The next morning, Derek was once again in a dungeon, fighting a “starter monster” and finding it to be a considerably larger pain in the ass than he’d been led to believe.
Another neon-green pseudopod swished through the air in front of his nose as he jerked his head back, then swiped his rapier through the base of the limb, only for the severed mass to get absorbed straight back into the slime the moment it fell down.
What a pain in the ass.
Drawing his rapier back, Derek was about to try to skewer the core once more, only to realize that a second slime had found its way behind him. Somehow.
A quick bolt of hellfire turned it into a bonfire, the creature igniting like dry tinder despite being something like ninety-five percent water, and after a quick moment of indecision, he jumped through the flames, while the critter in front of him lunged after him.
He was immune to his own flames. It very much was not.
Okay, once again: he was wasting mana. But, at the very least, he was learning to get as much use out of it as possible.
Behind him, he could hear Ye-in cursing, her forcefields turning out to be functionally against infinitely maleable enemies, and trying to hit the core amidst the sticky mess that was their torso turned out to be a pain in the ass.
Because while slimes weren’t overly dangerous, at least not this variety, they were still tricky to kill with mundane weapons alone.
Derek’s rapier flashed out, the tip spearing the core of yet another slime, only his second “proper” kill, as he didn’t count the ones he’d had to resort to hellfire to deal with.
It wasn’t like practicing with it wasn’t important, because it very much was, in fact, in many ways, it was more important than his martial training, but overall, any time he resorted to it in situations he was supposed to be able to handle by strength of arms felt like a personal failure. Not to mention that he could barely use it, and the only reason he could repeatedly do so was that the monsters he was facing were so weak, so he could finish them off with incredibly brief bursts of flame.
There was a loud splattering sound, followed by Wyatt swearing, but that seemed to be the last of the slimes in the room.
“Mana break,” Derek called out, while looking to make sure that his fellow student wasn’t injured. He wasn’t, but there were several new stains on his pants, consequences of having hit a slime just a little too hard.
“Incoming,” Ye-in warned, pointing towards the door to the next room, where a dark brown slime was oozing out of.
“Oh, please don’t be sewage …” Derek muttered under his breath as he readied his rapier, hearing someone snigger behind him.
He began to stab out in a way he knew was patently ridiculous, more like how someone with arachnophobia tries to squish a spider with a stick while staying as far from the eight-legged horror as physically possible, than an actual fighter.
Because it made a perverse kind of sense that there would be sewage slimes in here. They’d be disgusting, but not overly so compared to what they might face elsewhere, so it would be a comparatively “safe” way to introduce students to the grosser side of things.
But still … ew.
Thankfully, this particular variant seemed to be comparatively slow, and after his fourth half-hearted stab, the slime collapsed into a brown puddle, core popped, splattering everywhere.
“Shit!” Derek yelped and jumped back. And then he smelled it.
“Wait … is that Coke?”
Another snigger behind him, leaving him ninety percent certain that it was the teacher laughing at him.
“Dungeons can have variants on monsters, and the dean managed to figure out how to trick them into making cola slimes a few months into the age of the [System]. She gets a kick out of seeding a few in the training dungeons,” he explained without prompting.
Derek nodded slowly. That was interesting … but he was mostly just glad he was presently dripping soda rather than shitwater.
“Alright, now can we have a mana break?” he finally asked.
There was a chorus of yeses, and they settled down for a few minutes, then proceeded into the next room, which was still a stone cavern, but one that was shaped and painted to look like the walls and floor were made from wooden boards instead.
As for the slimes, they were both more numerous and varied in color, not a single neon-green “standard” variant in sight, but absolutely chock-full of more interesting variants, including several white ones, a mint-green one, three ones that looked like amber if amber had the consistency of jelly, and finally almost a dozen dark red ones that were just a little bit too clear to be blood.
And then they lunged forward.
“What. The. Fuck,” Derek muttered, readying his rapier.
The damn things were fast, far faster than the others, moving more like the cola slime from earlier, more fluid, more flexible …
Shit.
Derek threw himself to the side as a green one launched itself at his chest, rapier splashing through it while entirely missing the core. Though it still felt far easier to cut through than the ones in the first room.
Fast but fragile, yet still immune to any damage that failed to strike the core.
The slime lunged for Derek once again, the rapier once again only succeeding in splattering more dark green liquid across the floor, rather than inflicting meaningful damage.
Oh, hell …
Derek began to stab at it more frantically, rapier flashing forward half a dozen times in barely two seconds, easily punching through the liquid shell until the creature fell apart. He had no idea which strike had managed to land, but clearly, one had, because the slime fell apart while releasing a minty-alcoholic smell he couldn’t quite identify but seemed oddly familiar.
“Are all of these booze?” Ye-in asked, Derek, looking up to catch her looking like she’d just murdered someone, red liquid practically drenching her up to her chest, though based on her comment, that was probably just wine.
Evidently, someone had had a lot of fun guiding the development of this dungeon’s core.
Then, something whipped across his arm, tearing his jacket and leaving a thin cut in his arm that began to sting something fierce.
Whirling, he was greeted with an extra-large slime that seemed to have a massive shard of glass at the end of its pseudopod …
With a soft curse, Derek flung a bolt of hellfire at the amber-colored slime … big mistake. Because it exploded into a massive ball of black flame that washed over his face, briefly blinding him.
Fuuuuuuuuck. That thing had probably been made of whisky or something.
Well, no one had been in range to get hit, and he was immune, but that had still been stupid … and then he heard Ye-in giggle behind him.
Derek sighed, turning to see a room practically drenched in various colored liquids, the smell of several kinds of alcohol mixing into a highly unpleasant melange, but clear of surviving monsters, leaving him free to engage in this conversation.
“What?”
“You have mad scientist hair,” she sniggered, causing him to reach up to try and tame his now frizzy mop of hair that had been blown into a truly ridiculous hairdo.
“So I do,” Derek muttered as he looked around to once again make sure the area was clear, then worked to get it into something at least somewhat “proper” while his mana regenerated.
“Can I try to light the next room on fire before we go in?” he asked once he was done. His response was a chorus of shrugs, so he asked, “Does that mean ‘yes’?”
“Sure, go for it,” Ye-in said after a brief silence. “But do you have enough mana for that?”
“I don’t need to,” Derek replied with a broad grin and began to pull some gadgets out of the storage ring.
Well, “gadgets” was stretching it by a significant amount.
What he was actually holding were large lead weights that were meant to be used in fishing, to carry the hook towards the bottom, smeared in homemade napalm, which was basically just gasoline thickened by a gelling agent, with the basic idea being that the napalm would carry his hellfire, while the metal would provide the mass needed to allow it to actually fly a significant distance.
Carefully, he prowled forward, a fistfull of slimy metal clutched in each hand, then, the instant he saw the next room over, he pulled his right hand back and threw it forward in his best approximation of a baseball pitch, sending a burst of hellfire shooting from his palm at the last possible moment, then passed the weights from his left hand into his right and threw those, another flaming shotgun blast of metal flying into the room beyond before he legged it.
Just in time. He didn’t see what exploded, but it had definitely been bigger than the whisky slime from earlier and was quickly followed by two more, to the point where he actually felt the familiar sensation of regeneration touch his ears, indicating he’d actually managed to inflict some hearing damage upon himself.
When he walked back over, all he saw was an inferno. Not one a slime could have survived, but also not something he could see through … Derek sighed and decided to swallow his pride.
“Uh, was that the last room?” he asked the teacher.
“It was. But you won’t have someone to give you information like that normally, so you shouldn’t get used to that.”
Derek nodded, then looked around at the others. “So, see you next time? I gotta take a shower.”
Because for some goodforsaken reason, even though he was entirely immune to his own fire, and heavily resistant to many others, and capable of pretty much ignoring radiated heat, he still sweated when things were too hot, so with how much hellfire he’d thrown around, the entire damn dungeon was slowly becoming an oven, leaving him sweaty and gross.
Thank God for living near campus.
***
The second class of the day turned out to be a bit of a drag, very much the opposite of what he’d expected a class on magic to be.
Oh, Derek had little doubt that magic would be truly fascinating once he could use it, but right now, it was entirely theoretical, heavy on information that just plain needed to be memorized yet lacked an immediate use.
Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
So basically, it had started with a short recap of “you need to buy spells with [Skill] points until you’re familiar enough with them to the point where you can start learning them from books or make your own” and then a glut of stuff that presently only served as “filler” in his brain.
Important … but Derek had a feeling it would swiftly become his least favorite class.
***
After lunch, he found himself back in the main hall, beneath the dome, which was now entirely black, reminding Derek of an old-school planetarium, while the floor was formed into a handful of scattered chairs.
Just how early was he? There were exactly four other people here, despite the fact that … he checked his phone. Jup, it was literally less than a minute until class started, and he doubted a group of significant size would march in during those last few seconds.
And yes, one more person did enter, but he didn’t look like a student.
A middle-aged Korean man entered from the main door, slowly walking towards the center of the room, seemingly the very first teacher who did not need to make a big production out of their entrance, though the fact that he had a rather large pitbull walking beside him as he scratched it behind the ears was unique in its own right.
He stopped in the dead center of the room, where a standing table was waiting for him, and waved them all over, waiting for the students to do so before beginning to speak.
“They say that those who do not study history are doomed to repeat it.
“I wish that were true, because if it were, it would be very easy to make the world a better place and keep it that way.
“Instead, it is as Mark Twain said, ‘history does not repeat, but it sure does rhyme.’ There are patterns, but not ones that are easy to identify or disrupt, let alone stop.
“But if you’re here, that’s not going to prevent you from trying.”
It was at this point that Derek realized he recognized the teacher despite the man not having introduced himself.
A second of Korea’s S-Rankers, Dr. Han Junu, whose powers were … well, they were weird, in the grandest sense. Where most people in his position had somewhat coherent powersets that could be described in a few words, a full sentence at most, his abilities were …
Perhaps it was easier to describe what he could do, rather than to try and generalize.
Dr. Han was a living spanner in the works of those more powerful than him.
That dog of his had quite literally eaten the North Korean nuclear program before the man himself had fled the country of his birth, if some of the crazier rumors were to be believed.
[Raid Bosses] lost their absurd toughness, “merely” being building-sized punching bags while certain [Skills] of his were active.
Any shadow governments or secret societies that tried to establish themselves would immediately begin to fall apart, the veil of secrecy torn open the very instant he decided it needed to go.
Powerful abilities capable of sweeping away armies would fade like dust in the wind, and just in general, “the powerful” would find that putting themselves above others also involved giving said others a clean shot at the last place you wanted to get hit.
Raw power was the one thing he was said to be limited in, but then again, he was at the Level cap, so he wasn’t exactly lacking in that department. Perhaps not the absolute strongest in straight combat, but an absolutely terrifying figure in other respects, and, perhaps more importantly, so far above Derek in Level that he was in absolutely no position to comment on his capabilities.
Then, Han let himself drop to meet a chair that rose beneath where he was about to sit, while the table vanished, leaving him sitting there, gesturing at them to come over.
“Also, since this class is mostly empty as usual, we once again have the opportunity to make this a bit more … interactive.”
As he spoke, several more chairs rose from the floor to form a ceiling that included him.
“Though next time, we’ll have a smaller classroom, so please check your schedules for the updated location before then.”
While he spoke, Derek walked over and took a seat, and so did everyone else.
“So, what does everyone want to get out of this class? It’s optional, unpopular, and adds very little to your degrees, and yet you made the wise decision to be here. Why?” Han asked.
“I’d like to understand how the world ended up the way it is, and how it’s going to change,” Derek said. “I mean, things seem static, now, but we’ll all live basically forever, and I don’t think they’re going to stay the same for all that time.”
“No, they probably won’t,” Han said, with a voice that perhaps, just a little bit, sounded proud, which made Derek think that was probably the one thing he was teaching the class to talk about … which did make sense, didn’t it? If one thought about all the changes he had to have seen over the course of his life, from the turmoil in the nation of his birth, to him defecting from the hermit kingdom of North Korea, to seeing all the early turmoil of the [System] until the Earth reached its current form … just about every publicly known phase of his life was radically different than the one before or after.
Then, the student to the right of Derek gave her own answer.
“I just find history fascinating.”
This time, Dr. Han simply nodded. “Another good answer.”
And then, he gestured at the third student.
“I want to learn what makes nations fail so I can draw my own conclusions. My father has decided to hire a building’s worth of so-called experts in colony creation and societal planning, but the only thing they have going for them is their diplomas, and I need actual examples to call them out on their bullshit.”
Han barked a laugh. “Yes, I can see how that might have happened. But practical experience is still worth more than almost anything you can learn in a classroom environment. If I were in your position, I’d try to contact the public relations wing of the Colonial Development Ministry, they have the information you need and are usually happy share it with someone who shows genuine interest.”
The student who’d spoken raised an eyebrow. “Are you trying to talk me out of taking this class?”
Han gave a wry smile at that. “In this stage of my life, I have chosen to be an educator. That means I give you the information you need, not the information that’ll keep you in my classroom … though I do believe everyone can benefit from studying history, regardless of their goals.”
The next student merely shrugged, adding on a short “I’m looking into all classes before picking the ones I want.”
And the last one was also just interested.
“Alright,” Han finally said. “And does anyone have any particular time period or topics they’d like to see explored, or are you alright with me choosing the content of our lessons?”
No one put forth anything, except for the student who’d been told to contact the ministry, who’d pulled out his phone.
“In that case, I’d like to cover the past century,” Han decided. “The mess the [System] made of things, how we fixed things, and how badly it might have gone if we hadn’t.”
As he spoke, images began to shimmer into the air overhead.
Images of battles, of monsters Derek had seen dozens of time on television, on the news and in movies, of people he recognized and ones he did not, scenes depicting disasters that felt like he should have learned about in school, and a titanic serpent that could only have been the Leviathan, the first, last, and only [World Boss] to ever be summoned on the Earth’s surface, the creature easily visible despite the fact that the image showed it as viewed from space.
Military parades and mushroom clouds, leaders giving speeches and rooms utterly covered in blood and guts, conference rooms and fire-blasted hellscapes.
Derek swallowed nervously. How much of that had Han seen personally? How much of what had happened back then had actually been that bad, and how much of what they were being shown had simply been selected for its poignancy …
Finally, the swirling mess of images began to slow down until it stood still, and only a single picture was clear as the others faded away.
It was off a rather fat Asian man, baby-faced, almost, wearing a suit and heavy jacket while overlooking a military parade, and Han began to speak.
“Once the world stopped trying to end every five seconds, the way the [System] impacted leadership changed things more than anything else.
“Under the [System], it’s not just enough to be in charge; one actually needs to make sure the people under you are happy. Because if they aren’t, they tend to plan, they tend to prepare, and most importantly, they tend to get the exact classes they need, most destructive to their leader’s plans.”
The image overhead shifted, showing a utilitarian concrete chamber, its walls blurry and cast in shadow, but the center of both the room and the picture were crystal clear, showing a large dog, a pitbull, the very same pitbull currently resting peacefully beneath Han’s chair, absolutely going to town on the insides of a large missile, devouring metal and what Derek was ninety-nine percent certain was the nuclear bomb itself.
If that was true, then those “rumors” had, in fact, been one hundred percent true … well, it wasn’t like it had ever been in question that he’d fried the nation’s nuclear arsenal, but the proclaimed method had seemed a tad ridiculous previously.
“It does not matter how powerful the one in charge is, how well their [Class] helps them control the populace, how tight their iron grip is … the harder they make it to rise up, the stronger those who manage it will be, and the better they will be adapted to the tactics at play.
“And all that can only happen if a leader actually manages to climb that high, which they usually don’t.”
Then, Han leaned forward in his chair, placing his elbows on his knees as he interlaced his fingers, striking the closest approximation to a “mastermind pose” as he could without a desk in front of him.
“Now, why do you think that is?”
“You lose power the way you get it,” Derek offered. “Anyone who tries to seize or hold on to power through violence is set up to get thrown out by violence. And you need to be ridiculously powerful to be able to hold off everyone.”
“That’s part of it,” Han replied.
“You can’t be both the strongest combatant and the most capable politician, your [Classes] can only be about so many things, and you only have so many [Skill]points.”
“If you want to be an absolute ruler, you need to keep the people around you down, and that leaves you vulnerable to anyone from outside your inner circle.”
Han nodded slowly, thoughtfully. “All good answers. But you’re all thinking about the end of the path to power … what about the start?”
“Uh, truth-telling abilities force politicians to be more honest?”
Another nod from the Dr.
“If you want to do something tyrannical, you need to pick a [Class] to that end, and people might call you out on that?” Derek suggested.
“Generally, legislature prevents the [Class] you hold alone being the cause for legal action, but yes, any politician running around as a [Budding Tyrant] or the like would find many doors being barred to them,” Han agreed. “Or outright assassinated, but that sort of thing is usually looked askance upon, at least when the perpetrator is found.”
“Why? Don’t they deserve it?”
“Way too many people think that any politicians other than the ones they vote for are the devil, that is a slippery as hell slope.”
“But if you don’t do anything, you will wind up with some tyrant who’s actually hard to get rid of! We could …”
Derek sighed as the arguing started between his fellow students. Oh hell …
It wasn’t like he couldn’t see their points; bad leaders, even if eventually removed, could do a hell of a lot of damage, but at the same time, how much death and chaos was acceptable in exchange?
“When the government fears the people, there is liberty. When the people fear the government, there is tyranny. Thomas Jefferson,” Han quoted. “The governments of the world, have power. If we let them use it against us, rather than for all our benefit … I have lived in a place like that. If I could have done more than run off with the WMDs, I would have done so in a heartbeat.”
At least that seemed to settle things.
“Isn’t everything under the UN anyway?” Derek asked.
“As far as the big picture is concerned, yes,” Han said. “Yet as effective as a body as it is nowadays, that is a relatively new development. It’ll take a while before national governments stop being important. Besides, the way things are now, there are two levels of politicians with [Skills] that improve the entire world.”
Huh … that second part was actually something he’d never thought about, though it made sense.
He hadn’t paid all that much attention to that part of politics, the exact [Skills] boosting Germany at any given time hadn’t really affected his life all that much, and it wasn’t like he’d been able to vote, so he hadn’t really followed the whole “well, if I get elected, I have this [Skill] to help you all do xyz” debates. Unless it was YouTube compilations of hecklers with truth-telling abilities calling out lies. Those tended to be pretty funny.
The discussion wound up winding down a bit later, so Han decided to cut things there, and once again start to project images into the air around them, with Derek only then realizing that they’d winked out completely at some point.
This time around, it almost exclusively showed individuals, shown standing amidst scenes of carnage, monster bits spread all over, interspersed with images that looked like they’d been ripped straight out of some recruiting poster.
But what really stood out to Derek was that he recognized the overwhelming majority, including his sisters.
“Is the next topic S-Rankers?” he asked.
“Close,” Han said. “This is about the Compact.”
Ah, yes, that thing, which Tanja liked to bitch about whenever the conversation turned to politics. Because it was the document that really did tie her hands, one that all S-Rankers had to sign before being allowed on the Earth’s surface, which primarily stated they couldn’t do battle on a planetary surface unless someone else picked the fight, while also granting certain legal privileges that had enticed the first wave of S-Rankers to sign.
At this point, though, there was enough weight behind the contract that newcomers to the rank pretty much had to sign … hence his sister’s consternation.
“As you all know, the Compact managed to directly prevent the strongest people in the world from taking over through sheer strength, or it becoming collateral damage in a fight, while also ensuring that they were capable of defending themselves, and the world itself, if needed.”
Derek nodded along slowly. By insulating the people who could shatter the social order from most fights while also keeping them in reserve, the world he currently lived in had been made possible.
And while it was doubtlessly phrased far more eloquently within the Compact itself, the general concensus among the populace was that it opperated on the principle of “if you feel like you’re getting away with something, you probably already crossed the line a while back,” alongside a very strong expression of the concept of “fuck around and find out” on the parts of those tried to get to those beyond their reach by targetting their family, friends, and even acquaintances.
Basically, no one would have signed the damn thing if doing so risked them winding up being unable to act against someone threatening their friends and family.
Han abruptly stood up as the windows overhead once again began to let in daylight, now fading.
“But that’s something for next week, I hope to see you all then.”
With that, he began to head towards the exit, only to stop after a few steps, turn, and announce “Dasom, come!”, at which point his dog rose off the floor to bound after him.
Well, that had certainly been … something.
Then, after class, Ye-in decided to show him a nice local restaurant he’d managed to miss despite how thorough he’d felt his explorations had been, and then he headed home, thoroughly looking forward to the next day. And not just because the first class was going to be all about the place he eventually wanted to go, outer space.
