...
...Liam.
...Hey.
...Liam Keene!
A voice of a man continuously reverberated through his ear.
"Hey! Liam Keene, wake up!"
"Huh? What?" Liam Keene, who made a half-hearted response, woke up from his deep slumber.
"What do you mean 'what'? The devil of a teacher is already here, idiot!" The student who woke him up went near him and spoke in a low voice yet high tone.
"Huh? What?" Hearing what his classmate said, his eyes widened along with his troubled expression.
'...Uh, I swear this already happened before. Déjà Vu?"
Ding!
Liam straightened his back in surprise when the phone inside his pocket rang. He pulled it out and tried to check what it was, but after seeing the text on the screen, he immediately frowned.
"W-Wait a minute..."
— The Heaven's App greets the user.
A female-ish voice resonated in his head at the same time a message appeared on his phone.
'This... This isn't Déjà Vu. No way. I remember now. This is that crazy app!'
"Uh, hey, Liam Keene, you should hide your phon–"
"Stand up!"
A loud, thunderous voice, almost a roar that one could hear in movies echoed throughout the whole room.
A woman with her sharp-glaring eyes and her fairly voluptuous body stood firmly behind the classroom's podium.
After hearing her exclaim, all the students, except for Liam who was surprised and accidentally dropped his phone, immediately stood up and looked straight at her without letting a second pass.
"Sit. Have you already finished the tasks I gave you?"
"Yes, miss Anna."
"Question. What did the monster analysts discover..."
The lady professor continued to speak as she turned around to write something on the board.
Liam, who was not listening ever since his phone fell, regained his composure and sat straightly on his chair.
'What in the world is happening.'
Ding!
His eyes widened as heard several rather unbelievable things.
Putting his phone back in front of him again and looked at the new message.
"No fucking way..."
Liam couldn't believe what he just read. He tried blinking his eyes multiple times, closing and opening his phone before looking at it again but it didn't disappear no matter what.
— Congratulations!
— The user was successfully transmigrated into an alternate world.
— A world different than what the user is used to.
"...Uh, Liam Keene? Were you talking to yourself?"
At that moment, the same classmate who woke him up earlier whispered while looking at him as if he was crazy.
"I mean I don't discriminate against people talking to themselves but if she hears yo–"
Tak!
"Can someone give me the names of the students talking at the back?"
The lady professor turned around from the board and let out a question, no, an order while simply glancing at the empty air in front of her.
"L-Liam Keene and Nathan Vance, professor..." The student near her answered.
"May Mr. Keene and Mr. Vance please stand up."
"Ah, Professor, good... Good afternoon. We apologize..."
Nathan Vanes, the student who was talking to Liam Keene earlier, stood up and bowed his head towards the lady teacher.
"G-Good afternoon, professor..."
Liam also followed suit.
"You two... dared to chit-chat inside my class?"
The enraged voice that she was holding back so hard that her veins started to show made her expression extra scary today.
Nathan Vance who made a helpless smile and Liam who frowned experiencing this 2 times in a row both have the same thought of seeing her like this.
'Devil...'
'Devil...'
"Both of you, get out of the classroom, stand up with your arms wide open... and prepare to call your parents in the school!"
Bang!
Liam was once more kicked out of the room and was forced to stand up in the corridor.
"What kind of fucked-up situation is this?"
He was perplexed to the point of him asking if this was just a dream or not.
"Why?"
Liam glanced at his side as he heard a voice.
"Oh, is this your first time?"
Nathan Vance, his classmate, who was also kicked out of the class together with him.
"Well, it's your fault, to begin with. Also, you were being weird earlier. I shouldn't have woken you up if I knew it'd turn out like this."
Nathan scratched his head with a slightly regretful face as he said that and Liam looked at him in contempt.
"...Weren't you the one being noisy about discrimination or something?"
"Oh? Was I?"
'Huu... I don't remember having a weird classmate like this guy. Have I really transmigrated like what the app said? Or am I still dreaming while sleeping in class?'
"Oh!"
Liam was unsure about his situation but he had an idea.
A simple yet effective idea to know whether he was dreaming or this was indeed reality.
'This weird classmate of mine seems to have no problem talking to me in this world... or dream.'
Either they were friends or his personality was just like that.
To confirm his suspicions, he looked at his classmate who was making quite an expression while stretching his body, preparing to follow the teacher's order.
"It's the latter for sure..."
'He wouldn't mind if I let him hit me, yeah?'
As he thought that, Liam smiled and spoke in a nonchalant manner.
"Uhm, hey, classmate. Hit me."
If this was just a dream, he needed to wake up as soon as possible. He didn't know what would happen to him at his school with that devil of a teacher.
"Ah, you can call me Nathan. And sorry, but what? Why would I hit you?"
Nathan responded with his tilted head.
"I would just like to confirm something."
"Oh, sure."
"Alright, you can hit me in the— Ack!"
Before he could even finish what he was saying, he suddenly received a hard blow on his stomach.
He had quickly and successfully hit Liam.
"Th-That fucking hurts... What the hell! Ugh, why would you hit me in the stomach...!?"
Liam's body curved forward while holding his agonizing abdomen with his arm.
If he knew it would land there, he would have at least prepared himself, but he couldn't even notice the fist moving towards him.
It was a shocking experience but one thing he knew for sure was that this wasn't a dream.
It was too painful to be a dream.
"O-Oh? I'm sorry, I didn't hit you that hard so I thought you could take it. Ah, if you want, I'll help you take yourself on the bench there."
...He didn't hit him that hard?
"You damned..."
A while later, they both sat on the bench on the school grounds.
It took quite a while for Liam to recover from the blow to his stomach.
'Well, I'll be damned. This isn't a dream at all. What do I do now?'
It was then that Nathan suddenly spoke...
"By the way, why are you weak?"
That sudden question was like putting salt on Liam's wounds.
I've been like this almost my whole life, what are you talking about!
Liam wanted to say that but decided against it and just shrugged his shoulders as he spoke.
"You're just absurdly strong, you bastard."
"Eh? I only used a bit of my strength though... And I think I'm just a bit above average compared to the other students, at least in Azure Class. Maybe you're just really weak. Hmm. Yeah, that must be it..."
Nathan continued to mumble as if he found Liam strange and had a face that seemed to say that his thoughts were correct.
However, the one who found this even more strange was Liam.
"Excuse me?"
He eventually let out a question as he was not quite getting it.
"What do you mean average? and Azure Class?"
"Cider, Scarlet, Amber, Azure? Those classes aren't meant to be ranks but they considered Cider to be the best class since the top sections in there have many strong powerhouses. Ah, also, Azure-10, we're in the lowest section of our class and our grade."
"..."
'Well, I guess I can say I didn't expect much since I was also at the lowest class in my world.'
"What, you don't know that? We've been here for like a month already. You really are stupid... And I guess, you're also weak."
"...I've been sleeping a lot I guess, haha. Also, about the last part, I already heard that from you so stop repeating yourself."
"Hmm... Oh, right."
Nathan's face brightened a bit as if he just thought of a good idea.
Liam noticed this and asked.
"What is it?"
"You can just tell me your stats so I can tell."
"Huh? Stats?"
Now he was really confused.
"Yeah. Your stats or at least your hunter level."
"Huh? Ah. What game are you exactly talking about?"
"Game? I meant the system. Your system."
Liam frowned. He wasn't really getting what he was saying.
"System?"
At that moment, he widened his eyes as he looked at the empty air.
"Ah, do you see it now?"
Nathan looked at the sweating Liam who looked extremely surprised.
"No way..."
A window appeared in front of him, showing his status, level, and skills.
"...This isn't true, right? Am I dreaming inside a dream? Inception?"
Liam blurted unconsciously as he looked at the window that only appeared in a game or a novel.
"What do you mean by that? The system has been with us since we were 15."
Gulp. Liam couldn't believe it.
'That app...'
He tried to shove away the things the app said to him before but it seems he could not...
— The user was successfully transmigrated into an alternate world.
— A world very different than what the user is used to.
He had an urge to check his phone at this instance.
...But Nathan cut his thoughts.
"So what's your level?"
"Ah, that..."
===
Name: Liam Keene
Age: 18
Hunter Level: 21
Mana: 96 / 96
Strength: 87.25
Agility: 86
Constitution: 91.75
Intelligence: 96.25
Wisdom: 81.5
[Skills] (Proficiency: %)
- Common
Dishwashing (P) [57.476%]
Cooking (P) [13.293%]
- Physical
Dart [43.227%]
Resist [32.081%]
Blunt Weapons Mastery (P) [68.419%]
Basic Sword Mastery (P) [39.636%]
Hard Strike [17.524%]
- Elemental
Mana Sense (P) [23.118%]
- Special
(Null)
===
"Ha, Haha... This is..."
A part of Liam was excited, but he was mostly shocked by what he was seeing.
'...He said we all have this system since we're 15, huh.'
"I guess I'm literally in an alternate world?"
Once again, what the app told him was true.
"This is crazy..."
"Hello, are you still with me?"
Liam was brought back to reality and looked at the guy who was picking his nose mindlessly.
"I asked what is your hunter level."
"Ah, that. Uh... It says here that I am Level 21. I'm guessing that's good?"
Liam turned his eyes off his stats for a moment and stared at Nathan, waiting for an answer.
"Eh? The average level of a student in our year is 27. So you really are weak."
"I... am indeed quite weak. But stop saying it so casually. Oh! At the very least, my [Dart] skill has over 40% proficiency."
Seeing his [Dart] skill being the highest leveled out of all his skills, he thought it was worth boasting about.
"...That's good, right?"
However, contrary to his thoughts, he could only see Nathan tilting his head and making a confused face once more.
"Dart is the most basic physical skill and its average level is 60% in our grade. The teachers mentioned that one can't completely outrun most low-grade E-rank monsters when their Dart skill's proficiency isn't at least higher than 50%."
"..."
"I guess you really are wea–"
"Stop saying that every time, damn it!"
Realizing that even in this world he had below-average capabilities, Liam was disappointed.
Not in himself, but in the app who was the reason he was here.
'What is this nonsense. Shouldn't the people who get isekai'd be overpowered right from the start?'
He felt dejected by the fact that he couldn't even run away from low-leveled monsters...
Monsters...?
"Wait... What monsters?"
"Hm? I don't know anymore if you're just acting stupid or you are actually stupid."
'From now on, I should refrain my questions in front of this guy.'
However, this Nathan guy was right.
It was weird for Liam to think that there would be no contradictions if people have a system and skills.
'...System and skills.'
Levels and monsters.
He couldn't name a better pair than those words when he thought about modern fantasy novels.
At that moment...
Ding!
Liam's phone vibrated. He opened the app expecting an explanation of his situation.
— The user was considered stupid by a person of the unfamiliar alternate world that the user has been transmigrated into.
Liam was speechless.
Although indirectly, even the damned app was calling him 'stupid'.
— The Heaven's App will provide aid by sharing the common sense and basic information known to the user's new world.
"Oh?"
Should I praise this damned app?