The sensation wasn't exactly like stepping through a teleporter, though it definitely felt like it.
One second, he was in full consciousness of his body, but in the next, he felt as if he was being drawn out of his body, yet not fully out of it.
A dragging force enveloped him, the world blurring at high speed.
Silence followed for a long while before his eyes snapped open.
Gasps.
A gasp of exhaustion left his lips as he collapsed on the ground, except... There was no ground.
Beneath him was a void, far beneath which were pink stars, shining pink illumination.
He looked around him, noticing the other students, all looking visibly shaken.
Though he was also shaken, a good look at the place he was in made his fear disperse, the realization hitting him.
"A Mind space?"
"That's an astute observation."
The voice echoed, seemingly coming from all parts of the space, but all eyes turned up to the sky.
There was a tall pillar around 20 meters in height, and high above it sat the pink-haired instructor, hands under her cheeks as she looked down at all of them.
"In here, in my mind space, I can better make you feel what I'm going to teach you. Treat this like a projection, except that... you're directly in it."
She explained, and in the next moment, her right hand quietly reached out, fingers pressing softly.
FLICK!
A finger flick and the world instantly changed.
From a void with pink stars to a world of strands. Genetic strands floating all around them, the entire world looking like one big genetic strand itself.
"The Awakening Stimulant Class is all about one thing: Awakening."
"What does it mean to Awaken? A simple ability gaining that happens when you turn exactly 18?"
She asked, and all eyes turned forward.
There she was, surrounded by genetic DNAs and splices.
"A deep understanding of Awakening is needed if you're to ever be able to progress through the realms quickly, and right now, we begin with what makes Awakening impossible before the descent of the Apexialdoom Rift, and why it's possible after."
"Imagine a simple invasion, most clearly present in most chemical reactions."
"A single drop of a chemical, leading to an entire tube of another chemical changing its color... its nature in almost an instant. It's an influence of something external, and alien."
"This is what the Apexialdoom Rift is."
"It's a force of nature, alien in its creation, invading Earth, or, to better put, our Mother Nature."
"Like how the introduction of a chemical to another could lead to the complete change of the other, Earth was greatly influenced by the descent of a new nature, the one present in the Apexialdoom Rift."
"Though the influence resulted in many changes, two things are of major study."
She said, and with another flick, the DNA world gained a bit of light.
Drifting motes of light in every color one could imagine filled the entire place.
Unconsciously, White mused.
"Essence Energy."
"That's another good observation."
She complimented, going on.
"One of the most alien changes Mother Nature went through from the intrusion of the Apexialdoom was Essence energy."
"And Essence energy triggered everything else."
"It was the Apex Influencer, turning Earthling beasts to monstrosities by a forceful corruption of their DNA."
"To the beasts, it was a curse as it increased their ferocity, depriving them of intelligence, like a cancelling of the intelligence strands in exchange for the increase in brute strands."
"From this, they grow the most unnatural paths, simple bestial creatures taking new form."
She explained.
"Let's take a renowned beast of the previous Original Mother Nature, for example. A lion, the one referred to as the King of the Jungle."
FLICK!
With a flick of her fingers, the world changed again, turning into an environmental conglomeration.
The deserts.
The grasslands.
The mountainous peaks.
Cold, icy peaks.
"This simple creature of nature was quickly enough, with the introduction of essence, split into 7 different racial types, each attuned to different essence types, and even different types of environments."
White could easily see them.
One that he recognized was the golden lion, which he had fought first on the entrance test, but there were more.
There was a rocky-looking lion with hardened hot lava oozing from its upper body.
There was another lion-like creature with fins growing outside its body, as it flowed in and out of the water.
Another lion had 6 legs instead of four, its body leaner, with fangs that tore out of its jaw, hanging down beneath.
Each one had something in common.
They were ferocious even standing still, with only one thing in their eyes:
Bloodlust.
This was what awakened beasts are, ferocious beasts enslaved to an unstable bloodlust.
"FLICK!"
One more flick, and the lions disappeared, replaced by the floating essence energy.
"Safe to say the changes in Mother Nature weren't exactly kind to the animals."
"But to us humans, it was a blessing."
"Our bodies reacted far better to essence energy, for it not only strengthened us, but it also allowed us to keep our intelligence, and for some, massively boosts it to unbelievable levels."
"As animals were reduced to different races, humanity kept its singular species."
"Homo sapiens remained unchanging, save for the passing of awakeners' very strong bloodline, but even then, the majority looked no different from the original mortal humans."
"Even with the intrusion of a new force, modern nature remained kind to us, humans. And this is the origin of our ability to awaken: The change induced on Earth by the descent of essence energy from the Apexialdoom Rift."
She explained, and many of the students understood more clearly now.
"Of course, humans and animals were not the only things the essence energy changed."
"Earth was widened, exactly three times its initial size, and new undiscovered zones emerged."
"In fact, right now, over 70% of this new Earth is undiscovered. Humans ourselves—even with this 30% explored, are only settled on 12% of Earth."
"The Supernaturals overtake the rest of this world, and even they have a limit that they occupy."
"Scientists of our time believe that if we venture out to the deepest parts of Earth, explore 60 to 80% of it, we might even be able to find another set of humans that are just like us, but with a unique characteristic different from ours."
Her words left White in quiet disbelief, but her next words really shook him.
"Worthy of mention is that we Humans, Homo Sapiens, already have some different species of humans, amongst us."
"They have come to us from the farthest areas of Earth and naturally established harmony and now live amongst us."
"These species of humans are called Homo Aetherius, and right now, I can see 7 of them amongst you all."
"WHAT!?"