a race to the top.

Andrew looked into the back of his classmates as the auditorium lights grew dim. it was the first day of high school and for everyone here. that meant opportunity, a chance to be the best, the fastest, the hero and it meant everything to them. This private school for the "elite young geniuses" located in heart of Minnesota, united states. was stocked full of potential for new world leaders and powerhouses.

An old man walked into the center of the auditorium holding a large ball in his hands. stopping to set it on top of a small holder for the crystal. he turned to us with a wide smile on his face.

"Welcome to Grim wolf academy, state champs of the national fighting tournament." he gave a small bow as kids screamed with excitement.

"here, you will learn how to be the best at what you do. You have all fought, backstabbed and possibly killed to be here today. To you, I wish the best of luck." he tapped the top of the crystal and a blue ring blasted out of it towards us.

[Welcome, Andrew]

a message appeared in front of me as I opened the prompt.

[I am your personalized system, pleased to finally be with you host.

I am here to help nurture your strength to become the best....]

'The standard greeting huh?' Andrew thought as he scrolled through the welcome message. It was a message encrypted for everyone to receive at the very beginning. He scrolled to the very bottom where two buttons lie

(accept) (decline)

Without hesitation he clicked accept.

[Importing system.... 1%]

looking up from the screen to the surrounding faces around the room. Andrew saw a few familiar faces. John, an old best friend and Emily, an ex. Andrew thought that he and John ended on decent terms, he and John were great friends. Doing everything together since they were kids. Their parents met when Andrew's family moved into town from out of state, even becoming next door neighbors. They were always the best at everything they did in middle school and that allowed them to get into this high school. For John, it was his athleticism which was the exact opposite of Andrew. I was the best test taker in the entire damn state.

Andrew did not end on the greatest of terms with Emily. Emily cheated on himwith John, who was told we broke up, completely dense in the situation. She used his fame as a horse to ride herself to prom queen and eventually here. Leaving Andrew as the dirt she rode on. John eventually found out about how she cheated and was deeply sorry. But he had fallen in love too much to break up with her. So they both decided it would be best to just not talk to each other.

It didn't matter much to him anymore though. turning his face to his new friend Alex, who's glasses covered almost half of his face.

"you get yours?" Andrew asked him, he was brought back to reality after staring in front of him in a daze.

"uh.. yeah. yeah i did" he nodded with a smile. His shorter black hair was messy and never done as he was always working on a project and never got much sleep. His eyes bags dragged down the op his small freckles

"thats great" Andrew responded turning back to the giant blue screen in front of him.

[Finalizing.... 98%]

a loud ding rang through his head.

———————-

Welcome Andrew!

Str: 6/10

int:10/10

cha:4/10

dex:9/10

———————-

He stared at the distribution of stats the system evaluated him as.

'The average human is around a 5. So having this big of a head start is nice.' he thought to himself

'But pull the punches on my looks' he looked back at the old man on the stage.

"Now as you are aware, there are three main ways of getting status points. Entering the dungeon, fighting your fellow classmates and completing missions given to you by your system." He paused to make sure everyone understood.

"The dungeon is a man made training facility where certain monsters are placed for each individual, each floor progressively getting harder. Your progress is saved each time you leave so you are not able to farm said monsters."

A screen appeared above him while he was talking displaying its functions and where it's located. The dungeon was located on the eastern side of the private campus and had three different buildings. One for each thousand floors.

The kids around him were shocked at the pure amount of floors given, but he didn't let it bother him.

'We were going to be here for 4 years and use the dungeons for 8 if we made it out of high school.'

"The second option is self explanatory, you can fight your peers with status points on the line. The challenger states where the fight will be held and what the fight will be, bare handed? First one hit? To the death even. However, the person challenged is able to refuse the challenge. They may also change where the fight is held OR what type of fight it is." He continued his long lecture, the kids stood there taking in his words as if a new amendment from a god was being distributed.

Alex could barely contain his excitement as he was twisting in his seat, the way that kids do to get a better running start to recess.

"The final option is by completing missions given to you by your system. These are never too be ignored as they can contain vital resources for your progression." He looked at us with great interest.

"I am eager to see the accomplishments you will achieve this year and with that. I wish you the best of luck and I will see you next week." He gave a small bow and everyone in the auditorium jumped up from their seats. Rushing towards the exit to try and find the dungeons.

Andrew knew that was going to happen, almost jumping out of his seat to head there himself. But he knew better, he could keep up with them, but he didnt like the long wait and delay, he wanted to be stronger now.

Andrew didn't know what exactly too do next, so he stayed put and opened up the message tab at the top left of his menu.

————

New missions!

Awaken mana flow!: awaken your mana flow by directing mana around your body, awakening all pools in your body.

Reward: random element control

Kill monsters: kill your first monsters!

0/10

Reward: 2 str points

—————

'Huh, interesting.' He has read on how mana controls work in some of the new guidebooks a new company has made.

The founders of the system were called flowering intellect of new earth or FINE for short. Have released books on what their new humanity defying technology is.

Retracing what he had learned from his hours of studying from his head. First moving himself on the floor in the lotus position to help concentrate on the task. Using knowledge to try and find the mana meridian located behind the heart. Slowly poking around throughout his body.

'This feels weird, like a concentrated fog is flowing through my body'

Finding the small marble sized meridian, he slowly extract its contents. Leading it down his arms and legs and eventually to his head.

*Ding*

————-

Mission complete!: Awaken mana flow!

Reward: soul enhancing!

————

"Excuse me, what?" he asked out loud.

'I'm like 120% sure that soul enhancing isn't an element. I had planned out what to do depending on what spell I got for years. not whatever this is.' he thought with great puzzlement at his new power

He sighed, standing up from the cold concrete floor. Andrew is not a patient person by any means, after all he wanted to get stronger. He doesn't want to be bossed around and doesn't want to be worked to death.

His father was a lowly businessman, he had no drive to get stronger and no confidence in himself. Andrew's mother was the same in that she left everything up to her spouse. Andrew's dad was worked to death, he had others shove their work on him. He had no choice but to do it because he was weak. He spent his whole high school and college career lazing around and watching tv. But one day he had so much work stacked on his back that he couldn't finish, he was killed by his co-worker the next day. The company makes a bullshit excuse like "maybe he tripped down the stairs, or whatever people with sub 10 stats do. Don't expect compensation, no ones paying for a bug's funeral."

Andrew hated being weak, because he was scared of it. He studied and studied the best paths to get stronger and get revenge on my father. All of it was thrown out the window in seconds.

He stopped mulling over the fact that complaining wouldnt change and walked towards the exit of the auditorium, opening the door and he was greeted with the green campus in front of him. The auditorium was located on the west side of campus as he walked into the small park separating the four sides of campus.

The pine trees swayed as the light september air glided through the branches, dancing with glee. Andrew walked forward to a small patch of grass and sat down on the grass by a nearby tree.

'Ok, that's enough moping. How do I get you to do something.' he looked at the screen and tapped on Soul enhancing.

-

Soul enhancing:

You are able to change all inherent assests in your system.

Cooldown: 10 min

-

'Okay, this is starting to look up.' Andrew thought as he looked at the definition. Its potential could be limitless, but what exactly can it change? The 10 minute deadline was also a huge issue, normally you don't have a cooldown for your basic element.

The bark on his back scratched through his tight grey shirt as he leaned forward

"Alright, lets test this out."

he sat up from under the small pines and headed towards the campus library, where a map with the entire campus is located. As well as an element compatibility test for new students. The library was south of the auditorium, so tracing his steps back to the start and then walked down towards the library. Its grand entrance stood tall like a government memorial as it imposed over its surroundings

Opening the door he saw a grand 3 floor library, completely full of books and textbooks. A set of tables align the fences of each floor. On the main floor, the librarian's desk was located in the center of the room.

"Good morning sir." The librarian said to him as he walked over.

She was an older lady, perhaps in her late 70's. She smiled at him as he nodded towards her.

"I would like to check my element compatibility please." Andrew replied back with a smile.

She nodded and reached under her desk and pulled out a black orb held up by a silver casing.

"Please place your hand on top." She pointed to the top of the orb.

Doing as he was told and the orb shone gray.

"Looks like you are physically driven, books on physical spells are located on the top floor to your right." She directed him upwards with a point of her finger.

"Wait a minute." Andrew replied with a hint of curiosity.

'System, use soul enhancing to change my element to fire'

Getting no response back, he sighed. Thinking that maybe that's not how his newfound ability worked. But after a couple of seconds the orb beneath his hand started to glow a faint red, growing until it was then completely red.

"Oh lord," the old lady pondered.

"Is it broken? Oh no what should I do! The headmaster will have me fired." She panicked grabbing the orb and looking around it with worry

"No, it's not broken. You don't need to worry." he smiled as he pulled his hand off of the orb. It swirled back into its original black hue.

She ignored him and continued to worry about the orb as he turned around and walked out the library.

'System, please notify me whenever an enhancement is complete.' Andrew told the system with a little annoyance. What if nothing really happened, he would have no idea if he hadn't kept his hand there.

[of course, however. Why didn't you use it to accommodate all elements instead of one? A couple of people can do so in this world.]

its standard voice rang through its head with no emotion, as if this was a set dialog.

'Because if I did, I would draw a lot of attention. Everyone here is around the same rank in terms of power. If it's revealed that I have this ultra cheat code thing. They'll have my head, everyone here wants to graduate at the top of their class. Some will kill to do so.' he replied back as he walked down to the dungeon. The dungeon takes some time with each person that enters as it has to load the person's dungeon save.

As he walked through the park towards the dungeon he heard a familiar voice call his name.

"Andrew, wait up!" turning around towards the noise he was greeted by a familiar face.

it was a shorter girl who had short tomboy like hair with glasses. freckles that nearly blended in with the skin lined the ridges of her cheecks as she smiled

"Ya heading to the dungeon?" She tilted her head sideways. She was always over-expressive, which was great because Andrew sucked with people.

"Yes I am, would you like to come with me?" he asked her. His brown hair covered his eyes a little as he did so. He had forgotten to style it up as he normally does, probably because of the big day rush.

"Sure, im quite excited for this upcoming year. I really worked hard to get here after all." She said happily as she walked beside him, eventually speeding up as she too could barely keep her excitment in.

Andrew shook his head and jogged to keep up with her. Turning the corner behind her he saw that the line was a lot shorter now than it would've been if he went right after getting his system.Andrew stood behind her and asked what she had planned to do when she got into the dungeon.

"I want to use a giant hammer and bash their whole body into a pulp, wouldn't that be cool!" she laughed a little as she imitated swinging downwards with an over exaggerated jump. Causing weird looks from others as she did so.

Zoe had always been more of a tomboy, so she was often casted away when talking with other girls, who rather than beating things to a pulp. prefered things like the rapier which was more elegant, or magic to avoid the blood. But he liked her better that way, it showed personality.

Andrew smiled as she walked into the dungeon in front of him, doors closing behind her. Waiting there in silence for about a minute or so when the doors opened back up. Walking forward he heard the doors closing behind him.

[Andrew Smith, group 1 floor 1….]

A loading bar appeared below it, along with a shelf full of weapons to choose from. He picked a heavier one handed sword to wield. The sword was a generic weapon, and because of that many spells and abilities coincide with the sword. While weapons like the hammer hold greater affinity with fire and earth. The sword held affinity with every element, but not as powerful as others. It was a great starting weapon but not a powerful one.

"Perfect for testing"He smiled widely, twirling the sword around

[battle commencing]

big red letters appeared in front of him, startling him into dropping the sword.

The landscape in front of him changed into more of a cave like environment with dangling rocks and jagged terrain. In front of him was a pair of three goblins holding small stones in each hand.

"Well, let's get this show started!"