...but not unwelcome.

Biology was an underwhelming class. The textbooks they'd purchased were on back-order, so the teacher put on an instructional video instead. It gave John plenty of free time to toy around with his interface and explore several new pages, made easier as he discovered it didn't actually require physical interaction. Like the achievement popups, he could open or close windows simply by willing them so, but that felt odd to John. As he browsed, he traced the gestures he'd normally make on his desk, tapping it or swiping the surface. They were easy to disguise as aimless boredom.

The Inventory's features were mostly what he'd discovered in the morning, but he found a way to switch his equipment to a secondary set. He almost swapped to it, until an error message popped up that doing so would remove all his clothing. It was a bit comforting that the Developer had written in some cautionary measures, though he wouldn't have minded a tutorial. Regardless, the second page would be useful for storing armor, and it seemed he could swap between the pages' weapons without changing armor. Once he had a second armament, it would effectively be a free quickdraw effect, and he was already considering what he could do with that potential.

In addition to June, his Relationship Page had two other entries: Moira Brighton and Erica Carpenter. The only data present were their relationship scores and John wondered why they were even on it with such low regard for him. His only theory was that it had selected individuals that 'stood out' from the crowd, people that might be companion characters in a game. A part of John flinched at the comparison; the last thing he needed right now was an existential crisis about his existence. To take his mind off it, he went back to scouring his sheets. Neither his Skill List nor Spell List had any new information, and he'd already tried the Progress Screen earlier. That only left him the Quest Log and anything that he'd missed. Aside from this morning's quest, there was nothing notable on the Quest Log and he dismissed it.

What he'd mostly wanted to find was an options menu, but it either eluded his search or didn't exist. A popup confirmed the latter.

Achievement Unlocked! - "Inquisitorial"
Fully explore the basic Character Sheet.
+1 Intelligence

It was a nice little bonus for his trouble, though it could have been more substantial.

With nothing more to be found for the moment, John spent the rest of class using Observe on his classmates and occasionally toggling Astral Observe out of boredom. There weren't any higher-level students in the class, but a singular leyline crossed through the center and up over the board at the front of the room. Watching it was infinitely more interesting than what his teacher had to say, but he was sensibly conservative with his mana. By the time the class was over, he'd barely spent 22mp which was neatly offset by his regeneration.

Leaving the biology classroom, it dawned on John what his next and penultimate class of the day was. P.E. The teacher for it was a man named Conroy Hanfield, and John was firmly convinced he had a sadistic fetish for dodgeball. Nearly a third of their classes were dedicated to the sport, even after complaints from half the students, and it was obvious that the game was just an excuse to watch male students pummel each other with balls. The female students were always assigned outdoor jogging on dodgeball days. Today, as Frank had predicted on the bus, was one of those days.

As he always did, coach Conroy had set up the interior of the gym to resemble a Roman arena; benches and stands were pulled closer to form a tight oval around the half-court line drawn across the middle. The whole setup was uncomfortably reminiscent of the morning's events in the barrier, and John shivered slightly as he walked under a precariously balanced bench and into the arena. The rest of his classmates had already arrived or were pouring in and had begun to cluster into small groups. John tried to take a place near the corner of the arena, where he might not be noticed but before he could sit down he was called out.

"Yo, nerd! You ready for me to bust those balls?" Frank, of course, loved dodgeball days as they gave him a sanctioned opportunity to inflict as much harm as possible on the weaker students. He cracked his knuckles loudly, audible over the quieting conversations. "I bet you get off on that sort of thing!"

John ground his teeth together, replying wouldn't help. Frank had too much sway here, and unless he could back up his words with actual performance in the upcoming match it would be worse than saying nothing. Fortunately, the bully seemed satisfied by his initial taunts and turned back to his friends. The chatter resumed back to its earlier levels until the coach walked into the arena and clapped loudly.

"Alright kids, I want a nice and clean match. No aiming for the head, or I'll have to disqualify you. Let's get started..."

As was typical, Frank was granted the position of red team captain and gathered up his cronies from the football team. John ended up on the blue team, one of the last picked by its fatalistic captain. As they lined up on either side of the center and the coach explained the rules they all knew, John contemplated the teams. The distribution of athletic students was laughably unbalanced. Excepting two people from the badminton team, every athlete in his class was on Frank's side of the court.

The coach carried a bag full of semi-hard balls up into the stands, where he stood with a grin. "Let the games begin!" He dropped the bag and kicked it, the balls inside spilling out and down the stands into the arena. Most landed on Frank's side, and his team quickly gathered them up and started throwing. All in all, it took roughly fifteen seconds for the gym to transform into a battlefield with colored balls flying in every direction. John did his best to avoid them, Evasion kicking in and twisting him out of the way of several aimed at his crotch.

Coach Conroy laughed heartily and took a seat in the stands, clapping and cheering as John's team was steadily whittled down, but it was background noise. John's focus had narrowed to one thing, Frank. The taller and burlier boy was growing more and more frustrated with his dodging skills and continued to hurl ball after ball in his direction. It was all John could do to stay in the game, there was no break to throw back, and the pressure was mounting. Things seemed to blur together.

Something whipped past his face, and, in a blink, John was back in the barrier. The poltergeist, jaws making horrible noises as its glass teeth rubbed together in a facsimile of laughter, sent another of the hated chairs hurling through the air at him, and John whipped out a hand to cast a spell. The word half left his lips when reality came crashing back. He clenched his fist to cancel the spell, and the ball impacted with enough **** to break his nose.

-6 hp.

"What, trying to cast a spell or something?" Frank picked up the ball as it bounced back towards him and smiled an ugly grin. "How about this one? Fireball!"

-3 hp.

The ball hit John dead in the chest and, despite Gamer's Body, knocked the wind out of him. He collapsed to the sound of the coach's whistle. The first round was over, and they were now being given a five-minute break before the next one to get water. As most of John's team limped out of the arena to recover, he looked at his fingers with a bit of horror. He'd been about to cast Rend at Frank.

John had no idea what the spell would have done, or what it might have looked like to the rest of the students, but none of that mattered. He almost attacked someone because of a stupid game of dodgeball. Enough was enough. Living the rest of his life reacting to furniture or sports like a war veteran wasn't an option; he needed to get himself under control before he tried murdering a chair, or worse, someone sitting in one. John took a deep breath.