A Totally Normal School Day

As John entered the bus, he walked down the aisle to get to his seat but was interrupted by Frank tripping him by sticking his foot in front of John’s foot when he walked next to him. John then fell quite hard on the hard floor of the bus, losing a few points of health as he did so.

“Have a nice trip, Noobman!” said Frank, spitting a bit

As Frank’s buddies erupted into laughter in response, John quietly sighed. As he started to get on his feet, he glanced up only to see an outstretched hand in front of him, followed by a “You need some help there?” from a feminine voice.

Looking up, John spotted a girl that he hadn’t encountered before. She had a soft, rounded face with full lips, icy blue eyes, and purple hair and was smirking slightly in what seemed to be a mix of amusement and a bit of genuine concern.

“Uh, yeah, thanks,” John responded, taking the hand. “You’ll have to sit with me; all of the other seats are full” said the girl. John responded by glancing further upward to see her stats.

Faith Elemine
Level 10 Gravity Specialist

Hiding his shock as best as he could, he thought, I wonder how many other people have magic in the school, or, hell, Springfield as a whole. Then he followed her back to where she was sitting and sat down next to her.

The bus started off to its next stop with a heaving lurch, and a few minutes passed. John, who was immensely uncomfortable in the silence, asked the girl, “What’s your name? I’m John. It’s nice to meet you”.

The girl responded by saying, “The name’s Faith, nice to meet you as well”

“That’s a nice name. Are you new here or something? I can’t remember seeing you around before now”

“You could say that, I’ve been homeschooled up until now, so this whole school thing is kinda new to me,” she said, glancing in his direction.

While she was saying that, John discreetly cast Observe on her.

Discretely glancing at the pane that appeared, John took note of the information the skill had gathered on her.

They chatted a bit as the bus ride continued, not learning much about each other, mostly just pleasantries and stopping each other from getting bored.

John **** himself to not glance at her breasts, It's so tempting, but she could snap me like a twig. There unfortunately just isn't a need for making enemies today

After the bus came to a lurching halt, John stood up and slowly walked out of the bus, mentally preparing himself for a very exhausting day.

John’s first class today was programming with Mr. Cloud, an ironic name, if you think about it for longer than five minutes.

He had taken the class at the insistence of his parents, since they reckoned that he should be able to make something with what he had. It was either this or shop class, and he definitely didn’t like the idea of taking the alternative.

Mr. Cloud was a truly professional man, wearing a pinstripe suit, complete with a tie, each and every single day, with little variation other than the daily color of the tie.

Cloud was a good teacher, passionate about what he did, always made sure you really did learn what he was explaining to you, and insisted on breaking down the problems the students were having, as many often did, giving just enough information to help them understand it better and to call each student by their last name, for what reason, John couldn’t guess.

Today’s lesson was on how to retrieve data from the internet and to store it in a way that made it easily accessible and retrievable.

Usually, John had just breezed through this class, never truly trying anything exceptionally experimental on the admittedly decent computers they had at the academy.

But today was certainly different from the last time he had been in this class: he wanted to truly push the limits of his intelligence today, starting with this.

About an hour later, John had established a good baseline for the project, managing to compile data correctly, but was still ironing out the few bugs that existed at this point.

Suddenly, John knew what he had done wrong and quickly wrote the bugs out, as well as the bugs that resulted from that. He looked up to see the reason why, once he was done half an hour later, and was met with a popup.

Skill Unlocked: Programming, Neerrd!

Ignoring Gaia’s comment, John instead balked at the hacking cost of the thing.

Wow, my chances of hacking literally anything but a toaster, and even then only a really bad toaster, are really bad. I guess my low level does explain that though, so hopefully it’ll improve.

Now that his mana pool had finally fully regenerated, he decided to cast Observe on a classmate under the pretense of having a few final looks over his script, to help level it up and to get the final last bits of experience he needed to level up Mana Capacitance and Mana Conductance.

Mana Capacitance is now Level 2
Mana Conductance is now Level 2
Observe is now Level 4

The sheet was nothing particularly interesting. Just another level 3 person with average stats. Suddenly remembering something, John checked the status of his mana batteries and was pleased to see that they were all fully charged.

John then submitted his classwork, much earlier than he normally did online, and idly sat about, mildly invested in coding something to aid his own devices, for now and in the future. But first, I’ve got to decide what kind of build I’m going to go with. Maybe a mix of Intelligence and Wisdom, that might be good, but being too split around might be the deciding factor in a fight one day.

Deciding to weigh his options, John started to assign priorities in order of most important to least to each of his stats on a scrap piece of notebook paper he got out of his bag

Wisdom I want to make sure my mana regen is nice and high.

Endurance Mostly because I don’t exactly welcome ****, and a higher channeling rate is always welcome.

Intelligence While it is my current highest stat, having a large mana pool doesn’t matter as much when you can have things that can store that mana for you.

Agility Dodging things might be important at some point, plus, if I ever decide to use guns, or any weapon involving finesse, it might help

Charisma Talking your way out of a fight might be possible, but fuck that, I want experience, both mechanic wise and literally. Although negotiating might be important at some point.

Strength For all I care, it’s a dump stat, might be important though in the future, if close quarters combat happens.

Libido I have a high enough sex drive as it is, I don’t need to add more onto that.

John sat back in his seat, finally satisfied with the priorities and reasons he had assigned each of his stats after half a dozen revisions.

Suddenly aware that the bell was about to ring. John packed up his stuff into his bag, making sure he didn’t forget anything as he did so.

After heading to his next class, chemistry, which was upstairs, John sat down in his usual spot, in the back of the class, and got out the stuff he needed for class.

Chemistry was taught by Mrs. Winters, an old, ragged woman, almost a complete contrast to Ms. Summers, his art teacher, but regardless, she was good at her job and made sure you weren’t afraid to ask questions if you weren’t sure.

The class proceeded as usual, but John made sure to pay extra attention to what they were going over and to do at least some of his homework during the time he was there. He also noted that when he cast Observe on the textbook, nothing special happened. In reaction, John thought, Huh, guess I’m almost out of freebies from Gaia at this point.

As class winded down in preparation for the bell, John once again gathered up his things and wondered what he would do with his free period today. Maybe some games on my phone? Nah, I’ve got a better idea, grinding out some skills and possibly a level in a barrier, which sounds like a much better course of action.

Stepping out of the classroom a few minutes later with his bag, John felt the world shift around him in a way that it had only done once before and looked at a popup that had just appeared.

Putting his backpack into his inventory, John heard in the distance what seemed to be an argument? Slowly creeping closer to the source of the noise, it gradually got louder and louder, leading him to the main courtyard of the building.

Once he could see the courtyard from where he was, he quickly dashed to the railing and hid under it so whoever was past it couldn’t see him.

Slowly raising his head above the railing just enough to see what was going on, John saw five men, all clothed in blood red suits, one of which appeared to be holding a remote in his hand which John assumed controlled the robot that sat immobile next to him. It was black, sleek, with blades for arms, clearly designed for combat. Past them, John could see the girl he had talked with on the bus, Faith, looking really pissed off by what they were saying.

John only caught snippets of it, but what he could gather from what little he knew was: They wanted to pay her off to gain influence over her father and to set up something called a “mana farm” directly in Springfield. He didn’t know what that is, but it sure sounded bad.

The men in suits were in the middle of the courtyard and were thankfully facing away from him, while Faith was slightly further away but facing towards him. Faith’s eyes suddenly met his for a brief second, clearly seeing him.

Ducking back under the railing, John could hear one of the men say, “There’s nothing back there, why did you glance there?”

At which Faith responded, “I thought I saw something there, but there wasn’t anything.”

“...Alright, back to business, are you sure you won’t accept our services in exchange for you... helping us out with your father?”

As this was going on, John struggled to form a plan, but he suddenly remembered something.

The Mana Batteries he had in his inventory were prone to explode when broken.