The Final War. A popular RPG game on Earth. It boasted incredibly well designed characters, along with a rich story that offered an abundant ways to play the game and reach any number of different endings.

However after it was finally beaten, people began to optimize the strategies to beat it to try and get the 'perfect' ending.

However, just like how there were those perfectionists there was also the existence of the players who simply wanted to have fun.

That is how Sylas ended up standing in a large arena with thousands of onlookers. He was in a colosseum standing across from a familiar girl. 

The girl was someone Sylas was familiar with.

Emily Brandt. A genius who was incredibly gifted at using Fire magic. She was also a character from The Final War.

As Sylas was standing there with a dumb look on his face, he finally received a few answers through a holographic screen that appeared before him

[Welcome to the world of The Final War!]

[I have brought you here to see the true ending of my world.]

[As a privilege, I will allow you to create your ideal character and Gift.]

[Character Creation]

I saw a familiar screen from the game. It was a typical character screen where you increased stats or decreased them to find your ideal starting point.

There were the basic stats that were prevalent in every game. Strength, Stamina, Agility, Dexterity, Intellect, Magic and finally Charm.

The first five were pretty self explanatory, while the last two were a little more obscure.

Magic improved someone's control over mana, and the potency of their spells. The way to improve your magic stat was not as straightforward as the others. You couldn't simply train harder and longer to increase it. You instead had to make breakthroughs in your magic, and achieve different enlightenments.

Charm was as it sounded, it was related to the physical appearance of someone along with the potency of their mental magic. Increased Charm also improved your resistance towards mental magic.

Then there was something called Unique Stats. You had the choice of different ones. There were stats like Dominance, Control, Spirit and etc.

However Sylas had no interest in those. Mind control or summoning characters were boring to him. Instead he chose the most unique stat.

Luck.

What did it mean to be lucky? With F-Rank Luck you were unlucky. Your life was filled with misfortune.

D-Rank Luck meant that things didn't go your way, but you were simply deemed as unlucky.

C-Rank meant you were neither lucky nor unlucky. Just average. B-Rank was where things got interesting. You were considered lucky. Things went your way, most of the time. A-Rank was where your life was filled with lucky encounters.

S-Rank was where you went past what humans should be capable of. Good fortune found you. SS-Rank brought you great fortune.

Then there was SSS-Rank Luck.

A well rounded build would allow you to reach D-Rank in all three stats of their choice, but instead I decided to use those three stat improvements to improve my Luck to B-Rank.

Everything else might be at F-Rank but I could improve them with time. Also there were hundreds of hidden relics that I could collect with my extensive game knowledge.

I might have played for fun, but that didn't mean I wasn't diligent. I knew a lot of the game, and I knew exactly what I needed to make my play style work. Once I finished with my stat selection, I was prompted to make a Gift.

A Gift was something everyone had. It was a defining characteristic for someone. The most popular ones were Sword Saint and Archmage. These were picked because they gave you a tremendous boost in Sword skill growth, or Magic skill growth. They also had little, or no, downsides so they were the best that you could pick.

Sylas didn't want to take that route however, instead he wanted to create a new one, since this was a new world he could experience something he had never experienced before.

There were no Luck based Gifts in the game, so if you went the Lucky route you had to truly get lucky to be able to clear the game. However it made it a lot more fun. Not knowing if you will get out of a situation or die because of it, but being saved by a random lucky encounter.

But when Sylas thought of what to pick he had a lot of trouble. The system didn't allow him to pick anything that was too egregious so he had to play around with it for a while before he finally finished fleshing out his Gift.

[Gift: I Make My Own Luck (F-Rank)]

[Description: Influence one event a day to be favorable. The scope of what you can do depends on Rank.]

[Character creation complete!]

****

Time had started again before me. The roar of the crowd entered my ears and a soft wind began to blow across my face. I didn't have time to enjoy the fresh experience. Instead I turned my attention towards Emily Brandt.

She was standing across from me with her wand at the ready. I looked down.

'I don't have any weapons... How the hell am I supposed to fight?'

A middle aged man walked towards me.

"Uh... Do you not have a weapon?"

I shook my head. I didn't have any training with traditional weapons. The man, who I realized must be the referee, soon came back with a cart full of weapons. I looked at the selection with disappointment as I feared there might not be a weapon I could even use.

As I was reaching towards the bottom of the cart, looking to grab a sword, I noticed a weapon that was perfect for me hidden beneath others.

The referee looked at me awkwardly.

"Are you sure?"

I nodded. Turning back to Emily she let out a scoff.

"A gun? Do you really think you have any chance to defeat me with that?"

"Not really... But who knows?"

I smiled as I pulled the hammer back on the revolver I now held in my hands.

"Maybe I'll get lucky."

This comment seemed to anger Emily, which made sense since almost everyone who attended the academy had worked hard to get here and now her opponent was claiming that luck might triumph over her hard work.

While she was angry, I actually had a relaxed expression because I knew the outcome of this duel wasn't really important.

This was the beginning of the story, which started in a typical academy setting and later transitioned into a war game.

We had successfully been admitted to the academy, but that didn't mean we had what it took to survive here. The backstory of the protagonist was that I was from a fallen noble family, that was once a pillar of the continent but was wiped out by demons.

The protagonist was the only living member, and they were admitted into the academy because of a favor from the headmaster.

The duel today was just to determine class rankings. I didn't care what I ranked though. I just needed to prove later on that I deserved to be there. That meant surviving until the first test, which should be a month from now, and I had plenty of ways to strengthen myself.

"If both sides are now armed, and ready, we will begin the first match of the class ranking tournament."

He pointed at Emily.

"Are you ready?"

She nodded, and he turned to me.

"Are you ready?"

I nodded lazily. The referee ignored it but it bothered Emily. With a clap the referee signaled the beginning of the duel.

Immediately Emily began casting the simple fire spell: Fireball.

However I knew that while I was surrounded by geniuses almost none of them had any real experience in combat. So I used that to my advantage.

I immediately fired a shot straight at Emily's head. The bullet flew through the air before slamming into an invisible barrier in front of her face. Startled she interrupted her own spell cast while screaming and flinching backwards.

"You psycho! How could you shoot at my face?!"

"Are you dumb? We are in the arena. All attacks are absorbed by a barrier. Once someone takes enough damage they are considered to have lost."

While I explained it to her I fired another shot at her. It hit the barrier in front of her face again but when I glanced at the large screen I saw that I didn't deal very much damage at all by the machine's standard.

'This is why guns are so bad for the academy arc. The barriers don't consider headshots as more damage, although if I were to shoot someone in the head they would die unless they had enough defense.'

While Emily was still scared from the ruthlessness of my attacks I unloading the remaining four shots before she finally started to cast her spell.

She must have calmed down and remembered I only had a certain number of bullets in my gun. I was out of bullets. I watched as she chanted her spell with a bored expression. I couldn't win at this point so I just stood there.

'Why didn't I get any extra bullets? What an oversight by the referee and also me.'

As Emily reached the completion of her spell something ridiculous happened.

A bird flying overhead suddenly felt it's stomach tighten, and gurgled loudly. Since nature had called, the bird simply did as it always did and pooped while flying.

The excrement arced through the air and fell down towards a certain girl chanting a spell.

*plop*

"AH MY EYES!"

Because Emily lost her focus at the most important part of the spell casting process and her spell backfired.

A small explosion followed by the mechanical voice announced the results.

[Sylas Fontaine is the winner.]

"..."

The crowds had a similar reaction. No one knew what the say. The famous genius from the Brandt family lost to a fallen noble who used a gun, and all this was because bird poop landed in her eye.

Medical personnel were attending to Emily's eyes, trying to flush it out and reduce the irritation. I however didn't care so I just walk off stage while laughing. People looked at me with slightly angered expressions but no one directly said anything. I soon found my way to a waiting room where all the other students in my class were waiting. When I entered the room they looked at me with varying expressions but none of them were friendly.

I made my way to the corner and tried to quietly mind my own business when I felt a large hand grab my shoulder.

From the strength of the grip I knew they at least had D-Rank Strength or higher. I turned and looked at who had stopped me.

Short brown buzz cut hair. A square jaw and a heavy brow.

'Looks kind of like a caveman but with short hair.'

I thought to myself. However on the outside I had a smile while looking him in the face.

"You're Bruce Sloan right? What did you need from me? Pointers?"

The grip on my shoulder tightened. It hurt but I kept the smile on my face nonetheless.

"You think you won today? Well you didn't. You got lucky."

I nodded.

"I did get lucky... But I also won. Didn't you hear the announcement?"

Angered he shoved me against the wall.

"You think I won't mess you up? You're not even a real noble!"

At this my expression dropped and I looked him with an annoyed expression.

"I don't think you will. I can accept bullying but if you're a man then you shouldn't make threats you don't intend to keep."

Performative behavior always annoyed me. Bruce was trying to impress the other students while later claiming to Emily that he defended her honor, but it was all BS. Bruce was a simple bully, and he should stay that way. Trying to play politics among children was stupid.

Angered Bruce looked like he was going to hit me but after gritting his teeth he roughly pushed me to the ground before walking off.

I stood up and brushed myself off. I then continued over towards an empty table and sat down. I didn't continue to antagonize Bruce because if I pushed too far he might actually hit me, and to be honest he could easily kill me as I was.

However I would get my revenge later. Also he was an important character later on so I would make it moderate.

While I rested I watched the rest of the fights with an uninterested expression. It turned out the same as in the game. The only difference was that my own rank was pretty high. I was now ranked 19th out of 25. Emily was still top 10 in the rankings but because of her loss to me she wasn't in the top 5.

It made me laugh a little that B-Rank Luck actually allowed me to win.

The rest of my fights I just instantly surrendered because I didn't think it was worth it to continue fighting. I had already showed all my tricks, and the one win was just a fluke.

In the end I was definitively in 25th place, the lowest ranking student and wildly unpopular because I was the black mark on Emily's record.

After our rankings were decided we were put through a long and boring welcoming ceremony before being sent off to our dorms.

The dorms were extremely nice and it felt like I was staying in an expensive hotel. While I was admiring the amenities I heard a chime come from the door. I opened it and saw a small drone carrying a box.

Taking the box I brought it inside, and found my uniform. It was all black except for the white vest that came with it. Black slacks, black button up shirt, and a black blazer. The white vest stood out but it was just there for a little contrast.

I took out the two sets of the uniform. One I hung on the doorknob of my room, and the other I hung in the closet. Under the uniform were two pairs of shoes, belts, a couple ties, and several pairs of black socks.

After sorting out everything I needed for the next day I turned on the TV and watched some comedy show. After staying up late I finally went to sleep around 2 AM. Already I was enjoying the lazy lifestyle of academy life.