The next day, I woke up early in the morning, a few minutes before sunrise, with the exact same dream about the massive clock tower, with the countdown glaringly saying:

  998 days 4 hours 22 minutes 16 seconds.

  Surprisingly, my theory of going to sleep with a hard resolve to wake up at a specific time had actually worked flawlessly.

  Using my enhanced mind, if I could somewhat better control my physical body and erratic emotions which I did when facing danger, couldn't I theoretically also control my sleep cycle?

  It was a wild thought I had decided to put to the test last night, and it worked.

  Waking up, I freshened up pretty quickly. The supply bag Mr Smith had given me thankfully contained essential things, including a crude but effective wooden toothbrush.

  Once done with my hygiene, I marched to the kitchen and pushed open the window to see that it was still somewhat dark outside.

  I struck a match, lit a candle, and then started meticulously checking the available vegetables and spices one by one.

  Soon, I mentally mapped out a complex cooking plan for a specific recipe after silently thinking and analysing the ingredients for almost ten minutes.

  With that i started cooking, efficiently utilising the best of my enhanced skills and new culinary knowledge.

  Soon, the morning sun finally started rising, and through the window, I could see the illusory sky becoming brighter and brighter, bringing the joy of a new day.

  Soon, after half an hour of grueling focused cooking, I finally completed the broth dish. When I carefully tasted the broth, I grimly realised the dish was only average compared to the fantastic meals I had eaten back home.

  But still, analysing the flavour profile in my mind, searching for exact changes and spice ratios I could change, I tried to somewhat fix it before hoping to improve next time.

  Once done, I walked out to the fireplace room and formally set up a proper dining table. I pulled open the heavy curtains on both sides of the fireplace to let some warm rays of morning sunlight enter the gloomy room.

  After perfectly arranging the rest of the plates and cutlery, I finally stood and waited there patiently for Mr Smith to arrive.

  Since I had officially taken up a paid job as a chef, I firmly believed it to be my duty to provide the best possible dining experience to ensure I kept this life-saving position.

  Although my formal setup was inspired by some fancy books I had read, that didn't matter. The truly important thing was keeping the job I had managed to get purely through sheer luck.

  After a few tense minutes of waiting, Old Smith finally entered the room, freshly washed up.

  Looking at the elaborate dining setup, he was visibly somewhat surprised.

  He slowly sat on the wooden chair I had prepared for him before asking curious,

  "Is this how formal dining is done back in your homeland?"

  "Well, not always, but yes," I answered, while carefully opening the hot cooking pot.

  As I started to serve the steaming dish onto his wooden plate, Mr Smith looked satisfied with the rich smell and scooped up a spoonful of the dish.

  A few tense seconds after thoroughly chewing and swallowing the bite, his hardened face visibly brightened. He looked up at me with a genuine smile

  "It's really not bad. It also has a unique taste I have never experienced before. Did you mix in your hometown's specific style?"

  "Somewhat," I said with a modest smile.

  "Hmm. You are not as bad at cooking as I originally expected. You can definitely improve eventually. Anyway, you sit down and eat too,"

  I gratefully took a seat across from him before he continued speaking.

  "You previously asked about going back to the daily gathering on the central field, right? You can freely go, but don't go wandering blindly around the city like last time. The outer village is full of desperate, violent people, and the inner city is not that drastically different,"

  "So it's not safe around there, especially for someone physically weak like you. Also, try to return here as soon as you possibly can. I need to hear a lot more about your hometown, if you are okay with telling me, that is."

  " I will keep that in mind. Also, I'm more than happy to tell you about my hometown, Mr Smith" I said sincerely, finally starting to eat my own food.

  Eventually, we finished breakfast. When I politely offered to wash his dirty plate, he flatly refused, stating firmly that he doesn't like someone else washing his personal plates. So he washed it himself.

  After that, I meticulously cleaned the dining table and scrubbed all the heavy utensils used in the cooking process, before I neatly put them all away in the cupboard in the kitchen.

  With all that done, I soon dressed up well in my sturdy new leathers before finally leaving the safety of the house, walking toward the central field, hoping for a much better, less bloody day.

  ***

  Arriving at the sprawling central training field, the chaotic hum of the crowd washed over me. It didn't take long to spot the guy and the girl among the sea of desperate faces.

  Nate, caught my eye, a fragile smile breaking through his exhaustion as he asked, "It seems you got a job?"

  "Yes. As a cook. What about you guys?"

  They shared a quick, tired smile before Eva answered.

  "We also found a job each. Nate here is a cleaner in a shop, and I am a support saleswoman. Both our shops sell meat."

  I stood there for a moment, genuinely wondering what a 'support saleswoman' even entailed in this brutal city. But pushing the thought aside, I remembered the truths I had learned and quietly told them about the city's history.

  Hearing that, they stared at me, their faces paling in shock as they screamed in unison,

  "What?"

  Seeing their dreadful expression, feeling satisfied that I wasn't the only one to go through that, we continued as we traded a few more hollow words, the tension lingering, before the familiar, thunderous cheers erupted from the crowd.

  Looking toward the commotion, we saw that twelve new Earthlings had successfully awakened their powers, each ability alien yet carrying similar unnatural undertones.

  Then, just like the gruelling cycle of yesterday, the native recruiters arrived. These hardened veterans represented the major guilds, stepping forward to examine the newly awakened ones before laying out their calculated offers.

  After a tense stretch of time, the awakeners made their desperate choices.

  Most flocked to the Vanguard and the Golden Lotus guilds, visibly intimidated by the brawly members of the Iron sovereign guild, while recalling his threats yesterday, ultimately ignoring his faction entirely.

  Soon they left with their chosen teams.

  With them gone, our conversation dragged on a little longer, trading whatever fragile pieces of information we had scavenged.

  By the time the afternoon sun bled across the sky, I finally cut the talk short.

  "Anyway, guys, I will take my leave. Let's meet tomorrow."

  "Okay, and don't be late. " Eva agreed, her voice thin, as Nate nodded firmly. "Try to find some more information in the meantime if possible."

  "Yeah, yeah," I muttered casually before turning my back and leaving the crowd behind, ending my gathering.

  ***

  Once I reached the familiar sanctuary of the house, I voluntarily slipped through the back door and navigated the shadows to the heat of the smithy.

  Mr Old Smith was already submerged in his gruelling work. Not disturbing him, I quietly took a seat, the rhythmic pounding echoing in the cramped space, before he eventually asked,

  This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

  "So, how was the gathering?"

  "Good," I replied flatly. "Some new guys awakened their powers and got into the guilds."

  He paused his hammering, his eyes locking onto mine. "What about you? Don't you wish to be awakened?"

  "I do," I admitted, the cynical truth heavy on my tongue. "But I have always been average my whole life, and I wouldn't be surprised if I were to be the last person here to awaken. So I don't have many worries about that for now."

  A low, rumbling chuckle escaped him. " Haha, Good. It's better not to worry about things that you don't have any control over," "Anyway, are you ready to talk about your homeworld?"

  "Yes." I replied, feeling the sudden, crushing weight of nostalgia, which turned into confusion " But where exactly should I start?"

  "Hmm. You can start with your family and the things you learned throughout your life. That's the best way,"

  Following his lead, I began speaking about my family. But the next moment, a deep, suffocating sadness threatened to choke me, but I instantly controlled my fractured emotions, forcing the stories out into the stifling air while he mechanically continued his hammering.

  Crang..!Crang..!Crang..!

  My words blended seamlessly with the harsh, screams of his hammer striking bone.

  Although he appeared completely absorbed, I knew the truth: he was using his spirit sense to read my underlying intentions. So, I simply kept talking.

  As the stories were unspooled, they inevitably strayed into realms far beyond his understanding, delving into the modern, scientific discoveries of my world.

  The moment my tales breached those alien topics, Mr Smith abruptly ceased his relentless hammering. He took a seat, poured himself a dark drink, and lit a harsh cigar, listening with intense curiosity.

  Back on Earth, I was merely an average student, a kid who had a hard time retaining information, focused solely on cramming facts to survive exams.

  Now, gifted with this enhanced mind, I could access an enormous vault of knowledge, remembering things I didn't even know I had absorbed.

  As the hours bled away, I watched Mr Smith's scarred face cycle through profound emotions, flickers of joy, visceral shock, and heavy despair mingling with fragile hope.

  He eventually abandoned his smoking and drinking entirely, his focus locked solely on my words.

  By the time my stories reached their exhausted conclusion, the evening shadows had swallowed the room.

  He sat in a stunned, heavy silence for several minutes before speaking. "What a great world to live in. No wonder you miss your world as much as you do." His words confirmed that his psychic abilities could read my raw feelings as well.

  "What I said was simply the summary, limited heavily by my own flawed knowledge," "Also, there are problems with my world too. I just didn't mention them openly, that's all."

  "That's understandable," he nodded "There are no perfect worlds without problems. But compared to my own world, this is far better."

  Seizing the moment, I asked,

  "Can you tell me about your world too, Mr Smith?"

  "Yes, but not much," he answered, a shadow falling over his gaze. "None of the people in the city can talk much about our world. Except for the fact that it's a world filled with endless beasts and ruled by nobles who have built towering walls around the cities to protect them."

  He took a slow, heavy breath. "Even though we can clearly remember our own life there, just when we try to speak about it, our memories unnaturally become cloudy, and we can't remember much."

  His revelation sent a chill down my spine. It was the exact opposite of our situation; while our minds were unnaturally enhanced, their minds were forcefully suppressed.

  Paralysed by my inability to find logical answers in this abyss, I simply buried the mystery. With that grim note, our conversation died, and as he finished his work, we both abandoned the forge.

  Since evening had set in, I went through the motions of cooking, and we ate our silent dinner before I finally dragged my exhausted body to bed.

  As I closed my eyes in the dark, before the reality that I had survived a day without facing any danger brought peaceful sleep, the void of the truth caught me.

  I was still trapped here, far away from my world and my family. The suffocating thought of their despair over my sudden disappearance made the crushing weight in my chest heavier.

  I never had a perfect relationship with my family, yet their mere presence had always provided a safe peace. Now, severed from them, I felt like that peace had been ripped from my life.

  But soon acknowledging my helplessness, I once again used my enhanced mind, desperately forcing my racing thoughts to shut down so I could sleep.

  ***

  The next morning eventually broke, heralded by the exact same haunting dream of the looming clock tower and its relentless countdown.

  After that, the day bled into the exact same grinding routine as yesterday.

  It began with cooking breakfast, followed by the gathering in the central field, where thirty-three more Earthlings had successfully awakened. They made their pacts with the guilds and vanished into the city.

  Once that ended, after a few talks with my friends, I retreated to the house, solely to drown the silence by telling more stories of my world to Mr Old Smith, eventually cooking, eating dinner, and forcing myself back into the dark oblivion of sleep.

  This numb, repetitive cycle became the exact rhythm of my life for the next few days, stretching on steadily as eventually my physical scars completely healed.

  As I rotted in this repetitive loop, more and more Earthlings steadily awakened and pledged their lives to the guilds.

  Every single day, after escaping the stadium, I spun tales of Earth while the relentless, metallic shrieking of his hammer filled the air.

  With nothing else to anchor my fractured mind, I intensely focused on his hammering motions, clinically analysing the microscopic differences between every lethal swing.

  Gifted with an enhanced mind, my ability to passively absorb and learn these complex hammering styles was superior to my old, average self, but when it came to clearly remembering what I lost, the gift was also a curse.

  Concurrently, the black despair in my heart mutated and grew larger every single day.

  The agonizing thoughts of my missing family, my friends, my world, my life on earth, the confort I felt with them, the loss of all of them, and the fact that there was nothing I could do, or that I didn't had a way to return to them in the near future, all these things flooded my mind like an ocean.

  They made it hard for me to live here, interact with people, they made it physically impossible to snatch even a single night of peaceful rest; I was losing my sanity, my peace. I had to force my brain to shut down every night to get some sleep, my bedsheets soaked with pathetic tears.

  Eventually, the seventh day of my arrival in this hell dawned.

  Returning from the gathering, I numbly took my usual seat in the sweltering smithy, staring blankly at Mr Smith's relentless work.

  By now, I had bled myself dry of every story I could possibly remember, leaving me with absolutely nothing to do.

  Drowning in the agonising despair of missing my home and family, and physically shattered by sleep deprivation, my mind screamed for a distraction.

  A brutal, physical pain to overwrite the mental one seemed like perfect salvation. Watching his rhythmic strikes, a sudden, desperate idea flared in my mind.

  "Mr Smith," I called, my voice cutting through the ringing sound. "Would it be fine if I did the hammering?"

  He paused, slowly turning around. A faint, surprising smile touched his scarred face before he gave a firm nod.

  Without a word, he plunged his tongs into a boiling alchemical potion, extracting what looked like a thick, short bone, just long enough to forge a dagger.

  He thrust that, with a rough sketch of a dagger toward me.

  "Here, try to reshape this piece of bone into this,"

  I grabbed the drawing, my mind burning the complex dimensions into my memory. Returning the parchment, I gripped the heavy tongs holding the smoking bone.

  Getting up, I slammed the bone down onto the iron anvil and accepted the hammer he offered.

  Staring dead at the bone, I forcibly stabilised my erratic breathing.

  I channelled every detail of the hammering techniques I had memorised over the past week, raised the steel, and unleashed my first strike.

  Crang..!

  The sharp sound shattered the air, immediately followed by a relentless storm of blows.

  Crang..!Crang..!Crang..!

  With every single impact, a blinding pain ripped through my unconditioned muscles. I had never subjected my body to this kind of agonising labour, yet I stubbornly pushed forward.

  Truthfully, I harboured zero passion for blacksmithing; my actions were born purely from suffocating despair. Visualising the void of my missing family, I wanted nothing more than to smash something as violently as I could.

  I craved the physical destruction of my own muscles, knowing that physical agony was the only reliable drug that could grant me the oblivion of sleep.

  It was the best, most brutal coping mechanism I possessed. I was weaponising physical suffering to slaughter my mental anguish. And so, the violent strikes went on.

  Crang..!Crang..!Crang..!

  Even as my body wept a river of cold sweat, even as my screaming arms felt like they were on the precipice of shattering, I refused to stop. I simply grit my teeth, switched my bleeding grip to the other hand, and swung again, and again.

  As I continued, after what felt like a gruelling hour trapped in that sweltering purgatory, I finally let the hammer drop.

  Drenched in sweat and radiating pure pain, I had completed the initial reshaping phase. With that, I slowly turned my aching neck to face Mr Smith, showing him the result, silently demanding judgment.

  He stared at me, then down at the reshaped bone, which undeniably held the lethal, curved silhouette of a dagger, with an expression of profound shock.

  "Where did you learn blacksmithing?" he asked, his voice thick with disbelief.

  "Here. By watching you work all these days," " So, how is this, Mr Smith?"

  A jagged smile forced its way onto my face as the burning agony in my muscles successfully drowned out my mental abyss.

  "Good," "It's one of the best first-time hammerings I have ever seen. A single mistake would have shattered the bone entirely, but you didn't. Maybe it was luck of the first timer, but you definitely possess a talent for blacksmithing." He stepped closer.

  "So tell me, would you like to officially learn blacksmithing? Would you like to become my disciple?"

  The words hit me like a physical blow. Did he just say I'm talented? Me? The eternal symbol of averageness?

  Hearing those words of validation, an alien surge of fierce pride erupted in my chest, completely eclipsing my initial, desperate intent of just seeking pain.

  "Yes. Mr. Smith," I answered, a genuine smile breaking through the grime on my face.

  "No. Not Old Smith," he corrected firmly, his voice rumbling with newfound authority. "If you are going to learn the art of blacksmithing from me, from now on, you should call me Master."

  The demand only cemented the soaring feeling in my chest. "Yes, Master," I replied, standing taller.

  In the crushing void of losing my family, finding a surrogate anchor here in this nightmare was a salvation.