I, Happy, was an ordinary man, who studied in an ordinary school, graduated from an ordinary college, and worked an ordinary job in an ordinary company. So how did the most unordinary thing happen to me?
One night, I was heading back home, after having a few drinks with my colleagues. Suddenly, a message notification pinged my phone. It didn’t have the sender's name on it and contained just one line.
I just thought of it as spam and swiped the message away.
But it popped up again. I tried swiping it away again but this time it just stuck to the screen. In frustration I tried to click 'NO', but my drunken fingers fumbled and pressed the 'YES' button.
As soon as I pressed the button, the street lights started flickering. A sudden pain emerged from my chest. I clenched my heart and started hyperventilating. I tried to call for help but no soul passed the deserted roads. I lay down on the asphalt gasping for air as my vision started to dwindle.
*****
When I opened my eyes, I was laying down on a bed. A soft blanket covered my body. Rays of light penetrated the room.
Thankfully it looked like someone had noticed my collapsed body and called an ambulance.
I sat up and looked around. But instead of the normal hospital rooms what greeted me was a fancy bedroom. It seemed that the hospital staff had mistaken his identity and put him in one of the VIP rooms. I hurriedly got out of bed to find a nurse, but as soon as I stepped on the floor a horrible pain erupted in my head. Memories that weren’t mine started flooding into my head.
When the pain subsided, a status screen appeared in front of me.
Name: Ray Laxon
Title: The Otherworlder
Rank: C
Stats:
* Strength 3
* Stamina 3.3
* Agility 3.4
* Perception 5.6
* Magic Power 7.1
* Intelligence 8.8 →5.5
* Charm 7.7
===Memory Synchronisation: 100% ===
Abilities:
* Hand-to-Hand Combat (★★★):
Coordinates the body for easy movements and helps the user to use their body to fight more efficiently. Allows the user to easily learn basic martial art techniques.
As mastery increases, it will allow the user to subconsciously dodge dangers.
[Beginner Level]
* Brahma Sword Art (★★★★☆):
A sword art that was created to create. With each swing, the user can materialise their mana. Upon mastery, the user will be able to materialise mana into their surroundings and change the terrain temporarily.
[Beginner Level]
Skills:
* Appraisal (EX):
Allows the user to check the status of a selected target. The more mana that is used, the more details will be displayed.
Seeing the status screen in front of me and combing through my new memories, I was able to figure out that the original owner of this body was Ray Laxon, a professor at the Star Academy. But the weird thing was that the names Laxon and Star Academy were familiar to me.
I sat up on the bed and racked through all my old memories. Finally, the answer popped into my head. Star Academy was the most famous Hero Cadet Academy in one of the fantasy novels I had once read. One of my friends was a web novelist and his first novel was “The Blood-Drowned Reincarnator”. In the novel, the human world was being invaded by the Demon Lord and his troops, and the protagonist had to go through a series of trials in the Star Academy to grow stronger and defeat the Demon Lord.
I looked around and found a full-length mirror.
“Ray” seemed to be a very tall and slim man with blue eyes and messy dark blue hair, giving him a nerdy look. His looks were good enough to rival the most handsome men around the world in my previous life. It seemed weird to call it my previous life, considering it hadn’t even been an hour since I remember getting that weird message, followed by my heart attack.
“Whoever sent that message must have been the reason I got transported into this novel and woke up in this body.”
While I was contemplating my current condition, an alarm started ringing. I turned my head and saw a smartwatch ringing on the side table beside the bed. I picked it up and a hologram popped out.
“Right, I forgot. This novel was supposed to have a futuristic setting.”
According to my memories, the alarm was so that I could get up for the orientation today at the Star Academy. The professors had to meet up at the office at 7.15AM. It was currently 6AM.
Ray’s house was kind of plain. Despite its grandiose walls and ceiling, the furniture was kept to a minimum. The house consisted of a living room, a kitchen, one bedroom, an office filled with many documents, and a training facility that was equipped with its own gravity room.
Since I needed to go to the morning meeting, I decided to take a shower. After freshening up, I checked the closet. Have to say, the previous owner of this body didn’t have much of a fashion sense. The closet was filled with shirts and trousers that would probably be in the wardrobe of a 70-year old man. After much thought, I decided on a white shirt and black pants.
Ray’s figure was good enough to make me look like a professional model out for a shoot.
I got out of the house at 6.45AM. The house was located on the fourth floor of the professor’s dorm building. It had a total of 50 floors, a residency for hundreds of faculty members, and an entire floor dedicated to training. Nothing less to be expected from the Star Academy, the greatest Hero Academy. The entire institute was about 28000 acres large with student dorms and training halls. It also included a large Coliseum where duels between students, and sometimes professors, were conducted almost daily.
You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.
Following Ray’s memories, I navigated my way through the premises. On the way, I read more about Star Academy and this world on my smartwatch.
In the year 1960, about seventy years ago, the demon realm invaded the planet. Fighting the demons came various creatures such as elves, dwarves, orcs and merfolk.
At the same time, there was a major change in the Earth’s mantle causing a planet-wide tectonic shift.
The world map, as humanity knew it, was destroyed leaving behind five major continents and various islands between them.
The elves, dwarves, orcs and merfolk, who were stronger than humanity at the time, took away 4 of the newly formed continents, leaving humanity with less than a fifth of their land.
Following this catastrophe, many Dungeons, rifts in space that lead to magical locations, opened up in various places on the new Earth.
As humanity explored these Dungeons, they found flora and fauna that had never been seen before.
Magic power, or mana, was abundant in these Dungeons and they gave rise to Awakened beings among humanity.
As the Awakened were made known to their power, they entered these Dungeons and brought back treasures that advanced humanity by decades.
Finally, after seventy years, humanity had gotten back on track, and reached the level of the beings that had invaded them decades ago.
The Awakened beings were regarded as Heroes, and the best of them set up 5 major cities on their continent. Capital City was the most central and largest of them all. Following it was, Aquilo City to the North, Auster City to the South, Solanus City to the East and Aqua City to the West.
To regulate the Awakened Beings, the Heroes set up a governing organisation, The Hero League, in Capital City, which is where the majority of the story takes place.
Following the League, many large and small guilds were established, privately owned by the first of humanity’s Heroes.
But where there is light, there is darkness. Some of the Awakened Beings believed that humanity would perish at the hands of demons, and thus they joined hands with the demonic beings.
The Hero League deemed them to be the Fallen and set bounties on all of them. The Fallen struck back and rose again in the form of The Chaos Alliance.
The Star Academy was established about 20 years ago, to train new Awakened and raise them to be greater Heroes than their predecessors. Its students and professors were all the creams of the crop.
There are about 1500 students in the first year, but the student numbers dwindle after that since many students are either held back or choose to drop out due to the harsh curriculum, leaving less than half that many students to graduate during their third year.
The professors here were all Heroes, personally evaluated by the Principal, who was one of the first generations to have Awakened and is in the Top 25 of the Hero Rankings, evaluated by the Hero League.
Ray Luxor, on the other hand, was someone who barely made it into the Hero Rankings. The only reason he was given a job as a temporary professor was because of his significant achievements in the field of mana theory. Otherwise, a Rank C Hero would never have been given a chance to teach at the Star Academy.
After touring the Academy for half an hour, I went to the main building. It was a wide seven-storey building.
The first-year professor’s staff room was on the first floor. As soon as I entered the room, I was hit with a strong Aura. My knees buckled under the pressure. A man with black hair caught me as I fell to the ground.
“Oh no, Mr. Laxon. I am sorry for not holding back my aura. You see, our staff room usually only has Ranks B+ and above, so we don’t have to worry about Rank C heroes fainting.”
The professor in question was James Lanton, an A+ rank hero and ranked in the top 500 of the Hero Rankings.
He’s one of the instructors for the first years and is famous for his nasty personality among the staff. For him, there wasn’t a difference between anyone below Rank B and an insect crawling in the mud.
In my newly acquired memories, James would never stop putting down Ray, constantly bullying him due to his low rank. Even some of the staff shared his ideals, so they did nothing to stop him.
‘Sigh. You had a tough life, didn’t you, Ray?’
But I didn’t have low self-esteem as the previous Ray did. I stood up and straightened my trousers.
“Don’t worry, Sir Lanton. We all make mistakes. It’s only human.” I looked him straight in the eyes.
The corner of his right eye twitched.
James hated nothing more than to be associated with the lowlives below him. But what surprised him most more was the fact that the usual Ray Laxon, who usually had hunched shoulders and scared eyes, as if he was afraid of everyone's gazes, was looking at him directly.
A low-life like him was looking at him, an A+ Rank directly. He wanted to put this guy back in his place. But right at that moment, a woman entered the staff room.
The woman had a gorgeous face with an hourglass figure. Her straight blonde hair reaching her waist, looked like a river made from melted gold. Her monolid green eyes looked as if they could steal away all secrets leaving you bare in front of their owner.
She was a Rank S+ Hero and in the Top 100 of the Hero Rankings, Misa Amore.
Before she became a professor at the Star Academy, she was one of the most public-renowned Heroes in Capital City, no, on the entire continent, famous for both her world-class beauty and many achievements as a Hero.
Three years ago, there was a huge commotion in the media when she declared that she was retiring from her being an active Hero at the age of 30. Despite being a teacher now, she still had many connections at the League and would even help them from time-to-time.
“Sir James, does there seem to be some sort of problem?”, her cold voice echoed throughout the staff room, grabbing the attention of every person present in the room.
James immediately flustered.
“O-of course not, Ms. Amore. I-i was just helping Mr. Laxon out.”, he stuttered in front of the S+ Rank Hero.
“Well then, please start getting ready for the morning meeting. We have much to do before the orientation event for the first-years begins.” Ms. Misa approached her desk and put down the papers she was holding.
Everybody around her started hurriedly arranging the documents for the orientation event that will be discussed today.
I remembered this event.
It was the event where the novel began.
The protagonist, Rhian Vermilion, had entered the Academy as the top student. To the League and the Guilds, this was quite a surprise since Rhian had no connection to a high-standing family, who provided their children and the people they sponsored with the best of resources.
This news had given much fuel to the media industry. Provocative headlines such as “A Commoner Surpassing the Nobles.” and more had circulated the news for a good while.
Fifteen minutes later, all the professors, including me, met up in the meeting room.
We sat at a long table with the staff head, Lia Zachen, sitting at the head of the table. A hologram projector was placed in front of her.
She switched it on, and three virtual screens appeared floating in the air. Three students, two boys and one girl, were displayed on the screen with their details along with their photos.
“In front of you, are the top three students for this year’s entrance exams.
Rank #1 Rhian Vermillion.
Rank #2 Luke Vestillo.
Rank #3 Rachel Briar
I am pretty sure you all know that representatives of many guilds would be joining us today in an attempt to gain more information on our first years, especially these three. So I would like to make sure that there are no faults in our security.”
As one of the professors gave her a report, I looked at the other Hero Cadets displayed on the screen.
Luke Vestillo was the main rival in the novel, “The Blood-Drowned Reincarnator”. He was also the heir to The Shadow Guild, the #3 Guild on the human continent.
Ever since young, he was given the best of everything, making him think he was some sort of a “Chosen One”. But Rhian gaining the top rank was a big blow to his over-inflated ego. This caused him and his underlings to constantly pick fights with the protagonist during his time at The Star Academy.
Rachel Briar, on the other hand, was the granddaughter of Rufus Briar, the #1 Hero and head of Hero League.
She was also the female lead of the novel. When she was just eleven years old, her family was attacked by one of the executives of The Chaos Alliance, killing both her parents and leaving her toddler brother with a curse that made him unable to use mana for life.
Her grandfather tried everything to help her brother but to no avail. So she made a vow at her parents’ funeral to become strong enough so that she could bring her parents’ killer to his knees and torture him into telling her the cure for the curse.
As I stared at the screen, a slight pain irritated my eyes. I rubbed my eyes to bring them back to normal.
Before I knew it, the meeting was over, with Miss Lia assigning duties to some of the senior and higher Ranking professors. Since I was a relatively new professor, and hadn't even been on campus for a week, I hadn't been given responsibilities.
I went back to my desk as the professors around me started getting ready for the orientation. Still being a bit uncomfortable with my new environment, I went out of the staff room. Outside, I could see students arriving. They were heading towards the Academy Coliseum where the orientation was going to take place. I started walking towards the humongous building.
The location where it all started.