Chapter 8:Back to School [1]

After another hour of reading in the library, I finally uncovered the gist of the world's history in the past 20 years.

Similar to how Earth was in the beginning, there is only one continent on the map: Pangea. The giant piece of land is split into two parts: the realm of the living, which contains humans, elves, orcs, and dwarves, and the other half, known as the Underlands, which contains demons, demonic monsters, and djinns.

10 years ago, the demons broke the peace by attempting to invade the realm of the living, more specifically, the Elven territory. However, the 7 heroes, alongside the elves and dwarves, fought back and defeated the demons. Since then, the demons have shown no sign of attacking. However, djinns still attack occasionally, though it is unknown whether they are doing it of their own coalition.

The realm of the living is split into four parts. Humans occupy the biggest part as we have the highest population, while Elves occupy the smallest, solely living in forests. Dwarves live in the mountains, and orcs' habitat is widely unexplored by humans.

Five years ago, the Celestial Academy was established to train humans' upcoming talents. However, the other races have not attended the Academy yet. Through the academy, students can follow two paths: the path of the sword or the path of magic.

Even though the demons have remained dormant since the last war, dungeons and monsters occasionally pop up, so new heroes are constantly required, and the Celestial Academy, being the best training institute for these heroes, is widely respected and known.

Dungeons are currently humanity's greatest threat as the Nederlands are dormant, and djinns never attack large scales. The monsters inside dungeons will continuously respawn until the boss monster is defeated, and the dungeon's difficulty depends on the radio waves it emits, ranging from S rank to E.

After reaching a certain age, a status window with your stats becomes visible to all those selected to be heroes, or around 50 percent of the population. Some of these selected heroes have a tiny chance to receive special traits that give unique powers like teleportation or necromancy; however, these are very rare, with only 10 cases of humans having them.

Celestial Academy has five classes: A, B, C, D, and E. The academy determines your placement through the entrance exam, which evaluates your current power and potential. The strongest are placed in A, and the worst in E. Due to 3 of the 7 original heroes originating from commoner families, the academy says that people are not to be treated differently because of their classes; however, as you can see through Ren's actions, the gap between classes is clearly apparent and that the rule is barely-ever enforced.

When your base stats reach the threshold of the lowest rank, E-, your current rank will be visible on your status menu. Most Academy students, including myself, have not reached that threshold yet, but some Class A students have reached E-. The protagonist, Liam, is also E- rank right now, but due to his status as a commoner, he was denied access to the infamous Class A.

Typical of the main character, Liam also possesses a special trait known as persistence. His stamina is out of this world, allowing him to train for hours at a time without being tired, and his tenacity also seems to be increased as he refuses to ever give up.

From the E- rank, it isn't as simple as raising your stat total to rank up, as you must attempt a "breakthrough" to go up a subrank. There is no actual way to tell when you can break through, as your status menu will randomly alert you when it deems your body and stats ready. These breakthroughs are known for being horrifying and painful as parts of your body are actually reconstructed to adapt to your new level of power.

However, whenever you increase a subrank, you have a small chance to awaken a dormant special trait, and your stats will also grow faster until you again reach the capacity for your rank.

Anyway, this was more than enough reading for today, so I stretched and headed out of the library. My next stop was the weapon selection facility.

Fitting the best academy in humanity's history, their storage boasts various weapons for students to choose from. Of course, these weapons are simply loans, and if they are damaged, students must pay the massive price tag to pay for them.

Entering the empty facility, I walked past the magic sections containing wands and grimoires and headed to the swords area. Looking around, I saw thousands of priceless weapons waiting to be chosen, ranging from broadswords to katanas to even dual-ended swords.

The stuff inside this facility alone is probably expensive enough to feed the entire kingdom for a year, yet the storage is unlocked and left without any security guards. I can't say it's not tempting, but my hopes quickly dispersed when I remembered how, in the book, a student attempted to steal; however, he was arrested within an hour by Acadamy's team of B-rank professors.

The book didn't even mention how he was caught; it just said that the student was sentenced to 10 years in prison.

"creepy."

Looking around, I finally decided on a small and slick black katana. It wasn't like my decision here mattered that much, as I had already planned to get a better sword. I would wait until the first incident happened in school, and after Liam beats the villain's djinn, I'll steal the djinn's sword.

Foolproof!

The sword worked for now, as I could swing it around without many problems, so I grabbed it, checked it out of the facility, and headed back to my room to drop it off.

After leaving my room, it was already around evening time, so I decided to go for a peaceful walk through the nature area of the academy.

I looked over the island's railing at the mainland and the dark blue ocean, which sparkled occasionally due to the moon's light.

In the library, I had figured out how to connect my earbuds to my smartwatch, so I put in my earbuds and gazed out.

"So this is my new home..."

After a minute, I realized how stupid I looked, so I turned away toward the dorm building.

-*-

The following day, I headed back towards the gym for a workout. After grabbing some breakfast from the cafeteria and heading back to my dorm for a shower, I decided to check my stats, and to my surprise, it seemed I had reached the threshold for E-.

It wasn't that surprising, considering I spent a week straight training in the mountain range, but I felt somewhat depressed when I saw my overall stats.

===Menu===

User : Ren Montclair

[Class: N/A]

[Stats]

-> Rating : E-

-> Strength : G

-> Agility : E

-> Stamina : E-

-> Magic Power : E+

-> Luck: G-S {Conditional}

-> Intelligence : G+

-> Charm : G+

[Traits]

-> Passive: Dragon's Will [1 / ?]

---> Dragon Eyes : Your eyesight is enhanced.

[Skills]

-> N/A

=======

In the book's last chapter, Liam has a fully maxed-out menu with S+ stats, so looking at my abysmal stats brought on a sense of dread.

Even though getting a special trait was extremely rare, I was more or less expecting it after learning of my ownership of the dragon's eye, so I wasn't shocked or anything. On the other hand, something that completely shocked me was my intelligence stat.

Why was it so low?

I mean, I knew I was new to the world and basically didn't know anything, but wasn't giving me less than E too much? 

I sighed, recalling the hundreds of hours I spent studying in high school. Where did that all get me now?

It was nice to see my stats ranking instead of those numbers, but it also showed me how weak I actually was. A normal student shouldn't be worried about their safety as they attend the best academy in the world, so the security was top-notch; however, as an avid reader, I knew that the security was a joke.

Honestly, at one point in the story, I was convinced that there were more djinn spies within the school than actual students. That was the only way it made sense.

10 DJINN ATTACKS IN ONE YEAR?

I mean, you can't really blame the school because the protagonist will draw good or bad attention wherever he goes, but 10 attacks in one year clearly displayed that the school wasn't even fucking trying.

Looking at my luck stat, I was partially conflicted. It meant I had either really good luck or really bad luck, with no in-between. Luck was the only invariable stat, though, so there was no use in complaining about it.

The rest of the Sunday passed by uneventfully as I spent most of my time either practicing with my new sword or reading more in the library.

Alas, my first day of school arrived.

Although I pretended to be oblivious, I heard some conversations about myself while walking to places. The conversations went something like this.

"Did you hear about that guy who got suspended during the first week of school?"

"The one with black hair? No, why does it matter?"

"I heard he got disowned by his father as punishment."

"For being suspended only? That's rough."

"No, he deserved it. Didn't you hear what he did? He attacked someone just because they were a commoner."

However, it seemed that the students didn't recognize my new appearance. They continued talking even when I walked right past them.

I guess they'll be shocked when they see my new look in class.

Of course, I couldn't deny these rumors as "I" did technically do what they said, but at the same time, every time the gossip was spread, my situation got worse.

A sudden change in attitude would make people suspicious of me being a djinn, so I would have to act according to the people's expectations of me. Basically, as long as the gossip of my suspension went around, I would have to act like some pretentious spoiled brat.

Steeling myself and adjusting my attitude to cocky, I left my dorm room with my uniform on and headed towards Classroom D.

It was really unfortunate that I was put in Classroom D as that was the homeplace of the protagonist and his first heroines for the first semester, which meant that it was a disaster waiting to happen.

Anyway, the protagonist should advance to Class A by the end of the first semester, so I just had to deal with it for 2 months. 

Staring at the sliding door in front of me, I inhaled and got my snarky voice ready before sliding open the door.

There was only a minute left before class started, so the room was packed to the brim with students.

Hearing the door open, every student immediately directed their gaze towards me. Their silence quickly turned to murmurs as almost every student immediately began whispering something about me to their neighbor.

"Isn't that him, the disowned?"

"tsk* why do we have to get a snarky noble like him in the class?"

"Didn't he get suspended for attacking someone for no reason?"

"Doesn't he look different from the pictures...?"

Ignoring their murmurs, I took. a quick glance around the classroom before spotting the protagonist alongside some other important characters. Finally, I spotted an empty seat, so I sat down there.

As soon as I sat down, the classroom opened again, and the teacher entered. Silence descended upon the classroom once again as the teacher spoke.

"We'll start with roll call.

Liam. Here!

Kane. Present!

Alyssa Here!

Cecilia Here!

...

...

Ren."

As the other student's gazes once again locked onto me, I said.

"Here!"

In particular, I could feel one gaze staring bullets into my back. The owner of this gaze was Liam.

Hey, you're the one who brought me here; why the hell are you complaining?

[A/N: If you're reading my other works, new chapters are today. AP World and Bio destroyed me, so I couldn't release for like 3 days.]