A couple of hours later, Derek was feeling better, especially after a healing potion, though his head was still throbbing with phantom pain.

  Granted, it was better than the feeling of someone wearing stilettoes taptancing their way across the inside of his skull, but the alleviation of the agony did little to shake his refusal to touch “bad idea juice,” as Tanja had referred to it in a text she’d sent him a bit ago, in any way.

  Seriously, though, had everyone known about the fact that the party was all about teaching them why alcohol sucked? Everyone except the students themselves, at any rate.

  Hell, Viktoria probably had been aware too; she’d just decided not to gloat, or something like that.

  Either way, he had a few hours to get ready for the actual end-of-year affairs, when the transcripts would be handed out, something his family was going to be showing up for.

  Which left him with quite a bit of time to kill once he was done getting dressed. His outfit was basically a slightly more formal version of what he’d worn yesterday evening.

  In the end, Derek found himself on the couch, half-heartedly watching TV while trying to ignore the last remnants of a headache.

  It was actually quite fascinating, if he thought about it. The way these old shows were still impacting the world today. Because there were military strategists, mages, and general bringers of chaos looking to them for inspiration.

  Granted, many of those old TV shows worked off of physics different from reality, entirely new phenomena of all sorts that fundamentally changed those fictional universes, practically defining them, or their tricks had already been overtaken by events, made redundant by magic, or even exceeded by modern tech.

  But he knew of at least one star-killing spell that had been modeled after a certain episode of Stargate, though the only reason he was aware of it was that Viktoria had let that information slip during a family dinner a couple of years ago.

  Eventually, the doorbell rang, and he heaved himself up, marching over and letting the rest of his family in.

  Mom and Dad were dressed in their usual old-timey formal clothing, a dress and three piece suit, respectively, while the twins had gone all out, using the full capability of magic to create borderline absurd outfits.

  Tanja was wearing a literal dress of blades, hundreds if not thousands of hiltless knives covering her body in a manner that would have carved her to shreds in an instant in a sane world, as well as making her a wandering hazard in any place with other people though even she was unlikely to have put that on unless it had some kind of built-in protection. He still wouldn’t be hugging her, though, that was for sure.

  And Viktoria was wearing magic. Somehow.

  It certainly had the appearance of cloth, yet even at first glance, there was a sense of unreality to it, the dress that bordered on the ballgown almost luminous, yet without light, crackling with energy but lacking menace, the raw potential of mana forced into a physical form that should have been utterly inimical to its innate properties yet simultaneously seemed to fit it perfectly.

  In other words … well, it seemed the “doing crazy stuff to alleviate boredom” bug seemed to have gotten to his sisters quite a bit earlier than it did to most people. Or maybe they just normally didn’t play fashionista anywhere he might have run into them, which was more likely, considering they’d moved out of their parents’ place literal decades before he was even born.

  “So, is the academy still standing, or did you burn it down?” Tanja asked, making Viktoria laugh.

  “That’s a bit rich, coming from you. How many times did you get yourself in trouble by setting off the ‘someone’s falling from the roof’ alert by flying too close to the academy back home?”

  “Enough times that if Isaac hadn’t been in charge of it, I’d have practically had to live in the dean’s office, with how often I’d have gotten called,” Mom pointed out.

  Now that story, Derek hadn’t heard, and he’d heard a lot of ridiculous stories about the twins, many of which he only believed because he’d later found them in newspaper archives.

  “What’s the alert for, anyway?” he asked. “Wouldn’t a ward to catch people have been better?”

  “Oh, that’s the first thing they put in, but then the students started using it as a bungee cord, basically,” Mom said. “So Isaac set up a detection system to alert staff because it was getting annoying.”

  “Hm …” was all the further comment Derek gave on that front, and they eventually made their way towards the academy, where he got to see his sisters’ version of the “leave me the hell alone” glare.

  Ye-in usually looked more like a grumpy cat than anything else, giving off an almost palpable aura of “not in the mood,” and that did do the trick almost always, but the twins … honestly, the closest way he could describe it was “wasting our time will cost you an arm and a leg, literally.”

  Obviously, they weren’t outright threatening anyone’s life, but he could practically feel people recognize them, light up, get a read on their “vibes,” and finally wilt like a flower in a blast furnace.

  Mom and Dad generally didn’t garner the same degree of interest, after all, they were “just” a bit over Level 100, and most of that had been powerlevelling, if he remembered right.

  But in the presence of Tanja and Viktoria?

  They barely even seemed to exist anymore. And neither did he.

  That stung. As did the fact that the opposite of being invisible next to them, which he would be if he reached his goals, would be having to fight just as hard as they did for the barest scraps of privacy.

  Though even if he’d had the option of hiding in obscurity, the price, making himself small to avoid drawing attention, would have been too high. Because he did want to take advantage of what the [System] offered, to, eventually, extend his lifespan to the point where there’d be time for literally whatever the hell he wanted to do, as well as actually claim a small part of the power he’d spent his entire life around for himself … but he knew there woudln’t just be a cost to getting it, but also a downside to having it.

  Maybe that was why Isaac had hightailed it out of the solar system, eventually, with only his girlfriend in tow. Though with them having spent nearly fifty years together, Derek had come across quite a few theories that those two had actually gotten married at some point, they just hadn’t announced it to avoid people getting upset due to not having been invited to the marriage.

  And it wasn’t like he’d even been looking for any of that; it had just randomly popped up on YouTube as a recommendation often enough that even scrolling past the titles had given him the information practically via osmosis. Still weird as hell, though.

  The central hall had more doors open than Derek had ever seen, more than he’d even known it had, to the point where it almost looked like the dome was floating, unconnected to the earth, while the floor was already covered in rows upon rows of chairs, formed out of the floor as per usual.

  Outside the hall, in the two grass fields, tables and chairs were already set up, with buffet tables hidden beneath shimmering forcefields that were, in his opinion, there purely to prove that they could casually throw around that kind of magic.

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

  “Hey Derek!”

  He turned his head from side to side, trying to find Ye-in, but unfortunately, in the crowd, locating a single familiar face was an exercise in frustration. For him, at least.

  “So, is that your girlfriend?”

  … because his sisters, or Viktoria, at the very least, had been able to locate her in an instant.

  “Just a friend,” Derek replied with a sigh. “And if you don’t drop that, I’ll just stop inviting you.”

  Quite frankly, he was fully aware of the fact that siblings teasing on certain topics was inevitable, but while any “joke” could get annoying if told in excess, the whole “girlfriend thing” would get old extra fast. And that went doubly for when it wasn’t even true.

  “The lad doth protest too much,” Tanja commented, with a blatantly fake British accent.

  “It was one sentence,” Derek hissed back, lowering his voice now that Ye-in was closer.

  Both his sisters smirked, only for their expressions to switch to something more neutral almost instantly when Mom cleared her throat.

  “So, are you going to introduce us?” she asked Derek, having switched to Korean. Hers was actually quite a bit better than his, even though he’d almost certainly used the language far more often, the [Omniglot] [Skill] everyone gained access to at the fourth Evolution once again proving just how overpowered it was.

  “This is Nan Ye-in,” he said, deciding to keep things simple.

  “Hi,” the lady in question added with a light wave, a warm smile on her face. “I’ve heard so much about you, I feel like I know you already.”

  “All good things, I hope,” Tanja asked, and Derek promptly rolled his eyes. He hadn’t really shared all that much, but he supposed that that was sort of the stock line to give when meeting the parents, except … gah, had he just referred to this as a “meet the parents?” He … urgh, yeah, he had. At least things couldn’t go too badly in this situation, right?

  Ye-in nodded, then gestured beside her. “This is my mother, Nan Min-soo.”

  “We’ve met,” Viktoria announced. “But that was a while ago … oh, thirty years back?”

  “Something like that,” Nan said. “I see you two haven’t changed.”

  Her tone was sufficiently neutral that Derek wasn’t sure whether or not that was a positive or negative, though it was probably the latter.

  Tanja shrugged. “We literally have no idea how long we’re going to live, beyond ‘long’ and ‘there might be visible continental drift during our lifetime.’ Way I see it, we should enjoy being young for as long as possible.”

  … so said the lady who was over a hundred years old. The age differences at the time of initialization shouldn’t really matter anymore; percentage-wise, they were nearly nothing, but somehow, they did seriously show now.

  “Oh, look at the time,” Mom said, glancing down at her wristwatch. “We should find some seats.

  Derek rolled his eyes once more.

  Real smooth, Mom, real smooth.

  Although … as they headed over, he pulled out his phone and realized that it was, in fact, time to head in.

  Once people had sat down, Kim appeared with the same flair as she had displayed on the first day.

  “I won’t keep you long, God only knows how many speeches I’ve sat through myself, and you all must be eager to go on your holidays.”

  She paused briefly, waiting for the brief round murmurs to die down before continuing.

  “This has been a good year; we’ve had several students prematurely choose to graduate with rare and epic [Classes], others have set new records of their own, and I don’t think we’ve ever had a class of future starship captains that has as thoroughly exploited the challenges before them. If any of them wind up in the navy, they’ll wind up admirals ... or the most notorious petty officers in the entire organization.

  “As you all know, there’ll be a two-month break before classes resume; however, the teachers remain available for the next week in case you have any questions or need help.

  “And, of course, the academy’s library and training facilities will remain open, and some volunteers from the Hunter’s guild are offering to stand in for the teachers for those of you who would like to visit some of the training dungeons during the break.”

  That sounded like something he’d like to do. He had time for fun later.

  “Without further ado …” she raised both hands above the lectern and snapped her fingers.

  Nothing happened, or so it seemed for a long moment, until a light weight settled on his lap, causing Derek to look down at the leather folder that had appeared there.

  “… Oh, and the buffet is now open.”

  Derek ignored that and instead opened the folder to check over his report card.

  Good marks across the board, though he had to admit, the actual description of his performance was surprisingly painful.

  “Derek Thoma is both intelligent and capable of using said intelligence, but also has a tendency to go for alternate win conditions during training scenarios, rather than learning the intended lesson.”

  Yeah, ouch.

  Tanja giggled, the sound far too close to his right ear, and Derek jumped in surprise with a startled yelp.

  “What!?” he snapped.

  “That could have been Isaac’s report card,” she said, ruffling his hair and yanking her hand back when he tried to brush it off. “You’re going to be a real menace one day, aren’t you?”

  “I’m not sure ‘menace’ is what he should be aiming for,” Mom sighed. Dad nodded in agreement. Viktoria practically twisted herself into a pretzel to read the report card that was currently hanging at his side, then let out a bark of laughter when she succeeded.

  Derek turned to his sisters. “That reminds me we have any unique books at the library on Mars? Ones I wouldn’t find in the academy library?”

  Tanja shook her head.

  “Really?” Ye-in asked, having stepped closer at some point without him realizing.

  “If Isaac felt something should be spread, he’d spread it; if he felt it should be kept secret, he didn’t write it down. Or at least not somewhere as public as the family library,” Viktoria explained.

  “We do have one hell of a training room,” Tanja pointed out. “I’m heading out in a week, but if you want to fight something specific, I could summon and supervise. Unless you want to go visit some other star systems with me.”

  Tempting. Very tempting. Derek had never been outside of Sol. In fact, he’d never even been outside the range of the Fast Travel System, which barely even reached the asteroid belt.

  But at the same time … he’d be able to do whatever the hell he wanted once he took up a [Class] and started leveling. For right now, training was much more important. Probably.

  “Thanks, but I think I’ll stay in Seoul and train,” he said. “But if you’re willing to help me fight monsters on my own … that’d be really awesome!”

  He also held out his report card to Ye-in when she showed him hers.

  It was a lot like his, good marks across the board, though the comment of “good student with potential” was a lot more positive than his.

  “What are you going to do over the break?” Derek asked.

  Ye-in shrugged. “Not sure. Head to Jupiter, maybe, see if I can line up some internships or something for when I’m a legal adult. I heard you’re just gonna keep your nose to the grindstone? Don’t you need a break?”

  “Eventually,” he admitted. “But I feel good for now.”

  When she gave him back his folder, he snapped it shut and tucked it under one arm.

  “Let’s go raid the buffet!” he declared … only for him to discover that the majority of the adults had used their superior stats to all but teleport to said collection of food.

  Seriously, who was the grown-up here?

  “How about we all go out to eat in an actual restaurant, where we don’t have to fight people for the food?” Mom offered.

  “Actually, I think I’d like to go browse the food carts outside,” Derek suggested, and that was what they wound up doing, eating far too much and as it turned out, he and Ye-in were the only ones who actually suffered the consequences from overeating.

  Damnit. He needed to level … but he also needed to wait.

  ***

  That night, Derek lay awake at night, staring at the ceiling, thinking.

  He could pick a [Class] right now, he knew that. Tanja and Viktoria had started with an epic [Class] and, well, they were them, while Isaac, along with many of the early S-Rankers, had started with a common one, instead growing off of all the insanity they’d been confronted with at the time.

  Yet he couldn’t do that, he couldn’t rely on sheer luck and fortune to arrange suitable challenges for him to overcome and grow off. Not even a little bit.

  Therefore … therefore, he’d almost certainly have to grow off sheer fucking effort and grit instead, unless he got “lucky,” but he neither wanted to rely on pure chance, nor was he particularly interested in “may you live in interesting times” kind of luck. That was a line was intended as a curse, after all.

  So, he made a decision.

  Was being stuck without a [Class] for however long it took to earn a legendary one comparable to what his siblings had been through.

  Ha, nope.

  In fact, other than the fact that every year he aged at a low Level would translate into a decade or two at a higher one, he wasn’t outright losing much, because there were ways he could (at least in theory) mitigate the impact that loss had on him.

  And even so, people barely died of old age anymore, and no one even knew the baseline lifespan of a High Human anyway.

  The older Thoma siblings had fought monsters against terrifying monsters, perhaps trying to defeat time itself would be a suitable substitu- … bwahahaha, yeah, nope. But it was as close as he could get without a world-shaking crisis happening in the next decade or two.

  So, what was a suitable timespan to offer up … a decade, at the very least, before he’d reassess. Unless he earned a legendary [Class] before then … as if that could happen.