Horizon:Volume 1 Chapter 02

Chapter 02: The Classroom's Wrecking Crew

Class is not over until the bell rings.

But what if the classroom has fallen into ruins,

Will the lecture still be resuming?

Musashi Ariadust Academy's classrooms are made of wood. It was a small room but it did not give a cramped impression as the number of students per class barely reached 20. In the back row, a few vacant seats are evident.

White clouds filled the screen beyond the glass paneled windows.

In front of the blackboard, with a World History textbook on one hand, stood a short-heighted female teacher. Her name is Mitsuki Sanyou, as corresponded to the name written on the tag attached to her body.

"In the past, humans had made a descent from heaven to this land, a place called Far East. However, the environmental climate outside this land proved to be uninhabitable, thus people are unable to migrate outwards. The solution that the old people had thought up is, they created an alternate space similar to a parallel world, by copying the Far East itself, therefore doubling the lands available for settlement. People started residing both in real world and parallel world. But people wondered if they will be able to ascend back to heaven one day. With this, the people had proposed one idea. If they walk the same road that past people had tread before, in other words, by recreating the history, they will be able to return to heaven one day. Because of this notion that they created...

Sanyou paused, resting the chalk she has in hand on the blackboard, and continued,

"...the Testament. An archive of written histories that happened in the previous world.

●

Sanyou tapped the blackboard. She then underlined the word Testament.

"The people in that time thought they could go back to the heaven by creating the same history, that's why they created seven sets of Old Testament and New Testament, which holds the history record of B.C. and A.D period respectively."

It's like a strategy guide for the present world, Sanyou added.

"Having said that, if people knows what will happen in the future, there will be some who will take advantage of it. In order to avoid this problem, people had decided to place a limitation to the amount of history they will read to until the next 100 years. Another thing, they cannot place the duty of displaying the history update to a human, as that human will be liable in exploiting it. However, they resolved this issue by using the tectonic plates that governs everything as an intermediary and they successfully linked fate with Testament.

Sanyou turned to face her students. She knit her brows. In contrast, everyone eyed her with questioning gazes.

...Shoot. As I thought, all this "fate" talk was hard to comprehend, after all? Maybe it was too early to discuss about the abstract topic.

She got tensed inside. Then she reviewed in her mind the lesson outline that she prepared for this lecture. After taking a breath,

"Do you know what fate is? Let's see... Abe-kun, what is the first thing to come in mind when you hear the word fate?"

She asked one of her student. Then the male student responded bashfully...

"---A marriage?"

Is that a sarcasm against me who just got dumped by a guy who fled to another woman?

For a moment, Sanyou's surroundings has dropped to absolute zero. The male student break into laughter. Even surrounding students started calling him "Marriage Man". That will be his nickname for the rest of his school days, she bet.

Sanyou collected herself, letting loose a bitter smile as she noticed the classroom became lively. Then she resumed the lecture.

"Okay... In other words, when he associated fate with marriage, he meant that marriage is..."

Unavoidable, is what she's going to say.

"Un.. Un... Unavoid... But it's avoiding me, GODDAMMIT!! Shit! Did I choose a wrong image to conduct myself!?"

"Sensei! Please don't sink into self-loathing with reality!"

Shut up you all! Anyone can get married while still young. That's right. I'm still 24. Yes, still young. It's within the range of "still young", right? I haven't yet spent half of 50 years of human life.

For the meantime, Sanyou regained herself, and continued,

"Anyway, to sum it up. Fate means something that is inevitable."

For some reason, the students nodded with sympathetic gazes in Sanyou's words, but Sanyou convinced herself that it was just a mere illusion.

"It has been known that fate actually exists. This has been proven already back in the era of Gods. Fate basically has variability. The existence of fate is the very reason that there is a beginning and an end to everything. Together with space and time, it is accessible in the world's Leyline which governs all creation."

So...

"The incessant flow of fate as long as this world exists and the Testament. The people in the past had managed to link this two together. And then, adjusting with the current time, it will show the history of human until century ahead."

Sanyou resumed writing on the blackboard.

"This testament, as it repeats history, were allotted the same position to the major religious scriptures that existed in the previous world. Except, all of that position were lost because when people were still residing in heaven, different Gods actually existed. That's why today, people worshiped not the Gods, but instead..."

She wrote this on the board:

• The recreation of history through Testament, is what people believed in.

"And that leads to our present state. Present religious groups and organizations are suffixed with 教譜 <Kyoufu> , or sometimes 教譜教団 <Kyoufu Kyoudan>, while its followers are called 奏者 <Sousha>. So Shinto for example, here in Far East, it is called Shinto Kyoufu. A Shinto shrine is called Shinto Kyoufu Kyoudan, and people who can use this power are called Shinto Sousha."

Furthermore,

"As far as religions outside the Far East goes, their names are spelled backwards to what they are known before. The reason behind that is, not only it creates a dichotomy between the same religion of the past and the present, but to those people who had moved to the parallel world, it serves as a divine protection for them to 'be able to one day leave this closed-off space'. The inverting of names signifies retrogression.

Tsirhc-ian, who worships the Testament, its offshoot Murasai, and anti-Testament faction , all after leaving the Harmonic Divine States, in order to avoid the chaos of reformation, left their names inverted. In present, the main religions are:

• Pro-Testament. Tsirhc-ian branches :
  • Scion : Primarily Demons <Mazoku>. Loves Old Testament. Usually vagabonds.
  • Catholic : Mainly K.P.A Italia, Tres España, Hexagon Francoise. Worships saints.
  • Protestant : M.H.R.R. Loves Testament. Nondescript people but they are good at business.
  • Orthodoxia : Soviet Russia. Also interpreted as Russian Catholic.
  • Anglican Church : Mainly British. Divorce is legal. Officially a protestant but inclines towards Catholic.

• Pro-Testament Offshoot :
  • Murasai : Mainly Middle-East. Requires everyday to go to church or fasting.

• Anti-Testaments
  • Dunhi : India. the way of life and death. and curry.
  • Outa : China. Littered with sages. Ramen.
  • Shintoism: Many Gods. Worshippers are unexpectedly arbitrary.
  • Buddhism: Far Easterner's version of Dunhi. Packed with many spells.