I couldn't help but regretfully look back at the me who thought they may not need to fight. Oh how I envied his naivety. This world was at the edge of starting a massive war. One that the country I was in had a stake in. In fact, it was one of the main perpetrators.
To give a rough summary of a complicated situation, this empire, known as The Holy Country of the Divine (very modest) or as it was referred to in the books, simply the Divine empire, was at odds with another. An empire known as The Empire of Death Defying Soldiers, abbreviated to the Undying empire. Upon further research it was discovered all the countries of the land had such extravagant names. I couldn't figure out if it made remembering them easier or harder.
Back to the main point, the Devine empire and the soldier empire both wanted to claim a third empire in between the two. A small country humbly named the country of auspicious citizens, had stumbled upon a immensely valuable dungeon. A dungeon is exactly what you think it is, an area in which you can fight monsters for rewards. Seems like more specifically when a core, a collection of ambient mana, is left in an area without something to absorb it for long enough it becomes a dungeon core, taking over an area of land and raising the mana quality high enough things that shouldn't exist start to simply appear. These would be the monsters. Also worth noting was that dungeons were dissipating due to the increased human interactions in places slowly increasing the value of them, that wasn't the main problem though.
The dungeon had appeared in an abandoned mine. This quality caused the dungeon core to start producing monsters made of materials in the mine or at least with portions of them being made of ore. Imagine a regular goblin but instead of a wooden stick his was made of diamond. Essentially it was a literal gold mine as every part of the monster would fetch a high price and being monsters the material they had was even stronger then regular ores. The two empires who were previously uninterested in the small country we're now very interested and both immediately threatened to takeover if the rights were not given to the mine. Hearing that the other had done the same both empires responded in the same manor once more. "Give us the mine and we'll protect you from those other scheming tricksters." Caught in the middle and not wanting a full blown war to occur on their land the auspicious empire is currently panicking without being sure what to do, whilst the devine and soldier continue to plot, scheme, and worsen relationships between the two.
This was bad for me for several reasons. For one, I appeared to be of enlisting age in this world. Second, I was known in this world as a "Chosen". Another pretentious name but it meant I could see the status screen and receive its help training, something which would make me significantly stronger then a normal person if done right. All this meant right now was that our country is looking at a highschool full of us and thinking "Ah what wonderful potential soldiers". And third, was that a war on this scale would drag almost every neighboring country into it in some way or another, making any running away meaningless as I would simply get involved in another way. However, not all hope was lost. There was one trait of a dungeon that was helpful in this scenario. If you reached the core and absorbed it the dungeon would dissipate. This was almost never done with the exception of incredibly dangerous dungeons as it was equivalent to exploding a mine for little to no reason. But in this case to prevent or stop the war it would become necessary. Problem was, at this point everyone hated the other nation and saw no reason to stop the war. Each side was 100% confident in their own ability. Meaning I would need to stop it myself. Great...
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With his arm healing Ceff didn't have much else to do and decided to go to the library to study a few monsters, however couldn't help being curious about the boy a few isles down with the unfriendly expression reading. The kid had gone through a course and a half of history if his graveyard of finished books was anything to go off of. The kid had messy brown hair which almost grew to cover his eyes. He was on the scrawnier side which meant he probably did magic of some kind.
The kid reached the end of another book, but betraying his routine of getting up and grabbing another one he seemed to enter deep thought for a period of time. Before after a few minutes of thinking the kid simply picked up his books and started putting them back where he had found them. After the full 10 minutes it took the kid to do this he turned and walked to the section titled "The voice of the gods." And picked up 5 books before returning to his seat. Absurd. Ceff slowly peaked back down at his book, an analysis on a wolf type monster named lobo which led other monster wolfs and even any regular wolfs in the area. Before sighing and muttering "Stats." His screen appeared in front of him quickly.
Name: Ceff
Health: [150/50]
Mana: [50/50]
Dexterity: [20]
Force: [20]
Magic intelligence: [5]
non-Magic intelligence: [3]
Adaptability: [8]
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Skills: [Fighter](3)
He frowned at the blue screen, he had the numbers memorized due to how often he looked at it at this point but he still couldn't help the habit to glance at it. He needed more skills. If he had something besides the class skill he might've been able to defeat that troll he had fought. He winced as he remembered the club smashing his arm. He put his book down and walked over to a section most kids had sat around labeled "Skills". He hadn't wanted to originally because he felt guilty due to his descent, how could he learn such valuable information from the country his homeland was about to fight with? But his last fight caused him to swallow his pride and walk over to the bookcase. He entered the subsection for sword based skills and after a significant amount of time looking picked up one titled "Force Amplification." As he was about to walk back he saw the figure of 3 students in his way.
"Finally able to accept our countries knowledge? Or are you grabbing that book to burn it like the savages in your homeland?"
Though the taunt left a deep anger and grief in him Ceff yet he had no rebuttal. What they we're saying was true, his homeland was savage and not taking advantage of the skills provided probably did seem arrogant. But he saw no reason to start a fight over it. "I'm just going to read it."
"Oh yeah? You sure didn't want anything to do with this area earlier in the year. You brutes should go back to mindlessly swinging the sword, at least that way something productive is done."
Once again Ceff grit his teeth but didn't reply he simply tried to walk past but was stopped by the lead student stepping in front of his path.
"How about we see how death defying your people really are?"
At that moment however another voice chimed in. "Can you please move out of the way." The voice was expressionless and cold and all 4 of them turned to see the student who had powered through the history and seemingly also parts of the of the voices sections before making his way to the skills. The lead student turned to look at him. "I'm teaching this brute some manners, so beat it."
"The only one lacking manners here is the one blocking the path." The kid coolly responded without missing a beat causing the leader to fully turn around.
"Last warning punk, scram or you're going down with him." Ceff quickly responded and tried to gestured to the kid that he was fine and not to get dragged down with him. However as he looked into the students piercing blue eyes, he saw a seriousness the made it evident that they had no intention of backing down.
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Why's that kid waving his arms at me like that? The boy I had inadvertently helped was gesturing wildly with one of his hands, seemed like the other was hurt. The kid was somewhat hard not to notice though, his hair was bright red and his face basically screamed "I'm a protagonist!" The leader was looking at me expectantly for me to leave. I once again curse my lack of social awareness. I had just been trying to get though to look at the sword skills would look like and my attempts at pointing out that they were in the way seem to have failed. While I had hoped to solve this peacefully, some firsthand knowledge of fighting wasn't too bad of an idea. Granted I had no intention of getting hit. I grabbed the pen I was holding in my pocket and made an attempt at enchanting. Immediately the menu popped up in front of me. Trying to buy myself some time I questioned the leader of the weird cliché bully gang. "What exactly did he even do to cause this?" The leader then proceeded to go on some tangent about the "sins of his people" but I tuned him out. I looked at the interface that had shown up.
Pen: [tool made for writing]
[Enchant? Y/N]
I focused on the Y and what came up next surprised me, though my face didn't show it. It was block code. Basically a simple style of code where little blocks which could be attached to one another worked as code instead of typed words. I quickly moved a few pieces, which I could do mentality like all the other functions of the system, to do what I wanted to achieve and selected [done] The next option was another yes/no box.
[Are you sure you want to enchant? Will cost 5 mana. Y/N]
I was once again surprised by how cheap it was, I suppose I hadn't changed much of the pen, just gave it a new function. I chose Y.
The leader seemed to wrap up his impromptu lecture and looked back down on me, he was only a few inches taller but seemed to tower over me. "So now that you know why, beat it!" I looked up at him a calmly pointed my pen at his face. He scoffed at me and was about to mock me when I activated the enchantment and all the remaining Ink sprayed directly into his face, eyes and mouth especially. I felt impressed at my own good aim.
The kid flinched back in surprise mixed with pain and the two lackeys' quickly started to try and help him only leading to some bumbling as the two made things slightly worse rubbing the already stained ink further into the leaders uniform. The leader shouted out at them trying to wipe the ink away "Just get that bastard!" And when the two lackeys' looked back to do so they only saw air. They turned back to where Ceff was and also only saw air. They got tricked.
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Ceff looked at the small boy who helped him, the two of them already outside the library as he had been dragged out by the smaller kid.
"You really shouldn't have done that. They aren't going to leave you alone now!"
"Probably. That's fine by me, I would've been inconvenienced by them regardless. At least now I can strike back in good faith."
"But, you shouldn't have stepped in for me, I can handle myself. Plus, you did actually listen when he told you why right? I'm from the Undying empire."
The kid looked at him indifferent face calm as ever. "Did you actually do anything to them?"
"No but-" He was cut off there
"Then I don't care." He was caught off guard by the boys brashness. Then after an awkward pause as if the conversation ended the smaller boy simply walked away. Ceff stood there shocked for a moment as the boy simply left. And in a few seconds he was gone.
"What a weird guy."
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Luckily I had managed to escape the conversation. This was why I didn't like people. 3 people bullying someone for no reason and the bullied person taking it for a ridiculous reason. You'd never catch a computer bullying another computer.
Complaints against humanity aside I looked down at the now dry pen in my hands and felt a bit of discomfort at the ink that hit my hands. Despite the loss in terms of a new enemy and ink stains I learned a lot from the short encounter. For one these people weren't absurdly powerful. Given his status as lackey leader the kid was either strong or rich, either way he would be strong. And yet all it took was the element of surprise and a fancy enchantment to take him down. If his pen had shot something equivalent to a bullet of my past life he would be dead. Another thing I gained was info about the enchanter class. For one it worked like code which worked out great for me and it seemed like the obvious was true, the more powerful the enchant the more mana it cost. A bit of fiddling with the settings to confirm my theory was all it took to cement this idea. One of the settings I could effect was the pressure of the spray, turning it up and down effected the end mana cost. While I wasn't sure what encoder did in this regard I assumed the cost was a lot lower then it should've been. I left it at that. And headed back to my dorm, I learned a lot today. Now just to see If I could figure out my classes.