I turned to my left just in time to see my friend yawn. He tried to cover his mouth, but his hand missed it by just a couple inches. His other hand was there to wipe the tears from his eyes as he was both tired and bored. There really was nothing to do at the moment.

The lecture in front of me kept droning on about how we have to be safe on the exercise equipment. The many gym teachers had brought out several different things to use and left all but one person to teach us about it. It was so boring, especially when none of this information would be useful unless we planned to exercise using this same exact equipment in the future.

There were some other people, whose names I mostly forgot, that were whispering amongst each other. I didn’t bother learning the others’ names because I don’t know or interact with them.

All those normies… I just shiver at the thought. How are they so, so joyful? I just confuses me. I would never be able to do the kind of shit they do without giving it a second thought and worrying about it. I’m fine with sticking to my novels and games.

“Pssst! Hey, Valor, how long is this class?”

I didn’t turn my head to look, but I knew that it was Flynn who spoke to me. After he had yawned, he tried to get a good look at the clock, but couldn’t manage to see the time. He asked me because I was one of the only ones in the class who actually wore a watch and kept looking at it constantly.

I mean, it was definitely useful to have a watch when you know you have to go and do something or go somewhere at a specific time. Flynn had the capacity to go out and buy one, but he said it was “too much work and maintenance,” whatever that meant.

Sighing, I took a glance at my watch and turned it towards him. He read the time aloud, but in a softer voice.

“Just twelve thirty? I thought he’s been rambling for the last two hours.”

I gave him a sideways glance as he wasn’t the most realistic person in the world. The period had only started about twenty to thirty minutes ago and he seemed like he was about to finish.

“...And that is why you always adjust the weight to what you can handle. Any questions?”

A look to the left, then right gave me the idea that no one, including myself, wanted him to ramble on any further after what we had just heard. He seemed so boring and ordinary.

“Then, without further adieu, we can start with the-”

His voice was cut off with a loud crashing noise. The ground shook and people went from sitting to lying down on the waxed floor. The teacher slipped on a frictionless piece of floor and fell face first into the ground.

As for me, I had gotten startled by the loud sound and instinctively hopped forwards just a little. I ended up head butting a person in the arm and, once I had stopped moving, rubbed my head a little.

Looking up, I saw that there were these things that streaked through the air around us and pummeled the ground into chunks of debris.

The other teenagers were yelling as things started to rain down upon us. Not one of us was prepared for this event and we couldn’t do anything about the falling rectangular objects. Dust entered our eyes and mouths and many of us choked on it.

The rectangles were raining down, one by one, randomly throughout the gym. However, it seemed like they were trying to not fall where the majority of the group was, like someone purposefully dropped the boxes around and not on them.

One kid had managed to stand up and started to run towards the door. He moved around the boxes and reached the door by ending with a roll. He slammed against it and turned the handle.

When he opened it, all I could see was not hallway, but pure darkness. He almost fell to his death if it were not for his tightly clutching the door handle. He swung the door shut and pulled himself in.

Looking back towards the rest of us. Everyone could see the fear in his eyes.

“Oh, God!! It’s hopeless!!!!”

The kid started to scream as he jumped out of the way of a box. As he dove, a second one came down upon him and he was not so fortunate as to dodge it.

Blood. Gore. Guts. Call it what you want, but what I witnessed was nasty. I didn’t want to throw up, but I certainly felt my stomach do a complete one eighty as one of his eyeballs could be seen hanging from the corner of the box that had crushed him.

Underneath, it wasn’t just a pool of blood, but also the internal organs that had managed to spew out from under it. I swear I could see his heart beat one last time before it stopped.

“Mrrf!!”

Several people clenched their mouths as they desperately tried to not regurgitate their lunches over the rest of us. Flynn had gone slightly pale and didn’t move whatsoever. He wasn’t trying to not throw up nor was he trying to hide. Instead, it was more like shock and he was quite surprised and feeling a little bit scared.

The kid who had tried to escape and died was Edgar. He wasn’t a very good kid, but he didn’t deserve what he received. He did pickpocket occasionally, but mostly just pencils to use in class. If he was placed in a sticky situation, he usually ran, but look where that got him.

A small stream of blood gurgled towards us as all the blood from his dismembered right arm and legs spilled out. One kid threw up their lunch, breakfast, and even last night’s dinner, a nasty green color with chunks of brown.

I turned away from both sights. Not because I didn’t want to believe it, but because it was far too much for my stomach to handle. It went from “Oh, God! Falling shit!!” to “Holy Hell!! The fuck is going on?!!” in a matter of seconds.

Looking over, I could see that the teacher was crouched up in a ball and covering his head. The rest of the teens, myself included, were able to stand up, albeit shakily, and took cover underneath and around the equipment. Some of the training equipment had fallen over and weights were scattered on the ground around it.

Everyone screamed, everyone yelled, and some people pissed their pants after imagining what would have happened if they were the kid who had died. I only knew his name, Edgar, from when the teachers said his name in attendance.

I covered my head while cowering under the training equipment. Closing my eyes until I could just barely look out of my eyes, I saw that the crashing stopped.

Turning upwards, I looked around at all the holes in the roof. I could see that there was just darkness beyond them, like what was outside the door.

With several doubts and ideas in my mind, I slowly got up and brushed all the dust off my arm.

Looking at all the things that fell, there were several obvious similarities. Mainly being that they all had buttons and were a light grey color.

The boxes were all different sizes, but kept the same rectangular shape. Every single one managed to make a crater in the ground that was proportional to their size.

Every one of the boxes was smoking and there was a single line running through the middle, length wise, like rectangular coffin.

Looking around, several other teens opened their eyes to look at the mess of wood and the occasional gore. Every single one became wide eyed as the realization that one of their classmates, even if they didn’t know him too well, had died and they stared in shock at the bloody remains.

Several people fell to their knees as they witnessed death for the first time. It was horrifying, watching one of you classmates get crushed underneath a box that came through the ceiling. The river of blood flowed towards the class’s feet and most of them stepped out of the way. The ones who didn’t step in time had their feet drenched in dark red and the they fell back, holding their mouths.

One kid frothed at the mouth as he fell backwards. He seemed to have fainted due to the horror.

Then, seemingly out of nowhere, a strange voice reached out to them all. It sounded like a man whose voice seemed to have failed him.

“Ah.”

The voice seemed to have noticed the dead teenager.

“Well, I hope he won’t be important.”

After the voice spoke, there were three sounds, like grunts of agreement.

“Ok, then. Now! Those who are hearing this voice, you will be transferred soon. I need each of you to only open one box. Just touch the lid and it will open. I will give more explanations when you do so.”

Too stunned to move, the teens either fell to their knees or just leaned against the sides of the training equipment.

The voice seemed to get annoyed now and started to yell.

“I said to touch the box!!!!”

That made them start moving, but it was like they did it in a trance. Even Valor, who was still quite conscious of what was going on, moved to touch a box. He felt as though he had no control except for the ability to choose a box.

Everyone moved almost robotically, as if they were being puppeteered. Valor had some suspicions, but none more obvious than the idea that the voice got angry and forced them to move.

Everyone stopped in front of a separate box and bent over to touch it.

A single finger press later, the lids slid off and fell to the ground. In front of everyone, weapons or items were carefully placed on velvet cushions.

Just about everyone was conscious of what they were doing now and they struggled to stop moving as they reached into the box and hefted the weapons in complete synchronization.

For Valor, he had received two large gloves that went to his elbows, gauntlets. Each finger was sharpened to a point and the part of the gauntlet that faced outwards when worn was covered in three layers of armor. It wasn’t too wide and was about three times larger than his arm, but it seemed strange because it looked like something could pop out of the sides at any moment.

The palms both had a pentagram each with runes engraved around it. The entire gauntlet was mostly made of metal, but the joints had chainmail instead of a solid piece of metal. On the middle section of all the fingers, save for the thumbs, was a chain that connected to the front of the forearm.

Both of the gauntlets were colored in white, but it didn’t seem to be paint. Instead, it was as if that white color had come from the material itself, like how iron was a grey color.

“Good, good, good. Now, don you gear and come.”

No one knew what he was talking about with “come” for he was not there. No one knew exactly where the voice’s source was and, thus, did not know where to go after they properly wielded their gear.

However, the second that Nio, a male classmate who seemed to have gotten a large sword shrouded in light, held his sword properly, he vanished in a blue light.

In the next several seconds that followed, people started to vanish when they equipped their weapons.

When it was Valor’s turn, everyone who had something to carry, and not wear, had vanished. All that remained was him, Aria, and Arnold who all had something to wear on their hands. However, Arnold had regular gloves that went down to the wrist, but was still a white color while Aria had a single gauntlet that was far larger than Valor’s.

There were some exceptions, like Jane who had gotten four rapiers. Instead of holding them all, she just held one and her and the other three rapiers vanished. Another had a mask to wear, Harmony, and just had to place the mask on her face and pull the strap over her head.

When Valor finished placing his gauntlets on his arms, he felt like he was pulled somewhere. A pulling and pushing sensation could be felt on his chest and back and he couldn’t feel the ground anymore.

His eyes were open to witness a vast darkness with small dots of light here and there. He could see some images that he both did and did not recognize. A man holding a sword in the air with lightning coming down around him. A man holding his arms out and a large body of water parting. A man with white hair holding a rifle and shooting a large, blue lizard with wings.

He understood almost nothing of what happened when he was in that space and it only took a couple seconds for him to exit that area.

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Soon enough, he found himself stumbling on some pebbles and small ditches underfoot. With an arm raised to block the light shining on his face, he looked up.

His surroundings was made up of only trees. Grass was underneath him and he, as well as the other classmates, were standing in a clearing with no trees. The skies were a light blue that was shimmering for some odd reason. There were no clouds in the sky and the sun seemed farther away, but still just as bright, if not more so.

The trees seemed to be made up of many different types, from fruit bearing ones to ones that seemed only good for making houses and furniture. None were too tall, but he could still not see over any of them.

He looked around to find that his classmates had changed clothes. They had went from their usually shorts and t-shirts, their gym wear, to some strange looking clothes that ranged from fashionable outfits to stupid costumes to armor.

Looking down, Valor could see that his own clothes had changed, unbeknownst to him. He wore clothes much like a chuunibyou would wear.

He had a white jacket that went down to his knees and had some black chains around his arms. It had two pockets, each of them at the sides, and had a hood that was already pulled down. Around the front of his head, there were parts of the jacket that could be clasped together to make some sort of partial face covering that only went up to the bottom of his nose, but could cover his entire chin.There were no zippers, but instead buttons that seemed to be made of a dark material.

His shirt had hardly changed materials, but the design certainly did. The material he had worn before felt similar to the one he wore now, a polymer and cotton mix. The design had changed from a video game shirt to a shirt that was black with diagonal dark red lines that looked like a creature with large claws raked his shirt.

His pants had went from sweat pants, because he didn’t like to wear gym shorts, to somewhat baggy, but not too baggy, pants. They were black and had more pockets than a pair of cargo pants. Instead of a belt, three chains held it together and, instead of the clasp for a belt, it was just a carabiner. He quickly patted down his pockets, but nothing was there, just like how there was nothing in his previous pair.

He also felt that he had underwear on, but he decided not to check what it looked like with his classmates still around him. He still had his gauntlets on and flexed his fingers to see if he could move them.

He opened and closed his fingers before cracking his knuckles and looked more carefully at them. The color of the gauntlets matched the color of his overly large coat.

Turning away from his gauntlets, he looked about him and could see a girl wearing a cute, tiger onesie while holding a huge scythe that was too big for her body. He could see someone decked out in full armor that had spikes and horns and a huge shield was floating around, what Valor guessed was a, her. Someone was even wearing a white and red dress that was beautiful and it looked like something someone would wear to a ball.

Those were the most strange and peculiar outfits out of the bunch. The rest seemed to wear clothes that were based off of modern fashion and things that they thought were cool.

However, he could not focus on clothes at the moment. He had more dire circumstances. A classmate died, the teacher was curled up under a tree, and the class had been transferred to a new location.

Looking around some more, he realized that everyone in the class was there. And by everyone…

“Hurgh!!”

Someone beside him threw up. They regurgitated green and Valor stepped away.

He knew why they had thrown up. It was because Edgar, the one who died, was there too. The problem was that he was still dead and still in hundreds of pieces. The strange thing, though, was that he was in a clear coffin that seemed to be made of clear crystals.

His body parts were placed where they should have been. It was like someone took him apart only to try to put him back together by placing the parts where they should have gone, but parts of him were still mashed and broken and blood had started pooling at the bottom of the coffin. It was disgusting to see fragments of his skull covering a smashed brain on top of the organs that were leaking multiple things.

Everyone turned away to try to not look at the horrific sight. Even Valor, who had managed not to piss himself or vomit yet did so for he was not someone who liked to see a fresh corpse.

“H-hey!!”

Valor turned. He had his hands on his knees and was bent forwards because he was exhausted by everything that had happened in the last few minutes.

Looking upwards to where the voice came from, he saw his friend, Flynn, walking towards him. He seemed fine and it looked like he was not concerned with the dead body or about the current situation. The only reason that he stuttered was because he saw Valor in such a state.

He was wearing a suit and tie. The suit and pants were white while the tie was a dark purple color. He had one breast pocket on his suit and four pockets, two in the front and two in the back, on his pants. Looped around his pants, a black belt was stationed there that had a metal buckle.

He seemed to be easily carrying a huge sword that was about as tall as he was. It was quite wide and had enough room on the handle for four hands to be placed side by side and still not touch the hilt or the end of the sword. A chain was connected to the bottom that had a small, circular pendant with a dragon head engraved into it.

“How are you holding up? That kid, Edgar, he died pretty, um, dramatically, huh?”

Valor turned back towards the ground, trying not to vomit as he remembered, quite vividly, how he had died.

“Don’t…”

His voice started to fail him and he was about to tumble into the ground when he felt a hand underneath him prop him up. He soon found himself on his own two feet and that Flynn had helped him get up.

“...Thanks...”

Suddenly, as if he had more energy than he led on, Valor held a finger up to his friend.

“Don’t mention that scene again. I mean, he’s right there!”

Valor didn’t turn, but knew where he was so he pointed. Flynn put up his hands defensively as if to say, “Okay, I got it.”

Valor sighed and then, after a moment, breathed deeply, in and out.

“So, that voice, um, he said that he would meet us, right?”

“Well, he told us to “come” and I think we have come to him already, but I don’t really know. All I know is that we all changed clothes and my sword is badass!!”

He was the only cheerful on in the current situation as no one else wanted to even speak. Looking around, it was clear that some were mourning or cowering in fear.

Suddenly, the coffin started to move. However, instead of falling over sideways, like one would think it would, it traveled upwards. Some heads turned to look at it only to find themselves repulsed by the remains of Edgar.

The coffin seemed to move into the sun and was engulfed in light. The people who realized what just happened, because the rest were still looking away, were dumbfounded as they just saw something that went against all logic once again. The first time, it was boxes falling in the gym and, outside the gym, there was only darkness. The second time was when they appeared in the woods to find Edgar’s remains stored in a coffin made of a clear material. This event was the third, excluding the voices and equipment they received.

Flynn’s eyes followed the coffin until he no longer could look at it because the sun was too blinding. Valor turned his head and eyes to watch as the coffin moved upwards. Under his breath, Flynn just spoke three words.

“What the fuck?”

“...”

Valor couldn’t speak, but absolutely agreed with what his friend had said.

Then, a beat later, the voice came once again, but, this time, it seemed to come from above.

“You have all come!! I have taken your friend’s body and will bury him. I hope he will be the only one in the hole.”

Mr. Harris, the teacher, worked up the courage to ask a question.

“W-what hole?”

With zero hesitation and no thought about how his answer would affect the group, the voice spoke.

“The Gore Pit.”

Just imagining Edgar and many other corpses in a huge pit made some people vomit once more. One person actually felt like he was going to, but found that he had nothing left in his stomach.

“Dang.”

It turns out that there was someone who could speak without throwing up other than Flynn. However, this one seemed to be extremely apathetic and spoke in an uninterested tone.

“Indeed so. Anyway, enough about that! I will give you an explanation now!! First things first, you each either have the ability to heal or to kill with your equipment. If you think about the word “Status”, a small screen appearing on you gear and you will find that you can see your status screen.”

Almost everyone tried to do that while the two that didn’t just stood, dazed.

For those who did, however, small rectangles filled with words and icons appeared in front of them. It told them their skills, magics, ability scores, classes, levels, and some sort of tree with icons on it, like a family tree.

“You can find your classes on the top left of your screen. Below that is your level followed by your ability scores, like Strength and Dexterity. You will each have either magic, skills, or a mixture of both depending on your gear. If you scroll to the bottom, you will find an evolution tree to upgrade and evolve your gear. Your class is solely dependant on what gear you have chosen.”

Indeed, Valor could see his stats:

Class: Mage Killer

Level: 1

Strength: (13) Dexterity: (11) Constitution: (8) Intelligence: (14) Wisdom: (16) Charisma: (6)

Skills:

Rank F:

-Thrust: One strike with a piercing weapon against an opponent.

Magic:

Rank A:

-Weapon Bind: Bind up to four weapons.

There was an advanced evolution tree underneath the rest of his stats, but he didn’t take the time to look through all one hundred or so. That one hundred wasn’t the total amount, but the number of evolutions he could become next. After that, there were thousands.

“I, however, left that choice to the three fates themselves. Currently, they are with me, but will only stay for a short while longer. What you have chosen is your destined gear!!”

The voice started to get more and more excited as he spoke.

“Each of you have two skills or magics. One will be F rank and the other will be A rank. As you can see, your ability scores are so, so very low. You will have to work hard not to die because of it!!!”

It seemed to want them to live, but, at the same time, it seemed like it was toying with them. It’s tone was that of someone who was having way too much fun directing people in what was going on and where they had to go.

“There are three kingdoms here, in the Feywilds. You are to split up into three teams and each team will choose one destination. I will give you these three compasses that only point towards one of the three kingdoms each. I want you all to save this world from the abyssal horrors of the Feydark and Limbo. Also, as an added on extra, I want you to entertain me!! I have seen gods of other planes of existence do such things, like that Rune fellow from Earth, and I want to see if you are truly entertaining!!!”

Flynn leaned in close to Valor and whispered.

“Who’s he talking about?”

“No clue, but focus on what he’s saying.”

“Ahem. You have no choice in the matter. Here are the compasses and some instruction manuals, six of them, two per party, that have information on many things that you will need to know.”

A beam of blue light appeared in the center of the opening. Unfortunately, a teenager was standing there and ended up being hit by a compass. Luckily for him, it was traveling at a slow pace and hurt as much as a dodgeball thrown at someone.

He fell to the ground and rubbed the area that got hit. He muttered some swears and crawled away from the center.

“Oops. Sorry about that. Don’t stand in the middle next time. Anyway, I have to drive these three back. I sort off picked them up from Earth. In the meantime, sort out groups and leave. Oh, I also forgot to mention this, but a bear is heading towards you all. Bye!!”

With that cheerful and awe inspiring last message, a sphere of light seemed to break off from the sun and it sped away. It seemed that the voice was coming from that sphere and was blending in with the sun.

“What was that about a bear?”

Someone asked around them. Valor was looking over his gauntlets and was going to test them on a nearby tree. He had heard that a bear was coming, but thinking about all the fantasy and video game terms the voice spoke about, it seemed like this wasn’t going to be just a regular bear.

“D’ya think it’s gonna be like a four armed bear? Ooh!! Maybe it will be a bear covered in armor!! Or a Werebear!!!!”

“Just shut up!”

Valor hissed at him. He didn’t want to place any more unnecessary doubt or fear in the hearts of his classmates. If he did, then how could they think they could win against a bear. Even if it was a regular one, it was still going to be hard to kill.

“Ha!! Even if it is a Werebear, I got this!!”

Valor turned with slight interest to see what the person who spoke had in his hands. It was a long and futuristic gun. It had a rectangular barrel whose width was about the size of a head. There was a hole in the back to place your arm in and it seemed like you could pull a trigger or something inside the gun. The only problem was that it had no method of reloading.

Someone seemed to notice it and pointed it out.

“And how are you going to reload it, huh?”

The teen smiled as he spoke.

“I have an A rank magic to use some of my “mana” or whatever to shoot some magic bullets!! I’ll blow the hell out of it!!! If that doesn’t work, I can use my F rank skill to shoot a fire bullet!!!”

He looked like he was part of a biker gang. He had a leather jacket on and Valor could see that he was wearing biker gloves, well, at least on his left hand for his right was inside the gun.

Valor recalled that his name was Maximus, but the other teens called him Max. He was a reckless kid who threw himself head first into danger and wasn’t that good in his studies. True, he was popular, but he wasn’t liked.

“Yeah, I’m staying as far away from him as I can. I don’t want to be shot.”

Flynn provided a great argument for steering clear of that child and Valor proceeded towards one of the trees at the edge of the clearing.

No one in the class, not even the teacher, was focused on making teams. They were each thinking about how they would survive a bear attack. Priorities first.

Standing with his gauntlets, Valor held his arms up and used his skill. He didn’t think he would know how at first, but, as soon as he felt like he wanted to, he found himself doing it.

His gauntlet thrust itself through the tree and it pierced right through. Valor smiled as he found that he was able to do it, but became nervous as he soon found that his arm was now stuck.

“Shit.”

The attack his just performed also made him feel extremely tired. His arms felt weak and his legs were wobbly.

Thinking back on his ability scores, he remembered that his strength and dexterity both were in the low teens with the numbers 13 and 11. That must be the reason why he was feeling tired. That and his constitution was only 8.

He turned to look at his friend who was looking at his sword. He wasn’t sure exactly what he was doing, but he believed that he was most likely looking at his status.

“A little hel-”

His words were interrupted when a large crash sounded in front of him. His eyes went wide as he spun his head to look through the trees. However, at the moment, all he could see was darkness as he strained his eyes.

Suddenly, he saw a flash of silver and ducked with his arm still stuck in the tree. Luckily, the thing tried to swipe at his head and the tree above him slowly fell to the side. It was such a clean swipe that there wasn’t even a speck of debris from the tree.

The claw, however, had scraped Valor’s gauntlets for only a moment, but it still should have caused it to break, seeing the state of the tree. Instead, the gauntlet was fine and Valor pulled it out to find that it didn’t have a gash, much less a single scrape on it.

He fell backwards into the dirt and watched as a giant beast moved overhead. It had brown fur and and had some chunks of armor on its body. Surrounding it, orbs of fire flew around and, whenever they touched something, they disappeared and flames erupted where they used to be.

Trees lit up like torches and patches of grass turned to ashes.The bear was colossal and the armor on its limbs, back, and head seemed a couple inches thick. The armor was comprised of three layers, each made of a different material.

It roared as it swung its arms back and then it hunched over. After looking at all of the students and the one teacher, it charged.