The lights were turned out; the curtains drawn; Sullivan had secluded himself within the tenebrous sanctum of his room for four days. During that period, he meditated on the dream he had—the dream that he kept having every night, each time with clearer details and additional clarifying context, along with his accruing strength and power; all while sensational news kept progressively making a stir in the outside world.

  In the last few days, as high school students undertook their annual awakening tests, over thirteen students had awakened with A+ aptitudes, Sullivan included. Priorly, the nation could only have boasted to having seven A+ aptitude awakeners. But currently, with this unprecedented influx of A+ aptitude awakened, there totaled a whopping twenty A+ aptitude awakened. But not only that, according to the official reports, they had all awakened darkness affinities. Even more alarming, six of those A+ aptitude awakened had retested, Sullivan included, to discover they had a S aptitude.

  This anomalous event naturally generated a torrent of far-fetched, conspiratorial, and slanderous theories. One theory claimed that all of these fledgling A+ aptitude awakened were the secret love children of Marty Savage. Another less ridiculous theory claimed them to be the unwitting victims of secret government testing. One theory postulated that energy was escaping from the dimensional rifts, causing the aptitudes to consequently raise.

  All of this, the dreams, the news, the theories, had been stirring around in Sullivan's head, making connections, forming theories of this own. It was not until Sullivan had learned that apparently all thirteen of the Thirteen Chosen (the name the media was calling them) had scored a hundred on their academic portion of the awakener test that he began to realize what was happening, and how infuriated it made him.

  Positing that the world had ended, or was going to end, everything fell into place. In another timeline earth met a calamitous ending, condemning a few lucky—or terribly unlucky—survivors to languish in that hellscape. One, or more, of those miserable vestiages of the former lively and relatively peaceful world took it upon themselves to reverse that awful fate by tampering with the past. With the assistance of some insanely powerful temporal ability, this mystery orchestrator, or cabal of them, had decided to meddle with the aptitudes of thirteen, or more, individuals, while also granting them with the chance to cultivate their strength through their nightly trips to the future; all in a bid to save the world as they remembered it.

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  But there was a problem: how to assure you picked the right world-saving candidate. What if, by accident, an overly egotistical student with anti-social tendencies was blessed with prodigious power? They could possibly exacerbate the problem by killing off their weaker competition and causing problems all around with their imperious behavior. There needed to be some way to vet the candidates. This is where the one-hundred percent scoring comes in; as evidently, they had settled for the academic test scores to winnow the wheat from the chaff; because would a maniac gain proficiency in knowledge of rules and regulations, of fairness and justice? That was the anticlimactic reason Sullivan had been chosen specifically: he paid attention too well in class and had ten dollars to win.

  But this standard of culling would prove ill-starred for the would-be fate changers: Sullivan was slightly too twisted.

  "And to think you had me tricked; made a fool out of me." Hysterical laughter spilled out of Sullivan. "I originally was right, of course. Random people just don't become heroes and save the world. I was never going to become special. But then you had to go around poking your nose in my business, deciding my life and fate for me—ME! Making me suffer those terrible restless nights of strife and terror! Expecting me to drudge like a workhorse, training, fighting, getting stronger, so that I can save the world, because I'll be forced to, right? No sane person wouldn't try to save their world... Ha, but you've already got all the work horses you need. Twelve S aptitude awakened should be enough to avert the apocalypse, right? You know what I'm going to do? I'm gonna find you, and we'll see whom plays with whose life."

  And with that, Sullivan, who still had yet to join a guild, knew perfectly which guild he would actually join: The Faust Guild.

  Dartford, who still blamed himself for Sullivan not joining the Smithson&Company, would also blame himself for Sullivan's new choice.