If the world could be quantified into those who “have” and the “have-nots” then Ethan Louie Greene was one of the few who could confidently say that he understood what it felt like to be on both sides of the equation.

When he was young, his family wasn’t particularly well off. They were not exactly poor people, no, as they had the fortune of having inherited a house from Ethan’s grandfather on his father’s side, but they were not particularly wealthy either, often being forced to find creative ways to make ends meet every month because they were not earning enough for the whole family to subsist on.

His mother ran a small catering business from their home, while his father, like his grandfather before him, was a blacksmith. From the stories his parents told him, Ethan’s Grandfather used to have his works highly prized as he often made replicas of medieval armor and weapons to be used for filming, back in the 1950s to 1960s.

Sadly, the drop of demand for such items – with modern movies often preferring to use replicas made out of plastic painted to look like metal, or just straight up CGIing such things – also meant a decline in the business his father had trained to do since his youth. He still managed to earn some money making custom-made knives and the likes for enthusiasts, but it was far from enough to support the family of three, then later four, by himself.

Ethan himself did not have the most pleasant experience once he started his schooling. He was scrawny and thin, rather small for his age, and his being a stereotypical nerdy bookworm had not helped things. Needless to say, some of the bigger boys in his class saw him as an easy bullying target, while he himself was rather powerless to do anything about it.

Fortunately, he went to the same school and was in the same class as his childhood friend and neighbor Alissa, who despite being a girl, was quite the tomboy and had zero qualms about punching a bully right in the nose.

The two of them had been close friends since they were the same age and the O’Connors lived next door to his family, and Ethan often thought that his early school life would have been quite a lot more unpleasant if she had not been around to help him out back then. It was a situation that persisted until the two of them entered middle school.

That was when things started turning around for the better for Ethan and his family.

His father had by accident – he was complaining to random people while drinking at a bar one night to vent his frustrations, unknowing that some of the people present happened to be enthusiasts of historical swordfighting – gained himself some interested and wealthy customers, who after they saw the quality of his works, ordered quite a few more pieces at good prices.

Overnight, the smithy that only barely made money for the past decade turned into a source of wealth as Ethan’s father enthusiastically went to work, pleasing his new customers and the other customers they introduced to him, all the same sort of people, and earning himself and the family so much money they actually managed to pay off their debts and start saving up for the first time in decades.

As for Ethan himself, it was in middle school when his own growth spurt suddenly struck with a vengeance. The thin, gangly boy who looked positively harmless grew into a hefty, broad-shouldered man of over six feet tall. Before long the school’s football team poached him to play for them, and by the start of the final year of middle school, the boy often mocked as a bookworm was the school’s star quarterback.

Even then, Ethan was still the same boy inside, and he remembered the harder years where he watched his parents at times skip meals so he and his little sister Eve could have their three meals a day. Although his family’s situation had drastically improved since then, he still decided to help alleviate some of their burden, in his own way.

He went to a public high school when the time came, although his family could afford a private one by then, picking the high school in question partly because it was somewhat known for their sports team. His goal was to attempt to get noticed and if possible, fight for a sports scholarship so his parents wouldn’t have to spend their savings to get him through college later on.

Alissa happened to join that same school, partly out of camaraderie, and partly for similar reasons. Her family had been better off than Ethan’s prior to their change of fortune, but now it was the other way around. Like him, she too wished to help her parents out a bit, which her family needed even more as Alissa had three younger siblings who were growing up themselves.

They excelled in both their sports – both of them being fast-tracked to full scholarships by their final year already – and their studies, and things had gone well, at least until the incident happened, and they were whisked away to another world before they knew what happened.

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It was a jarring experience, to say the least.

At first, Ethan found himself ecstatic over the development. When he was younger and smaller, books had always been his escape, and he was particularly fond of reading stories where the protagonists got whisked away to another world, where they had the chance to fulfill all of their wishes and make their dreams come true.

Now that he was placed in the exact same situation, he was overjoyed… at first.

After a few days and the reality of the situation settled in more, however, he realized that he had no business being as ecstatic as he had been at the start. He shook his head at what he thought must have been some leftover wishful thinking from his younger days, and pondered the situation more seriously. He knew one thing for certain, however. He wanted to return to his family, and at the moment, the only option he could envision would result in that happening was to follow what the otherworldler king and priests asked them to do.

Certainly, he had also read stories where the otherwordlers later turned against the heroes of the story after they had outlived their usefulness, but given his situation, and lack of knowledge, none of them have any solution on how to return home, other than to follow the bidding and hope that the locals would keep their word.

Alissa had rightfully mentioned her doubts to him, and he approved of that line of thought. In private, the two of them slowly hashed things out together, each of them attempting to find more information through different directions. Both of them had tried asking the people they frequently come in contact with, as well as read many books in the libraries for that purpose, to no avail.

When Alissa shared with him the information she learned from the library – openly during a chat on the dinner table, rather than in one of the brief moments when they were covered by her skill during practice, as those sort of information were clearly nowhere near important enough to hide to begin with – Ethan couldn’t help but to suspect that things indeed looked a bit too… convenient in some ways.

The summoned [Heroes] and [Champions] were clearly there to be pitted against one another, with a ticket home as the prize. As for Alissa’s doubts on why none of those [Heroes] and [Champions] remained instead of going home, Ethan also had his own doubts, but on the other hand, if those chosen were in similar situations as they were, he could see they wishing to return at all costs as well.

Unlike the often good-for-nothing losers that were frequently cast as the protagonists of the wish fulfillment stories he often read in his youth, both he and Alissa – and even Joshua, for that matter – were in the prime of their lives, with a bright future ahead of them, and families they care about. They had a lot to lose by staying, so if whatever power picked the people being summoned deliberately chose such people every time, he could see a possibility why none deigned to stay.

After all, considering how their capabilities when they were summoned were at least partially based off their achievement in their previous world, people like them, those who were doing well and were the cream of the crop, were clearly better options to summon than shut-ins who failed to make anything worthwhile out of their lives, in many ways.

He had not voiced the possibility to Alissa yet, though, as he too felt that it was a worthwhile avenue for them to look into, when they have time.

As such, while Alissa tried to make friends with the Princess and the other girls in their party – something she told Ethan about the evening after the “tea party” she was invited to – he in turn tried to do the same with the boys. It was a rather easy thing to do, honestly, as he easily slipped into a mask he already often used to get along better with his teammates at the football team.

While Ethan never truly changed much from the nerdy bookworm he had been when he was younger, he knew all too well how to play the big, smiling jock athlete for others to see. It only took moments for him to slip into that persona once more and cozy his way around with the other men in their group.

Out of them, Joshua remained mostly taciturn and was rarely seen outside of the few times when they trained together, either just the three of them, or the whole party at once. The other three men in the party – though to be honest, seven to five wasn’t the worst ratio it could be, as he had definitely read stories with far worse ones – were easier to find and befriend, though.

Benedictus was rather taciturn as well, often brooding over his late brother Gregorius. He was the hardest one for Ethan to get close to, though offering some sympathy – which was genuine on his part to begin with – helped get the lay brother talking more openly. That, and some drinking sessions, where Ethan thanked his luck that the local alcoholic beverages were nothing like what was available in his previous world, so he could easily hold his own with the others.

Glenn, while a rather quiet young man at first, opened up pretty quickly. Ethan had almost immediately pegged the young man – he was probably only a year or two older than them, at most – as the sort of honest bloke who doesn’t keep secrets to anyone. He recalled that Alissa said that Glenn was likely the First Prince’s man, but if so, that loyalty was more of one out of gratitude for the aid said prince had rendered to Glenn’s home village.

That said, if the First Prince had wanted to know anything about their party from Glenn, all he needed to do, most likely, was simply to ask, and Glenn would have spilled everything he knew right away, so Ethan made a mental note not to speak of anything he and Alissa considered best kept between themselves in Glenn’s earshot.

As for Osmond, Ethan quickly learned to dislike the nobleman.

While outwardly Osmond de Jardine was the picture of poise and noblesse oblige, it had not taken Ethan long to recognize that the man was little different to those that had bullied him when he was young, personality-wise. As such, while he took his time to talk with the man when they ran into each other and tried to fish out some information from him, he only did it because he felt that someone like Osmond might well let slip of some important information out of a vain desire to impress others or out of simple negligence.

He might not like it, but he would do it nonetheless. Anything if it meant getting to return home to his family once more.