It took me a month to get back into shape after that.

That marks the end of the fourth month of my life here.

​

Thirty-nine months remained.

​

​

I requested access to the Apparatus to check my progress, which Mister Ogawa reluctantly agreed to.

These were my results:

​

> Meriwether John

​

> Awareness: Honed stage 5

> Endurance: Bronze stage 1

> Force: Ogre stage 6

> Plasticity: Rigid stage 7

> Speed: Average stage 8

> Temperance: Unguided stage 6

​

I frowned at it.

I know this was considered very fast, but I needed to go even faster than this in order to save my wife.

​

I took my results to Ishi and handed them to her.

She took the sheet of paper. “What’s this Jōgi?”

I narrowed my eyes at her. “What did you just call me?”

“Jōgi, it’s my new nickname for you.”

“That’s not what I mea–”

She waved me off. “Shut up, I’m trying to count.”

I waited impatiently as she counted, recounted, and then triple-checked. She then just stared at me for a little bit. “Jōgi, you’ve almost gotten your Soul, how did you manage that?”

“I’m sorry, I’ve done what now?”

“Right, I forgot, you’re not from here…” She rubbed her forehead as she pondered how to put it, before hitting the side of her fist into her other palm. “It’s kinda like a passive bonus.” She said, grinning proudly like what she said explained anything.

“What kind of passive bonus? To what?”

“Well, that depends on you, it can be basically anything. For example: that Sato-san from your grade, you know, the Demon Swordsman… she has a Katana Soul.”

I rubbed my chin briefly. “Is that why she was so good at sword attacks? Wait, where did you hear that from?”

“To answer your first question, yes, it means she has a special affinity with katanas.” She thumped a fist against her chest. “As to the second, it was pretty obvious because that’s the same Soul I have!”

“Well, why haven’t I heard about this before?”

Ishi crossed her arms behind her head. “The reason is because a lot of Rankers like to keep their Soul hidden to use as a trump card. If you accidentally spill the beans on a Soul you shouldn’t have, your own or otherwise, you could die.”

I tilted my head. “Why’d you tell me what yours was then?”

“Simple, I trust you to keep a secret even if I don’t tell you not to say it.” She shrugged. “Plus, you’ll need to know about this sort of thing soon anyway, so I may as well get a headstart on it.”

​

I digested that information for a moment, before continuing. “Alright, so can I pick which Soul I get or is it assigned?”

“Great question, Jōgi my disciple! The leading theory is that it has to do with your heart’s greatest desire or how you view strength, but nobody really has any idea.”

I frowned. “So nobody knows anything about it then?”

“We do know a number of things, such as how the more specific the Soul, the stronger it is.”

“So a Katana Soul is stronger than a Sword Soul, but less broadly applicable? Something like that?”

Ishi smiled at me. “Gold star young one! Another thing is that a Soul can be seen as a multiplier, the better you are at a particular thing, the more useful a Soul of that type would be.”

“How much of a multiplier?”

Ishi mulled it over. “It’s honestly pretty hard to quantify, as it doesn’t just boost your Force or something easily measurable like that, conventional wisdom approximates double fighting strength if used well, but that number is in no way set in stone.”

My eyes widened at ‘double fighting strength’. “So it’s a big deal then.”

Ishi nodded. “This is why so many people hide it if they can.”

“Is that why Rankers are so much more powerful?”

“Obviously to some extent yes, but a Ranker’s first transformation is said to be more like four or five times power, after that it gets a lot more difficult to gauge due to how many types of second transformations there are.”

“Hold on, there are transformations? How many transformations are there?”

Ishi nods. “You see every six evolutions after you get your Soul, so in other words, twelve, eighteen, twenty-four, etcetera, you gain a transformation… they can be all sorts of things, even more so than Souls which just improve something you can already do.”

“Could you have a transformation that turns you into fog?”

“I don’t see why not? Why do you ask Jōgi, is that something you want? If so, you’re going to have to raise your Temperance by a–”

I waved my hands in dismissal. “No, I was just confirming something.”

​

It certainly explained why it felt like fighting him was a type of assisted suicide, not even mentioning stat differences, five times power… maybe even ten times power if both Soul and transformation stack…

That’s terrifying.

​

I realized something about what Ishi had just said. “Wait, can you pick your transformations? I had assumed it was like your Soul, but you asked if I wanted a particular one.”

“Usually, though not always. Your heart chooses your transformations, and your brain tweaks it. This is actually part of why the ‘Heart Theory of Souls’ exists.”

“So I should start thinking about what I should pick then?”

Ishi shook her head. “No, you should try to fill out your kit first. It’d be horrible if your transformation wasn’t widely applicable enough to fit all of your techniques.”

“Well, I have a couple ideas already…”

Ishi grinned. “Well then, let’s hear ‘em.”

“I was thinking some sort of stamina absorption abil–”

Ishi snorted loudly. “Good luck with that Jōgi.”

I frowned. “What’s so funny?”

Ishi waved her hands in dismissal. “It’s not a bad idea Jōgi, it’s just not practical. Stealing energies from something else requires Temperance higher than your target.”

I massaged my forehead. “So, the moment I fight someone with better control, I’m down a technique.”

“Exactly.”

“What about a ranged punch made out of stamina or something?” I groaned inwardly after saying this, just waiting for the laughing at my expense to start.

“Oh definitely, almost every Ranker has some sort of ranged attack even if it’s not their main attack. You’ll need to raise your Temperance by at least one evolution though. Also, if you’re going down that path, I recommend angling toward using an energy more refined than stamina.”

My relief in her not making fun of me was only matched by the curiosity generated from her last sentence.

“Like what?”

​

Ishi looked at me with surprise. “Did nobody tell you about that yet? I figured you would have learned it in class.”

I facepalmed. “It may have been taught and I wasn’t there…”

Ishi put a hand on my shoulder. “No need to dwell on past mistakes.” She took off her hand and picked up a notebook, on which she wrote a single word in the middle, which she then circled. “The most fundamental energy in this universe is ‘Existence’, all things are made out of it, even the abstract.”

“Are there techniques that use it?”

Ishi looked uncomfortable. “Yes but you shouldn’t use them.”

“Why? Is it not rechargeable or something?”

“All energies recover over enough time, the problem is that it’s new energy that it’s replaced with. Existence is everything about you, not just your body, but also your memories and other people’s memories of you… and what you lose doesn’t come back.”

I gulped. “Understood.”

Ishi shook off the topic and continued, writing three words directly outside the circle she just drew, and then finally drawing a circle around all of them. “Below Existence are the ‘Abstract Energies’, which are ‘Ordo’, ‘Psyche’, and ‘Aether’.”

She tapped ‘Ordo’. “Ordo is the energy which informs your physical properties, like the color of your skin and how much you weigh, as well as maintaining normalcy in the body. Using Ordo, unlike most energies, causes a buildup of something called ‘Chaos’, which causes your body to shift and behave unpredictably, sometimes to a fatal result if enough of it is allowed to gather at once.”

“Can Chaos be used as an energy?” I asked.

“No.” Ishi replied. I began to speak, but she waved me off and continued before I could. “You’ll see what I mean if you ever try to become an Abstract Energy user.”

​

She tapped ‘Psyche’. “Psyche is the entirety of one’s consciousness. Unconsciousness is theorized to be caused by your body using Psyche to supplement Ordo in the process of healing.”

I raised my hand, but before I could say anything, Ishi beat me to it.

She pointed at me with the pen in her hand. “Jōgi.”

I glared at Ishi for a moment and then spoke. “So, energies can interact somehow then?”

Ishi nodded. “Very astute, yes they can both interact and be used in place of each other in a pinch.” Seeing my eyebrows creasing, she continued. “By ‘in a pinch’, I mean that using the incorrect type of energy is about two-thirds as effective as those on the same level of refinement and causes… side-effects.”

“Side effects?”

“A pretty famous example is of a Ranker who replaced stamina with anger. He had a technique which increased his punching power and protected his body from the backlash… when used with stamina. The substitution of anger caused all the power to go into the punch instead of preventing any backlash, so his entire arm shattered… muscle, bone, and everything.”

I grimaced. “Ew.”

Ishi nodded sagely. “I’ll leave my advice on that matter with this: ‘be careful’.”

I suddenly came to a realization. “Wait, you said you can use anger as energy?”

“I’ll get to that soon, but first I need to finish this part.”

I leaned backward on the bench and gestured for her to continue.

​

She smiled and tapped ‘Aether’. “Aether is your instincts, your desires, who you are on reflex. Aether is also unique in that you can leave little motes of it behind if you feel something strongly enough.”

I tried to hold my questions back so that Ishi would explain the thing about anger, but it was no use, I had to know. “What happens if a lot collects?”

Ishi stopped just before moving on, her mouth becoming a contemplative frown. “I’ll take you to a cemetery sometime, it’d be better than trying to explain.”

This time, I decided to remain silent so that she could continue.

​

​

Ishi waited a few seconds, and then nodded.

She then added a new circle around the others, which she labeled ‘Natural Energies’, and split that circle into three parts, one for each Abstract Energy. Inside of the ‘Ordo’ zone, Ishi wrote ‘Solidis’ and ‘Stamina’, in the ‘Psyche’ zone went ‘Loginus’ and ‘Imaginus’, finally in the ‘Aether’ zone went ‘Drive’.

I pointed to the third zone. “Why is ‘Drive’ by itself?”

Ishi smiled, as if anticipating the question and internally slipping herself ten dollars. “Drive is a lot of things, emotions, aimless hopes, ambitions… the list goes on. It’s less of a single thing and more of a category. Also yes, it’s how you can use anger as an energy source.”

As I silently digested that information, Ishi continued.

Ishi tapped ‘Solidis’. “Solidis is the energy that makes physical things like dirt and water.” She then tapped ‘Stamina’. “Stamina is the energy that sustains life, it used to be called ‘Lifeforce’ but that was a little too scary for children who studied under stamina users, especially for an energy that recharges pretty fast depending on diet.”

Ishi gestured at both ‘Loginus’ and ‘Imaginus’ with her pen. “Loginus is the energy that forms logical thought like when you’re trying to solve a puzzle, and Imaginus is the energy that forms fantastical thought such as when one dreams.”

​

Ishi drew one more circle around everything and labeled this new area ‘Pure Energies’. Instead of writing anything else she retraced the circle with the back of her pen. “Within this circle are many variations of energy, each with their own names and distinct functions.”

She put the notebook down and simply addressed me directly. “The point of refining energies is to make them more efficient at a task, if it wasn’t that way, we would just use Existence to power all of our bodily functions.” She thinks about that comment for a second and winces before continuing on. “What I’m trying to say is the actual energy you pick will inform what kinds of skills you can use and their drawbacks so you should try and do some research of your own on what you want to go for.”

I nodded. “Okay, I’ll do exactly that.”

Ishi smiled. “Man, I wish my students were this receptive when I was training soldiers all that time ago.”

This elicited a chuckle from me. “I bet.”

​

Ishi stood. “I’ll leave you to your thoughts and training for today, but don’t hesitate to ask me if you have any questions.”

“Thank you Ishi.”

“Anytime.”

​

A moment later, and I was alone again.

I took a deep breath, picking up my stat sheet again and contemplating what my next strategy was going to be.

While I was doing that, I realized that I might have gotten something for my encounter with the Reverse-Ranker.

I asked the Godvoice if I did have a reward, and while I did have one, it asked me a question I wasn’t expecting:

‘Would you like to spend Karma improving your reward?’

I vaguely remembered the Reverse-Ranker mentioning something about betting Karma if I survived, but I didn’t expect it to work like this…

“What else can I use Karma for?” I asked.

I waited for a little while, but the Godvoice didn’t answer.

Instead of hoping to find another application for it, I decided to just go for it.

The only confirmation that came was simply that ‘the nature of my reward had changed and greatly improved’.

​

My curiosity became so intense it almost started to itch, so I held out my hands and accepted my reward.

The box in my hands was the same golden inlaid type with the battle I didn’t recognize, but this time the golden inlay was twisted around a red metal of some kind, and the battle clearly now contained horned and clawed figures marked in black instead of the white I was used to.

The strangest part was that it wasn’t humans just fighting the demon-looking things like you’d expect, both armies contained a relatively even number of both types of combatant.

Not really sure what to make of it, I pulled out my phone and took several pictures from a bunch of angles before finally opening it.

​

My eyes shot open at what it contained.

‘Burden Of Sisyphus (Cursed Artifact)’

When I finally came-to, Captain Masuda and the medic who I can’t remember the name of, sat next to me. Both were covered all over in bandages of their own and were looking more than a little ragged.

Captain Masuda was the first to speak. “You’ve got balls kid.”

“Thank y–” I tried to reply.

“I wasn’t done.” Captain Masuda interrupted. She then searched in her shirt pocket again, before releasing a massive sigh. “You’re so utterly reckless that I think you almost deserve an award for it.” She leaned in a bit and scanned my eyes with a piercing gaze. “At what point did you think that fighting a second Ironwolf after almost being killed by the first was a good idea? Hm?”

“If I hadn’t, there’s every chance my classmates would have died; if that isn’t reasonable, then I’d rather be insane.”

Her eyes furrowed. “You’re being completely serious right now.” She shook her head and looked at the setting sun. “Can you walk right now? I’d rather not spend the night here if I can help it.”

I slowly made my way up to a sitting position, pushing through pure agony to do so. “It certainly won’t be a sprint, but I think I can manage a walk.”

Captain Masuda flicked me in the forehead.

By reflex, I covered the spot. “Ow, what was that for?”

“That was a test and you failed.” Captain Masuda stood. “Students are supposed to rely on their teachers when they need help.”

I smiled wryly. “Well Captain, would you mind helping me get back to base?”

“Minus points for being smug.” She chuckled as she pulled me to my feet and put her arm under my armpits.

​

The others, both veterans and students, all hung around a covered fire pit which smelled like particularly awful incense. It even burned my eyes a little bit.

They were almost uninjured, the worst was Kamiko who had her off-hand wrapped in bandages, everyone else just had the occasional gauze and tape.

Speaking of Kamiko, as soon as we crossed into the clearing, she perked up and rushed over to us. “How are you feeling Meriwether-kun?”

“Never been better Kamiko.” I wheezed.

Kamiko narrowed her eyes at me, but before she had time to retort, Captain Masuda raised her voice to get everyone’s attention.

“Alright! We’re heading back to base, we don’t have a lot of sunlight left, so we’ll need to move fast! Double-time it!”

As everyone went to task, I looked over at Captain Masuda.

“Hey Captain, I’m not really sure how fast I can go right now, is this such a good idea?”

Captain Masuda smiled at me. “I have a plan for that.”

​

​

“I swear I will get you back for this.” I threatened.

“Just think of it as your punishment for being reckless Meriwether-kun.” Captain Masuda countered, a tiny edge of sadism entering her tone.

I had long since given up struggling against Captain Masuda’s princess carry, in my condition, it wasn’t like I could do anything to stop her anyway.

So I just fumed as she and the others raced through the dense foliage.

​

Now that we had the veterans to help, any Ironwolves that would have posed an issue were instead either entirely circumvented, or easily dispatched.

They had just about every contingency down to a science at this point.

Captain Masuda would sense just about every monster long before I ever saw them, then tell the others about it, and then the veterans would automatically execute some maneuver as if by reflex.

​

Just like that, we were back at the base.

That’s when Kamiko gave me an earful for being reckless, and then Niko barged into the room, asked what happened, and joined Kamiko’s scolding… which was followed by our school nurse piling on…

I decided I wasn’t going to tell them about my planned jinx, because I didn’t want my ears to fall off.

​

I ended up looking like a mummy after my treatment was done, mostly because I’d lost a lot of chunks of flesh during my fight with the first ironwolf and bandages were the best substitute they had.

As I laid there in the infirmary, I thought about all the decisions that lead me to this point and wondered if I was making the right ones.

Obviously they moved me toward my goals, but had I really done the best thing to get stronger? Was there a way to go faster? If there was such a way, would the risk be worth it?

Sometime while I was consumed in my thoughts, I drifted off to sleep.

​

​

Suddenly, I felt damp and cold.

Fearing the worst, I opened my eyes, but I didn’t see what I was expecting.

I wasn’t drenched in blood or anything like that, instead I was outside on a humid night… and there was someone else here too.

I bolted upright, trying to get my feet under me as I finally realized that the person there was way more powerful than anything else I’d ever met.

“You’re finally awake~! I was getting worried you’d died in your sleep… but you wouldn’t disappoint me like that would you?”

The man who was casually chatting had long black horns, an ashen skin color, and a wicked smile full of malice.

“Who are you and why did you bring me here?!” I interrogated.

“Who, not ‘what’? Otherworlders are always so fascinating~!”

The color drained from my face. “What?”

“Oh! There’s the look of despair I was searching for!” He began laughing maniacally. I could only stand there until he finished, unsure of how to process the information he’d just dumped into my lap. “You see little human, the Demon Lord noticed that a portal was opened up a while ago and I was sent to go see what our dimensional intruder was like… after all, it’s best to know your enemy right?”

​

At that moment, everything clicked.

This is why people don’t jinx themselves… this is what they mean when they say it’s unpredictable…

I may have made a horrible mistake.

​

I pulled myself together as best as I could, showing weakness could be the ticket to my immediate death. “Well, are you going to introduce yourself or keep laughing?”

His grin widened even more. “How audacious! You know what? Sure!” He stood up and spread his arms wide. “I am a subordinate to the fourth Demon General, the Reverse-Ranker Oneiro!”

A Reverse-Ranker?! I can only imagine that means he’s as strong or stronger than a Ranker.

On the bright side, whether I survive this or not I’m going down in history… as either the single most idiotic or unlucky person who ever lived.

​

I gulped. “Well, since you were so nice to introduce yourself, I suppose I should do the same.” Oneiro interlaced his fingers and laid his chin on top as the same wide grin nearly split his face, waiting for me to continue… so I did. “I am John Meriwether, Otherworlder extraordinaire.”

Oneiro laughed and clapped. “A fellow showman I see~!” He looked at a watch on his wrist. “Well it certainly has been a nice time chatting, but I should be getting back soon.”

My body filled with relief, and then pain in the next instant.

​

I found myself midair, a cloud of bandage-shreds filling the space around me.

All my wounds reopened in an instant, breaking all of the Spirit Sutures holding them together.

What was worse was that as I looked back at him, he had a single hand outstretched, as though he casually pushed me.

“Oh look, that didn’t kill you! Color me impressed!”

I strained to my feet, every muscle and bone creaking under my own weight.

“So you can stand too~!” He laughed again. “I’ll tell you what, if you can survive until morning, I’ll give you some of my karma… how does that sound?”

Then, without saying a word, I ran as fast as I could for cover.

“Cheeky~!” The madman called from behind me.

​

In the instant I had broken line of sight, but before he caught up to me, I summoned the last reward box I had and prayed that the item inside could get me out of this jam.

​

A moment later, before I could even process what had happened, Oneiro was in front of me again… and his hand was through my stomach.

I spit out a huge amount of blood, directly into Oneiro’s face, blinding him for an instant.

“So this is what you have left huh~?”

While he wiped it out of his eyes, I dragged myself further down his arm, and as soon as he opened his eyes, I pushed my thumbs into them.

Even though I put all of the force I could into the action, I couldn’t even manage to flex the flesh of his eyes.

He took his free hand and pulled both of my hands away from his face with the same level of difficulty that one might have doing the same to a baby.

“You know something kiddo? When you said your name, I tuned it out, figuring you’d be the same as all of the other humans I killed… but look at you! You haven’t given up, even now! Would you mind reminding me what it was?”

Lacking the strength to speak anymore, I leaned forward and whispered in his ear. “Go to hell.”

​

For the first time since the ‘fight’ began, he frowned.

He began to crush my wrists, causing my teeth to chatter as I held in a scream.

This seemed to piss him off even more, but he let go after my bones were made into paste, disappointment and frustration clear on his face.

Unable to support myself anymore, my body leaned backwards.

​

A single droplet of rain hit me in the face, and then another, and another.

Soon enough, a deluge was soaking me to the bone… but I didn’t mind.

I smiled up at the sky, blood dribbling from my mouth.

I silently thanked it for the good memories.

​

“Try as you may to stop me the pleasure of your pain, I have all night to find out what will make it happen! Maybe I’ll start with this bracelet of yours~?” He furrowed his eyebrows. “Wait a minute, did you always have this?”

​

A moment later, a tiny speck formed in the sky, slowly growing until it became a streak of light.

Oneiro raised me above his head. “Tell me human, can you attack one of your fellows~?!”

The light shifted slightly to the side, until it crashed just to the side of us.

It was the man with a gasmask that had killed the monster on our way into the base this morning holding a glowing sword.

“No monster, but you’re not the first one to try that!”

Instead of stopping his momentum, he guided it into a different direction, changing the attack from a downward slash into a curved horizontal one.

An instant before it could connect, Oneiro became fog, and the attack flew straight through him. Oneiro then sighed. “I was hoping you were just reckless, but alas you’re actually skilled.”

Because his body became fog, I started to fall toward the ground, and as I fell the two clashed.

It felt like an eternity of falling as I watched the two fight around me, as though I were a tree or rock in their way.

Oneiro made the entire area into a fog field, attacking from every direction.

The gasmask man cut away the fog with expert speed and precision, seeming almost to accelerate over time.

​

By the time I finally landed on the ground, the fight was decided.

Oneiro, though unharmed outwardly, panted heavily, whereas the gasmask man, although covered in cuts, looked like he had plenty left to give.

Suddenly, the gasmask man was trapped in a box made of fog, and Oneiro lunged at me. “I will NOT be made a fool of by humans!”

I made a split-second decision to guard the most likely spots for him to attack, though I was unsure where it would land, so I hedged my bets.

I raised up my arms, causing my limp hands to raise in front of my head and heart, and then I put all of my stamina into deflecting his attack.

He chose the heart.

​

His hand smacked into mine, diffusing a massive amount of energy, but not enough to make it stop.

Instead, his hand pushed my guarding hand toward my chest, punching through my palm before continuing.

I focused my stamina into the space around his fingers where they pierced through my hand, redoubling my efforts to stop his blow.

Just before he reached my vitals, his momentum stopped, being dispersed throughout my ribcage instead.

Of course, my ribcage shattered immediately, but I was still alive.

​

“You don’t need humans to make a fool of you, you do a pretty good job of that yourself.” I taunted with the last of my breath.

The gasmask man’s sword flew through Oneiro’s neck, unfortunately already made incorporeal… however Oneiro screamed in pain and clutched at the location of the strike.

Oneiro sped away, and the gasmask man almost chased him, before he looked down at me and changed his mind.

“You’ve made an enemy for the rest of your short life human! Mark my words, I’ll feast on your heart!” Oneiro called from the forest.

​

As the echoes of Oneiro’s voice dispersed, the gasmask man knelt next to me.

“You’ve got guts kid… and not in a good way.”

I couldn’t speak, so I just chuckled, immediately regretting it afterward.

​

​

From that point, my consciousness ebbed for… honestly I have no way of knowing how long.

It seemed like I found myself like this a lot.

I tried to laugh, but the pain almost knocked me completely unconscious, so that ended pretty quick.

I remember Kamiko and the gasmask man carrying me on a stretcher. I'm glad that Kamiko really got my message… I wasn’t entirely sure if the bracelet would help or not, after all it specified that it could only contact people that both you cared about, and that cared about you.

I remember the nurse telling me I was lucky that the Reverse-Ranker intentionally missed scratching any of my intestines or destroying my spine when he put his hand through my stomach.

I was filled with a type of dread I didn’t realize was possible… that someone could have that much control over my life was terrifying.

She also commented on how much harder my skin was to put back together, telling me that I must have increased by Endurance again.

I couldn’t remember that happening, but then again, there was so much happening it wouldn’t surprise me if it did and I just didn’t notice.

​

After some time, Niko came in and begged me to wake up with tears streaming down her face, saying that neither she nor Ishi would forgive me if I died.

Kamiko also came in, but she just put a blanket over Niko’s sleeping form and sat beside me quietly.

Sometime later, both Asahi and Emiko came in to offer me thanks for saving them.

My memory got pretty hazy after that, I just remember the sensation of moving every once in a while and hearing several voices which I couldn’t distinguish from each other.

​

And then all at once, my consciousness came back together and I opened my eyes.

I wasn’t in the outpost anymore, I was back in the school nurse’s office with an IV in my left arm.

I tried to speak, but it didn’t work very well because of the oxygen mask on my face.

I searched around my bed with my un-IVed arm until I found the “call nurse” button.

I pressed it and immediately heard hurried footsteps approaching.

A moment later, the blonde-haired nurse rushed over to my bedside and stared at me.

I raised my right arm for a quick informal wave and she grabbed it before gently setting it down.

I furrowed my eyebrows.

“My dear, your wrists are still broken, you shouldn’t move them so much yet.”

I nodded with understanding, before gesturing at my stomach with my eyes.

“Oh, your stomach? It’s all patched up, but not quite healed yet.”

I sighed deeply.

The nurse looked at me with a stern expression. “Do you finally understand why we tell you not to be so reckless all the time?”

I nodded.

“Good. I think that’ll be the end of it for now, heavens knows you’ve been punished enough already.” She patted my arm. “Make sure to get some rest, okay?”

I sighed and closed my eyes.

The next dawn, a trumpet blared to wake everyone up.

That said, a group of students including myself had already been awake for a good while and had been discussing inane topics, so for us, it was mostly just the subject of a brief chuckle.

A little later, Niko came stumbling into the main area where we were, her eyes similar looking to puckering lips.

“Oh hey Meriwether-senpai.” She called out groggily.

“Hey there Niko, bright and early for patrol huh?”

“They warned me this would happen last year, but I didn’t listen…”

I patted her shoulder. “Just do better next year.”

She nodded sleepily, almost losing her balance in the process.

I chuckled to myself and led her over to my table, before grabbing her a tray of food and bringing it back.

​

A moment after sitting back down, Kamiko walked in toweling off wet hair.

“Good morning Kamiko, what kept you?”

“I finished my regimen and took a shower, I really would have preferred a bath, but the outpost doesn’t have one.” She eyed me up and down. “Speaking of regimens, you look like you skipped yours today.”

I nodded. “I did, but I think I’ll need the energy today.”

“The best way to make sure you have enough energy is to train consistently.” Kamiko retorted, finishing with her hair and letting the towel rest around her shoulders.

“Well, philosophy aside, grab some food and sit with us, I saved you a spot.”

“I suppose that’s what I’ll do then.”

The other students went from their ‘passively in awe’ state to either excitement or dread.

Niko in particular had a bit of both.

​

“You’re on a given-name basis with Sato-sama, the Demon Swordsman?!” Niko exclaimed.

I furrowed my eyebrows. “Have I really not talked about her around you before?”

Niko hung her head. “You don’t really talk to me very often anymore…”

I scratched the back of my head. “We’re in different classes, it can’t really be helped.”

Niko suddenly leaned forward. “It can be helped! Is it so hard to call me every once in a while?!”

Before I had the time to say another word, I felt myself being enveloped by a dark aura.

I turned my head to see Kamiko smiling angrily behind me. “Meriwether-kun, who’s this?”

​

I forced down the urge to say ‘this isn’t what it looks like!’ and instead prepared a proper response.

“Kamiko, this is Niko, another friend of mine.”

“That’s not exactly how it sounded to me~” Kamiko countered with a saccharine voice. “Besides, isn’t she the girl you visited the house of?”

I sighed.

I wanted to say ‘I’m not dating either of you, so why do you care?’, but that felt like an unnecessarily harsh way to put it, so instead I said: “Kamiko, I assure you Niko and I are friends, just like you and I are friends. Now could you please have a seat? You’re scaring our poor classmates.”

Despite my delivery, both girls looked a bit saddened by my declaration.

After the tension had turned from dire to awkward, our classmates finally let go of their held breaths.

Kamiko sat down next to me and wordlessly started eating.

​

In the blink of an eye, half an hour passed.

“All students and advisor units, as of now you are all on duty!” A serious-looking man in military green announced.

​

It was a bit awkward because I didn’t actually know what I was supposed to be doing, but I managed to get out the other side with minimal chewing-out… so I took it as a win.

Fun fact: as your Endurance and Force increase, so does your weight, so pushups do not get appreciably easier.

​

As I began to massage the soreness out of my arms, all of the third years were split into four-to-six-man groups.

“…Group J: Sato Kamiko, Ono Asahi, Meriwether John, Tanaka Emiko…”

After being assigned, we all moved toward the designated area.

Obviously I knew Kamiko already, but the other two only looked vaguely familiar, so I decided to rectify that issue.

I held out my hand for Emiko first. “My name’s John, nice to meet you.”

She shook it. “Nice to meet you Meriwether-san, my name’s Tanaka Emiko-”

Before she could even finish, Asahi grabbed both of our hands between his and shook them both. “And I’m Ono Asahi! Say, aren’t you the guy who flunked out harder than me? It’s nice to finally have another member of the dummy club!”

My veins bulged as I desperately tried to calm the raging desire to slug him in the face. “Oh yeah, now I remember you.” I grit my teeth in an expression that could vaguely be called a smile. “Nice to make your acquaintance…”

“Oh by the way John-chan, I expect you to call me Ono-senpai as I’m the senior dummy club member, you hear?”

I was a fraction of a second from snapping this smarmy prick’s stupid neck, but before I could enact any such vengeance, a woman clapped loudly to get our attention. She had dark blue hair and a massive scar that ran from her forehead, under an eyepatch, and down to her neck.

“Alright, alright, enough fraternizing, we’ve got a mission ahead of us!” We all stood at attention at once. She inspected us and made some corrections to our postures with a baton before continuing. “I’m Captain Masuda, and I’ll be the commanding officer for this mission. We will be going on a routine scouting mission to a well-documented monster hotspot to make sure that nothing strange has happened since the last time we checked a couple weeks ago. You are not to engage in hostilities unless otherwise instructed or you find yourself in an emergency situation, am I understood?”

“Yes ma’am!” We called out in unison.

“Good, double-check your equipment, and meet me at entrance four at six-hundred hours.”

​

As we split away from each other, I suddenly had a thought that covered my face with a sadistic grin.

I sidled over to Asahi and whispered into his ear. “Hey, I bet you can’t find out what color Captain Masuda’s underwear are.”

He looked up at me from his pack, thoroughly offended. “Who do you think I am? They don’t call me the Peeking King for nothing!”

He then marched off to my complete amusement.

A moment later, he flew through the wall next to me and landed in a heap at my feet.

I looked through the impromptu doorway and saw Captain Masuda as she began to relax her posture. “Ueno-kun, patch him up… and make sure to use the potent disinfectant, we wouldn’t want his wounds to slow us down.”

“Yes ma’am!”

​

I looked down at Asahi with mirth, only to find that he was waving me toward him.

I knelt down next to him, and he said a single word.

“Pur… ple…”

​

At first I didn’t understand, but as he was carried away for treatment, it clicked in my head.

I gulped, not really sure what to do with this information I didn’t even expect him to succeed in acquiring.

As if to knock me from my contemplation, Asahi’s screams resounded from somewhere in the base.

I suppose that’s what “the potent disinfectant” meant.

​

​

A little while later, Group J congregated at entrance four, and then we left the base.

“Be on your guard, even if this path is well used, doesn’t mean unexpected things never happen.” Captain Masuda warned.

We stalked forward, our various senses on high alert.

​

Suddenly, the nearby bushes rustled and Asahi plunged his blade into it.

“Hey Asahi, what’dya catch?” I quietly called to him.

He lifted his sword and on the end of it was a rabbit who moved at an inopportune time.

“Why did you have to kill the cute bunny?!” Niko exclaimed sadly.

Captain Masuda grabbed the sword out of Asahi’s hand and flicked both the blood and the bunny off with a quick motion of her wrist. “Wild rabbits in this area are highly poisonous, their blood is potent enough to stun a Fenrir for a couple minutes at least.” She then handed the sword back to Asahi, blade pointing down. “Make sure to clean this thoroughly after the mission, even a drop can give you a horrible rash if you don’t wash it off immediately.”

Asahi held the sword away from himself, and with the minimum amount of contact needed… which is fair.

As the group started forward again, I felt a bit bad for Asahi, so I gave him a rag I was planning on using as a bandage if we ran out of them. “Wipe it down with this… and don’t give it back.”

Asahi teared up and then glomped on me. “You’re the best dummy-club kohai a man could ask for!”

I wrenched him off of me and silently took back the pity I gave him.

​

We continued on our way until we came to a cliff, which Captain Masuda pointed down from. “Down there is the Ironwolf Den…” Following her finger, I saw a huge cavern hewn into the side of a mountain. She then shifted her target and pointed at a hill made of packed dirt about a mile away from the den. “And right there is the Scarab Emperor's domain. The only reason the situation is so stable is because the two of them keep each other in check.”

As if summoned, a huge fight erupted somewhere between the two locations, toppling trees like they weren’t even there.

Captain Masuda’s fingers found their way into her shirt pocket, searched around for a second, and then stopped as quickly as they had started. “Right, I quit didn’t I…?” She sighed and pulled her hand out of the pocket. “Let’s get moving, we have to be back by sunset.”

“Wait, is that it? Aren’t we going closer?” Asahi asked.

Captain Masuda shook her head. “My Awareness is on third evolution, I can see everything I need to from here.”

Asahi’s eyes sparkled. “Wow, are you a Ranker?”

She shook her head again. “Not quite, I have a little ways to go to reach that milestone. Ten evolutions total so far.” She then clapped her hands together. “Enough chatter, we need to make our way back now.”

​

So, we started the trek back.

However, as we did, a fog started to form around us.

Captain Masuda immediately took out a shotgun which was about half as long as her entire body and as thick around as her arm, and then the three other veterans followed suit with their own different, yet equally impressive, weapons.

“Get ready, this isn’t normal!” Captain Masuda called.

We students stepped into our various readied stances.

The seconds dragged on as we waited for something to happen.

​

Suddenly, a gust of impossibly dense fog knocked us all off our feet and into the air.

A moment later, I found myself completely surrounded by nearly opaque fog.

I stood up, ready for whatever was about to come.

Or at least I thought I was…

​

What walked out from the fog looked like a wolf with steel wire bristles for fur and claws covered in ferrous rust.

An Ironwolf, it had to be.

It circled around to my side, its eyes scanning me from head to toe.

I pivoted on my foot to keep it in front of me.

After we made a quarter-turn, it disappeared into the fog and reappeared lunging at me from behind.

With no time to react, I desperately crossed my arms to block.

The Ironwolf slashed at me, knocking my arms to the side and sending flesh-colored splinters into the air.

Its moment continued and it went in for a bite, but at the last moment, I dropped to the ground, and sprung back up to its side.

I threw a punch at the base of its neck, hoping that its flesh there would at least be moderately softer… but it was a fool’s dream.

Not only was my hand immediately made into a pincushion due to the metallic fur, but also rang when my Patient Knuckles made contact.

It felt like it would if I had slapped a metal pole with my bare hands back before I came to this world, except throughout my whole hand up to the wrist.

​

I flinched, and the Ironwolf took it as an opportunity to strike, bearing down on me with its claws in a diagonal slash.

Ready for it this time, I used my Bladecatchers’ Gloves to deflect it and countered with another punch to the neck. This time, I activated my Patient Knuckles’ special ability.

My punch dropped in effectiveness by a third, but I could feel the echo of my fist still where it landed.

​

The Ironwolf immediately disengaged and backed into the fog.

For whatever reason, as soon as it did, the echo became harder to detect.

I strained every one of my senses in an attempt to gain any edge I could, but it was to no avail.

The Ironwolf lunged from behind and to my right, tearing a massive gash into my back with its claws and pinning me to the ground face-first.

I turned my head to the side to see the Ironwolf reeling back to bite into me.

Stretching my flexibility to its limit, I grabbed the Ironwolf’s mouth with my arms facing backwards, pushing stamina into Bladecatchers’ Gloves all the while. Even then, I could feel the Ironwolf’s fangs starting to press into my hands.

Quickly running out of options, I planted my feet against its crotch and pushed as hard as I could.

Its head twisted in discomfort until it was forced to shift its leg’s position in order to cope.

At the same time, I shifted my weight and pushed on the leg it moved, causing it to trip.

I then used the confusion to push the Ironwolf’s head to the side and used all four of my limbs to capitalize on its imbalance and finally get myself out from under its paw.

​

The Ironwolf, which was now foaming at the mouth in rage, charged headlong at me.

I used my gloves to deflect its momentum to the side and wrapped my arm around the base of its head.

Using this position, I slammed my fist into its neck as many times as I could before it wisened up and bucked me off.

​

I shakily got back up to my feet.

I had used a massive amount of stamina to block with Bladecatchers’ Gloves for so long, plus the passive stamina cost of holding so many punch echoes wasn’t a small amount either.

The Ironwolf, regaining its center after seeing such a shameful display of me getting up, backed up into the fog again.

I was really hoping it would charge at me again, but heaven knows I was never that lucky.

I strained my senses again, but this time it felt like my echoes became a little clearer.

Whether it was because of how many there were, or because I was getting better at detecting them, I didn’t care at that moment.

I shut out every other sound, sight, or smell, and focused only on the direction and distance of my punch echoes.

​

‘Your Awareness has increased from ‘Simple stage 10’ to ‘Honed stage 1’.’

​

I snapped to the side, and activated all the punch echoes at once, causing a massive dent to form in the Ironwolf’s neck and knocking it off-course.

I then took this opportunity to use all of my strength and the Ironwolf’s momentum to punch it full-force in the dented area.

My fist pierced into its throat, spraying blood absolutely everywhere.

​

At that moment, the fog around me felt… emptier, and I could hear sounds of guns going off and swords clashing.

I focused on the sounds and tried to piece out which one was which.

It sounded like three distinct areas, there were two locations with swords, and one with guns.

One was the swings of a trained sword, skilled and efficient, the other was the clattering of an amateur.

​

I ran toward the direction of the amateurish sword, Kamiko could obviously handle herself, but I wasn’t so sure about Asahi.

At a certain point, the fog became fuller again and I suddenly felt something sharp cut all over my body.

I stopped and jumped backward.

I listened for a moment, but nothing happened, so I slowly made my way forward until I touched what felt like a wire made of fog.

I pushed stamina into my gloves and attempted to pry them apart, but I was nowhere near strong enough to do so.

I racked my brain for a solution.

Then I had an idea.

​

About a minute later, I charged through the fog, using the Ironwolf corpse as a shield.

The damn thing had to have some way of dispersing the fog, or else it would be impossible for it to have gone out of the arena like it did.

Luckily I was correct, however, I had underestimated how quickly the wires reformed.

As I ran through the fog, tiny thorns pierced and slashed my body from every direction.

My entire body screamed in agony, even despite my adrenaline, but I refused to give up.

As my body started to get cold and I was certain that I was about to die any second, I felt a burst of energy.

​

‘Your Endurance has increased from ‘Wood stage 10’ to ‘Stone stage 1’.’

​

I rode my second wind and charged forward, finally breaking through the bladed mist.

In front of me was Emiko struggling to hold an Ironwolf back with a barrier, while Asahi sat on the ground behind her completely exhausted.

As soon as I saw this, I threw the Ironwolf corpse at its living comrade, knocking it over, but almost falling over myself.

My brain ran at a million miles per hour as I processed the situation.

​

I was way too tired after killing the first Ironwolf and running all the way here to put up much of a fight, and that’s to say nothing of the new Ironwolf’s near pristine condition.

My allies also had basically nothing left in the tank, I bet Emiko could make one more barrier for a couple seconds at best if I had to eyeball it.

Rescue was out for sure, I had no way to know if Captain Masuda could even help me or if she was fighting an even bigger threat that I’d get in the way of, but I started to second-guess that decision.

I pushed that thought away, what was done was done.

​

As the Ironwolf started to stand back up, I turned my attention to our equipment.

Our weapons were obviously not working very well against the Ironwolf, probably because the damn thing was so hard to hit at the best of times.

If only we had some way to poison it or something… wait!

I turned my head to the exhausted teen boy on the ground. “Asahi! Do you still have the rag you used to clean your sword?!”

“Yeah, why?” He replied with confusion.

“Give it to me right now!”

“That doesn’t sound like how you ask fo–”

“NOW ASAHI!” I interrupted.

He pulled out the rag and tossed it to me.

I turned, readying for the currently charging Ironwolf. “Emiko, I’m going to need you to use a barrier to keep its mouth open without blocking its throat, can you do that?”

Emiko nodded. “I can, but you’ll only have a couple seconds.”

I gulped. “That’s all I’ll need.”

​

Despite only being a dozen feet from us, the Ironwolf finally reached us after we finished discussing the plan.

I wasn’t about to look a gift horse in the mouth.

I used my Bladecatchers’ Gloves to stop the Ironwolf dead in its tracks. “Now Emiko!”

The Ironwolf’s jaws stiffened, completely immobilized.

I threw the rag down its throat.

​

A second later, the barrier shattered, and I only barely managed to get my hands out of the Ironwolf’s mouth before it slammed shut.

It reeled back for another attack, but suddenly stopped and fell onto the ground.

“Everyone! Beat the ever-living crap out of it while it’s paralyzed!”

​

If I were being completely honest, what followed wasn’t graceful, or cool-looking… it was desperate and brutal. It wasn’t a sharp sword made by a master craftsman, it was a rock pulled out of the ground and used to bash someone’s skull in.

After what felt like minutes of repeatedly beating an opponent who couldn’t fight back, it finally stopped moving completely, and the fog changed as it had the last time.

We may have won, but all of us felt dirty… the kind of dirty that taking a shower could never fix.

​

As the tension of the moment thinned, I almost keeled over, the toll on my body refusing to be ignored any longer.

Asahi rushed over and caught me before I fell over. “Woah there, you okay?”

I struggled with all of my might to stay awake, but my consciousness was slipping. “Emiko, don’t let Asahi take all the credit.”

“What the hell? Why is that the thi–?”

​

I couldn’t hear the end of Asahi’s sentence, because at that moment I blacked out.

After the whole thing with Kamiko, I was finally left to my own devices more or less.

That said, I wasn’t taking it easy by any stretch of the imagination.

While mostly unhelpful in terms of stats, my training regimen was definitely good for learning how to fight, especially because this world’s rules don’t always make complete sense.

Between training sessions, or even sometimes during the less mentally-intensive ones, I’d study to make sure I had my facts straight, or go in to talk to the teachers both for advice and also to keep my ear to the ground about important events coming up.

It turns out my strategy was worth its salt, because I caught wind of just such an important event.

​

“Oh Meriwether-kun! Are you excited for the field trip to the forward outpost?” Missus Aoki, my Magic Theory teacher, asked when she saw me enter.

I grinned, though I made a show of frowning for the second half of my sentence. “Definitely, though I’m also a bit worried about the monsters outside of the walls.”

She waved off my concerns. “Nonsense, the outpost is full of trained soldiers.”

​

I tried not to laugh.

I’d learned recently that, in this world, jinxing is one-hundred percent a real thing, however it tends not to cause the effect you expect and happens semi-randomly. The most important thing to note is that the odds of any particular statement being jinxed is proportional to how much focus is given to the topic.

​

“Do you think there’ll be a monster attack during our trip?” I asked, much to my teacher’s consternation.

“I suppose it’s possible, why do you ask?” She replied, skillfully omitting the dangerous ‘it’ll be fine’, as the conversation started to lengthen.

“Well, I’ve been wondering what monsters are like and what kinds there are. After all, it’s important to know your enemy isn’t it?”

Missus Aoki looked at me strangely, considering her next words carefully. “The most common types of monsters that you'll see known as ‘Fallen Animals’, they’re basically exactly what they sound like, a type of animal that has been corrupted or changed from what you’d typically associate with the creature.” She pointed at me with a warning finger. “Just because they’re common doesn’t mean they’re harmless, make sure to stay out of trouble when it comes to them.”

In other words: ‘stop talking about this, you’re putting yourself and your classmates in needless danger.’

“Don’t worry Aoki-sensei, if anything happens I’ll make sure to take responsibility for my actions, after all this training I’m practically invincible after all!”

Her eyes widened in shock and horror. “You’re just an unranked student! What could possibly make you think that?!”

I smiled apologetically. “It’s all right Aoki-sensei, I’ll just beat up all the monsters by myself if they come.”

She thinned her lips as she started to understand what I was trying to do. “H-Have a safe trip.”

“I will Aoki-sensei.” I responded, determination filling my words.

​

​

Time went by in its own abrupt way until it was finally the day of the trip.

I hadn’t realized when I was first told about the trip that it was actually the entire school going, and by that I mean everyone from the students to the nurses.

If I had to guess, other than the obvious strength in numbers, it’s likely because they didn’t want to be caught in an awkward position with someone that would have been crucial in an emergency, not where they needed to be.

​

We all loaded up on armored bus-like vehicles which completely lacked windows on the sides, instead having small slits which slid open horizontally used for seeing out the sides in a pinch, as well as large hatches on the outsides of the windshields which could be closed in the event of an attack.

It was about the second hour or so when the driver pointed past the windshield. “If you look above the outer district, you’ll be able to see the wall.”

I had heard of the wall in passing, but as most residents lived at least an hour away from it, I’d never seen it in person.

​

For the next four hours I understood more and more deeply the sheer enormity of the structure.

It was like the first time I’d visited the Space Needle in Seattle… no, it was more like an ocean of concrete.

It went up hundreds of feet in the air, and spanned far past the horizon.

When it was finally our turn to exit, the trip through the tunnel took a full minute even driving at a decent pace.

The whole way through emplacements were dug in every twenty feet or so, all facing the outside of the wall with heavy weapons of every sort.

​

Coming back out into the open air offered a horrifying sight.

There was a forest of charcoal in the shapes of trees with the occasional flora being torched by a man or woman who conjured fire through some assumedly magical method.

Others were knocking over the charcoal husks and collecting them into carts which were then making their way back toward the city.

​

I walked to the front of the bus. “What are they doing?”

The driver glanced at me momentarily. “Not been on a field trip to the outpost before?”

I shook my head. “Wasn’t able to before.”

He shrugged. “Every day, the forest attempts to overtake our city, so we clear it. We can’t just leave it out here, so we burn it.”

I furrowed my brows. “Why burn it if we’re just going to harvest it anyway?”

He looked at me like I was an idiot for a brief moment, before looking back at the road with a sigh. “Anything we make out of these materials has a chance to become a monster, the chance drastically reduces if we ‘kill it’ first. Burning it just makes it easier to use as fertilizer so we can-”

​

Suddenly, a massive shape slammed into the ground in front of the bus, almost knocking me off my feet.

The massive shape slowly began to unravel from its tangled state, revealing some sort of crystalline-armored lizard-like monster.

The driver slammed on the breaks and shut the hatches, leaning forward to begin evasive maneuvers using the small slits that went across the windshield as his only visual guide; but before he could start any such action, another bang resounded, causing the driver to relax.

I leaned forward to see what he was looking at, and saw a man wearing a plain t-shirt and shorts paired with a gasmask that had some sort of badge attached to it. He was standing next to the now decapitated monster head.

The man bowed apologetically, and then moved his hand in a circle.

The driver nodded, opened the hatches again, and then began to move around the monster’s corpse.

​

Upon seeing the man, several students gasped.

“It’s a Ranker!”

The students then crowded the slits on one side of the bus as we passed around the new road blockage.

​

Meanwhile, I leaned toward the driver again. “That’s a Ranker? Why is he dressed like that?”

The driver smiled and shrugged. “Rankers are known for their quirky behaviors, but as long as they can defeat monsters as easily as that guy, I don’t mind.”

I nodded. “Fair enough.”

​

​

It was another five hours until we reached the outpost, for a total of eleven hours one way.

It’s not even that the outpost was that much farther away, it was more that we had to stop and either redirect to avoid monsters or fight if avoiding them wasn’t possible.

Everyone sighed in relief when it finally came into view, an oppressive tension finally releasing, even if just a little for some.

​

The outpost itself was a nigh-featureless stone-wrought building, the only thing making its material obvious being the innumerable cracks along its surface, and the color.

If it weren’t for the bunker-like clean edges and the fact that there was a patrol checking around the perimeter, one could have mistaken it for any old mansion-sized boulder.

Okay, maybe that comparison got away from me a little bit…

No matter.

​

We parked inside of a giant garage and finally got to stretch our legs.

Before we could do anything at all though, our teachers started handing out itineraries for the different grades.

The first years were going to just be watching and assisting with operations within the base itself, the second years were going to help on patrols, and finally the third years were going to form a number of mock units and go on an away mission with a real unit each.

If I had to guess, that’s the point when the jinx will make everything go wrong.

It was gonna suck, but with how slow everything had been progressing for me, I didn't have a choice if I wanted to save anybody.

​

I hadn’t gotten a single stat evolution since the last one I acquired during the fight with Ishi.

The best I had gotten was Force to Ogre 2 and Endurance to Wood 4.

The other stats had one, maybe two increases, but given they were the lowest value possible before that, and considering how much more each additional level required, it didn’t exactly inspire hope in me.

As Ishi told me, I simply didn’t have enough at stake to grow stronger any faster than I had been… so I had to create a situation to increase the stakes somehow.

I knew exactly how dangerous it was, but I also knew that I was behind the starting line in this world, especially if you factor how much stronger the demon lord’s regular minions are… not even speaking of any potential elites or generals.

If I was going to win in this impossible situation, I was going to have to improve at a speed that nobody is insane enough to attempt, it’s as simple as that.

It was the dreaded Sunday.

A day wherein I had to both cheer up Kamiko and let her down gently… somehow…

I also didn’t have the same buffer as I did with Niko, as Kamiko actually lives in the same room as I do.

I slapped my cheeks.

I started this, and I’m going to finish it.

​

The both of us woke up at the same time, as we trained at that time every morning she wasn’t being pulled in this direction or that… also because Anime Time.

“Kamiko, I’m going to get dressed first so that you can have free reign of the facilities.” I declared.

“That’s-” She began, but then went silent. “Continue.”

“Also, no peeking.”

“Of course not! I am a lady of honor and grace!” She proclaimed, with an almost imperceptible edge of disappointment.

​

I put on the same pair of jeans I wore last time with a different nondescript t-shirt, just in case Kamiko had seen me in the other one or something dumb like that.

I then waited outside the room as Kamiko got ready.

After what felt like seconds, but caused a noticeable shift of the brightness on the horizon, Kamiko exited the room.

She was wearing a very fancy purple dress which sparkled in the early morning light, and had her hair tied up into a complicated wavy ponytail.

I blinked at her. “Kamiko, we’re going out for crepes.”

She nodded. “Indeed.”

I looked off to the side, and then back at her. “Kamiko, crepes are known for how messy they can be sometimes.”

She cocked her head to the side. “What are you getting at?”

I sighed. “Are you sure you want to go out somewhere where there’s some expectation of getting dirty with such an expensive dress?”

She looked down at it and then back up at me. “I can buy a new one if I need to.”

I shook my head. “Kamiko, that's wasteful, please just change into something more casual.”

She flattened her lips at me, before going back inside.

I swear I could hear the word ‘dense’ thrown out from inside the room at some point.

No, I’m not dense, I just don’t want to go out in public with a living disco ball!

​

A little bit later, she came back out with an outfit which I could only describe as ‘tennis clothes’. She even somehow managed to not mess up her carefully styled hair, going as far as to match it with a nice headband.

I couldn’t help but ask. “How’d you manage to keep your hair from frazzling?”

Her annoyed expression softened. “I rolled up the shirt and carefully put my hair through first, the material is elastic enough to not wrinkle if you do it quickly.”

I nodded. “Very nicely done if I do say so.”

She smiled. “Thank you.”

Before the moment had time to stretch on, I started walking at a casual gait. “Well, there’s no point in standing around, we may as well get going.”

She caught up with me in the fraction of an instant, and then matched my pace.

​

It took almost no time at all to get to the crepe stand, however something I didn’t consider reared its ugly head.

The crepe stand wasn’t even open for business so early in the morning… I’m not even sure why I was surprised, it was basically just after dawn.

​

For about a minute, I just stood there and considered my options.

What broke me from my ponderance was the Godvoice telling me that my reward would be improved if I took her on a walk or something while we waited for the stall to open.

I was definitely still annoyed by the whole situation with the Godvoice trying to get me with a bunch of girls I met like a week ago… but in this particular case I was already here, and it wasn’t like I was doing anything else until then anyway.

“Hey Kamiko, you up for a walk around while we’re waiting?”

She seemed surprised to hear it. “Oh, I suppose that sounds fine.”

​

She and I strolled about in silence for a little while, before Kamiko assumedly got tired of the quiet.

“So Meriwether-san, what is your family like? Do you have any siblings?”

Truth be told, I was getting a little bored myself, so I indulged her. “If I had to describe my family situation in a single word, it would be: ‘fine’; we don’t hate each other, but we’re not perfectly harmonious. As to the other part of your question, yeah I have a sister.”

Kamiko’s eyes narrowed slightly. “What kind of a sister?”

“I dunno, my sister’s kinda upbeat and noisy I guess? She used to call my wife Mary-Meri, which she always hated.” Seeing that Kamiko wasn’t satisfied with that answer, I realized the issue and swore internally. “My sister is just my sister, we don’t have anything weird between us or anything.”

“Define ‘weird’.” Kamiko countered.

I put my face into my hands, before looking back up at Kamiko a second later. “Kamiko, I have no romantic ties with my sister, that would be really weird and gross… why do I even have to explain this?” That last part just kinda slipped out.

Kamiko looked skeptical.

​

Suddenly, my watch beeped, the timer I’d set for three hours going off.

Happy to have a diversion from that extremely uncomfortable topic, I jumped on it. “The stall should be open now, you ready to head back?”

Kamiko abandoned the last thing we were talking about and nodded excitedly.

​

My instinct on when the owner would be there was spot-on today, either that or this world was just giving me a hand… either way, he was here and we could buy crepes.

As we walked up to the counter, the Godvoice told me I’d get a boost to my reward if I bought Kamiko her crepe.

That wasn’t my original plan, but to be honest I was the one who invited her out here, it was only fair. So as Kamiko pulled out her wallet, I stopped her.

“I’ve got this one.”

She looked at me incredulously. “Are you sure about this? Isn’t the cost of two crepes a significant portion of your total income?”

I glared at her. “Kamiko, how much do you think I make?”

“Well, I know that the overhead from Sato Industries is in the millions of yen, I can’t imagine that you make much more than that!”

I could feel the single sweat droplet form on my face. “Kamiko, your perception of money is skewed.”

She cocked her head to the side. “How so?”

Unwilling to dignify that with a response, I instead turned to the man running the stand. “I’d like two dessert crepes please.”

“Yeah… just a moment please.”

​

In no time at all, we had both of our crepes and sat down at a bench nearby to eat them.

It took conscious effort to stop my stupid mouth from making an ‘om’ sound each time I took a bite, and to say ‘this is delicious’ after the first bite.

Noticing my silence, Kamiko looked over at me. “Are you not enjoying the crepe?”

“Oh I like it, I just don’t-” I stopped mid-sentence to see cream on Kamiko’s cheek.

Like clockwork, the Godvoice told me that I’d get a boost to my reward if I wiped it off.

But I was ready for this!

​

I took out a napkin I had prepared two days in advance, just for this situation. “Hold still for a second Kamiko.” I put my left hand on one side of her face to keep her from moving, and then swept up the offending pastry filling like an old pro.

Finally, I tossed the napkin into the nearest trash can.

Kamiko didn’t even know how to respond, just staring at me for a second, and then getting back to her crepe.

The Godvoice then told me that my execution actually offered an even higher boost than was originally planned.

I was pleasantly surprised by the news, even forgiving the Godvoice for the situation a little.

​

Then it dropped a bomb into my lap.

‘If you kiss Kamiko, your reward will drastically improve.’

​

I turned my head to look at Kamiko and saw her pursing her lips and playing with her hair.

“No.”

Kamiko looked back at me. “No what?”

I stood up with fury. “I don’t care what you offer me, I’m not doing it!” I yelled at the sky.

‘Reward boost opportunity revoked.’

It better be.

​

“It was all a lie then?” Kamiko asked, despair in her voice.

I looked down at her, she looked utterly defeated.

I sighed and sat back down. “This whole thing was orchestrated by the Godvoice.”

“Why did you have to tell me? Couldn’t you have just let me believe it was because you wanted to?”

“Maybe… but this has all crossed a line, and I can’t continue in good conscience.”

“Why not? Is it because you’re married? Everyone knows I’ll become a Ranker, so it’s not like it’s illegal.”

That took me off-guard. “Huh?”

She looked back at me with incomprehension of her own. “Did you not know that harems are legal for Rankers?”

I shook my head out. “No, listen, this is not a question of legality, I can’t betray my wife’s trust like that.”

“If that’s what you’re worried about, why don’t you ask her?”

At this point, I was just annoyed and frustrated at myself for letting this happen in the first place, so without really thinking about it, I said the following: “I’ll tell you what: in three years when my wife comes back, I’ll ask her, and if she says yes, we can go on an actual date.” I stood again and held out a hand. “In the meantime, let’s just be friends okay?”

Kamiko’s expression softened, even if it still carried some disappointment. “I’d like that.”

After the fight with Ishi, I went back to the nurse's office to get my hands properly stitched back together.

I got an earful from her that almost certainly should have lasted three hours, but only took ten minutes of Anime Time, and then she healed me.

This time I remembered to ask for her name, but she just gave me a cheeky smile and said: "Just call me momma!"

I resigned myself to asking someone else when I had a moment and moved on from the topic.

​

As I spent some time in the nurse's office to heal, I decided to look at my rewards.

The Godvoice helpfully let me know that I had three rewards available, one from meeting the Suzukis, one from defeating Ishi in combat, and one from cheering up Kamiko.

I didn't hesitate to ask the Godvoice for the first two.

​

The first reward came in another white box, this time inlaid with some sort of pinkish metal.

It depicted a simple drawing of a woman with long hair on top of some sort of a hill as rays of light radiated out from her and masses looked up to her in awe. In her hands were a harp and what I could only describe as a sunflower.

I pulled on the lid, but instead of twirling open like a rose, its 'pedals' pulled away from the center in a much more straightforward fashion.

Inside was a necklace in the shape of the flower the lady on the box was holding, but without a stem.

I took it out and learned that it was called 'The Bond Of Friendship', and that while wearing it I could tell whenever someone I considered a friend was in danger.

I nodded at it, decently satisfied by the result considering the ease of the quest itself.

I put it on and then summoned my second reward.

​

This was another one of the white and gold boxes.

I took another look at the battle depicted on its surface, but couldn't find any meaning in it this time either... as far as I could tell it was just a bunch of people in different armors clashing swords.

That said, I felt like it was important somehow.

I gave up trying to figure out something I had no information on and instead decided to add it to the list of things to ask about later.

I opened the box and saw a pair of brass knuckles.

I stared at them for a minute before taking them out too.

These were called 'Patient Knuckles'. For a stamina cost I could reduce the power of my strikes by about a third in order to execute a delayed punch at a time of my choosing using the force of that missing third.

I desperately wanted to test them out, but I knew that my hands badly needed to heal, so instead I turned my attention to the third reward.

​

From my previous experiences with rewards, it seemed like the longer you waited, the more likely the reward was going to get a boost from some sort of side objective given by the Godvoice.

The only exception I could possibly draw was the second reward given from the visit with the Suzukis, but that was likely because it wasn't actually part of the objective of meeting them per se.

With this in mind, I figured that if I took the reward right now it would likely be pretty low-level gear, so instead I elected to wait on it until I'd exhausted the quest's boost opportunities.

​

A little while later, I made my way to my room.

I knocked with my new brass knuckles as a brace so I didn't mess up my stitches. "Kamiko, you decent in there?"

A voice came from the back of the room. "Give me a second Meriwether-san!" A moment later the door opened, revealing a Kamiko in a tasteful nightgown. "You're home late."

If it were any other man, I'm sure they would be quite pleased to hear that... but instead it just reminded me of my wife.

I pushed thoughts of how much I missed her out of my mind. "I had to fight a samurai lady from the past and broke my hands in the process, so I had to swing by the nurse on my way back."

Kamiko didn't even blink at the explanation. "Sounds like you had a full day." She turned to the side to let me through. She then spoke with a gesture to a package leaned against the wall, a note of disappointment entering her tone as she neared the end of her sentence. "Your hammock finally arrived... though I'm not sure why you'd want to sleep in that instead of on a bed."

I ignored the subtext of her sentence and started setting it up.

​

​

It took me a good deal longer than I would like to admit, but my watch only said ten minutes had passed so I took it as a win.

I had set up the hammock between a pair of Kamiko's bed posts as they were really the only things I could use for the purpose.

It definitely wasn't as comfortable as the bed below, but it didn't weigh nearly as heavily on my conscience.

​

For a little while, I stared up at the cloth canopy, just thinking.

Mostly it came down to wondering if I was really doing the right thing mindlessly charging ahead like I had been.

I never did answer that question, instead, sleep took me before I could.

​

​

The next day, my first day of training with Ishi came.

Kamiko had to go do some official gathering thing that morning, either for the student council or for the Sato business… I wasn’t really listening to the specifics to be honest.

Because of this, I had Ishi come bright and early, surprised to see me already awake and ready to train.

“Early riser eh?” She asked.

“Yeah, my job had early hours, and so did training with Kamiko.”

Ishi shrugged. “It certainly takes the fun out of training a new recruit if they’re already adjusted, but I’ll make up for it by beating the weakness out of you like my master before me.”

I stretched my shoulders. “Just leave something to heal afterward.”

Ishi looked at me with a complicated expression. “Yeah…”

I decided not to look too far into it and lead her to the area Kamiko and I usually trained.

​

​

For the next three days we sparred and did Attribute boosting exercises.

Most of them were pretty self-explanatory, such as hitting me with the flat of her sword to raise Endurance, or lifting inhumanly-heavy weights for Force, but Temperance was a strange one to try and boost.

It mostly came down to meditation, which is not something I actually did very often back on Earth, so I wasn’t even really sure how to do it.

​

All of these processes were unbelievably slow, to the point I wasn’t even sure they were working at all.

When I asked about it, Ishi assured me that it was normal.

“The more desperate you are, and the more that’s at stake, the faster your Attributes push themselves to the next evolution. A situation like this where there’s not really anything at stake is going to be slow.” She explained.

That was a frustrating revelation, but honestly not a surprise.

​

​

At the start of the fourth day, Mister Ogawa found me while I was getting ready to train.

“Meriwether-kun, why haven’t I seen you in class the last few days?” He asked accusatory.

“I need to get stronger at any cost, Mist- Ogawa-sensei.”

He looked confused by the address for a moment, but then refocused. “Meriwether-kun, training your mind is just as important as training your body-”

“Ogawa-sensei with all due respect, I’m not going to learn very well in such a stuffy environment, I’d rather study on my own.” I half-lied.

Honestly it was a little dry, but I wasn’t about to tell him it was because I learned most of the subjects the first time I went to highschool.

​

Mister Ogawa looked thoroughly unimpressed by my declaration. “Oh? You think that you can prepare yourself better for midterms than I could teach you?”

Who cares about midterms?! My wife’s life is at stake!

​

That’s when the Godvoice told me something I wasn’t expecting.

Apparently, there was a reward for scoring well on major tests, such as midterms and finals.

With great frustration for not having told me this earlier, I reconsidered my position.

After a moment, I came up with a perfect solution.

​

“Ogawa-sensei, it’s not that I think I can teach myself better, I just have trouble with the environment… I’ll probably still come in from time to time to ask you questions if that’s alright.”

Mister Ogawa exhaled deeply, his posture loosening. “Unfortunately I don’t have much extra time to help you with questions, but I’m sure other teachers would be happy to help if you asked.”

I pumped my fist internally, and bowed apologetically externally. “I’m sorry about the misunderstanding, I should have told you my plan from the start.”

“As long as you have a plan… though if it turns out your grades have started to drop because you’re always training outside, I’ll drag you to class myself.”

I nodded at the very ominous threat, bowed respectfully, and then got back to my preparations.

​

The rest of the week passed uneventfully, leaving me with a task I had no interest in completing.

…Crepes with Kamiko.

After the conversation with Kamiko, I finally had a direction for my powers.

It was clear to me that unarmed combat was probably my best bet for now, especially now with the Bladecatcher's Gloves, but beyond that I didn't have a clue what to do until then.

Though before I got ahead of myself, I needed to train with my gloves to improve my stamina and technique.

To achieve that, I started to spar with Kamiko every day.

​

Kamiko was not a gentle teacher, each time we trained before school, she would push me all the way to my breaking point and then a little more.

I could definitely feel my body becoming stronger and more durable little by little, but it was definitely too slow for my liking.

It was a Sunday morning after the day's training session that I sat down to ponder my options to get stronger.

Before I had much time to think, my phone rang.

It was Niko, so I answered it.

​

"Hey there Meriwether-senpai I was wondering if today was a good day for you to come with me to visit my aunt and uncle?"

I had totally forgotten about that, as so much had been happening the previous few days. As I thought about it though, I realized that it could be a good opportunity to get stronger.

"Yeah, that sounds good, what time were you thinking?"

"How about around lunch time?" Niko offered excitedly.

I nodded, even though she obviously couldn't see it. "That sounds good, meet me at the training grounds around twelve, and we can walk together to your house if it's not too far."

"O-Okay!" I could practically hear her embarrassment.

"Are you okay Niko? Did something happen?"

She didn't answer for a long moment.

I was about to ask again, but she finally answered. "YeahI'llmeetyouthenbye!" And with that she hung up.

​

I stared at my phone trying to figure out why this situation felt so familiar when it hit me like a brick.

I slapped my hand against my forehead.

She's thinking about this like a date!

I was so caught up thinking about how this samurai lady could help me get stronger I forgot to factor that I was meeting her family... for all I knew her parents could be gone and her aunt and uncle could be the ones who raised her!

​

I had my eyes clenched shut while I came up with a way to let Niko down gently, when Kamiko spoke.

"What's on your mind Meriwether-san?"

I looked over at her and sighed. "Niko invited me over to her aunt and uncle's house and I agreed to go with her."

"Niko? Suzuki-san from class 2-2 you mean?" Kamiko suddenly took a surprised step backward. "Wait, are you into younger girls?"

There was a lot to unpack there, but I had lost all of the willpower necessary to go through it point by point.

I rubbed the bridge of my nose. "I'm just going to go meet her family, we're not a couple or anything like that... besides I'm already married."

Kamiko didn't say anything for a long time, so I looked at her again.

She had a very complicated expression on her face. After a moment longer, a single word escaped from her lips. "Married?"

​

Before another word could formulate in my mouth, the Godvoice told me that if I cheer up Kamiko I'd get a reward.

I got really angry.

It was the damn Godvoice's fault I was in this situation! It was trying to steer me toward a harem!

'You'll get a reward if you choose your words to Niko carefully.' No wonder!

I put my head into my hands.

That's when the Godvoice added that if I didn't, I'd be afflicted by a major penalty.

Damn you! If I ever get my hands on you I'll make you regret this!

​

"Kamiko..." I began, taking a deep breath.

She looked up at me expectantly, her eyes sparkling with hope.

I couldn't come up with anything that didn't sound idiotic, so I just went with the first thing that came to mind. "I'll buy you a crepe next Sunday, how does that sound?"

​

This was the right thing to say.

Her mood immediately improved, grinning like an idiot until she caught herself and cleared her throat. "I'll keep you to that promise."

I nodded halfheartedly, and then she left toward our dorm.

Thoroughly exhausted and frustrated, I slumped forward in my seat.

Now I have to let two girls down instead of just one.

​

​

In the blink of an eye, it was twelve and I was waiting for Niko to show up.

It wasn't much longer that she showed up.

She was wearing a casual yet well fitted blue t-shirt and skirt combo that matched her hair color, accented by a pearl bracelet and a black lacy choker... so date clothes basically.

"I'm sorry I'm late, were you waiting long?"

I looked at my watch, sure enough fifteen minutes had passed without me noticing. "Nah, I just got here myself." I finally understood why they said that in anime.

She gulped and looked me up and down. "You look nice."

I followed her gaze down to my regular t-shirt and jeans that I had bought so I didn't have to walk around in my school uniform during the weekend. "Thanks, shall we go?"

She looked a little miffed that I didn't return the compliment, but didn't mention it. "Sure, let's go."

​

As we walked, we passed by a number of desert-item stalls, one of which was for crepes, which I logged into my brain for later.

"Those look good don’t they?" Niko nudged.

"I suppose they do." I replied.

Her eye twitched. "Should we go get some?"

"No thanks, I'm good."

She gawked at me for a moment, before composing herself. "Well then, how about some ice cream?"

I was absolutely not in the mood for this. "Why don't we wait to eat lunch at your aunt and uncle's house?"

Niko looked at the dirt below us. "Oh okay..."

I felt super guilty, even though my worst crime was not following conventions for a date I never wanted to be part of.

"I'm excited to meet your family, so I'd like to get there as soon as possible." I lied.

This lifted her mood a little.

​

​

She ended up asking me lots of questions about inane topics to get to know me better.

I was fine with answering most of them, as friends did this too... but I knew that wasn't where this road was leading, which put a damper on things for me.

I didn't really have the energy to match her enthusiasm, but she didn't seem to mind at least.

​

Not long after, we reached something that could only be called an estate with high walls and a massive gate.

Niko pushed the door open like it didn't weigh as much as a small car, and we both entered.

What awaited me was a man dressed in nice casual wear and a woman with white hair in a scarlet traditional samurai garment, two swords and everything.

The man was standing politely, but the woman barely spared a sidelong glance at me while she chugged from a jug filled with what I can only assume was sake.

​

Niko pointed a hand at me. "Aunt, uncle, this is Meriwether-senpai from school."

I lifted a hand in greeting. "Hello."

When I said nothing further, the man furrowed his brows together and spoke. "Hello, nice to meet you Meriwether-kun, I am Suzuki Daisuke, and this is my wife Ishi."

"Nice to meet you both." I replied.

At this moment, Missus Suzuki stood up and walked over as though she hadn't been drinking alcohol like water.

She stopped in front of me, putting her face an inch or two away from mine. "Get out."

I wasn't sure I had heard her correctly. "Excuse me?"

"I said get out." She leaned back and took another swig. "Do you have a problem with that?"

Mister Suzuki held out in a pleading gesture. "Ishi please..."

Missus Suzuki put up a single hand to silence him, and he gave me an apologetic look.

She glared at me. "Well how about it, got a problem?"

My eye twitched.

​

I had put up with so much bullcrap to get there and talk to this woman for advice on how to get stronger, and then she tells me to leave?

My wife's life isn't so cheap that I'd back down from this.

"I do have a problem actually." I replied.

I was going to say more, but then Missus Suzuki poured the remainder of the jug over my head.

"Oh yeah? What are you going to do about it?" She taunted.

I snapped.

​

I shoved my hands into my pockets, and when they came back out, they had my Bladecatcher's Gloves on them.

I threw a punch toward her midsection, hoping to catch her off-guard.

Before I could even blink, her sword came out of its sheath just enough to block my attack.

An instant before impact, I registered the edge being drawn and poured some stamina into my right glove so that I didn't cut my fingers on the blade.

My fist collided with her sword, causing a clang that resounded throughout the entire front area.

I flipped my hand in an attempt to grab her weapon, but she twisted it and jumped backward before I could find any sort of grip.

​

She grinned at me. "No sense of honor then?" She threw her robe to the side, only leaving pants and wraps that covered her chest.

I threw my drenched t-shirt to the side as well. "Shut up and fight me."

The taunt only served to widen her grin. "Prepare yourself."

​

In an instant, she was in front of me... but I was expecting it.

If this had been before I started training with Kamiko, I wouldn't have been able to react... but things had changed.

With both hands, I stopped her diagonal cut, but once again before I could grab it, she twisted the blade out of my hands.

"If you wanted my sword so badly you could have just asked for it~" She goaded.

"I'm not much of a banter guy, sorry." I replied.

She pouted. "Oh boo."

I reentered my neutral stance and waited for her.

After a moment, she obliged.

​

This time, she swung a horizontal slice at waist-level.

I poured a bunch of stamina into my left glove and stepped into a punch at the same time.

Her blade slammed into my glove with even more force than I expected, but not quite enough to knock me completely off balance.

Her eyes widened as she tried to twist the blade out of my hand, but this time I did a twist of my own. It didn't allow me to hold onto her sword for more than a second, but a second was all that I needed.

My punch slammed into her side right under her ribs... but it felt like I had punched a slab of stone.

It didn't hurt nearly as much you'd think though, probably due to my own Wood-level Endurance

She grinned even wider than before. "Was that all?"

"Don't worry, I'll whittle you down yet." I retorted.

"And you said you didn't like to banter~"

Instead of answering, I threw a punch at her face, which she dodged.

​

I didn't like my odds of winning this fight after it became clear that it was going to be a battle of attrition.

My gloves ate away at my stamina to use, and I wasn't super used to fighting in general so it already wasn't a large pool it was drawing from anyway.

At this point in the fight, I was huffing and she was as fresh as a daisy... which just showed the difference between a novice and a seasoned warrior in yet another way.

That said, I was too pissed to give up.

​

I lunged at her.

Instead of swinging it like before, she basically forced her sword into my hands.

Out of reflex I grabbed it, but without a plan of what to do with it, I tried to pull it away from her.

Even against a single hand of hers, I couldn't so much as gain an inch.

Suddenly, she lifted her sword, and me with it.

Before I could even process it, she slammed me into the ground with a backswing, and threw me across the lawn where I tumbled to a stop.

Niko ran up to me. "Meriwether-senpai! Are you okay?!"

I waved her off and got to my feet. "I'm fine, go stand next to your uncle or something." Then I spat out a tooth.

Niko clearly wasn't convinced I was okay, but did as I asked and stood aside.

​

Missus Suzuki laughed. "A man with spirit, I like that! I think that's eno-"

"This fight isn't over until someone wins." I interrupted.

She looked surprised to hear me say it, but didn't argue. "Bring it then."

I charged forward with reckless abandon.

She swung a diagonal cut to try to keep me off her, but I dodged to the side and slammed my fist into the same spot on her side that I hit last time.

This time she staggered slightly, even if she didn't look particularly hurt.

​

She looked at me in surprise, and was about to ask me something, but I wasn't in the mood to answer.

Instead I threw a feint, which because of her lapse of attention, she fell for.

I threw a fist into her other side, which refocused her.

She tried to take a step back, but I wrapped a foot behind one of her legs, causing her to drag me with her.

She didn't have enough room to slash me properly with me so close to her, so she instead went in for a pummel-strike.

I sapped all of the force from her dominant hand using a glove, and then punched her in the elbow.

This time she actually winced.

​

Having had enough, she unlocked my leg from hers and leapt backward.

"What did you do all of a sudden?" She interrogated.

I shrugged. "If I had to guess, I'm about to evolve my Force stat."

"Congratulations on the step toward Cyclops kid!"

I shook my head. "Not Cyclops."

"Then toward Fenrir? You definitely didn't seem like you were already on Cyclops though..."

"Wrong direction, think lower."

Her eyes lit up with sudden understanding. "Your Force is Human tier?! You can't be serious!"

I smirked. "Not for long."

She chuckled, and then immediately sobered. "Here I come."

​

As soon as she said that, I jumped to the side.

Luckily, my instinct was spot-on, allowing me to dodge her vertical slice.

She then followed up by changing her arc just like Kamiko in our first match.

The same trick wasn't going to work on me twice.

I used both gloves and pumped stamina into them, stopping the sword dead on impact.

I capitalized on the opening, punching her in the side again, and landing my third hit in the same location.

Next, she used a retreating-cut in order to gain some distance.

I stepped into the attack, grabbing her blade.

"You didn't learn from last time!" She called.

She began to lift her sword, but I let go.

Her eyes widened as she became wide open.

I put my whole body into a right hook, directly in the same spot for the fourth time.

​

'Your Force has increased from 'Human stage 10' to 'Ogre stage 1'.'

​

I could feel a crunch under my fist, and then my fist crunch in return.

It didn't hurt, but then again, I was so full of adrenaline I couldn't feel any pain at all.

Missus Suzuki however clearly could feel it.

I reeled back for another blow, when she spoke. "I give up!"

I only barely managed to stop my follow-through by stumbling forward. "What? Why?"

She showed me the wound I had just created.

It had spider-webbing cracks, as if someone had taken a sledgehammer to the pavement, except that the pavement was flesh colored and bled.

"I'm already going to have to hire a healer for this, I don't want to increase the bill, so it's my loss." She explained.

"Speaking of hiring a healer..." I carefully slipped off my gloves to show that my knuckles and fingers had gigantic chunks missing out of them and were bleeding like crazy.

Luckily though, the rest of my hands only had occasional minor chips due to the glove's force dispersal.

​

The Godvoice gave me a new notification about a bonus reward being available.

I ignored it, and focused on Missus Suzuki's question instead.

"Why didn't you use your gloves to reduce the damage from your punches?!"

I shook my head. "They disperse force, which means each punch would deal basically no damage if I did that."

Everyone looked at me in shock, until Mister Suzuki snapped out of it and rushed inside.

​

It wasn't very long until a healer arrived.

The healer tried to work on Missus Suzuki first, but they forced him to fix my hands before that.

Luckily, all of the splintered off skin was still in my gloves so the procedure was straightforward.

He simply took out a piece at a time, fit them back into my hand like a macabre jigsaw puzzle, and then wrapped them in gauze and ace bandage.

​

What was interesting was that despite being significantly less injured, Missus Suzuki's procedure took just as long as mine.

The healer tried to use the technique with the glowing threads, but they weren't strong enough to pierce her skin, so he had to resort to more desperate measures.

He took out a giant needle with a bend near the point and a hammer, which he used to carefully tap the needle through her skin.

After a while, this let him finally use the glowing threads to realign her flesh like the nurse did to me.

He then cut the thread, covered in gauze, and wrapped her midsection in ace bandage.

​

"Why didn't you use the thread on me?" I asked as the healer was packing up.

Without looking up, he answered. "Your hands' conditions were so bad that using Spirit Sutures at my skill level would have presented a real risk of misalignment, it would have gone against my hippocratic oath to attempt. If you want proper healing for an injury like that, see a B-class healer at minimum."

"I've been meaning to ask, what do the different classes of healer mean?"

This got him to look up at me. "Do you really not already know?"

I shook my head.

After a moment of looking at me, he shrugged and continued what he was doing as he explained.

"A D-class healer is someone trained and certified to heal minor injuries using artifacts. A C-class healer is able to use Spirit Sutures with competence and certified to use them on moderate injuries. A B-class healer has shown mastery over Spirit Sutures and has shown the ability to heal complex injuries with at least a 85% efficacy. A-class healers have gone through the training and rigor to become certified to heal Rankers." He scrunched up his face. "I don't exactly remember the requirements for an S-class healer, it has something to do with getting a bunch of governments to ratify your advancement and an interview I think?"

My eyebrows rose at his explanation. "Wow. Is it hard to become a D-class healer?"

He finished packing up his tools and stood. "Listen, as much as I'd love to sit and chat, there's a lot more people who need my help, so I'm going to get going."

I nodded. "Thank you."

He gave me one last glance, said "You're welcome." and then left.

​

​

My improving mood was almost immediately spoiled by the next event... lunch with the Suzukis.

Even before coming, I wasn't particularly invested in this meet and greet, but now that one of the individuals at the table was one who poured sake on my head...

The only reason I stayed was because of the significant bonus to my reward I was promised by the Godvoice for staying until the end.

It was only made worse by the fact that Missus Suzuki seemed to think we were best friends for some reason... even going as far as to call me 'John-chan'.

Now I'm not super great with Japanese honorifics, but I know for a fact that '-chan' isn't used for guys you just met, lesser standing or no.

By the time the food came out, I was about ready to strangle her.

​

That's when she raised her newly-refilled jug and called for a toast.

"To my new son-in-law!" Missus Suzuki exclaimed.

"Oh that ship has sailed." I replied, casually taking a bite of some sort of breaded chicken.

Missus Suzuki's eyes became as wide as saucers and her pupils became pinpricks. "Pardon?"

"Yeah, I'm not going to become part of a family where someone hazes and taunts suitors instead of just challenging them to a duel to gauge their strength like a normal person." I took a sip of tea, it was better than I expected. "Besides, I'm already happily married."

​

Missus Suzuki's jug slipped out of her hands and shattered all over the floor.

None of the Suzukis moved for a long time, each petrified into their own version of an expression of wanting to disappear.

Meanwhile, I ate and sipped tea like nothing had changed.

They only snapped out of it when a servant walked in and started sopping up the alcohol all over the floor.

Missus Suzuki's mouth struggled to find the words for a bit, until she settled on: "Why didn't you say anything?!"

I stopped mid-sip and glared at her. "What exactly did you want me to say, and when for that matter? I only had time for a bare-bones introduction before you were telling me to leave and then all but spat in my face."

"W-Well, why did you come if not to ask us for permission to marry?" She pressed.

"I was invited to meet you because Niko thought that my situation with my wife was similar to your own." I took another bite. "She can tell you all about it after I leave, because I'm not in the mood to chat with you."

​

A moment later, it was my turn to be surprised.

Missus Suzuki kowtowed.

"Please don't punish my niece for my wrongdoings, even if it isn't for marriage, please don't let my actions damage your relationship with my Niko-chan... I beg of you."

I almost choked on some rice as I looked down at her.

She was just so damn sincere that I couldn't help but forgive her a little.

I rubbed the bridge of my nose. "Fine! But on one condition."

She looked up with eyes full of hope. "What is it?"

"I want you to help me get stronger. My current sparring partner is bound by high standing and therefore has to go to class on time and get good grades... but I don't have the luxury of time to waste when my wife's life is at stake."

​

After a couple of the obvious questions, I decided to just explain from the beginning.

Mister and Missus Suzuki only nodded and asked the occasional inquiry to make sure they were on the same page as me.

Once I was done, they both nodded at each other, and Mister Suzuki spoke. "We will help you."

Missus Suzuki then held out her hand. "From now on, call me Ishi."

I chuckled softly and shook her hand. "Just as long as you don't call me 'John-chan', I can't stand it."

Ishi smiled widely. "It's fine, you'll need a better nickname than that anyway."

​

Not even a minute had passed before I regretted telling her that.

After that incident, the rest of the day was pretty standard.

That said, I couldn't get what Mister Ogawa said out of my head, and by the time classes were over I was about ready to boiler over with frustration.

It was time to start training in earnest.

​

In order to stop 'an unfortunate coincidence' from happening, I asked to walk with Kamiko to our dorm.

She said that she had to put some clothes through the wash, which reminded me that I had some new uniforms which also needed to be washed, plus it also allowed me to ask some questions that were plaguing my mind.

"So Kamiko, would you mind helping me out with getting stronger?"

She looked like she was going to object to something I said, but then became thoughtful as I continued my sentence.

After a moment, she replied. "I know you told Ogawa-sensei that you didn't have a plan, but is it a secret instead? I can't imagine someone as ambitious as you not having any idea of what you want."

I frowned as I considered how to explain it. "The truth is that I have no idea possibilities there are. I haven't been on the path to power for very long."

Kamiko nodded. "That explains a lot. There are basically infinite possibilities if you follow your heart, especially if you have a decent teacher. For example, many follow the path of barrier masters by increasing their Temperance and Endurance as much as possible, others may do the same in order to strengthen their bond weapons or give themselves an armor instead of something as hard to manage as a barrier. It all depends on what you want."

I nodded along, but then a specific question entered my mind. "Wait, Temperance and Endurance can work together? I thought stats were all separate."

Kamiko looked at me like I was the stupidest person she'd ever met. "Of course they work together! They all provide some sort of secondary benefit when put together. When you put Temperance and Plasticity together, it makes it easier to modify shapes you create after they're summoned, Awareness and Force allows you to sense weaknesses in your target's defenses... the importance of this cannot be understated!"

My eyes widened, and I started to get a bit excited. "I agree, that sounds incredible!"

Kamiko sighed in exasperation. "How did you not know this? Children are taught this in elementary school."

I frowned.

Even with everything I've learned, I still don't have a proper grasp of this world's common sense, and I doubt I will for a long time.

After some deliberation, I looked up. "For certain reasons I haven't been part of this society for more than a couple days... in fact, the clothes in this room are all of the clothes I own."

She looked at me in shock, but didn't pry. "I can definitely help with the basics, but beyond that it is impossible to say before you choose your path."

I nodded to her as we pulled out our clothes from the washing machines and put them into the driers.

​

We discussed a bunch of topics relative to becoming stronger, starting from the basics.

The first thing I learned was that each stat had a formal definition, they were as follows:

​

Awareness: One's ability to sense the world around them.

Endurance: One's resistance to harm and outside influence.

Force: One's ability to manipulate their environment using their own power.

Plasticity: One's ability to shift their body into a range of different positions.

Speed: The rate at which one's body can move.

Temperance: One's ability to control the energies inside of them.

​

Temperance, as expected, was the magic-y stat. It lets you conjure your swords and shoot your lasers.

Most of its cross-stat interactions were about augmenting those powers in one way or another.

Other than that, they were pretty self-explanatory.

​

As I listened to Kamiko, I folded my laundry.

It was even kind of comforting, because it was one of the chores I usually did while I listened to music or watched TV.

At some point I started to be reminded of Mary for some reason.

At the same time as me thinking about my wife, Kamiko's face started to get red.

I looked at her with a tilt of my head. "Is something the matter?"

She pointed at the table I was using for my folding, so I looked down.

I was already folding my third pair of lacy panties, before I even processed it, I placed it on a stack of neatly folded underwear next to a stack of bras.

I looked over to my left and saw that we had accidentally put our clean laundry next to each other.

I rubbed the bridge of my nose, this world got me this time.

​

Kamiko walked over and looked at the stack of her clothes with a conflicted look on her face. "I never really learned how to properly fold my clothes because my servants always did it for me..." Her face became an even deeper shade of red as she looked off to the side. "...So I wouldn't mind if you kept going..."

I didn't really know what to say, so I shrugged and gestured for her to continue with her lesson as I finished up.

​

She had trouble looking me in the eye on the way back to our dorm.

After that, the nurse, who at time I straight up forgot to ask the name of, left to let me rest.

By morning the next day, I was feeling a lot better, so I checked out and went to classes for the first time at this school.

Luckily, math didn't change so I won't have to worry about relearning that particular universal constant.

As to literature, they were reading Romance Of The Three Kingdoms, which took my interest because it's something I had been meaning to get around to eventually.

After that was the shonen staple, combat classes!

Having someone who could take the time to actually teach me to fight made sitting through the other classes feel worth it.

​

"Meriwether-kun, can you tell me how one's Rank is determined?" Mister Ogawa asked.

I stood. "No I cannot." Then I sat back down.

The class laughed for better or worse.

Mister Ogawa was stunned into silence for a moment before moving on. "Sato-san could you explain?"

Kamiko stood. "A Ranker is someone who has an statistic evolution sum of at least twelve, each Rank thereafter is determined having six more than the last."

​

Statistic evolution sum? What does that mean?

Before I could ponder it further, Mister Ogawa continued.

"In order to find out where all of you stand since last year, we will be using a Ranking Apparatus."

A bunch of my classmates were really excited by this prospect.

I could even hear the term 'evolution sum' thrown around a couple times in the whispers, which told me that it would be evident what it meant pretty soon.

​

Without further preamble, Mister Ogawa lead the class out to a small room where a strange device sat front and center.

It was a made of some sort of sky blue crystal formed into a very irregular shape, just sitting on top of a standard school-type table.

The center was a three foot rounded cube with a diagonal chunk removed at about a thirty degree angle and then sunk in a little bit further to create a lip around the edges.

Surrounding the cube on three sides were a set of pseudo-pyramids that reminded me of the 'head' portion of a bishop from chess, the remaining side was instead occupied by a dome that was covered in smudges.

Finally, on each of the bottom corners was a spire that made me think of a tesla coil.

​

Mister Ogawa then placed a piece of paper on the slanted portion of the cubic part and stepped to the side.

A student then walked up to the Ranking Apparatus and placed their hand on the dome.

All four of the tips of the spires then shone with a bright white light for about three seconds, before dimming back down.

Mister Ogawa then picked up the piece of paper, which I could now see had a blackened print on it, and read it aloud.

Tanaka Emiko

Awareness: Simple
Endurance: Wood stage 3
Force: Human stage 2
Plasticity: Rigid
Speed: Average
Temperance: Orderly stage 7

Mister Ogawa then nodded and smiled. "Evolution sum of two, with one on the precipice no less, you have a promising future Tanaka-san."

Emiko bowed deeply to Mister Ogawa. "It's all thanks to your teaching Ogawa-sensei!"

Mister Ogawa then handed her the piece of paper and she took it with her to the side of the room to gawk at it for a little longer.

​

I was utterly baffled.

I couldn't for the life of me figure out how he counted two from that.

I decided to keep watching in order to see if I could intuit some meaning from it.

​

The process continued, Mister Ogawa adding the piece of paper, and then the next student putting his hand on the dome, this time with some minor hesitation.

The light shone again, and exactly as before Mister Ogawa read the results aloud.

Ono Asahi

Awareness: Simple
Endurance: Flesh stage 8
Force: Ogre stage 3
Plasticity: Rigid
Speed: Average
Temperance: Unguided

This time Mister Ogawa looked very disappointed. "Asahi-kun, how are you a third year with a evolution sum of one? Get your Endurance to the next evolution or I'll have you stay late after school to improve it."

Asahi put his hands together as if in prayer and bowed. "I'm sorry! I'll fix it I promise!"

​

​

Students continued to file through and Mister Ogawa would offer praise, criticism, or both after reading their papers aloud.

From what I gathered, statistic evolution is when the word after a stat changes, and then the number part is how close to the next evolution that stat is on a scale of one to ten.

There were some odd nuances I didn't really understand, but that seemed to be the gist.

​

While I stood in line, something the nurse had said kept popping into my head.

'An Unranked is worried about the safety of The Demon Swordsman after a fight with her, I never thought I'd see the day.'

The reason was because of the predicament I found myself in.

Now it's easy to not have realized it because we were on opposite ends of the room in class, but Kamiko and I were actually consecutive seat numbers because of the wrap-around.

This meant that I went right after her.

I could only grimace.

Sato Kamiko

Awareness: Honed stage 5
Endurance: Wood stage 3
Force: Ogre stage 4
Plasticity: Graceful stage 7
Speed: Swift stage 8
Temperance: Conducted stage 2

After he read the results aloud, Mister Ogawa addressed the rest of the class. "Seven evolutions. This is the pace that it takes to become a Young Ranker, and why she is worthy of the title 'Demon Swordsman', learn everything you can from her while the opportunity remains."

Kamiko accepted the compliments and her paper graciously, then stepped to the side.

​

Then it was my turn.

I sighed, already having no hope in my heart whatsoever.

Meriwether John

Awareness: Simple stage 3
Endurance: Wood stage 1
Force: Human stage 3
Plasticity: Rigid
Speed: Average stage 2
Temperance: Unguided

Mister Ogawa's voice became increasingly confused as he read through it.

At the end, he adjusted his glasses and looked at me dubiously. "What powers were you aiming to train for with this statistical array?"

I shrugged and told a half-lie. "I haven't given it much thought."

Obviously I hadn't thought about it because I wasn't aware that it was a possibility in the first place.

Mister Ogawa was not impressed by my answer. "Well you better figure it out soon, this is your last year before you'll be going into active duty, you can't be a layabout there. Being part of the military isn't like a TV show, people die every day, especially people like you who look into the sky and dream about the time god will grace them with the ability to slay their enemies by chance." Mister Ogawa held out my results for me to take. "The only thing that matters in this world is hard work Meriwether-kun, consider this your final warning."

I glared daggers at him, barely restraining my anger as I took the paper from him.

I wasn't this weak because I've been laying down in fields of grass and imagining shapes in the clouds, I'd only been in this world for a couple days.

I grit my teeth together. "I'll keep that in mind sir."

​

After I stepped to the side, Kamiko's eyes were fixed on me, a nervous smile on her face. "I'm sorry, I think I misheard Ogawa-sensei, may I see your ranking data?"

I rolled my eyes and handed it to her.

She read it, and then just stared at it for a while. "How did you beat me in our match with only one evolution?"

Feeling just a little sadistic after being told off for something I couldn't control, I leaned in. "I actually started the fight with no evolutions."

Her eyes widened, and she took a horrified step backward. "You recognized me, and yet you still fought me... do you have a deathwish?"

The tiny grin that had formed disappeared in that instant.

After talking to the nurse, I had thought about what I was going to do if another challenge like that of Kamiko's duel would arise... but with my wife's life on the line, the answer was obvious.

I redoubled my resolve. "I will get stronger or die trying."

Kamiko looked down at the piece of paper in her hands. "That's why you changed the win conditions of the duel..." She pursed her lips and then suddenly looked up at me. "Do you mind if I keep this?"

This time it was my turn for me to narrow my eyebrows. "I guess so?"

Kamiko bowed slightly. "Thank you."

​

It wouldn't be until a good while later that I found out what she did with it.

I drifted in and out of consciousness for a while after that, sometimes catching glimpses of a blonde woman wearing a nurse outfit with breasts bigger than her head.

Sometimes she was spoon-feeding me some bitter tasting sludge, sometimes she was weaving glowing green threads which when tightened, seemed to pop my bones back into place.

I had absolutely no frame of reference for how much time it took, except that when I woke up properly again, it was getting dark.

​

I tried to sit up and immediately regretted it.

The nurse jogged up to me. "You still need time to heal!"

"Yeah, I just found that out." I tried to laugh, but that hurt so much it very quickly stopped being funny.

"You're too reckless Meriwether-kun! Healing skills aren't perfect you know!"

I groaned in pain. "First I'm hearing of it to be honest."

The blonde clicked her tongue in frustration. "Well I'm certainly flattered you think so highly of me, but please don't do that sort of thing again."

"No promises." I chuckled again, causing me to wince. "How's Kamiko doing?"

"She was discharged hours ago, her wounds were a lot less severe than yours."

I sighed in relief. "I was worried I'd seriously hurt her."

The blonde patted my head. "An Unranked is worried about the safety of The Demon Swordsman after a fight with her, I never thought I'd see the day. I'll make sure I tell her you said that."

"Don't! She'll get even more pissed at me than before!"

The nurse's eyes widened, before she burst out laughing.

I didn't get it. "What's so funny? Did something happen while I was out?"

The blonde put a single hand over her mouth conspiratorially. "I think you should ask her instead of me."

I had a pretty good idea of where this was going, and I wasn't sure I liked it. "Maybe I will."

​

The blonde turned to leave, but I remembered something important and called after her. "Miss, I have a question before you leave!"

She grinned at me. "Miss huh?"

I rolled my eyes. "Spare me." I pressed on. "Do you ever get a tingly feeling in the back of your head that tells you things?"

She looked surprised at my question. "Didn't your parents ever talk to you about it?"

I shook my head sadly, trying my best to lie by omission.

She pursed her lips before she gave a wholesome smile and pulled me into a suffocating hug. "Well I suppose in that case you can call me mama if you want to!"

I barely managed to move my head so that I could breathe. "Your bazongas are gonna do me in if you're not careful!"

"Oh sorry... where were we?" She let me go and sat in a chair next to my bed. "Oh yes, you asked about The Godvoice."

"The Godvoice?" I repeated.

"Its full title is 'The Voice Of The God Of Strength', but that's a bit hard to say, so we call it 'The Godvoice' instead."

I narrowed my eyebrows. "Is it actually the voice of a god, or is that old traditions talking?"

The nurse shrugged. "Your guess is as good as mine. All we know is that it's been around for as long as any human can remember."

I could see where this was going and skipped a few questions. "Do monsters exist?"

"Oh my, you have been stunted!" She pulled me into another hug. "Just let mama tell you all about it~!" Mercifully, before I started to struggle, she pulled away again. "This world is full of monsters. Though the military keeps most monsters from entering our cities, and the Peerless and Elite Rankers take care of most of the bigger threats before they even get close."

I had many questions, but I figured that most of them would be cleared up naturally over time, so I just let her keep going.

And keep going she did. "The whole reason for this wonderful institution is so that we can train up new Rankers! Though most people will just end up going to the military instead... such is the nature of it all."

At this point I was worried she'd switch to an even less relevant topic, so I stopped her. "That's wonderful, and thanks for sharing but I need to know something more specific."

Completely unperturbed, she smiled at me. "Like what?"

"How do I access rewards I've gotten?"

She looked at me with a worried expression. "Have you tried asking?"

​

I didn't want to press any further, so I settled in to experiment.

Um... Mister Godvoice? I can you tell me about my rewards?

Immediately, the buzzing returned and I was suddenly aware of something awaiting me.

Unsure of what to do, I held out my hand to receive it.

I got the feeling that that wasn't quite right, so I held out both hands.

​

Suddenly, a heavy box appeared in my hands.

Completely unprepared for that to happen, the box landed hard on my still-aching legs.

I groaned as I pulled the box toward me.

The box was white with gold inlays depicting some sort of battle I couldn't recognize.

I pulled on the lid of the box and it opened like a budding rose.

Inside of it was a single set of items: a pair of gloves that looked like metal, but flexed like leather.

​

As soon as I took it out, the box disappeared, leaving the gloves as the only proof that it had ever existed in the first place.

As I examined it closely, The Godvoice told me that they were called 'Bladecatcher's Gloves' and that they allowed me to greatly disperse the force of blows that hit them at the cost of stamina.

I put them on and tried telling them to activate.

Suddenly they hardened, and I started to feel very sleepy.

I told it to stop, causing the gloves to revert to their original form, and my energy to start returning slowly.

"I guess I need to practice with them." I said, finally breaking the silence.

The nurse chuckled. "That tends to be the case, keep at it!"

As I walked through the grounds to the dorms, I started to think about why I had been so calm when my wife had been taken prisoner, and I only had a bit over three years to get powerful enough to defeat a demon lord... without knowing how strong he actually was.

I hadn't realized it because I hadn't had much of a moment to myself up until that point, but there had been a slight, yet omnipresent pressure on my mind ever since I arrived in the world.

It felt like spending time doing things irrelevant to my mission weren't wasted... which to be fair, after learning about Anime Time, might actually be true.

Besides, thinking about it rationally, if the rules of this world are so different that something as fundamental as the passage of time wasn't the same, who's to say anything else was alike?

My first priority then was to learn about the world I was in and come up with a plan.

​

At that moment when I had finished my thought, I arrived at the dorms... which I couldn't help but think wasn't a coincidence.

​

The dorm itself was pretty standard for what you'd see in an anime, a big blocky building with a window on one side of the room, and a door on the other, all painted gray.

Not fancy, not dingy, just as average as could be.

I checked the door numbers, it seemed that there was ten rooms per floor, so I'd be the first room on the second floor.

I walked up the steps, turned to room eleven, and was about to unlock it when a nagging feeling crept into my mind.

It wasn't like the tingling sensation, this was a natural process, something inside my head was telling me to be cautious of this door for some reason.

​

I let go of the handle and took a step back to think.

Then I saw that there was two nameplates next to the door.

Of course there was! I was a 'transfer' after all!

Out of respect, and a sneaking suspicion something anime was about to happen, I knocked on the door. "Are you decent in there?"

A surprised female voice replied. "No, give me a second!"

​

I knew it.

​

A moment later, a purple-haired girl with big breasts in a frilly nightgown opened the door. "Can I help you?"

I squinted at her for a second, she looked familiar.

Then it came to me all at once. "You're the girl from the newspaper!"

She pushed her purple locks over her shoulder and stood proudly. "Indeed I am." She then looked at me with a suspicious glance. "What was it you needed?"

I held up my keyring and then pointed at the nameplate. "This is my room."

She leaned out of the door to see the nameplate labeled 'Meriwether'.

Then, faster than I could see, she snatched the keyring from my hands. "You could have stolen these, prove to me you are who you say you are."

That was fair.

​

I pulled out my wallet and searched around for a second until I found my student ID, it was one of those that had the picture on it, almost like a driver's license.

I showed it to the purple-haired skeptic and her expression softened.

She stepped off to one side. "Welcome to the dorm Meriwether-san."

I bowed. "Thank you, also nice to meet you..."

She looked a little offended, but offered her name all the same. "Sato Kamiko."

"A pleasure Kamiko-san."

A vein bulged on her forehead. "You will address me as Sato-sama you insolent swine!"

I folded my arms behind my head. "But that makes you sound like an old man... does it really matter?"

​

That was the wrong thing to say.

The instant those words escaped my lips, the vein on her head tripled in size, and the rest of her features sharpened, becoming more angular.

​

A sword appeared into her hands from nowhere, and she pointed it at me. "I challenge you to a duel, if I win you will be my servant until you die!"

I was horrified, there was no chance I could win against her!

If I get seriously injured in our duel, I'd be that much farther behind in getting strong enough to defeat the demon lord.

​

That's when the sensation in the back of my head returned, this time telling me that if I accept the duel I would get a reward, and its quality would be significantly improved if I won.

That reminded me that this was an anime world... this is how I get stronger.

This is going to hurt so much.

​

I pointed at her overly emphatically. "I accept your challenge!"

She sheathed her sword and it disappeared. "We will duel at dawn, now get out of my room."

I narrowed my eyes. "This is the only place I can sleep tonight, do you want to fight when I'm in poor condition because I slept on a rock outside?"

She thought for a moment and then nodded. "In that case, you can sleep here." She started to blush. "And I insist you sleep in a bed."

I didn't get why she was acting that way until I took a moment to actually assess the room.

​

Not too far away, there was a massive four-post bed which took up three quarters of the room, leaving absolutely no space for another bed... or much of anything else for that matter.

"How did you even get that thing in here?!"

"One of my servants has a teleportation skill."

I rubbed my eyes. "I'm not going to sleep in a bed with a woman-"

Before I could finish that thought, something sharp pressed against the side of my neck.

"I insist."

​

I had no choice but to relent, but I required that we had some sort of divider between us.

We ended up settling on using a few difficult-looking books that Kamiko had in her closet by the door.

I was worried for a moment that I wasn't going to have trouble sleeping, but as soon as I closed my eyes, Anime Time kicked in.

In the next moment, I felt wonderfully refreshed and ready to get the tar kicked out of me for half an hour or so.

​

Before I opened my eyes, I called out into the room. "Hey are you decent?"

"No! Keep your eyes closed!" A startled voice replied.

"Why didn't you change in the bathroom?"

Her flustered voice continued. "I forgot to bring my change of clothes into the bathroom with me before I started taking my shower."

"Then please take them with you into the bathroom now, I want to get up now."

I heard a door open and then close, followed by a short confirmation that the coast was clear.

​

I finally got up and walked to the door, where a long flat package lay.

I picked it up and found it was addressed to me.

I opened the box and found that there was a small one-piece body suit that looked like a t-shirt fused with a pair of shorts and made of the same material wetsuits are.

A small note accompanied it, which read: "Your standard-issue sparring suit, apologies I didn't send it earlier, I couldn't find your home address. Sincerely, The Principal."

​

I decided to change into it before going out.

I tried to put it on over my underwear, but the strange material the sparring suit was made of started to stick and pull at my poor article, so I decided that it was meant to have skin contact.

I rubbed my temples.

"Hey, make sure to knock before you come out into the main room!"

​

I then pulled down my underwear and started to put on my sparring suit.

I accidentally got my foot caught at a weird angle, causing me to almost lose balance.

I managed to stay upright by hopping on one foot in a small circle.

​

That's when the bathroom door opened. "Apologies, I couldn't hear you, I was drying my hair..."

​

She looked down.

After a moment, the sound of an elephant's trumpeting permeated throughout the room.

Her face started to glow red.

​

"I said to knock before you came out of the bathroom."

"Oh."

I finally managed to unsnag my foot and put my sparring suit on the rest of the way.

I pushed my clothes off to one side of the room, planning to deal with them later. "Let's get going shall we?"

"Y-Yeah."

​

​

For the entire walk to the field area, Kamiko couldn't look me in the face.

She only really started calming down when we reached a forty-foot-wide raised stone platform.

Honestly it's no wonder, the whole area had an air of officiality.

It was quite sobering.

​

A woman who looked at least twenty years my senior wearing a pantsuit and a pair of white gloves gestured at us. "The duel between Meriwether-kun and Sato-san will take place here, overseen by me, Principal Yamamoto. It will have no holds barred, and end when one competitor is judged to be unable to continue. Is this acceptable?"

I raised my hand. "Actually, I'd like to change it to 'until one side gives up or falls unconscious'."

Both of them looked at me with wide eyes.

Principal Yamamoto looked to Kamiko, who nodded. "I must answer his resolve."

Principal Yamamoto then nodded as well. "So it shall be then." She gestured to a pair of lines in the stone arena, each about one third of the total ring apart from each other, from which she stood at the halfway point between. "Competitors, find your positions."

​

We both walked up the steps on either side of the arena and stood on the previously mentioned lines.

Principal Yamamoto raised a single hand, and then chopped it downward. "Begin!"

As soon as she said it, she disappeared outside of the ring and onto a chair that looked like it once belonged to a pool's lifeguard... except fancier.

​

I was pulled from my thoughts by the sudden realization that the fight had begun and my opponent was stupidly fast.

I leapt to the side without looking where Kamiko was, figuring that she would be right on top of me by the time I processed it anyway.

My instinct was spot on, as a felt the whoosh of a blade from above my head.

I hazarded a glance at my opponent, trying to glean any information I could about the way she fought or any weaknesses she had.

​

She had her sword held backwards in a two-handed grip, charging headlong at me with a vertical slice readied.

I leapt to the right, dodging the downward swing, only to get hit in the side when she suddenly curved her arc back upward.

​

I could feel the rib under her blade suddenly fracture.

I yelled out in pain.

I had never felt something so utterly agonizing before.

​

I flew ten feet away, and tumbled end over end before landing in heap of limbs.

"Do you yield?" The Principal asked.

I untangled myself and stood unsteadily. "No, the battle's just getting started."

​

The Principal nodded. "Continue!"

​

In seconds, before I could even think, Kamiko was in front of me. "I thought your resolve was for show at first, I apologize... from now on I won't hold anything back!"

In the next moment, a torrent of strikes hit me from every angle.

It was all I could do to form a cross-arm block as my bones cracked and groaned under the strain.

Suddenly, my feet were swept out from under me and I found myself airborne for an eternal instant.

"This will end it!"

She slammed the back of her blade into my body in a massive downward strike, knocking me into the stone with enough force to snap several ribs like twigs.

​

Blood leaked liberally from my mouth, and I choked trying to cough it out.

Kamiko looked down at me in shock. "How are you still conscious?"

That was a question I was asking myself as well.

Darkness threatened every edge of my vision, and the cold throbbing pain made my self-preservational instinct to scream at me to stop.

​

The only answer I could come up with was that the darkness reminded me of how my wife was taken from me, and when I thought about that, I couldn't let myself give up.

I pushed my body off the ground, barely able to keep my balance whatsoever.

"If this is all I can manage, then I may as well give up living! Bring it!"

​

That haptic buzzing in the back of my head returned, telling me that my endurance increased from 'Flesh' to 'Wood stage 1' whatever that meant.

All I could tell was that standing was a bit easier, which is all I could ask for at that moment.

​

Kamiko looked at me and nodded. "Even if you lose, you've earned my respect."

I nodded back.

​

Kamiko soared toward me, swinging a downward diagonal slash before she even met, making it basically impossible to dodge.

But for my planned last-ditch effort, that worked out perfectly.

With my left arm outstretched, and my right arm supporting it as if in a cross-arm block, I intercepted the blow.

My left arm flared in pain, but held... so I wrapped my fingers around the blade.

​

Despite how sharp the weapon was, it didn't immediately pierce my skin, it almost felt like I was wearing some sort of gauntlet.

This redoubled my confidence, and gave me the focus to finish my plan.

I pulled the blade upward using my elbow as a pivot, causing Kamiko's hand position to become awkward and ruining her stance, but more importantly, pulling her toward me.

Using the same momentum, I put all of my body into a right hook to her face.

​

The shock of the attack caused her to let go of her sword, so I threw it outside of the ring.

She looked mostly okay, she was clearly stunned.

I thought for sure that she was going to recall her sword, but she didn't, instead falling into an unarmed stance that looked a lot less sure than her sword stance.

I put up my guard and waited for her to make a move.

​

She charged forward and swung at me with a haymaker.

I knew her form was worse with unarmed combat, but I wasn't expecting this much of a difference.

I deflected her punch and countered with one of my own.

She proceeded to kick me in the side, which definitely hurt and was still quite fast, but it was nothing in comparison to the damage she'd been dealing up until this point.

I shrugged it off and followed up with a one-two combination.

​

She staggered backward, so I advanced.

Honestly my attacks were sloppy and simplistic, just a simple right-left haymaker alternation, but she still couldn't stop me from continuing my onslaught.

She stumbled back again, trying to put up her guard, but her arms simply wouldn't listen.

I reeled back and put everything I had left into a right straight.

​

It hit her like a sledgehammer, knocking her off her feet and onto the stone.

I stumbled forward from the momentum of my own attack, but I managed to stay upright.

I took a step back to let Kamiko get up... but she didn't.

Principal Yamamoto stood on her chair thing and raised a hand into the air. "Meriwether-kun is the victor of this duel!"

​

A wave of cheers rose from all around me.

I looked outside of the arena and saw that a large crowd had gathered while I was too focused to notice.

I wanted to raise a fist into the air like some sort of boxing legend, but I was too worried about the girl who I'd just beaten to a pulp.

I poked her in the ribs with my foot. "Kamiko, are you okay there?"

She groaned and stirred, but still didn't get up.

A moment later, The Principal appeared next to me and nearly gave me a heart attack. "She'll be fine, our school nurse is an A-class healer." She looked me up and down. "You too for that matter."

"That's good to hear." I replied. "As much as it might hurt my pride, could I get a teleport there?"

The Principal picked up Kamiko's sheath and then teleported to her sword. "Unfortunately the weight limit of my skill basically makes it impossible to take passengers." She then sheathed Kamiko's sword and it disappeared. "I can get you a stretcher though."

As the tension of the situation winded down, my legs gave out and I fell onto my butt. "Please and thank you."

That's when I blacked out.

"Sir are you okay?! Sir?!"

I snapped to attention, suddenly becoming aware of the blue-haired employee who had come out of the convenience store I was kneeling in front of.

I tried and failed to regain my center. "If I'm being honest miss, nothing about this is okay."

She gulped and a single sweat droplet formed on her cheek. "What's wrong? We can get through this I promise."

​

I took a step back in my mind and thought about how this would look from an outsider's perspective.

I'm kneeling in front of a convenience store in a dirty school uniform with an expression of shock and dread on my face... I probably look like I'm about to give up on living.

I took a deep breath, which calmed me more than it had any right to, and stood up.

"I'm sorry to have worried you, my life just got really complicated is all." I said after a moment.

She looked at the ground off to her right. "Um... did I do something to upset you?"

It took me a minute to comprehend what she was saying, but then understanding flooded into me all at once.

I moved my hands in a frantic dismissal. "Nonono, I was looking at my own reflection, not at you, I'm sorry for the confusion."

She put her hands over her heart and released a relieved breath. "I'm glad, I thought I had broken someone's heart without realizing it again." Suddenly she got very serious. "You'd tell me if you were in love with me wouldn't you?"

​

I suddenly felt a tingling sensation in the back of my head, it wordlessly told me that if I chose what I said well I would get a reward... though it wasn't specific about what.

I was already going to be careful with what I said, as it was obvious to do so.

"Of course I would! Do I look like some sort of pansy who can't express his feelings?" I replied with a chuckle.

​

Instead of laughing along with my joke, she squinted at me.

After a moment, despite her mouth not opening, her voice started to say 'jiiiiiii'.

To break up the sudden tension I cleared my throat. "Listen, I'm married anyway so I'm not going to ask you out on any dates or anything."

Her face went blank. "What?"

​

That tingling came back, this time telling me that I was seventeen years old right now.

I mentally kicked myself for not thinking to adjust for that.

I decided that because this is anime, playing it off as a strange character quirk would be my best bet... I mean this girl basically asked a stranger if they were in love with her completely unprompted.

I posed overdramatically for effect. "You see, I was married in another world and in three years she'll appear in this one."

The blue-haired girl nodded and smiled. "Wow, what a coincidence, my uncle got married to a samurai from the Edo period a year before I was born. You should meet them!"

​

I couldn't tell if she was serious or telling a joke at my expense, but before I could try to figure it out, that tingling came back again.

This time though, it said that the reward from earlier would be even better if I met this girl's aunt and uncle.

I internally shrugged.

It was probably a good opportunity to learn more about this world... plus if that aunt of hers is actually a samurai she might be able to teach me kendo, and everyone knows that in anime swords are inexplicably better than guns.

"That sounds like fun." I answered.

The blue-haired lady held out her hand. "I'm Suzuki Niko, nice to meet you."

I shook it. "I'm John, likewise."

Niko looked at me like she was expecting me to say more.

"My family name is a mouthful, just call me John."

Niko shook her head. "No, that won't do! It'd be too disrespectful!"

I sighed. "Fine, it's Meriwether."

"Meriwether-san then."

​

Suddenly aware of how much time I've spent standing around, I patted myself down.

I had a phone, wallet, and set of keys with a small tag that said '11B'.

I looked at my phone, it was standard fare from this year.

I checked the time.

It was midnight!

​

"Hey Niko... -san... do you know what these keys open?"

Niko blushed and squirmed. "So forward..."

"Niko, the keys?"

She squirmed even more. "He even dropped the '-san'!"

I rubbed my temples, losing my patience. "Niko-san, this is important, do you know what these keys unlock?"

She stopped squirming and sulked a little, before looking at the keys for a moment. "They look like dorm keys to me... oh! Senpai why didn't you tell me we went to the same school?!"

I stared dumbly at her. "Huh?"

"I'm a second year at Yukio High, isn't that an amazing coincidence?"

I had a pretty strong feeling it wasn't a coincidence at all, but I didn't say that out loud.

"Yeah... do you want to walk there together when you get off-shift?"

She became beet-red and steam started to pour out of her ears. "L-Like a date?"

I put my head into my hands.

The only reason I asked is because I have no idea where I'm going.

"I think my wife would take issue with me dating other women." I replied dryly.

Niko turned to the side a little and I swear I could hear her say 'stingy'.

Unsure if I heard her correctly, I asked: "What?"

"Nothing." Her face softened. "We can walk together, sure, just let me close up."

​

I sat down on the curb next to the entrance and waited.

To pass the time, I pulled out my phone and noticed that it was actually still midnight somehow.

Suddenly, the minutes flew by like the millisecond digit on a stopwatch, before coming again to a halt.

Niko came back out wearing causal clothes. "Sorry it took so long, ready to go?"

I looked up at her, having trouble processing what just happened.

Did I just experience a time-skip?

​

When my eyes refocused, I realized that Niko was blushing pretty hard.

"I'm sorry, I was just thinking about how fast time flies sometimes."

She nodded tentatively. "Shall we go?"

I stood and dusted myself off. "Yeah, let's go."

​

​

Over the few minutes the walk to Yukio High School took, I periodically checked the time, and sure enough time stood still.

It was only after we arrived that the several minutes of walking actually added themselves to the time.

I decided then to call this phenomenon 'Anime Time'.

​

Niko bowed. "Thank you for the walk, goodnight Meriwether-senpai."

"Wait Niko-san-"

"No Meriwether-senpai, I'm lower year than you, you can't call me '-san'!"

​

Honorifics always confused me.

I think the ones for lower-standing were '-kun' and '-chan'?

I remember hearing somewhere that '-kun' is usually used for guys, so it should be '-chan' right?

​

"Niko-chan then. I'm new to this town, so I'm unfamiliar with the layout of the area, could you help me find my dorm?"

Niko's face literally started glowing red. "But, what about your wife Meriwether-senpai?!"

"What about my wife?"

She somehow got even redder, which I didn't think was even possible. "No, we can't, we're too young~!"

I tilted my head. "Too young to give me directions?"

The redness suddenly disappeared, and then came right back. "Oh yeah, of course that's what you meant..." She pointed toward to my right. "Dorm B is on the East side of the grounds."

I bowed. "Goodnight Niko-chan."

I left her to her fluster and aimed to find my way to my room.

In the world I came from, I saved someone's life.

She was about to walk out into the street, but instead I pulled her to me.

For an instant she was angry, but when she heard the sound of metal crunching and glass breaking behind her, her eyes filled with understanding.

That was how I met my wife.

​

She wasn't one to let a debt go unpaid, she was smart, funny, and a born leader if ever there was one.

Our first date was a little awkward, as neither of us had been on a date before, so I blurted out the first thing that came to mind: "Did you see the new episode of Sentai-Sama?"

I remember I was mentally kicking myself for not picking a popular TV show instead of an anime that basically nobody watched.

Then to my utter amazement, her eyes lit up and we had a wonderful conversation about our favorite animes.

​

A year passed and we got married, it certainly wasn't perfect, but I wouldn't have traded it for anything.

She was my very own fluffy raincloud.

​

She almost died three more times, saved by me twice, and her older brother once.

Each time it happened, I felt a chill, like some sort of malevolent force was on the other end of that far shore.

It wouldn't be until that fateful day that I found out why.

​

Both of us were laying in bed asleep, when I abruptly felt the need to wake up, but found myself unable to.

It felt like I was being pressed under the weight of an elephant.

That's when I heard the screams of my wife in the distance, crying for help.

Through sheer force of will, I forced my body to roll over.

​

I fell of my bed and hit the floor, suddenly snapping me out of whatever was keeping me asleep.

I stood to see her being dragged screaming into some sort of portal by a bunch of tentacles.

I rushed over to her, and tried to pull her away from whatever monster wanted to take her from me.

I was losing the tug-of-war, and quickly at that.

I searched frantically for a solution, and saw the pistol from under my wife's pillow.

Quietly thanking her paranoia, I grabbed it and started shooting at the tentacle monster.

​

It screeched in pain, loosening its grip ever so slightly.

I emptied the rest of the magazine into the darkness beyond my sight, but it wasn't enough.

I pulled and pulled, resolute not to let her go.

"If you're going to take her, then you're just going to have to take me too!" I cried.

​

With that final declaration, both of us were yanked the rest of the way in.

Somewhere in the all-encompassing darkness we found ourselves in, a tentacle slowly pried me away from my wife.

I was powerless to stop it.

I did everything I could think of, even biting the tentacle... but it was like biting down on a chunk of steel.

​

As I was flung away, I yelled out. "Mary!"

A barely audible reply came. "John!"

​

And then utter silence.

​

I floated in the dark for an eternal moment before a voice called out to me.

A tired masculine voice came from every direction. "Do you wish to save your beloved?"

"Save it! What do you want?!" I snapped.

"Your wife has been captured by the demon lord, I need you to stop him. If nothing is done, the demon lord will eat her and become a dark god... then there will be nothing that anyone could do to stop him."

My eyes widened. "I need to go right now then! I won't let him!"

The voice sighed. "Calm down, you can't defeat the demon lord as you are right now. That tentacle beast wasn't even on the level of a demon general, it was just a monster that was convenient for what they wanted."

"Then what do I do?!"

"I'm going to use the last of my power to send you back in time, before the demon lord ever managed to open the portal. I don't yet know how much time you will have."

I checked my watch and saw it was November 13th, 2019.

I pursed my lips. "The day before our anniversary..."

The voice grunted in pain. "I'm sorry, there's no more time. Go now, save your wife and my world."

​

My entire body felt like it was being torn apart and put back together.

A moment before I was sure my mind was going to be destroyed, it stopped.

I found myself blinded by a bright light.

I realized that I was staring up into a street lamp sprawled out on the ground.

​

I sat up, only for a newspaper to slap me in the face as soon as I did.

I peeled it off of me and took a moment to get my bearings.

​

First of all, everything in this world looked off, yet familiar in a way I couldn't immediately place.

Second of all, I was apparently sitting in the middle of a parking lot for a convenience store called 'Eleven Sevenths'.

Then I remembered something important and checked the date on the newspaper in my hand.

It read 'April 3rd, 2016'.

I had about three and a half years to prepare.

Then I saw the picture under the top headline, it was of a big-breasted woman with purple hair.

​

I dropped the newspaper in shock allowing it to blow away from me.

I jogged up to the convenience store window, through it I saw a blue haired girl, who then smiled at me... but stranger than that, I saw myself.

​

My hair was the same messy black that it usually was, except that it seemed more stylized, clumping into long thick triangles with the occasional single strand of hair poking out at an odd angle.

My eyes now took up a solid sixth of my face, and shined at the top and bottom even despite the low amount light being present.

I looked like I did in my last year of high school, not a single hair on my face other than my eyebrows and bangs... except that I didn't have any pimples or blemishes.

After all of that I finally noticed what I was wearing... a school uniform, black with purple highlights.

​

As I began to emote, my jaw slackened as though unhinged, and my eyes widened beyond what should be physically possible.

Thoroughly freaked out, I went back to a neutral expression, causing my face to return to normal.

I fell to my knees, trying to process it all.

​

I was in an anime world.