Four Inches Below

Spring, February 8th, Hokkaido 2071.Cold sweat trickled down Kinos.h.i.ta Ayumi's face as she watched the clock ticking away. Every second the time went by, Ayumi grew paler and paler until it was the shade of a paper. She felt nauseous when she thought about what would happen after this and she couldn't seem to stop herself from hyperventilating.Her heart had been jumping unstoppably since this morning when she first opened her eyes. Her chest felt like it was ready to burst open in any given moment. She even seriously wondered how she hadn't got a heart-attack yet.However, the fact was, it wasn't just her who woke up this way today. Several students in her cla.s.s shared the same worry. If one stood in front of the cla.s.s now, they would be able to see how dreadfully horrified these couple of students were.One of them couldn't even hold it in and had threw up ten minutes ago, but despite feeling sick to the point of fainting, she strongly refused to visit the infirmary because right now for the people like them...For omegas, the only safe havens for them were the cla.s.sroom and the dormitory.But even then, after the cla.s.s ended in fifteen minutes, the cla.s.sroom could no longer shelter them and the dormitory would only open at five O'clock in the evening.In the end, those omegas, the lowest of the strata could only buy their time before they would eventually be hunted down."Hunting" was the term the people of Kyuten Gakuin used to refer to the activity where the higher ranks, Alpha or Beta, went after their target whom they had chosen beforehand during the cycle of moon every month.What came after the hunting went smoothly was the "Mating" where the hunters would be deemed legal to f.u.c.k their victims and robbed them of their aether even if the omega refused to submit to this intercourse activity.This was what the students of Kyuten Gakuin called "Hide and Seek". The game that happened three times every month with different grades every single time before the cycle restarted again next month.Kyuten Gakuin was the infamous academy located at a city in Hokkaido, j.a.pan, called n.o.boribetsu. It was built by utilizing the geographical structure of Jigokudani, the h.e.l.l Valley, that was once known for its volcanic hot springs. But, presently the place was renowned for its pure aether thus it became a strategic location for the academy. The building of the academy itself was constructed by following the Edo-period style of architecture.In this New Age, Kyuten Gakuin stood majestically as the number one Academy among the elites and especially those who were born gifted that landed them in the highest rank of the strata since birth.However, before all of these came to existence, almost fifty years ago, it was the age of darkness for humans. At that time, everyone had thought that it was the beginning of the end.After a mysterious pandemic broke out in 2020, for the first time ever, human race was threatened to the brink of extinction. Every day cases of people dying occurred all over the world and it only increased as the time went by.
Once infected, it only took them five days the longest before their breath ceased to exist. For others with weak immune system could take only two to three days even several hours before they succ.u.mbed to death.How this virus worked was through the human's veins. It would contaminate its victim blood by leaving trails of deathly residue that had remained unknown to this day as what chemical particle it was. When observed by the microscope, one could only see specks of glittering gold that slowly dissolved into our blood and gradually turning it black.By the end of the last day, the victim's body would be covered in dark veins that had become visible all over their skin. Hence, from this scene, the virus was known as the Devil's Tears.The pandemic plagued the earth for three years, and during that period, riots broke out everywhere, every country's experienced economic crisis, corruption reached its apex, the level of criminality shot up, people were starving everywhere as they fought to survive.It was chaos at every nook and cranny of the earth. The balance of the world had been toppled. It was truly the Dark Age of the human race, until one day in early March of 2024, the first survivor of the Devil's Tears emerged in Tokyo.It was a man in his twenties named Saito Jun. He was an ordinary employee in an IT company. However, after the Devil's Tears, his whole life changed. Instead of contaminating his blood, the virus seemed to have caused a mutation to occur in Jun's body causing the evolution of his genes.Jun's body was able to transform the virus into what we knew now as "aether", a magic essence that was converted from human's life force. Hence from that day onwards, what Jun breathed, what kept him alive was aether as the replacement of qi which had once been the source of human's life force.Afterwards, the scientist begun conducting several tests on him and found that this aether seemed to have strengthened its host and cured Jun of his illness. Jun had once been diagnosed with diabetes and cholesterol. But, after they examined him, no complication was detected in his body. He was as healthy as a horse.After going through all the tests, they decided to keep Jun in the hospital for further research. Then, came that day, when a couple of people from the protesting group snuck in and tried to kidnap Jun. They came prepare as they easily pa.s.sed all the guards and even silently killed the two who were a.s.signed to guard Jun's ward. However, no matter how prepared they were, they could never predict what came next.Jun fought back when the kidnappers tried to sedate him to sleep and to everyone's surprise, what supposed to be a light push, ended up sending one of the kidnappers to his death.That was the event that made the authorities realized, the aether didn't just simply alter the person's genes and cured them from their illness, but it gave its host certain ability. For Jun, it was his inhumane strength and the ability to cultivate his magic essence either to amplify it or to shape it however he wished for his defense.Saito Jun was the first Alpha that marked the beginning of the New Age, the age of human evolution.