He doesn't get a chance.

Meeting Miss Wittersham’s steely gaze, I gulped, the intensity of her stare making me more than a little nervous. As much as I wanted to sit here and admonish myself for making such a simple but foolish mistake, I could tell that the longer I took to come up with a satisfactory answer, the worse things would get.

Growing up in an environment conducive to raising decent liars, I.e., with strict parents, certainly came in handy. In mere moments I had built a story I felt was believable enough to get out of my troubles, a mostly true tale of computer whiz lover turned stalker spurned, followed by a mostly false campaign of ****.

The tale never left my lips, however, as it was at that exact moment that I felt a pulse of something I couldn’t explain pass through me. Something deep down inside me resonated with that pulse, a ripple deep inside that screamed a warning of impending doom, leaving me feeling both incredibly weak and insignificant.

I held the arms of the chair in a **** grip, my heart hammering in my chest as I fought down the wave of panic that threatened to consume me. Breathing deeply, I slipped back into the comforting serenity of meditation, taking the few moments I needed to centre myself before re-opening my eyes. Miss Wittersham was still staring at me, a measure of concern now leaking through a crack in her stern mask.

“I’m sorry,” I said, my voice a little shaky in my thoroughly rattled state, “please give me a moment.”

Not waiting for her response, I instead focused on opening my notifications, which had been blinking at me with a hitherto unseen urgency.

My face set in a firm mask as I read through the options, a spark of stubborn outrage forming deep inside.

‘Save myself?! And leave an entire world of people to die? Not. Fucking. Likely.’

The spark caught, turning my outrage into a smouldering flame of resolve. Decision made, I closed the notification, blinking as I found myself mere inches away from the face of an intensely curious Cameron. My eyes met hers, her face pinking slightly as she slowly pulled back, studying me intensely.

“What was that, just then? Your eyes were flitting from side to side like you were reading, but I can’t see any contacts? What was that? What is going on? You either have the world’s best poker face, or something was definitely blocking your vision. I checked…” She said, breaking eye contact.

“Well, Miss Cameron,” I replied, noting how her eyes snapped right back to mine when I revealed I knew her name, “the short answer is interdimensional silly buggers.”

Grinning as she gave me a slightly affronted look, I reached forward and began tugging cables out of the back of her monitor, ignoring her spluttered protest as I explained further.

“You’ve seen my calendar, right? So you should have seen that it only goes so far, ending with an entry simply labelled ‘Truck-Kun, round 2’? That was the date I got to last time before getting hit by a truck. Shortly after, I woke up in this world, several months in the past with shiny new powers and all.”

Grinning cheekily at Cameron’s rapidly growing expression of consternation, I tugged the final wire out of her monitor. She shot to her feet with hands balled into fists, glaring at me in outrage as she breathed in sharply, presumably about to tear me a new asshole. It was in that exact moment, with tension at its highest, that I tapped the top of her monitor, and the device simply vanished.

“You see,” I said, a small part of me treasuring her look of utter shock, “I’ve been given something akin to video game powers. Something that includes an inventory system.” With a flash, the monitor was back, along with the four textbooks that I’d purchased.

Cameron slowly sat back down in her chair, watching me with a guarded expression as I explained why I was rushing things and generally being an ass, the impending disaster forcing me to summarise my experiences from this morning quicker than I would have liked. Still, she humoured me, not interrupting until my explanation had caught up to current events.

“Ok.” Cameron said, looking deep into my eyes as she studied me. “This is obviously a lot to take in. You’ve done something I can’t explain with the help of this so called ‘inventory’, so I’m not going to dismiss what you say out of hand.”

But!” she added, raising a finger to cut off what I’d been about to say, “I have some questions that need answering.”

I nodded, waving for her to ask away.

“Ok, first. These video game ‘notifications’ of yours, are you able to share them? Let other people see them? That would be the fastest way to verify all of this.”

I blinked, not having thought about it before. Internally shrugging, I spent the single mana I needed for analyse, then, happily noting that her relationship score had increased all the way back to 2 and had even increased slightly beyond that point to 6, tried to mentally ‘push’ the subsequent notification towards her.

Sadly, it didn’t work, and instead I received an error message telling me I needed to ‘initialise’ the target before I could perform such an action. Making note of that little titbit for future reference, I looked at Cameron and shook my head.

“Darn. That would’ve been too easy, I guess.” She said, pouting prettily. “Anyway, next question. You said that something bad is coming? Something that will endanger the students and faculty?”

“I do,” I nodded, “but I am not sure what. The quest implies that getting stronger will help me face whatever it is, so I’m leaning more towards monsters popping out of the woodwork rather than a potential natural or magical disaster.”

She regarded me, then nodded. “Ok. So, if I’m working on the belief that what I saw you do with my monitor wasn’t some kind of collective delusion, then not believing in this threat would be foolish. As I see it, there is no upside for you if that part of this is all a lie.” She rubbed her temples, getting her thoughts in order before she continued to speak.

“Right. If I understood you correctly, you are currently not equipped to deal with anything that crops up before you do whatever it is you’re supposed to do to empower yourself? Is that correct?”

I gave her a sheepish look. “I, um, have a knife?”

“A knife?” She asked flatly, giving me a level look before letting out a sigh. “I really should chew you out for that, but the fact you’re even willing to admit to it says a lot.” She shook her head, covering her face with a hand, before asking in a voice full of weariness, “I can’t believe I’m asking you this, but do you even know how to use a knife?”

“…No?”

She sighed explosively, rubbing her eyes. “Alright. If something's about to happen, and you do have the powers you claim, then it falls to you to defend yourself or any other students or faculty who wind up in danger until the police or army can get here. Is that going to be a problem?” She looked at me sternly, her expression softening as I shook my head, a determined look on my face.

Looking down at her desk, she tapped the textbooks I’d left there. “You said these were skillbooks? Then I need you to use one now.” She could tell I really wanted to protest, as she softly added, “There’s no point saving them until a better moment if you get your ass kicked because you can barely defend yourself, is there?”

Sighing, I shook my head. “Alright, fine. It makes sense. It just feels like throwing future potential down the drain.” I continued to grumble to myself as looked at each book in turn, stowing everything but the chemistry book back in my inventory.

It was time to learn some magic.

…Hopefully.