2 Unfair
I rapidly rushed out of the carriage to find that in front of me lied a beautiful palace with quartz pillars decorated with colourful gems. Thankfully, the group was only at the entrance of the palace so I easily caught up.
"What the hell was that all about? Couldn't bother to call me huh?" I muttered, irritated.
"Well, I did call you, genius. 7 times in fact and you didn't answer! So... figured I'd just leave you there," Amber said with a genuine smile on her face. Sadist.
We were escorted into the throneroom and met the king, but the meeting was all-around just boring. A bunch of expositions I'd usually skip in games.
It all boiled down to, "The kingdom is endangered of being attacked by other races like the vampires and the demons. Heroes like you come every few decades to this world. This is the 13th time heroes came. Please, you must help us. This kingdom of Leon needs you" Or something like that. The generic script.
"I don't see why we can't help out. Fewer problems for them means fewer problems for us right?" Fay had an innocent smile on her face. I don't know how people like her still exist in such an unforgiving world.
"If you say so," Amber replied narrowing her glare towards the throne.
Fay is one of the only things that could convince Amber to so something without question. She's really nice so I have no idea how they get along so well. I guess opposites attract?
A few minutes after the whole exposition dump we were escorted into one of the castles surrounding the capital. They said something about measuring abilities and attributes. Everyone's nervous about it, but personally, I'm not really worried... most people would get a good stat. I'll be fine, I'm not the chosen one and will never be the chosen one... after all, we have Shin, the perfect protagonist.
"How hard can the test be? If I try my best then it'll be enough to save anyone," Shin then continued to start blabbering about his way of justice. Black and white morality like all generic main characters have. Let's just hope he doesn't go Naofumi on us.
The guy is protagonist material. In fact, he's probably the reason we're here. We're just extras here only to admire how great and powerful and morally good he is!
Background characters.
Anyways, first starts the physical test. We have to run from one castle to another. Seems simple enough. Simple does not mean easy though, the castle's way beyond the horizon... well at least I'm no worse than anyone else here.
5 minutes later…
How?! It just started and they're all already too far from me to be identified! What is this?!
"Damn you're slow. Wanna be the underdog so you gotta pretend like you suck or something?" Amber ran back to taunt me after being the first to reach the castle.
"Shut it," I tried to catch my breath, but only looked like a pathetic dog begging for something.
"Aww! Hiro's actually trying?" Amber smirked while running backwards.
"Want me to go Arifureta on you?"
"Feel free, I will protect Yue at all cost, Hajime! Don't expect any of our classmates to be apart of your harem though, over my dead body will I ever let you touch Fay and Misa," She narrowed her gaze, letting me know that even though she's smiling, she means what she said.
A full weeb conversation and 12 minutes later...
Finally! I finished and I'm… second!
To… last.
"How the heck is your stamina so high?" I asked Amber
Please...
"I don't know, in the old world, I'd be dead where I stand if I went through this. Maybe you'd be super OP in magic?"
Please...
"I hope so"
DON'T BE THE WEAKEST
Time Skip. One hour later…
God! If you exist, why? Why me? I mean Shin got worse but why did you drag me down with that guy. Why?! I've always been good! I'm great at blending in and dissolving into the crowd! I'm the perfect background character! Why me?!
My magic is literally rainbow cold flames! Cold! Flames! They don't work together and their even not frozen cold they're like 20-degree celsius! That may be hot in Canada, but not here!
"Dork! At this point, why are you even the class representative," Kyle knocked the back of my head.
"Bark all you want, but we have a vote again right now, the result would still be that no one except Ein would vote for the likes of you," Disappointed from my results, I really considered just getting a sword and threaten him with that.
"He's in a bad mood, don't provoke him unless you wanna die in your sleep. Also, it's bold of you... you're messing with my toy," Amber narrowed her gaze from afar, sending chills down everyone's spine. Sometimes she's friendly, sometimes she's terrifying... she really has to decide on a tone.
Can't exactly say I like being referred to as 'toy', but I guess it's better than last time's 'dog'. I did hear Kyle has a crush on Amber, but it's really hard to believe... unless he's a masochist.
"Yeah but there's no excuse for Shin he's just all-around a loser" Ein shifted the focus to save Kyle. Ah, the beta male. The follower. The whatever title people give.
"Careful, in these situations, the weakest becomes a literal god and you'd be the douchebag that everyone hates, Malty Melromarc" I don't like defending Mr Suzaku, but I don't want to die after he's back from his training arc.
"And this is the part that the person gets so stressed that from his carefree self he became a cool, calm and sometimes cruel guy," Amber said sarcastically
"Heh, and you believe in some anime?"
"Enough to be isekaied here"
"Tch"
I believe whole-heartedly that Shin's either gonna be a harem protagonist or an underdog. Right now with his current abilities, my bet's on the latter.
"So… what now?" Fay tries to de-escalate the tension.
"Hm… well let's split into parties and go level up, classic crappy RPG. I'd say aim to get to level 10 and meet back here." Damon suggested.
"How? We don't even know if we have levels and even if we did, we don't know how to open our stats."
"There must be a way, Felix told me the other generations of heroes have levels so it shouldn't just change for us, right?" Misa replied. So she's been talking with red-head too?
Nothing should change. Keyword, "should". Meaning it can. The best thing we can do right now is probably just figuring out how to open the menu or our stats.
"The hell are you doing?" Misa looked at Amber trying out different movements with her index finger.
"Trying. To get. The menu bar. To ope-"
She opened the menu bar by sliding her finger from left to right
"See? SAO logic," Amber smirked
"Isn't that nice? You're not useless," Misa smiled back.
When you know... if you said that, you'd be dead. Double standards...
I swiped to my menu and I was level 1 like everyone else, but unfortunately, my "ability" is called soul flame, what the hell? It's so vague. How nice of fate. Let's just define this as broadly as possible so I can get cool ability kay?
After a while, I grouped up with Shin, Amber, Fay, Misa and Damon. 2 weaklings, 1 potential psychopath, 1 too good for this world, 1 rational human and 1 idiot.
We walked out of the castle with some generic iron weapons and armours. Grass field, stretching pretty far with a forest at the horizon. Wild boars, like Amber, said SAO logic I guess.
"Can we be really injured here?" I pointed an iron dagger at my arm. I'm sure a wound can be healed with fantasy magic.
I moved in to stab my arm but was stopped by someone's hand. Immediately, I looked up to see who it was, completely expecting Fay, but boy was I stunned.
"Don't be so sure, we don't know to what extent healing magic works here," Amber spoke as if she could read my mind.
"Did I just hear concern?!" I overexaggerated my reaction, but I am surprised.
"D-Don't... die on me... o-okay? You jerk..." Amber whispered to make sure only I heard that. She stepped back to see my stunned face and...
Laughed uncontrollably, "You fell for that?! Hah! I can do a day without you any day,"
"I knew you were faking it. You'd never stutter that much unless you're REALLY SAD,"
"Exactly! Anyway... let's catch up to the others"
Everyone else seemed to not notice what I just tried out and walked up to fight. A single boar shouldn't be hard to kill.
I raised my dagger and dashed towards one of the boars. Piercing my dagger into its skin, dragging my dagger across its body. Glancing back, all I could see was the red eyes of the boar... striking me.
Shoot!
My eyes widened as I tried to block its attack with only my arms.
If only I was strong enough to hold a sword...
If only I was strong enough to wear armour in combat...
Just what kinda story is this?! I'm already not the protagonist! Leave me alon-
Suddenly, a dense metal pebble like ball smashed the boar in the face, flinging the boar away from me and knocking it unconcious.
Before I knew it another metal ball was thrown at me, missing by only a few millimetres.
"Damn it! I missed!" Amber shouted out of disappointment
"What the hell was that?!" I got up in an instant, releasing the adrenaline I should've had a few seconds ago. Out of instinct, I picked up the ball and pointed it at her.
"The legendary pebble of pig smiting. For you see-"
"No stop, I don't need you to recite a whole backstory about how the righthand of the demon king forged it in his or her darkest hour. Where'd you find this, actually?" If that happened... we'd be here till dusk.
"Forged it, forge" As she spoke an icon appeared in front of her saying something that I can't read from afar. Her last word released a transmutation circle and a slight movement from her fingers made it glow.
Following the light fading away, liquid iron started to form into a pebble like shape, hovering on top of her hand before falling into her palm after being solidified.
"Okay okay, I get it now. God or whoever's in charge of this world accidentally made you too overpowered and I have to suffer for the gifted eh?" I said giving a sarcastic tone with a small little hint of bitterness.
"Well I do have the most probability of being the final villain rival, I gotta have a head start so the main character can have something to aim for. It's LOGIC," Amber tried as hard as she could to not laugh from the stupidity of what she said.
I hate that we're taking the tropes so seriously, but I love listening to her stupid logic and myself going along with it.
"Shut it, my logic's as stupid as your's," She said to me with an aggressive stare.
How did she know what I was thinking?!
"Is your ability forge or telekanesis?" I asked, backing away. Maybe it's up to the distance. If I'm far enough... she can't read me!
"Forge. I've already had the reading Hiro ability, just trying it out here, going far away from me won't change much," She raised her hand to make a peace sign and smiled.
See the thing is if she doesn't open her mouth, she'd actually make a pretty decent waif-
"Hey! Look what I found!" Damon gestured for everyone to come over in front of the forest in the horizon attracting our attention.
