By humiliating Frank, of course!

Now, there were a lot of things John could do, a lot of them would put Frank into his place properly, but would also make him a giant target for the bully, so he had to do it in a sneaky way that would not mark him as the perp. Looking at his skills, he had a plan on what he could do, and looking back on the last day, it might also get him a skill that he could use in the future!

So John cast Move on Frank's shoelaces, untied them, and slowly tied them together. That would ensure that Frank got his humiliation and that he wouldn't be quick enough the follow John should he need to escape. The next step required some preparation, so John left Astrid at the edge of the crowd, telling her what he wanted to do, and went to a nearby trash can to find something throwable while also checking that no one was paying attention to him.

Thankfully everyone was too engrossed in the spectacle (and John once again wondered why the teachers didn't do anything), and he found an empty soda can that would do the job properly. He then put some distance between him and the bully, made sure that he had a relatively easy direction to throw the can, and then threw it in Frank's direction. Thanks to his pretty high Agility and his Strength, the can soared over the heads of the students and hit Frank in the back of his head while John used his own speed to once again join the crowd and make it look as if he didn't throw the can.

The can had the desired effect that Frank unpleasantly put down James and shouted with a red head "Who the fuck threw that?!? You're dead, bitch!" and started to run into the direction the can flew from thanks to the surrounding people pointing in the direction the can came from. Well, he at least tried to run into that direction, because he immediately got tangled in his own shoelaces and faceplanted on the floor. The crowd started to laugh loudly at his expense and John readily joined in with them. While Frank got up, he untangled his shoelaces, and this time he actually ran into the direction of the flying can, not even noticing John in the crowd he roughly pushed aside. Now that there was no bullying happening here anymore, most of the crowd quickly dispersed and made their way to the next period, including Vanessa who took off after her boyfriend. That left James sunken against the locker wall that he was pushed against moments before. John took the time to get to him and help him up to his feet.

"You okay?" he asked while helping the poor boy to stand again.

"I think... Is it always like this?" James asked while adjusting his uniform.

"Different victims, but yeah, he always finds someone weak to go after for one contrived reason or another." John purposefully left out that he was among the more frequent targets, "You get used to it sadly... but hey, someone seemingly took offense to it now. Wonder who threw that?" John asked while looking thoughtfully into the direction Frank ran. "Oh, I'm John by the way, nice to meet you," he said while extending a hand to James.

"I'm James, nice to meet you as well, and thanks for the help. Well, this is great... First day and I already have to go to the nurse's office. Could you give me the directions so I don't get lost?" John could indeed, he also gave him directions that wouldn't send him in the direction Frank just went in but a slight detour.

After saying goodbye to James, John took Astrid with him and ran towards the chemistry lab. While they had time during the run, he took a look at the pop-ups that appeared in front of him after throwing the can:

Achievement unlocked: Silent Hero
Help someone in need without ever revealing that you were the one that helped them.
Get used to this feeling of underappreciation, that's how most heroes live.

+50$
+100 XP (Reduction applied)

New Skill: Stealth Lv.1, Passive
You gain a bonus for hiding when using shadows, disguises, or camouflage. High levels of Agility can improve this skill.

New Skill: Throwing Weapon Lv.1, Passive
Improves your abilities with throwing weapons, like throwing knives, javelins, and grenades.
Maximum throwing distance equals [Strength].
Hit chance and Accuracy are equal to 2 x [Agility] minus Agility of the target and other boni/mali.

So would that Throwing Weapon skill apply to his spear if he were to throw it? That would be cool! And Stealth was always useful; given how the fight with the spiders went, he would assume that he would get a nice multiplier on his hit if he hit an enemy from concealment.

Mr. Burmick usually was late as well, but John did not want to rely on that. Just as the two of them entered the lab, did Mr. Burmick also enter. They both took seats on the opposing sides of the room (the only two seats left) while the teacher started to hand out some new books, talking about how those were new versions with better descriptions... this seemed awfully familiar. And, just like last time, he did get a pop-up, however, something was different:

If you read this, that means you survived your first day.
Well, look at you adjusting to your new life. It's only going to be stranger from now on.
Bit of a warning: There are many parties in this town and in this school that have gained an interest in you.
You better keep on your toes if you want to see the end of the week.

Stay alive, you might get useful someday, and remember this moment,
V.

John almost flew over that message, thinking it was another message from Gaia until he saw the initial at the end of the note. What? There was another being or person setting their sights on him? And this one seemingly wanted something in return for what they were about to do here.

Should he really accept this?

That question became a lot harder when he got the next pop-up, detailing what he would gain if he were to accept:

Learn Essential Alchemy?
(Y/N)

Essential Alchemy, what was that? Did that differ from normal alchemy, did that mean that it would be basic alchemy? This was getting him more and more interested because he didn't know. But there was one thing he knew though: He would have big plans for alchemy in any way, because he had a lot of ideas for different consumable and usable items, starting from basic things like health and mana potions, smoke and flash bombs, potions that would raise his stats temporarily maybe even permanently, more powerful materials for crafting and for barriers (if the power even had anything to do with that). There were a lot of ways he could use that skill.

So against any better judgment, he picked yes and seemingly indebted himself to some unknown figure...

New Skill: Essential Alchemy, Lv.1, 25 MP
Create magic object through the combination of Essences. Every object contains certain Essences that make up its core. Essences can come in usual stages of rarity. Essences are bound to the being extracting them from an object. making them unsellable and untradeable. Combine at least 2 Essences to create a new object. Quality depends on the quality and quantity of Essences and the skill level of Essential Alchemy. Higher levels of Essential Alchemy unlock new recipes, however, these recipes can also be found by experimenting. Each successful creation of an object unlocks the most efficient level of recipe relative to the current skill level. All found and unlocked recipes can be found in the Alchemy interface on your character sheet. Critical successes are handled like Craft critical successes. In one use of Essential Alchemy, you can repeat the first process as often as you have Essences, yielding another instance of the object created.

New Skill: Extract Essence, Lv.1, 25 MP
Extract a single random Essence from an object. The object is destroyed in the process. Higher levels will have a higher chance of yielding better results. Critical successes will yield two Essences. If more than one instance of an object is in possession, the skill can be repeated for free on other objects of this instance, possibly yielding different results.

New Skill: Extract Material, Lv.1, 5 MP
Extract materials from an object. The higher the level, the bigger the material gain. The object is destroyed in the process. This skill cannot have critical successes

So, those skills had nothing to do with chemistry, so whoever planted this book here had to know the extent of his abilities and that he would be in this chemistry class, because unlike the last time he didn't even get the basic information out of the book and the book wasn't empty... This made it pretty certain to John that this book was also planted for him, for one reason or another.

But the skills still sounded highly useful, if not a bit expensive if used inefficiently... Maybe there also was a way to get Essences in a different way? No way to tell that but to try farming them later...

Should he try it right now?