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Trickster: The Apostle of Loki

A trickster is only a trickster until someone knows your tricks. **** Humans are hypocritical, contradictory beings. Self-satisfaction is always the leading cause for action, no matter if it's for good or evil. What happens when a person who knows this truth gets the chance to live out his dreams in another world? **** When James suddenly got transported into a world in the form of a game that he had played with an unknown girl named Sophie, his only ambition was to survive the inevitable war that would come. What he didn't know was that this world wasn't quite as simple as he hoped, and even in another world, humans were all the same. ------- Just because a lot of people are getting the wrong idea, this is not a multiple-lead novel. Yes, Sophie does have a large part in the story, but the one and only mc is James. The further you come along in the story, the more it will be focusing on him. ------- If you enjoy this little story, please do check out my new project as well, Blessed by Lucifer!

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272 Chs

Change of plans

Sitting at my kitchen table with myself and myself, we were currently having a planning meeting for the upcoming ranking events that were to happen on Saturday. Although all three of me were part of the meeting, Matt didn't have much to contribute with. He was mostly with us to make it look a bit more authentic, as well as to let me make some progress with my understanding of Trickster.

"First things first, I have to decide whether or not it is worth it to try my best at the rankings or if I should just concede the duels and hide for the duration of the survival event..."

The duel part of the event was pretty self-explanatory. It was a 1v1 duel tournament where the winner would get to move on and battle the other students who won their match until someone became the champion. As it was a double-elimination tournament, all of the students had to lose two fights to get knocked out of the tournament, except for in the finals.

The survival event, on the other hand, was an entirely different beast of an event. It turns out that we were going to get hooked up into a virtual world where there would be a battle royal-style challenge between the different teams. So the last team standing would be the winners.

What made it more interesting was the fact that there was a multitude of different challenges placed in the virtual forest, ranging from puzzles and monsters to even mini-dungeons. Completing these challenges or killing monsters would award the students with points that would be counted when doing the rankings.

Even after searching the internet for more information, there was nothing to be found. The academy had probably been incredibly disciplined with trying to not leak any information about the tests and how they worked before they announced the relevant events to the students.

"I am pretty sure we could do pretty well in the survival event though...", sub-me said.

"I am sure I could, but we are not even sure if it would be enough for us to get to the A-class anyway."

There was another critical piece of information that I had gotten my hands on that made me consider trying to get a good enough ranking to promote from the B-class, even though I was very against it just a week ago.

It turns out that the students who got admitted to the A-class had a monthly allowance of 50.000 USD! How fucking nasty is that?! That was 50 times the amount of my total balance that I had when I got here. Though the students of the B-class also got an allowance, 2000 USD a month was nowhere near the 50k that the A-class got.

Yes. I was honestly debating whether it would be worth showing my face to the world to make money. Why? Try to live a year without money and you will know.

Now, 2000 USD a month was more than enough to live comfortably at the academy as our accommodations and food were completely free, but I had a nagging feeling that because we would get attacked by demons at some point in time, it might be good to have some extra dimes in my pocket.

"But what do I do about the duel tournament? It's not like anyone of me is good at fighting yet..."

Sub-me placed his feet on the table and put his hands behind his neck as he looked toward the ceiling, "Yea, we are pretty useless right now until we master the use of body enhancement."

"Fight?! I like fighting!"

"?!"

Both my main body and sub-me turned our heads toward Matt who had just spouted the first words he contributed with so far. And it was a pretty pathetic contribution.

Not like it was Matt's fault. If I didn't actively focus my consciousness on him, he was pretty stupid. As stated before, he was mostly here to fill in the last chair I had around my small table.

Ignoring Matt, I continued to throw ideas at myself. "What about this... We try our best to last as long as possible in the survival event. If we do well there, we might as well try to fight some matches in the tournament, hoping we can get promoted to the A-class. Sarah told us yesterday that if we go solo in the survival even we would get double the points, so shouldn't it be possible?"

Sub-me pretended to think for a moment, as I had already made my decision, "Okay. Let's go with that. But then we should probably start researching the other animal we want to be able to transform into."

Concluding my meeting with myself, I let Matt go up in smoke as my mana had already begun to run low. It was a bit tricky to know with precision how much mana I had left and how fast it regenerated, as there was no mana bar in this game to help me. However, it hadn't taken me long to recognize a strange kind of ethereal weakness that signaled it was low and the warm feeling when I was meditating that showed me I was regenerating it.

"Now, time is of the essence, sub-me."

"It is, main-me. Let's begin!"

And so we both sat and studied the anatomy of the animal I needed to be able to transform into for my plan to work.

****

[Sophie's Pov]

'I know I said I would go and ask James if he wanted to come out and spar with us, but man! It feels so bad that I have been to his room several times, yet I have never got to see Arthur's apartment...'

I just couldn't say no when he used his deadly smile while asking me, thus I was walking through the boy's freshman dorms once more.

Walking through the long corridor with numerous doors on my side, I quickly arrived at James's apartment but just as I was about to knock, I thought I could hear him having a pretty loud conversation with someone.

Putting my ear to the door to try and hear the conversation more clearly, I got the shock of my life. Both of the voices were exactly the same; James was actually talking to himself like a madman!

Stepping back from the door, I put my hands together to pray for the lost soul and walked back to the training grounds without asking if James wanted to join us.

****

[James's Pov]

The next week had flown by in what felt like an instant with nothing too dramatic happening. Hell, even Mike and John had been too focused on the ranking event that they didn't even try anything against me again. Same with Adriana, although I often caught her looking at me with a frown.

Having spent all my time fulfilling the conditions for what I needed in order to perform well at the survival event, there was now nothing else I could do.

All the students of the A-class and the B-class were now lined up in front of both of our homeroom teachers, Ms. Turner and Mr. Brown, in two orderly lines. Behind them, there were 16 VR capsules that we would be using.

As Mr. Brown had the higher position of the two, being the homeroom teacher of the A-class, he was the one who informed us about the process.

"All of the teams will be spawned on the same location, meaning you don't have to try and find your partner. As we have two solo players this year, it's important to keep in my mind that they get double the points, so it might be smart to use the fact that they are alone to your advantage early on. Finally, if you have some general items that you haven't registered yet, like insect repellant or matchsticks, please do so now by inputting them into your designated capsule. Any other questions?"

It was a pretty bare-boned presentation, not even mentioning the puzzles or the monsters at all, but we were all fine with it. We had already gotten the information beforehand anyway.

We now had ten minutes to look through our notes, make sure we had registered the items we wanted, and talk to our partners. These were all things I didn't need to do.

I didn't write any notes as my plan was pretty simple, yet extremely potent if it worked. There was no item that I wanted to bring as carrying a bag would make it hard for me to do what I wanted. Lastly, I didn't have a partner. Oh, and I didn't have a partner in the survival event either, so there was no one to talk to.

Or so I thought. As I was standing and pondering, Sarah came up to me, "Hey James... I just wanted to say, good luck!"

Before I could even refute her stupid words, we were competing against each other after all, she had already turned her back to me and walked back to Anna who was her teammate.

The pairs didn't carry any huge surprises. Sophie and Arthur, Anna and Sarah, Brad and Bradley, Bellatrix and Adam, Mike and John, Adriana and Trisha, and lastly, Sebastian and Suzan.

I had been a bit worried that me going solo would put another student in a tight spot but the edgelord didn't seem to mind at all. In fact, he was pretty hyped about showing everyone who 'The Harrower' truly was.

"All students, move to your designated capsule and connect yourself. We will be spawning all of you at the same time when everyone is ready. Another reminder, we will not monitor you on a one-by-one basis, we will only activate our cameras if we see that students engage in battle."

I laid down in the capsule and put the futuristic headpiece on my head and felt my consciousness getting transported to a virtual space.

In a matter of seconds, a large panel appeared in front of me, counting down the seconds before the event was going to start.

[0:05]

[0:04]

[0:03]

[0:02]

[0:01]

[Survival program engaged. Good luck, Mr. Jackson]