10 years ago (2112)

  Derek Thoma was wearing a massive grin on his face as he walked out of school on his first day. Five years old, the youngest in his Class since most kids only entered school at six.

  Mom and Dad said that meant he was smart.

  What it really meant was that he was small.

  But where were Mom and Dad?

  Actually, where were all the parents? There were like … like ten people, adults here, and half of those were teachers.

  “Hi Derek, your Mom sent me to pick you up.”

  He did not know that man. You did not go with people you didn’t know.

  “No, you’re a liar.”

  Derek shook his head, smugly staring at the man.

  “No, I’m not a liar,” the man said. “Your sister had an accident, and they sent me to …”

  “No,” Derek shook his head and turned away from the idiot. That was literally the example lie given in that stupid “stranger danger” seminar the school had made them do. “GO AWAY, I DON’T KNOW YOU!”

  He’d yelled that last part because that was what you were supposed to do in situations like this, make people pay attention and then … well, then the bad man was supposed to go away, right?

  But nothing like that happened. No one even seemed to notice … and then the man grabbed him by the shoulder.

  So Derek did the one thing that he’d been told to never, ever, do. He punched the man in the no-no-zone.

  It did precisely nothing.

  That was the front of his pants burst into black flame, and all went to he- … wente to heck in a handbasket.

  Whatever had made everyone else not pay attention went away in right that instant, and suddenly, the strange man was all the way on the other side of the road, with Mr. Müller on top of him, the teacher looking far more furious than Derek had ever seen him, a fist wreathed in white light that seemed to burn with unseen danger.

  Another hand tapped him on the shoulder, but this time, the person didn’t actually grab him; they’d just wanted to get his attention.

  Standing there was a woman, looking like she’d stepped straight out of one of his cartoons, with a sleek uniform and a sword that looked really, really cool.

  “Kid, you might wanna get out of here,” she said, gesturing back towards the school.

  Derek stared up at the woman with big eyes, and the hand she held out for him to take. He let himself drop onto his but and decided to stay there.

  “Mommy said not to go with strangers,” Derek resolutely declared.

  “Oh for fu- … fudge’s sake,” the woman stuttered, then stepped between him and the burgeoning fight happening on the other side of the road.

  Derek giggled, the earlier incident already nearly forgotten, and headed over towards the school anyway. “You’re funny.”

  Even so, he still heard it as she muttered something that sounded like what Dad always yelled at the television, then turned around and took a few steps away before pulling out her phone.

  Eventually, Mom and Dad arrived, and so did a whole bunch of adults, and they all made a lot of fuss about him.

  ***

  Derek sat in the corner of the room while the adults argued, talking about weird things like something having been wrong with all the clocks in the school and stuff like that. Adult things he didn’t care about, or even really understand.

  Normally, he’d probably have been pestering them for answers so that he could understand, but right now, he had something much more interesting to look at.

  His hands. They weren’t doing anything right now, but he knew they could make fire. He wanted to be able to do that again. He wanted to be able to do what the adults could.

  He wanted to be able to do everything.

  Fly, throw flames, outrun the wind, do anything and everything the heroes in his storybooks could.

  He’d already run around asking everyone how they’d gained their power, and they’d all told him the same thing.

  Hard.

  Work.

  That sounded difficult, but Derek wanted his powers!

  … So maybe, he’d listen to the adults and do what they said, even if it sounded dumb, just this once?

  ***

  Present Day (2122)

  Derek glared at the “stranger danger” poster on the display case next to the school’s entrance.

  His older brother was known for having kicked the Leviathan around like a football, at least as long as the not-publicly known boosting had held out.

  His sisters were, well, where to start? Valkyries, healers, one an impossibly powerful mage, the other a terrifying warrior, both already elevated the realm of legend.

  This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it.

  And then there was him. The kid who looked almost like the new stranger danger poster, and was the reason why so many of the damn things had been hung up in both this school and those around it. Also, the rumor that he liked lighting people’s nether regions on fire was still going around.

  That had happened precisely once, and the asshole had been trying to kidnap him, but it wasn’t like the truth had ever been able to stand in the way of a good story.

  God, had that really only been ten years ago?

  He’d heard so many things about that. It had started with a whole lot of “so happy you’re okay” stuff, but quickly begun to change, especially as he started to grow up and understand just how much of a clusterfuck that had been.

  To start with, the various law enforcement agencies meant to prevent stuff like that had been caught off-guard, supposedly, not because the plan had been good, because the whole thing had been a grand scheme carefully designed to avoid all the precautions put into place to prevent anyone from kidnapping the families of S-Rankers … it had been the spontaneous idea of some overconfident moron who’d gone through with things without ever taking precautions or making preparations that might have sent alarm bells ringing.

  Which wasn’t exactly comforting, even knowing that “loophole” was as closed as it could possibly be, the idea that recklessness was a “recipe for success” certainly did not lead to warm and fuzzy feelings, but at least there was a clear reason for things having gone the way they had.

  Derek glanced down at his hand, as he had so many times in the past decade. He’d only been able to use [Lesser Hellfire] precisely once, temporarily unlocked due to the stress and danger of the situation. But he knew he wouldn’t be able to use it until the [System] unlocked for him, because the hellfire was a part of his bloodline, and his bloodline came with child safeties.

  See, unlike in all the various novels he’d read (and had read to him), bloodlines under the [System] did not come from some great-great-great-grandparent who had somehow managed to boink a mythical creature of some variety; they were made.

  In fact, anyone over Level 50 could do so, putting whatever [Skills] they wanted into their bloodline and then passing it onto their children or directly granting it to their direct blood relatives, which was how Derek had wound up with his brother’s bloodline, though that fact hadn’t stopped the odd crass joke.

  All told, the [Bloodline of the Hellborn Survivor] had given him a whole lot of stealth and regeneration-related abilities, bladework was literally in his blood, and he even had hellfire as a weapon of last resort … but only within the limits set nearly a century ago.

  He’d asked why his regeneration only kicked in when he managed to seriously hurt himself and been told that having full access and thereby being “above pain” would likely hurt his ability to develop empathy. Of course, everyone who felt like that was also far too tough to suffer papercuts, or to come off for the worse from stubbing their toes … but the world wasn’t fair.

  Of course, there were a whole lot more powerful bloodlines out there, but they had the same drawback as all other bloodlines, the [Skills] they granted took up the slots for the inheritor’s own abilities, and a powerful ability could easily fuck over someone whose overall [Skill]set did not synergize with the granted powers, also preventing them from picking up one of the [Skills] their [Classes] relied upon.

  In the meantime, the Thoma family bloodline provided a whole lot of utility [Skills] that would have been picked up anyway. And it carried with it the ability to be a High Human, which improved all his stats a little. Nearly nothing by the standards of the [System], but when no one could Level yet …

  Initially, being stronger, tougher, and faster than all his peers had been amazing. He’d won every game, beaten every dare, conquered every wall that had stood in other people’s way.

  And then … then it had become boring. Not only had “victory” become what he expected to receive, nothing special, but no one had wanted to play with him anymore. It had made him frustrated, it had left him angry, until he’d talked to his mother, who’d pointed out how the others had to be feeling.

  So they’d stopped playing games where his advantages would have made him the automatic winner.

  It wasn’t like any of his abilities were impossible to match or even surpass, evolving one’s race wasn’t too difficult, and even before then, a few levels was all it took to make up for the stat points he’d gotten from the High Human race.

  But all those things required System access, but none of them had unlocked that yet, leaving the situation the way it was, with him dreadfully bored.

  Normally, they played board games, or video games on their phones when there were no teachers around to run off with the personal electronics they weren’t supposed to be using on school grounds.

  But they didn’t have any, and weren’t allowed to bring any either.

  The rule against outside games was there to prevent “inappropriate content” from entering the school, which included certain games judged as being too likely to cause fights, as well as to make sure that students of means couldn’t just buy everyone’s “friendship,” not that singular rule would stop those whose only “redeeming” feature was money.

  There was, however, a problem, a very big oversight, that really should have been noticed … or the damn rule should have just been suspended under the current circumstances, which could actually be done since it wasn’t a law but the declaration of a petty tyrant of a schoolmaster.

  But that hadn’t been done. Because that would have actually been the reasonable thing to do, which, automatically, ruled out it actually being chosen as an option by the school’s current administration.

  The complete and utter lack of outside games would have been fine, though, had the school had any games of its own.

  Mind you, it used to … but then there’d been an incident yesterday, involving a frozen whole chicken, the cafeteria deepfryer, and a stoner with the munchies. It was the sort of thing that really shouldn’t have happened in the current day and age, but the wards had almost exclusively been designed to stop things that couldn’t be prevented through simple common sense.

  Long story short, any games they might have played were presently ash, as was most of the sports equipmentand any replacements would be coming through the glacially slow process of school procurement, and that would take longer than he likely had left at this school.

  As for getting into mischief … that was damn near impossible.

  None of the teachers were overly powerful in the grand scheme of things, “just” slightly above the soft-cap for non-combatants of Level 50, but by any even remotely normal Stat distribution that would give them enough Perception to hear a fly fart on the far side of the school.

  Him and his friends getting up to shenanigans would be a hundred times louder than that.

  Hell, his own mother, herself a kindergarten teacher, had once told him that teachers ignored a whole lot of the things they heard, purely to maintain the illusion of privacy.

  Granted, to their credit, his friends had still hung out with him initially, rather than play with one of the few surviving footballs … but as nice as it had been for them to do so, he’d told them to go have fun; them being bored so he could be just that little bit less bored wasn’t fair to them. He could keep himself entertained for today.

  Hopefully.

  He finally tore his gaze away from the poster he’d been staring at for God only knew for how long, his eyes having strayed back onto it while he was busy mulling things over.

  Boredom. If it had been available as an enemy for summoning, he’d murder it a hundred times over the momen the got [System] access, but it wasn’t, and besides, it wasn’t like he’d even gotten the ability to actually summon monsters to kill for XP ye- …

  He stood corrected. He did have [System] access, because it had unlocked for him during right that very second.

  And since this served as his “graduation” marker, school being optional after the age of fourteen … even if anyone decided to bother complaining about him playing hooky, it wasn’t like the teachers would be able to actually punish him unless he was stupid enough to walk back onto school grounds.

  Granted, his parents might be strict, but even they weren’t strict enough to punish him for running off.

  So, quick goodbye to his friends, they could meet up later, then … time to run off.