Reborn: Apocalypse Ready. War Goddess by My Side novel Chapter 45

Chapter 45 Divine Awakening

Finished

The apparatus combined the pinnacle of contemporary engineering with the concentrated power of divine crystal and origin crystal, working in tandem to actively draw out the Divine Sigil slumbering inside every Awakened.

Could someone skip the ceremony entirely and simply wait for their Divine Sigil to surface on its own?

Technically, yes.

But that natural process was glacially slow, stretching well into a person’s twenties or even thirties, and by then the window for optimal growth had long since closed.

The realm needed a continuous, steady

In this age, Draconia simply didn’t have that kind of time to spare T flow of new Awakened blood pouring into the Divine Sanctum.

There was one constant, though, that had never once been broken. Nobody under the age of eighteen had ever successfully awakened a Divine Sigil.

Which meant every twelfth–grade student here today had already crossed that threshold.

They’d all been waiting for exactly this.

For these seniors, today marked the single most pivotal turning point of their entire lives.

Awaken a Divine Sigil, and the path led straight to the Awakened Academy. Fail to awaken, and the road ahead was the SAT, a conventional university, and a life built in the civilian world as a scholar or a scientific contributor to Draconia’s future.

Today was the day history would be written.

All six thousand and some odd twelfth–grade students converged on the Divine Awakening grounds and arranged themselves into orderly formations, each class filling out its own block of the field.

Excitement radiated off the crowd in almost tangible waves.

Everyone was waiting.

Everyone was hoping for something high–ranked.

But by historical averages, only around two thousand of those six thousand students would awaken a Divine Sigil at all.

And of those two thousand, the vast majority, somewhere around sixteen or seventeen hundred, would land in the C–rank or B–rank range.

True A–rank or higher? That was roughly three hundred people out of the entire cohort.

The odds were brutal.

S–rank was in a category so rare it barely registered. Those people were the kind of once–in–a–generation talents that entire nations built their futures around.

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11:25 am

Chapter 45 Divine Awakening

Finished

But C and B–rank were far from worthless.

They still stood miles above ordinary civilians.

A C–rank had the potential to become a Two–Sigil Divine Envoy, and a B–rank could rise to a Three–Sigil Divine Adept or, with exceptional effort, Four–Sigil Divine Knight.

It was a real path. Just not the legendary one.

Bianca stood right next to Steven, practically vibrating with nerves.

She snuck a sideways glance at him. SSS–rank.

Steven spent the last two days telling her what to expect.

When her Awakening came, he said, every eye on the field was going to turn toward her.

People would come at her from every direction, wanting to be close to her, wanting a piece of what she would become.

But she didn’t want any of that.

She just wanted Steven to be the one standing next to her.

He seemed to pick up on her tension without her having to say a word.

“Divine Awakening, begin!”

His voice rang across the field like a battle horn, and the atmosphere reached a fever pitch that felt almost sacred.

At the center of the grounds, ten black metal columns erupted from the earth, each one rising thirty feet into the air and measuring over three feet across, spaced at even intervals around the field.

The Awakening Guidance Pillars had risen.

Each one was threaded through with the most advanced source energy technology the current age had produced.

Every student on the field stared at those ten pillars with something close to reverence.

It was finally time.

Even Steven, with a full lifetime of memory behind him, felt something stir in his chest at the sight. Something old and restless and unavoidably human.

Would he land at B–rank again?

And what about the Crimson–Eyed Heavenfang crest burned into his chest?

He had no answers, only the moment in front of him.

If it was B–rank, he’d deal with it. If it was higher, he’d welcome it. There was nothing left to do but find

out.

Teachers began taking their positions around the pillars, a mix of Aethercrest staff, faculty from the Awakened Academy, and one stone–faced military representative standing with the rigid stillness of someone who understood the weight of the occasion completely.

This was not a ceremony to be taken lightly, and the presence of every official figure here made that abundantly clear.

Up on the main platform, distinguished figures from every relevant institution occupied their seats.

With all eyes on the field and the whole city holding its breath, the Divine Awakening began.

11:25 am