High School

28th April, 2022, Xianchu High School.

Mathematics Teacher, Shu Xuan, was writing different algebraic equations on the board as a part of the class. When he finished explaining the class and turned around to see if the students had any doubts, he found the day-dreaming Meng Tian looking out the window and staring into space. Meng Tian had been through two classes in the morning, Mathematics being the third. He was looking at his Status screen which had the new 'Stat' added to it, the [Energy Points]. There was only one point for now and Meng Tian had a vague idea that this Stat could be increased by consuming food... But, was it only food though?... He had to check after school. He tried to take this point and add to any of his body parameters like Intelligence and surprisingly, it did work. But, one Energy Point only gave him 0.1 increase in Intelligence.

As he was thinking about how to gain more Energy Points, Teacher Shu called him up and woke up from his reverie. Meng Tian was used to the Teachers ignoring him after their many failed attempts to 'educate' him. But, Teacher Shu, as his homeroom teacher, always had a sense of purpose to at least make Meng Tian become an average student. Although, all of his attempts ended in failure, he still did not give up. Meng Tian stood up from his seat and respectively called, "Sir?.."

Teacher Shu couldn't help but sigh, "Student Meng, please focus your attention to the problem on the board... The steps to arrive at the solution are already written here... Could you perhaps, read through the steps one by one and try to explain how we arrived at the result?"

Meng Tian was a bit embarrassed and couldn't help but scratch his head. As he saw the equations on the board and followed the steps, he felt like he understood something... But also didn't... Seeing that Meng Tian was not speaking anything, Teacher Shu asked him to sit down and carried on his class. Teacher Shu finished his class and was about to leave when he noticed that Meng Tian was carefully looking through the pages of his textbook. Teacher Shu felt surprised and happy that Meng Tian was trying to learn something. He did not disturb him and left the class.

The reason why Meng Tian was carefully reading through the textbook was because he saw a screen pop-up in front of him when he finished looking through the problem on the board.

[Mathematics Experience +1]

His Experience kept on increasing as he kept reading his textbook. Unknowingly, it was the time for lunch and the bell rang. Only then, did Meng Tian take his eyes off his text book. Fatty Li came up to Meng Tian to go have lunch as always. Meng Tian looked at his Stats and found out that his Mathematics Experience reached 77. He felt like a new space had opened up in his mind where many details about numbers, equations, etc. were stored, just like a computer.

At lunch, Meng Tian was expecting the usual sticky rice, vegetables, corn, and tofu. But, he saw that the menu had changed to include huge amounts of chicken, turkey, pork, eggs, nuts and seeds. "Xiao Li, Is there anything special about today's lunch?"

"Nope, just the usual... What were you expecting? Some beast meat?... Let me tell you, it is only provided to the top 10 Martial Arts students in each class... Look, they even have a separate food court on the 1st floor. I heard they can have Beast meat everyday which will increase their physical strength... Ah... I wish I could get some too..."

Meng Tian was shocked to find this kind of information and started to notice that indeed there were strong looking students going up to the 1st floor to have food. But his mind was racing to figure out what the hell was happening around him.

'Why are there Martial Arts students here in our school?... Since when did we have a class for that?... And what is this Beast meat that fatty Li's been going on about?...'

Meng Tian slowly came to understand that this school was different from what he had known... He immediately took his phone to search for Beasts, Martial Arts, etc. and found a lot of information online. After going through various blogs, news articles, and videos, he finally kept his phone back in his pants and let out a heavy sigh... 'This doesn't seem to be the World I know... Did I die in that car accident and my soul transmigrated here to this Parallel World?...'

Fatty Li noticed that Ming Tian was spacing out without eating any food. "Xiao Tian, finish your food. Teacher Min will make us practice a lot in the Martial Arts class in the afternoon. You know that she won't let us chill out and just stand there. Common, eat up. And just in case you forgot, the next class is English and the new Teacher is supposed to be super hot... Hehehe..."

After having lunch, Meng Tian came back to his homeroom to change into gym clothes and sat down to read up on this World's history to see if he could find any similarities. He found that more than 50 years ago, the humans of this World built a Super Particle Accelerator and Collider to study the sub-atomic particles the made up the entire Universe. One fine morning, they conducted an experiment to figure out if they can find the proposed God particle, the reason for the formation and sustenance of the Universe. Unfortunately, the collision of the protons resulted in the formation of a rift in that space. That rift began to emit a kind of radiation which the scientists were unable to understand. Within just a year, the entire ecological system of the Earth began to change. Animals started becoming stronger, plants began to mutate and humans began to evolve. The children born after this event, began to exhibit increased amounts of strength and endurance. But some of the animals had a more drastic mutation and they became what people now call as 'the Beasts'. These Beasts were too strong, their hides too thick, their teeth too strong, that they overwhelmingly took over many parts of the World killing and consuming many human lives.

The world governments and militaries strived to keep the human species alive by using all of their knowledge to develop new weapons technology, miniaturized lasers, etc. They also started systematic training for the newly evolving humans to better use their strengths against these Beasts. Over the course of the next few decades, humanity began to thrive and Martial Arts became a norm of everyday life. The human cities are securely surrounded by walls keeping the Beasts at bay. They are hunted and consumed as nutrients for increasing one's own strength. The radiation also changed the many metals and materials on the planet accelerating the growth of the human civilization. Now, most of the beasts and mutated plant life on the ground are killed as they come. But the majority of danger still exists in the domain of the oceans where the humans have very less authority.

Now that the humans were living in the age of kill or be killed, the governments had imposed strict restrictions on the compulsory education in Martial Arts for everyone for a period of 12 years in schools. Meng Tian finally understood why this World was so different and was more than sure that he did not belong here.

While reading, many blue screens popped up covering his vision. So, he willed the screens to stop bothering him and consequently no blue screens popped up again. He finally looked at his Status screen and thought to himself, 'Maybe the reason why only I have this blue screen is, probably because I am fundamentally different from the humans of this world or at least my soul is... I wonder how the Stats of other people look like... Too bad I have no way to find out...'

As he was thinking, he noticed that a change had occurred in his Stats again adding on a new row called [History].

---------------- STATUS ----------------

Name : Meng Tian

Age : 16

Race : Human

Strength : 0.6

Speed : 0.4

Agility : 0.4

Intelligence : 0.5

Spirit : 0.9

Health : 100/100

Skill(s) : None

Talent(s) : None

Occupation(s): None

Energy Points : 2

Mathematics Experience: 77

History Experience: 32

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