" She cuts herself off as she notices the bags under Soren's eyes. She leans in a bit closer, her face somehow looking even more annoyed than before, slight wrinkles of anger appearing as well. "Jesus, Soren, I told you to stop staying up so late!" She pinches her brow, "Just get up and get dressed, you're going to be late if you don't hurry." Soren, already accustomed to this lecture, blinks lazily as his mom slams the door shut as she leaves his room. He sighs languidly, before mumbling to himself "I should probably stop staying up so late…". He rolls off his bed and stands up slowly, his body slightly sore from his constant poor posture. He searches the ground for the set of clothes he usually wears, finding his ragged sweatshirt. It had slight tears at the bottom hem of it, but he honestly didn't care enough to put together a different arrangement of clothes. He grabs a random shirt on the ground, a white t-shirt and finds a pair of black sweatpants as well. He puts the clothes on, and slips on a pair of off brand white Chuck Taylor's. His mom had bought them off of some shady guy she knew at work, thinking they were legit, but they looked convincing enough to Soren, and he genuinely didn't mind all that much. He grabs his backpack, and leaves his room, heading towards the living room. As he enters, he sees his mom frantically putting together a cup of coffee, not noticing his presence. Speaking of presences, his clairvoyance had made him aware of something approaching him from behind. He looks over his shoulder and sees his older sister. She had long reached the age to move out, but had decided to stay with them. "Hey…" Soren says, giving her a slight upward nod. " 'Sup" She ruffles his hair a bit as she walks past him, sitting at the dining table before scrolling through her phone. Soren walks up to his mom as she is still engrossed in her task. "I'm ready, mom…" Soren says in a barely audible voice, a common thing for him in any setting, really. Whether that be in his own house, or outside. His mom turned slightly, acknowledging his existence, before going about her task. "Alright, just go wait in the car for a minute-" She hitches her breath as she nearly drops her coffee cup, catching it before it shatters against the wooden floorboards. Soren didn't seem particularly interested in waiting around, however, so he quickly exits the house and gets in the passenger seat of the car. He gives a lazy upwards glance and takes in the familiar sight of the alien spacecraft that had shown up nearly a decade ago right above the atmosphere. Nearly the whole world had made hundreds, upon thousands of attempts at destroying the spacecraft, but they had kept running into one domineering problem with it. It had a hyper regenerative forcefield around it that spanned several thousands of miles away from it. America had appeared to stop its attempts, at least on the surface. They were likely still coming up with ways in secret to break the forcefield in any way possible, but there hadn't been any developments since they last attempted to destroy the ship some 3 years ago, at least not publicly. Nuclear options clearly weren't working, so Soren had come up with the idea that they were going to attempt to cultivate some sort of super soldier with an ability that would be useful against the forcefield. He wouldn't be very surprised if they didn't already have a team of some of the strongest Saviors on the government payroll. Ah, to be a Savior. One of Soren's dreams before he turned 15. They were the people that fought in the dungeons, exterminating monsters and protecting settlements from attacks of the invaders' attempts at kidnapping people. A lot of countries had been split into different settlements due to the invaders' constant placing of dungeons. The invaders' seemed to only stick to making dungeons in specific areas across the world, forcing countries to conform to the patterns that dungeons appeared in. America was too big of a country to be affected too badly by this predicament, though. Soren wasn't well versed in most countries outside of America, and honestly not even in other American settlements that surrounded his own, but the enslavement of dungeon monsters had been growing in popularity in the last couple of months, at least within his settlement. Owning monsters was seen as a thing only the strong, therefore the rich, could do. The reason being that a monster grew stronger simply by staying alive; After each day, a monster grows slightly stronger. They didn't need to do anything specific, simply making it to the end of the day would empower them. But, for some reason, this doesn't appear to be an issue with the people owning these monsters, and they didn't seem to want to tell anyone how they are able to contain such ticking time bombs. His thoughts are cut off once more by his mother, as she closes the car door. Soren seemed to have been too distracted to notice that she even opened the door in the first place. "Alright, let's get you to school…" She says in a playful tone, almost like she was trying to hype herself up for the rest of the day. Soren gave a slight nod, his gaze kept forward, his pupils strangely dilated at all moments. He never really understood why, but it had been that way ever since he was born, which confused the hell out of every doctor he encountered, even those that he had frequently visited in the past. He hadn't really gotten bullied for it, but people definitely talked about it when he wasn't looking, most of them assuming that he was just cracked out of his mind on some drug. It didn't really help either with how large his eye sockets were compared to the rest of his face. He had dark blue eyes, but with his pupils constantly dilated, it looked more like he had black irises with a blue border around them. It was quite otherworldly, but Soren had grown used to the judging stare of strangers. His mother was probably the only person that didn't seem all that much bothered by it, although she was quite concerned when he was initially born, but she was glad to know that it didn't signify any specific life threatening problems within Soren. She pulled out of the driveway of their rather small home, and went a solid five miles over the speed limit. While she fumbled with the cup holder, trying to put her coffee cup in it, Soren turned to the passenger side window, gazing upon the sight of the rising sun. He had always had an interest in space, and its contents. Although he wouldn't call it a hobby, he did like to do some research occasionally on new discoveries, or new attempts at reaching farther out into space. After the arrival of the aliens, the world quickly took to space exploration, well, not quickly, they were still very busy with keeping the at bay. But after a couple of years of fighting against them, they finally grew comfortable enough with trying to do other things that didn't involve fighting the Aither. Space exploration had become one of the main things, among others, that had become a global interest, most likely due to the definitive proof that aliens existed. The sight of the school began to appear on the horizon.