Ryuko looked at me, his eyes piercing my soul. Once again, I was prompted with a difficult decision. It's almost as if Akira wanted me to choose Celeste, but Ryuko didn't. I questioned this.

"Ryuko, why the apprehension? Is there a reason you don't want me and Celeste to travel together?" I asked.

"I just don't think it's smart to dive headfirst into the affairs of The Mezurashi without first completing basic training. You could get yourself killed very quickly that way, and with someone with as much potential as you, it would be a devastating loss-"

Ryuko glared at Akira, who was pointing a finger at him. She had assumed control of his body, and forced him to relay his thoughts aloud. Akira was an incredibly powerful esper.

"Don't you ever make me say such things again, I will personally report you to Renjiro for invading my privacy like that!" yelled Ryuko.

"Oh quit your whining, he'll learn one way or another about their existence," said Akira.

"The Mezurashi? What's that?" I asked, confused. Ryuko grimaced.

"Well, the best way I can put it, is that they're a group of powerful unusuals, but I won't tell you any more than that, not until you pass the final test."

"Oh, so they're like a gang of unusuals? Or like a mob?"

"Sort of, they're more of an organization, look I can't be telling you these things, I won't say any more!" said Ryuko. Akira interjected~

"I believe that if Celeste wants to travel with you, she should. She's right you know, your ceiling, it has no limit, at least not one that I can sense."

I couldn't believe what I was hearing. My ceiling? No limit? Was I capable of possessing infinite strength somehow? It seemed so...unbelievable. There was no way somebody like me could be strong like that, or even capable of harboring it for that matter.

But still, Celeste, standing before me, was holding her arm out in front of her, presenting it to me.

"If you'd like me to travel with you, will you hand your sword over to me?" she asked.

"What? You need my sword? What for?"

"I need to come into contact with it in order to manifest within it. When I touch the handle of your sword, my body will transcend into the blade, and I will be able to guide you."

"It's a simple and quick process, but only if you'll allow me to do so," she said. Celeste and I had just met, and knew absolutely nothing about each other, and yet she wanted desperately to travel with me.

I knew that her reasoning must have been incredibly important, otherwise, there's no way someone would put so much faith into someone else so quickly. I decided to take the risk and accept her offer. I presented my sword to her, and she grasped the handle.

"...thank you, so much..." she said, as her body began to glow brightly. The light emitting from her was almost blinding. She began to float into the sky and twirl rapidly before becoming translucent once again, returning to her spirit form. Then, she flew full speed into the handle of my blade, where she was consumed. The blade of my sword began to glow and then return to its normal state.

She was inside my sword...

"Can you hear me?" I heard a faint voice call out to me. It sounded just like Celeste. When she spoke, my sword glowed.

"Yes, I can hear you, what about me?" I asked.

"I can hear you just fine. It's nice and roomy in here, I wish you could see what I'm seeing."

"How could a sword possibly be roomy? It's so thin, where exactly are you?"

"I'm in your sword dummy, but I'm not literally inside the blade, when a spirit enters a weapon, they're sent to a realm of sorts that your sword happens to be the gateway to, and when we exit the realm, we pop out of your weapon."

"Oh, like that makes any more sense than chilling inside of someone's sword, anyway, so are you officially my sword spirit now?" I asked.

"I sure am! Sword Spirit Celeste is here to aid you in your final examination!"

Wait, did she just say she was going to aid me in my final examination? Was that even allowed? My father told me that I would be appointed a spirit after the exam had concluded.

"Is that allowed?" I asked, Ryuko answered.

"It is. Spirits aren't just native to this academy, anyone can go capture a spirit at any point in time. In fact, I'm sure many people enrolling here have a spirit already."

"Oh, I see. Well, how exactly are spirits able to help us?" I asked.

"Spirits have been around long before humans even existed, and if their point of origin on Earth stems from the Spirit Portal, which is located in Minerva, that means that they've co-existed with unusuals for millennia, and are incredibly knowledgable on them. They can tell you how to take them down."

"I see, that's incredibly handy. Celeste, how much do you know about--" Celeste interrupted me.

"Everything."

"Oh, really? You know everything about unusuals? Can you tell me where they came from?" I asked.

"...almost everything..." she replied with apprehension. Akira added onto Celeste's thoughts~

"Nobody knows where the unusuals came from, or how long they've been around. All we know is the first sightings of them took place some 2000 years ago. Our entire dating system is based on the first documented encounter of one, which the earliest we could find was 2021 years ago."

It was beginning to add up inside my head. While unusuals have been around for over two thousand years, there was still so much we didn't know about them, such as their origin. I decided to ask Celeste a different question.

"Well, can you tell me a bit about intelligent unusuals?" I asked.

"Sure, what do you want to know?"

"How did they gain intelligence?" I asked. Ryuko facepalmed, but his expression changed when Celeste answered the question.

"Well, the most-likely theory is the theory of creation, which states that unusuals with intelligence are being created by a more powerful unsusual, as they all seem to possess incredible abilities. Perhaps there is one unusual behind the creation of others."

Ryuko's eyes widened, as did Akira's.

"That's news to me. I thought that they had just evolved naturally like humans," said Ryuko.

"Which could still be true, but with the incredibly dense population of unusuals who are smarter and more powerful than humans, evolution to this degree, in such a quick time, is biologically impossible, unless they had existed and evolved for thousands of years prior to their discovery."

"Intelligent unusuals were first discovered some 700 years ago, and exponentially rose beyond the capabilities of humanity. You'll learn all about this in school Hachiro, and they'll probably teach you the evolutionary theory, but just know that there are definitely holes in it," said Celeste.

I was learning so much about unusuals that I hadn't known before. Spirits truly were remarkably knowledgable creatures. It seemed as if Ryuko and Akira were also learning a few things of their own, had they not asked the same questions to their own spirits?

I decided not to question Celeste any further. It was getting late, and I had to get back to my room so that I could get some sleep.

"Thank you, for everything Celeste. I think it's time though that I go to my dorm, I should get some rest." I said.

"Very well, if you must know more, you can always call upon me," said Celeste, ceasing communications as my sword dimmed back to its original state. Ryuko spoke again,

"Hachiro, if you make it to the final examination tomorrow, just know this, your spirit will guide you and help you. Call upon them if you find yourself in danger."

"I will. Thank you, Ryuko, was it?"

"Yes, Ryuko Uchida. You will be seeing me again, sometime soon..." he said, before vanishing into the darkness. Akira laughed,

"He always does that, he's trying to act all cool and tough because he's a Kanpeki member. Anyway, Hachiro, go get some sleep, you'll need all the energy you can have for tomorrow, the test is pretty brutal."

"When will I know if I've qualified?" I asked,

"Tomorrow when you wake up, check your mailbox, it'll be grouped with everybody else's. If you see a green envelope in there, then congratulations! If you see a red envelope though, then tough luck..."

"Anyway, I have to go now, but good luck tomorrow Hachiro!" said Akira before flying away into the night sky. Being an esper must be so fun, being able to fly and read minds. Tomorrow, I would look for a green envelope...a green envelope...I hoped that it wouldn't be red.

When I arrived at my dorm building, the doors were unlocked, and being guarded by who I could only assume were experienced students on night watch. I entered, found my room, set my stuff down on the ground without organizing it, and crashed in my bed due to the immense exhaustion after today's exam.

Tomorrow was a new day, a new opportunity, and hopefully, the day I would finally officially become a student at Eritoakademi, Institute for The Extraordinary.