“So, how’d you do?” Ye-in asked Derke the moment he finally returned to the main room, which had been cleared of chairs and was now instead “populated” by tables with snacks and gaggles of conversing students.

  “I fried half the shooting range and was told I was going to break a lot of stuff while I’m here,” he told her with a wry grin. “You?”

  “I used my forcefields. Apparently, that ‘proves I’m a free thinker’ because I realized they never told us not to use powers, but because I completely missed the point of the exercise, I have to go back when everyone else has had their turn.”

  Derek grimaced. He’d dodged a bullet, then, though it wasn’t like any of his active abilities would have had any use for any exercises other than the last one.

  “I guess now we know how things work here,” he suggested.

  “Yeah, but it’s always nice to learn that from other people’s mistakes.”

  Derek nodded.

  Oh, speaking of mistakes …

  “I think we should probably exchange numbers before we head out,” he offered.

  Ye-in facepalmed, then sighed.

  “I knew I was forgetting something.”

  All of thirty seconds later, their phones were back in their pockets, each bearing an additional contact.

  With that done, she gestured at a nearby table, and he followed her. A young Korean man began to approach them, but Ye-in sent him scurrying away with a glare.

  Would that have been how he’d act, be forced to act, had he stayed in Germany? Or would he have found himself surrounded by toadies he didn’t have the heart to tell to fuck off?

  Probably the latter to start with, until he blew his top and switched to the former, he suspected.

  He’d also realized who Ye-in’s mother was by now. Not by deliberately trying to uncover the “mystery,” mind you, but simply because eventually, things had clicked.

  Same surname, her profession matched, Ye-in’s bloodline … it wasn’t like she’d been actively hiding it, any more than he had. Hell, she probably also knew who his family was. If she didn’t, on the other hand, well, he’d tell her if she asked.

  But as for Ye-in, she was the not-so-secret daughter of Nan Min-soo, generally nicknamed “The Warden,” owing to both due to her pre-[System] profession and her ability to near-perfectly lock down the battlefield using her abilities, even turning [Raid Bosses] into stationary targets, albeit temporarily.

  In other words, she was often the cornerstone of any given [Raid Boss] battle; monsters meant to provide a challenge to dozens or even hundreds of people at a time suddenly became rather easy to defeat.

  And considering how heavily the economy had shifted to rely on materials harvested from summoned monsters, someone like her opening the road to going after Tier 10s on the regular made her incredibly influential.

  They’d reached the food at that point, which turned out to be pretty generic snacks, probably the kind you’d see on a bar counter, to encourage conversations rather than feasting.

  Though after a bit, one of the teachers waved Ye-in over, and Derek was left standing alone all of five seconds before he was approached by a gaggle of other students.

  Oh, he could already see where this was going …

  “If you’re planning to ask me questions about anyone else, ask them,” he suggested, the expressions that greeted him in response proving he’d guessed correctly about what this was about.

  He sighed and pulled out his phone to message Ye-in that he was getting out of here. Talking to people in class and the cafeteria was one thing, but out here, where open season apparently been declared on him, where people could freely choose who to approach from the entirety of this year’s crop of students … anyone who decided to talk to him in this environment most likely had “impure” reasons.

  Something that was confirmed a moment later when Ye-in replied to his message with a “yeah, you’d better run :p” a moment later.

  So he headed out, returned to his apartment, and switched on the Tv while he made himself dinner, then ate on the couch until his phone dinged to inform him his class schedule had been set.

  It was pretty much exactly what he’d wanted.

  Magical theory, Martial theory, the practical versions of both as well, [Class]-theory, and Practical Dungeon Diving were generally all about learning to fight, and getting opportunities to prove himself in the eyes of the [System] so he could get a good [Class].

  And History seemed like it would be essential for understanding the present.

  In addition, he’d also grabbed Advanced Physics, Space Exploration, and Black Naval Theory for learning how to explore space. The last one had a rather odd name, but at some point, it had been decided to refer to space as the “black ocean,” to differentiate it from the terrestrial ocean, the same way humanity’s space navy was referred to as the “black navy” when context alone was insufficient to indicate what was being talked about.

  Then, his phone dinged once more, Ye-in asking if they should meet up tomorrow. Yes, obviously.

  And an hour later, Derek went to bed, a smile still on his face.

  ***

  The next morning, he wound up waking way too early, so he settled on putting some extra effort into making breakfast and reading on the couch a bit before heading out.

  Once at the academy, he found himself overlooking the “exercise quadrant,” imagining himself clambering up and down the artificial cliffaces. If only the safety features could function without a teacher’s supervision … but while he was young, in the prime age for stupid decisions, he wasn’t reckless enough to hop the safety barrier and go exploring on his own.

  Eventually, though, it was time to meet Ye-in in front of his first class, which turned out to be shared.

  “Morning,” she waved him over. “So, excited?”

  Derek shrugged. “I mean … it’s not like we’re going to be fighting any monsters.”

  “Not in this class,” Ye-in pointed out, gesturing at her own calendar, which showed that they shared a second class at the end of the day, dungeon diving. As far as he’d understood things, that involved them actually being able to go into a curated, comparatively safe, dungeon.

  “Oh, I can’t wait,” he told her with a grin. Unfortunately, his sisters hadn’t been willing to help him on that front, for some reason, but something truly awful would have to happen to prevent him from killing his first monsters now.

  ***

  A few minutes later, they were in the classroom, waiting for the teacher to show up.

  Which he promptly did, teleporting in front of the blackboard with his tie askew and suit rumpled, as if he’d had to dress himself under significant time pressure. Considering how high-Level the teachers at this academy were, that meant he had to have been in a hurry indeed.

  But he didn’t let that hinder him in any way.

  “Good morning, I’m Mr. Choi, and I’ll be teaching you [Class] theory.”

  As he spoke, a piece of chalk rose off the desk behind him, held in invisible hands, and wrote his name on the rather old-fashioned blackboard, first using the Korean then the Latin alphabet.

  “Simply put, there are two things you need to worry about: starting strong and finishing strong. You need to choose a starter [Class] whose [Skills] will remain useful until the end, and a 5th Evolution [Class] that lets you grow in ways other than Levels. Everything in between … just pick something that leaves you looking forward to what you unlock next and keep going from there.

  “What you start with is what you will have to carry you to Level 200, and when you reach that point, you will have one final choice to make: your Capstone.

  “Capstones are, unfortunately, still a barely explored subject, due to the fact that those who have reached them tend to play things close to the vest, but we do know that they are massively impactful, often shaping the entirety of one’s powerset once chosen. If they’re good ones.

  “We know that options like additional Stat or [Skill] points are available by default, but are also minimally helpful.

  “By comparison, others gain Capstones such as being able to reset their Levels and do it all again, with the benefit of hindsight and lingering boons from their first go around.”

  Derek grimaced. What the teacher wasn’t saying was that several notable individuals had been rather famously been murdered after making the attempt, chasing greater power not really being an option if you had pissed off anyone even remotely powerful.

  “And then, of course, we have Capstones we don’t have precise information on, but are able to identify from context clues nevertheless.

  “For example, this is Isaac Thoma.”

  Along with the declaration, a hologram of his older brother appeared above the desk, a glowing sword in one hand, a rainbow colored flame in the other, and Derek fought down the urge to sigh and lay his head on the desk.

  “He might be a self-proclaimed ‘paranoid bastard,’ but also follows a policy of not bothering to try and keep secret things that are obvious, so we do actually know what his Capstone is, for the most part. And it is as simple as it is powerful.

  “He has two 5th Evolution [Classes], and while we don’t know the specifics of either, we do know it has given him flexibility on par with a mage, as a speed-based melee fighter.

  “Capstones, the right ones, are the sort of things that entire governments and militaries make their plans around, the kind of things that can take someone who is ‘merely’ considered to have above-average strength and turn them into an S-Ranker with paradigm-breaking capabilities … however, discussing the kinds of stunts that can earn you a good Capstone is a topic for later in your studies.

  “Right now, we’ve got a different topic: Overscaling.”

  Derek allowed himself to breathe an audible sigh of relief. Deep down, he didn’t actually dislike Isaac, at least he didn’t think so, but at the same time, he also couldn’t think of many things he’d dislike more than an entire hour of having to listen to the teacher explain why his brother was “the greatest.”

  “So, who knows what that is?”

  Derek, like literally everyone else in the class, raised his hand, at which point Choi picked a student at random.

  “Overscaling means growing stronger without leveling yourself or your [Skills], even once you’re at the Level cap.”

  Choi nodded. “Anyone can earn some XP and gain Levels, without the cap, we’d be able to just keep leveling, and given enough time, there wouldn’t be a degree of power we couldn’t reach.

  “But that’s not how our world works, and if you want to become someone noteworthy, you’ll have to be able to get more power than 200 Levels provide. So, what is the easiest method of overscaling to obtain?”

  Once again, everyone raised their hands, but this time, it fell to Derek to answer.

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  “Aspects.”

  It was an obvious answer, really. Monsters sometimes dropped them, you could buy a slot to put them in with XP, and then you could gain some extra Stat points, along with some of the monster’s [Skills]. They were an easy way to get capabilities outside what your [Class] offered, as well as redirecting your [Class] path, and you could get a theoretically infinite number of them, though the exponentially growing cost of the slots did put a practical limit on how many you could get.

  But even though it was obvious, Choi shook his head.

  “Good guess, but the Aspect system is open to everyone by default. What is the easiest method that needs to be obtained?”

  Even though the correction had been said entirely matter-of-factly, Derek could feel himself flush. Damn, that had been … that should have been way too easy to screw up.

  This time, Ye-in gave the answer.

  “Spells. Mages can keep refining their magic over and over, creating better and better spells, and they generally have a higher growth potential than warriors, not counting [Skills] with their own overscaling potential.”

  Choi nodded, another series of illusions spreading across the wall behind him, depicting a series of scenes from various battles.

  Though despite the strong start, the rest of the class was comparatively simple, a history lesson, really, a mere discussion of famous, and famously suspected cases of individuals with overscaling [Skills].

  A cooldown [Skill] that grew stronger with every activation, a [Skill] whose levels kept resetting every time it hit its own cap, and kept gaining new sub-abilities, impressive Capstones, and once again, Derek’s brother was mentioned, though this time as an example of how secretive the elite could be.

  ***

  Five hours of classes and a long lunch at the cafeteria later, it was finally time to go ahead and go into a dungeon.

  Said dungeon turned out to be off-campus, but not so far that he couldn’t just hoof it there, though it was in an entirely new direction, revealing a few places he hadn’t seen yet, though likely wasn’t to visit on his own initiative either.

  The entrance itself was so low-key that he actually almost missed it; in fact, he might have had it not been for Ye-in and three other students already standing before it.

  “Wait, am I late?” he asked.

  “No, you’re just not early,” a familiar voice called from behind him. It was Mr. Zillman, wearing a trench coat and lugging an absurdly oversized club behind him, which looked like he’d just ripped a dead tree out of the ground, hacked off the branches, and gone “eh, good enough.”

  “Alright, for those of you who don’t know me yet, I’m Mr. Zillman, I’ll be supervising this dungeon dive.”

  He gestured at the entrance.

  “That is the Noob Cavern, the name says it all. It’s designed to be your introduction to fighting monsters, and as long as you’re even a little bit careful and aware of your surroundings, things will be fine. But you do need to pay attention.

  “So, for example, if I catch anyone checking their notifications while we’re in there, you’re washing dishes for a week.”

  “Don’t they have magic for that?” someone asked behind Derek.

  “Yes, we do,” Zillman announced, a wicked grin spreading across his face. “We find the pointlessness of the chore hammers the point home all the better.

  “Now, in future dives, you’ll get less and less information to go on, because gathering your own intelligence on the go is an important skill you’ll need to develop.

  “But since this should be your first dive, I’ll explain everything.”

  He pointed at the entrance, which was basically just a big metal door set into the wall.

  “The Noob Caverns don’t have a boss, and only contain one kind of monster: slate golems. They’re considered to be Tier 1 monsters in the summoning system, the threat equivalent of a Level 2 human at most. Since all of you have bloodlines and evolved races, you’re actually a little bit stronger than they are.

  “They’re about a meter and a half tall at most, are brittle in any place that isn’t actively moving, and they’ll keep moving unless their core is destroyed, which is always in the deepest part of their torso.

  “Once again, this place is as easy as a dungeon can possibly be, so if I have to step in, something major will have gone wrong. If that happens for the same reason more than once, you won’t like what happens. Life won’t necessarily give you the chance to learn from your mistakes even once, so if you can’t even learn in an academic environment…”

  Zillman trailed off, letting them imagine the worst.

  “So, are you ready to head in?” he asked after a couple of seconds.

  It seemed like the answer of “yes” was obvious … too obvious.

  “No,” Derek declared, amidst a chorus of yeses, resulting in everyone immediately turning to stare at him, not even entirely sure what had caused him to say that.

  “And what makes you say that?” Zillman asked, voice even in a way that made Derek feel like there was a correct answer here … but still told him nothing about what to choose anyway.

  The silence felt like an eternity, even though it was likely merely a few seconds, before Derek finally announced, “We need a plan.”

  There was no reply to that, but it bought him a couple more seconds.

  “I mean, you said it should be easy, but we still need some kind of plan. We don’t even know what everyone else can do.”

  Zillman nodded, face not revealing anything, then motioned for Derek to continue.

  “I’m Derek Thoma. I can regenerate, throw hellfire, and fight with a rapier.”

  “Nan Ye-in, sword, buckler, and force fields,” Ye-in followed a moment later.

  The other three students continued in the same vein.

  There was Wyatt Smith, an American with a quarterstaff who also had access to the [Powerful Blow] [Skill], whihc did the exactly what its name suggested in exchange for a little mana, a British lady by the name of Nigella Anderson, who was supposed to become a mage once she got her [Class] but currently could only fire a very low-power version of [Magic Missile], and another Korean, Kim Dae-ho, who was working on a monk build but currently had absolutely nothing to help him with that, meaning he was currently going in there to punch rock monsters with only a pair of brass knuckles to protect his hands.

  “Can we pull off a proper strategy, though?” Wyatt asked.

  “Do we need to?” Derek questioned. “Everyone fights the monster they’re in front of. If you’re not currently fighting a monster and someone else is in trouble, help them. We don’t have any big area of effect abilities, so not hitting each other should be pretty simple.”

  Or, at the very least, doable. Sure, it was basic, but like Wyatt had said, could they reliably go through with something more complex? And, more importantly, how badly could it bite them in the ass if they failed?

  “Alright,” Zillman grinned. “Now, are you ready to head in?”

  This time, everyone agreed, so the teacher hefted open the door, which had to weigh somewhere in the neighborhood of a metric ton, with casual ease, and they stepped into the dirt cavern behind it.

  Like most dungeons, the Noob Caverns were “illuminated” by unseen sources, a diffuse glow that was too bright, but also threw no shadows, creating an oddly shadowless realm that no one would ever mistake for a normal cave.

  It was also utterly devoid of monsters.

  “Are they hiding?” Wyatt asked.

  “The entry room is usually clear,” Derek told him. “Usually. But I wouldn’t rely on it.”

  So they headed towards the next room, the short corridor spitting them out into a far larger cavern, with seven small figures standing in the center, clearly waiting for them, and began to make their way forward at a shuffling pace, heavy rock feet loud against the craggy stone floor.

  “Scatter, pick them off?” Derek suggested, having to practically yell to be heard, then lunged to the side, running along one of the side walls to aim towards the leftmost Slate Golem. By fighting that one, unless the battlefield became considerably more chaotic, he’d also be able to keep an eye on the others, making sure nothing came up behind him.

  His rapier, having been out of its sheath since the very second they’d entered, flashed forward, the entirety of his weight and momentum behind it as he thrust it straight at the monster’s torso, aimed dead center, emphasis on dead … and bounced off with a tiny “plink” that was all but swallowed by the noise.

  Oh.

  The rapier flashed out again. This time, Derek decided to not even bother believing in its success, instead repeating the attack, the metal tip hitting and bouncing off the monster half a dozen times before he had to take a step back to avoid getting attacked.

  Fuck … these things were considered training dummies for a reason, they were slow as hell, and generally fragile … but a rapier that specialized in capitalizing on precision didn’t have the oomph needed to break through rock.

  In the distance, he could see Ye-in deal with the golem at the opposite end of the line, manifesting a barrier at its chest height to halt its advance, then creating a second one behind it at ankle height to trip it up when it took a step back to get around the first one, and then jumped on top of it when it fell, repeatedly bringing her shield down on it until it shattered.

  Damn, that’s cool … oh shit!

  Derek threw himself to the side to avoid his opponent’s fist, knees banging painfully against the stone floor, only for the pain to vanish a moment later when his regeneration kicked in.

  Shoot, he needed to get that under control, didn’t he? After all, he needed that mana for more serious injuries than booboos.

  And now, he was uncomfortably close to the wall behind him. He could dodge to the left or right to avoid being pinned, but the number of monsters needed to start getting lowered, now.

  So he lunged towards it while it was still recovering from the punch he’d just dodged, rapier once again aiming for its core, and unleashed his hellfire, a bar of black flame replacing his weapon in an instant, punching through the Slate Golem so cleanly that Derek barely even noticed it hit, the strike only stopping when the handguard of the rapier hit the golem’s chest.

  At which point the monster dropped like a puppet with its strings cut, jerking his weapon from his hand, an ugly crunch and a flash of pain informing him that he’d broken at least one finger.

  It was only when the Slate Golem began to topple that Derek realized his rapier would snap like a toothpick were it still protruding from the beast’s back if it hit the ground, but he managed to shoot his uninjured left hand forward and snag the hilt, then yank it out.

  Cursing internally, he found himself cradling the blade against his chest while the comforting feeling of his bones knitting back together washed over him … he froze, instantly realizing that the pain had only mostly vanished by the time the feeling cut off.

  After a mere moment of thought, he drew upon his actual mana pool and sent a few more dregs of the magical energy into his recovery ability. He needed his main hand functional, damnit!

  And with that, he “threw himself” at the nearest golem. Actually, he just poked it. Repeatedly.

  But just because the monster wasn’t being hurt didn’t mean it could ignore him, so it turned and began ambling after him, while he carefully retreated, making sure to keep the other four golems still standing in his field of view.

  The others would deal with their enemies and then … then his back hit the wall.

  Once again, shit.

  And, just like last time, Derek unleashed hellfire, but on this go around, he brought his rapier down in a a vertical chop, knowing the flames would make up for its lack of chopping power, carving a channel that the weapon could easily leave through when the monster fell, which it did a split-second later, hammering into the ground a mere centimeter from the tip of his foot.

  Close one.

  Cursing internally, Derek once again marched into the fray, while also focusing on not getting pinned again and sticking entirely to distractions.

  Even keeping his usage of hellfire to less than a second each time, he was burning through his mana at a rate that was both absurd and unsustainable.

  Though in the end, they managed to win, with Nigella being the only one who’d been unable to bring down even one monster on her own. She’d managed to kneecap her opponent with her spells, blowing apart both legs and making it topple over, but then been left without the mana to finish it off, something made all the worse by the fact that she hadn’t brought a backup weapon, though in the end, Wyatt lent her his quarterstaff so she could still get a kill.

  Derek sheathed his rapier before he had to put his hands on his knees to try and regain his breath, adrenaline beginning to crash while he tried to recover from all the running he’d been doing.

  Also, he couldn’t keep using hellfire like that. It was meant to be a holdout power, damnit, and he didn’t have the mana to use it as his primary combat technique.

  Also, Slate Golems were the standard punching bags of the [System] world. Slow, short, and brittle, they should have been easy … but they weren’t.

  He could, hell, should, bring a sledgehammer tomorrow, or figure out a way to add an anti-armor option to his rapier, but neither of those helped him now.

  Or maybe he could have grabbed a sufficiently heavy shield, which he could then “misuse” the way Ye-in did hers, but once again, that wasn’t something he could do now.

  Derek glanced down at the nearest dead golem, its heavy stone limbs splayed out.

  Could he … yeah, that might work.

  One final burst of hellfire later, he was holding a slate club that used to be a golem’s arm, and swung it experimentally, only for it to crack in half before the motion was even finished, the top portion flying through the air to clatter across the floor near the others.

  “Hey, watch it!” Wyat snapped, while Derek just gave a shy “sorry.”

  Whoops.

  “Slate is brittle even for rock,” Zillman reminded him, having gotten damn close without Derek ever having noticed him. “The golems can ignore that fact while they’re alive, but that club would have shattered the first time you hit something.”

  “Damnit,” Derek muttered, adding a louder “thank you,” painfully aware of the fact that Zillman had heard both.

  And from there, they fought their way throuhg four more rooms, each with one more golem than the previous one, making sure to take short breaks in between each to recover their mana.

  By the end, they were hardly experts, but they’d figured out ways to do better.

  For example, Ye-in lent him her buckler and instead used her sword in a technique called the Mordhau, an old medieval “trick” whose name translated to “murder strike,” involving grabbing the weapon by the blade while making sure not to touch the actual edges, and using the hilt to hit with, wielding it like a warhammer instead.

  Also, Nigella wound up deciding to not even bother trying to focus down individual monsters; instead, shattering as many legs as her mana pool allowed, one per monster, to keep them out of the fight while everyone else went after whatever remained.

  Wyatt, meanwhile, had both a staff and [Powerful Blow] and overall might as well have had a build dedicated to busting up golems.

  And finally, Dae-ho was, well, decent at bringing down golems. His knuckle dusters did help crack stone monsters, but at the same time, of all the weapons that were “good” at the task, they were the absolute worst.

  A good hour and a half later, they were stumbling out of the dungeon, covered in dust and sweat, a few rips in their clothing, and feeling utterly ragged.

  “So, what is the one thing you could have done to improve your experience?” Zillman asked.

  “Asked what the monsters were going to be beforehand?” Wyatt suggested.

  “Sure, but that would only help here, not in general,” Zillman pointed out. “What could you have done that would help in general?”

  “Spare weapo- … fuck,” Derek began to answer when he tripped over a rock and nearly went sprawling, only catching himself after having stumbled on for nearly half the length of the entry room.

  “Spare weapons,” he finally repeated. “We don’t have the [Skills] to compensate for the limits of our weapons. Also …”

  He trailed off, trying to decide whether or not the addition would be too pointed, then settled on “I don’t care.”

  “Also, everyone needs a weapon, full stop.”

  Zillman nodded. “You won’t always be able to fight on your terms, even the best mages need a backup.”

  The group broke up a few moments later, with Derek heading home immediately, too tired for anything else.

  That was when a [System] window popped into Derek’s field of view.

  And that one little message somehow made it all worth it.

  Granted, none of these [Classes] were significantly better than what he’d already been offered, but he’d still earned them.

  But there was also no force in this universe that could prevent him from heading straight home and collapsing into bed.