PROLOGUE 02: Zyth

It's been 2 days since "the incident". None of us were innovative enough to name it something more unique, so we just went with that. What we are referring to is when we were teleported to another world. We all received unique abilities called "Vrin". We also discovered that we died in our old world, though none of us remember it.

During the past 2 days, I've been doing a little research on this world. In this world, everyone has "Zyth", which is just their word for magic. Zyth works a little differently than our perception of magic. Everyone has skills in this world: Strength, Speed, Perception, Endurance, and luck. Outside of luck, Zyth amplifies these traits, if you have a high stat on strength, then it would passively amplify your muscles.

Now the way stats work in this world is complicated and weird. Each skill is divided into two categories, their rank and their level. Ranks are split up from A-D where A is the best and D is the worst. When I got my skills evaluated, the mage said I had horrible strength. This was because I have D ranked strength. Rank determines how much more powerful you'll get with every level, and also the maximum level you can get in a skill. Someone with level 10 A rank strength is going to be way more powerful than someone with level 10 D rank strength. Rank cannot be improved or changed.

Levels work just as you would've expected. Everyone in my class came here with all their levels being 0. Levels determine how powerful a certain skill is. If you use that skill, it eventually gets leveled up. The amount of experience needed to level up is increased based on your level.

So to summarize everything I just said, I am the weakest person in my class, and I cannot ever get to the same level as someone like Ryker.

I arose from my bed. My room appears to be like a common luxury bedroom from a castle. The bed is oversized and there isn't much in the room, other than the giant painting, a table, a cabinet, and a mirror.

Today is the first day of training. No one in our class managed to find out how to use their Vrin or Zyth, and also butlers/maids in the castle refused to answer questions as they were ordered not to talk to us, strange.

We walked up to the training grounds. It looks like a mix between a massive school and a European-style mansion, with there being an outdoor area to the side. I could see a massive track. In the middle, there were multiple straw dummies, probably for sword training. We see Cassian and we start following him.

I looked around trying to observe my surroundings, outside of our class, Cassian and a couple of knights and mages accompanying us, I couldn't find anyone else around us. Did they build all of this for just us?

We entered the building followed by a classroom, which surprisingly didn't look much different from the ones in our world. There are rows of tables all facing forward. Me and my friends all sat in the right corner together.

Cassian steps behind a Lectern. "Everyone please take a seat." Cassian pauses and sets his script on the lectern. "On your way here, you would've seen an outdoor area with a track and dummies. Starting today, you will be expected to meet up in that area at 6 AM every day. There will be dire consequences if you fail to be present. Teachings end at 5 PM. We will spend the first 8 hours on physical training. This will vary depending on what role you were assigned. The remaining 3 hours will be spent on world history and mathematics. Any questions?"

11 hours of school is insane. I took laziness to the next level in my old world, I would be a procrastinator and do the bare minimum amount of work. They expect me to train for 8 hours straight? Even other people in our class couldn't train that hard.

Now that I think about it, what happened to our teacher?

"What happened to Mr. Kingston?"

Cassian squints his eyes and faces me. "He was… sent away. He is far too old to begin training and will not prove an asset to our kingdom."

Ok, now I'm scared. The pause before he said "sent away" might be implying that they killed him. I don't want to push Cassian anymore about the topic or I fear for my own life.

Cassian's facial expression returns to normal. "Does anyone else have any questions..? No..? OK, then we will begin our first training lesson in the outdoor area. Follow me."

We stand up from our tables and start to follow Cassian out of the building. This was getting kind of boring, so I struck up a conversation with my friends.

"What role do you think you'll have?"

"What do you mean? They already told us our roles. I'm going to be on the frontlines as a knight." Deion said in a playful tone.

"I'm going as a mage in the back." declared Alice enthusiastically.

Timothy stares blankly at us. "I'm an archer."

"You already got told your position? They never said anything to me…" I say in a mix of sadness and confusion.

Alice gives me a cold glare as if she's looking down at me. "No offense, but you don't excel at anything."

"Yeah, outside of intelligence, all of your skills are below average," Timothy says while not even bothering to turn to look at me.

Deion also joins in. "Your highest skill, intelligence, is only average. Like that mage lady told you before, you cannot even conjure basic Zyth."

"Then what are they going to assign me- Wait, they're not planning on kicking me out, right? They can't just forcibly summon me here and then tell me to go live on my own…"

Alice puts on a shallow smile. "I'm sure they won't do that."

"You know what they did to our teacher, Mr. Kingston, they KILLED him and they're going to kill me like they killed him," I whisper.

"YOU DON'T KNOW THAT"

Suddenly, the entire line went quiet and everyone stared at us. Cassian stops and walks towards us.

"Is there a problem here?"

Deion quickly takes charge of the situation. "Uh, no there isn't. You know they're just arguing about their relationship, love drama."

"Well save the arguments AFTER school. This is your only warning, don't disturb our class again or there will be consequences."

Cassian walks to the front of the line and we continue walking towards the field.

"Are you ok? It doesn't matter if Kingston was killed, discussing a topic like this could get US killed." Deion angrily lectures me.

"I didn't expect Alice to get so defensive. What's up with that reaction?"

I was confused about why Alice had such a strong reaction to hearing her teacher might've been killed. Maybe it was because of the stress of coming here.

"I don't want to talk right now," Alice murmured in a quiet, sad tone.

Alice leaves our group and walks towards the back of the line away from anyone's sight.

I walked closer to Deion and whispered. "You don't think it's weird though, they've summoned us against our will, forced us to follow a strict schedule with consequences if we don't follow what they say and they've killed our teacher."

"Calder, are you fucking stupid or something. I said to not talk about this anymore." Deion angrily answered, whilst whispering.

"Timothy, you agree with me, right? All of this seems very suspicious."

"I don- I'm not going to answer this. Please just let it go, man…" Timothy still doesn't face me, but his tone changed to sadness.

"Great you too. Did everyone's brain just shut off or something?"

Deion, who just reached his limit, asked in a Tired tone, "Look just fuck off, I wanna speak to Timothy, alone."

I as well have reached my limits. "Fine, I WILL. Just remember this, he said summoning only would've worked if we died. The last memory I remember was talking to you guys about summer plans. How do you think we somehow suddenly died? By what, a-"

Suddenly Deion pushes me so hard I fall onto the ground. I bet if Cassian wasn't here he would've started a brawl. He looks so angry that I'm scared to even look at him.

I take my loss and start walking away from my group. I take a glance back and I see Alice walking back to them. I think to myself, did I just get kicked out of my friend group?

We arrive at the outside training area. Cassian stands in front of what looks to be a garden shed in a European-esque style.

"Please stand in a single file line. We will provide you with equipment depending on your assigned role. These are REAL top-quality weapons. You will keep them, take care of them, and sleep with them. If you lose them, there WILL be consequences."

I'm confused about what he means by "consequences". He keeps mentioning punishments ever since we got here. No one has gotten in trouble… yet, but I wonder what they'll experience.

Anyways, I wonder what weapon I'll get. I think I'm the only person in class who wasn't notified of my role.

After waiting for about half an hour, I finally got to the front of the line.

Cassian raised his eyebrow. "Calder, right?"

"Yes. I'm the only one who wasn't informed of my role, is there some kind of error?"

"No, there wasn't. It was hard to determine what role you should have since you don't have any specific talents. We decided to choose swordsmanship."

Luck was my lowest skill, with it being so low that the mage couldn't even scale it. Even so, strength was my second lowest practical skill, with it being D-ranked.

"Swordsmanship? But my perception is higher than my strength."

"That's true, except your perception is BELOW average. Even if it's better than your strength, you'll never be able to hit anything. You'll just waste our arrows if we decide to give you a bow. With a sword, you won't be able to deal a lot of damage, but you'll at least HIT something. Here you go." Cassian explained with a grin on his face.

Cassian hands me a sword. The second I grab the handle and he lets go, it instantly falls to the ground. I didn't think swords would be this heavy. I end up having to drag the sword along the ground just to get to the dummy area. I saw my group of friends but I decided that they had enough of me today, so I trained by myself.

Cassian began showing the basics of swordplay, archery, and Zyth. He taught the swordsman how you would hold the sword and do a basic swing. We started attacking the dummies and landing hits. When it was all over, a mage walked up to us and like before, started scanning our stats.

"Ryker, level 6 strength."

"Jennifer, level 5 precision"

"Antoine, level 6 intelligence"

Like before she would scan the skills of each of our classmates. Swordsmen would increase their strength, archers would increase their precision and mages would increase their intelligence. I realized that intelligence isn't based on how smart you are, but your Zyth handling and intensity.

"Calder, level- uh" The mage abruptly stops her sentence with a confused look on her face. "Calder, level 1 strength."

"What- why did everyone get a 5-level increase and I only got 1?" I demand angrily.

At this point, I'm not even surprised, I'm just angry.

She ignores my questions and proceeds with the next classmate.

Ever since I arrived in this world, I've been getting more pathetic. How come out of everyone in the class, I have the lowest stats in general and the worst Vrin!?

Ryker passes by me. "At least you're number one at something, being the weakest."

"Man fuck you."

Ryker repeats what I say in a nerdy voice.

What are you gonna do about it? Weakling."

Ryker tries to intimidate me by raising his sword acting like he's about to fight. I flinch out of instinct. He's already able to hold a sword properly whilst I'm stuck trying to lift my sword off the GROUND.

Cassian quickly walks up to us trying to diffuse the situation.

"Both of you, BREAK IT UP. Ryker this is your first warning, do NOT make me give you a second one. Calder, I'm tired of you being in trouble."

So let me get this STRAIGHT. I was taken here AGAINST my will, and this random guy is forcing me to train, and threatening me. We aren't allowed to leave the kingdom and outside of our trainers and classmates, we aren't allowed to talk to anyone. If not for the fact that I'm unable to provide for myself alone, I would've escaped this place on day 1.

I guess this is my life now.

3 months later

After 3 months of training, we've been called for our first task. We were going to a forest infested with giant spiders. The task was posted 4 months ago before we arrived in this world. Many souls have tried and died trying to complete this quest, and eventually, it was determined to be a task for the strength of the Royal Vanguard, composed of teenagers that were summoned from another world.

This is also where Calder Whitetree was determined to be...

Dead.