Zack woke slowly, his consciousness fighting to the surface of a pain-induced nightmare. His entire body was stiff and sore. To make matters worse, he was lying on an extremely uncomfortable, hard wooden floor. Standing above him, arguing, were three women of differing ages. Kneeling by his side, paying no attention to the argument above, was Zara.

“What’s Tessa doing here?” He whispered to his sister. His voice pitched low enough that those above didn’t hear him.

Her eyes crinkled with a hint of suspicion. “She says she was worried when you never showed up for class.”

“Don’t worry, she isn’t the one who did this to me, not exactly anyway.” He reached up and tugged on a strand of her hair. “Where’s George or Zelda?”

The bear, it turned out, was sitting on a chair in front of the table she used for schoolwork.

The other three finally noticed he was awake when Zara got up to fetch the bear so he could use it as a pillow.

“Who did this to you and why?” Jean demanded as soon as he was slightly more comfortable.

Zack took stock of his body before answering. “How bad is it?”

“Mostly superficial bruising across your entire torso and we are assuming legs, along with a cracked or broken rib,” Edith told him.

He cursed and looked up at Jean. “How will this affect me going through the portal next week?”

“More than likely, Rose is not going to let you go through in your current state, and we can’t hide this from her, either. The academy nurse was here a little bit ago.”

Zack cursed again and leaned back in momentary defeat. He needed to go through that portal!

“It was Dorn Albright, that Spencer idiot Quinn hates, and some other kids,” He recounted the entire event to them in a subdued voice, ashamed of his own inability to do anything.

“He said that my father and I will someday belong to his family?” Tessa asked, her eyes growing cold. “Just wait until my mother hears about that!” She gave a short, mirthless laugh and stood. “If you all will excuse me, it seems I need to have a chat with my parents. Zack, I’ll see you in class tomorrow. I’m sorry this happened to you merely because I chose to sit at your table. I’ll find some way to make it up to you.” She tilted her head at Zara, and then the two others, before leaving in a rush.

Jean pulled a chair from the table close and sat down with a sigh. “This is going to be a problem.”

“The Albrights?” Edith questioned.

“No,” Jean waved away the name. “They are a concern, but not the problem.” She glanced at the dorm matron with a frown, deciding how much she could say in her presence.

“Why don’t I make a trip over to the cafeteria and get us all some food?” Edith proposed, catching on quickly.

“The problem,” Jean began as soon as they were alone. “Is that Tessa is not an idiot, and neither are her parents. If she describes your scars, her father is going to have an idea of what caused them. He will be curious as a researcher. It’s in his nature. Her mother, however, could ask questions that are better left alone.”

Zara stepped in front of her brother, shielding him. “What kind of questions?”

“There was a rumor that went around the squad when we first rescued the two of you. It was one so ridiculous that we all just immediately laughed at the idea and forgot about it. We all knew that the researchers had used you in conjunction with experiments pertaining to their portal. The members of the squad all pictured them pushing you against the surface of the portal and doing something…” She shook her head with a wry smile. “We had no idea how researchers worked back then. The rumor, though, was that you had actually gone through the portal and had the scars to prove it.”

Zack struggled to sit up with Zara’s help. Leaning against George’s now squashed body, he wiggled over to the couch. His skin had a fresh sheen of sweat by the time he finished moving the short distance. “And what do you think now?” He wanted to hear her say it before he confirmed anything.

She swallowed and looked at the jagged scars visible beneath the bandage wrap on his stomach. “Now, I think that rumor was right, they found some way to get you through the portal early.”

“You should probably tell the sergeant and the major what you have deduced, as well as about Tessa’s family, and the nurse.” Zack reached for his damp uniform shirt, cringing at the thought of putting the filthy thing back on. “They both already know the truth. They saw the scars firsthand and were the ones who decided to hide them from the rest of the squad and possibly the people above them. While you’re at it, can you also ask them how they sealed my status page in the first place? I didn’t even know that was possible until it happened.”

“That isn’t possible. We don’t have any idea how they work, let alone know enough to seal them.” Jean shook her head. “Wait, so does this mean that you already know what your class is going to be?”

He shrugged, regretting the movement immediately after as it pulled at his rib. “Possibly. I was a mage-based class before. There is no telling if that will be the case this time. As far as I know, no one has ever awakened their status page and class twice.”

“Hold on,” Her eyes snapped to his. “What do you mean, mage-based class? Were you a mage or something else? How high was your level?”

He winced at the slip of the tongue he hadn’t even realized he’d made. “I’ll just say I was above level ten when we were finally rescued.” Hopefully, that was enough to throw her off the trail.

Travelers got their ‘Junior Classes’ at level five, and ‘Regular Classes’ at level ten. The mage class went through several evolutions and changes during that time. It was unknown if the aberration classes would evolve at higher levels as the records pertaining to them had never gone above level twenty-four. It was hard to raise one’s level to that point. Only a few travelers had ever gotten their ‘Specialist Classes’ at level twenty-five.

There was little reason for most to even try pushing their levels higher after a certain point. With the time limit and their need to guard the miners, few travelers ever even traveled into the depths of the portal where the stronger monsters were. More than that, unless their compatibility was high enough, the amount of work involved just became too high.

There were, of course, portals with stronger monsters near the entry-point, few corporations actively mined them. It made little sense to spend the money paying for higher-level travelers when the payout wasn’t worth it. Those portals contained mana crystals that were more valuable, true. That didn’t mean anything when people died on each trip. There weren’t enough travelers for anyone to be so cavalier about their lives.

It was left to the governments and the military to guard those portals deemed too dangerous.

She squinted at him and shook her head with a sigh. “Fine, keep your secrets. I don’t actually care what your specific class and levels were back then. Still, they were able to discover a way to forcefully activate your status as a child. Why haven’t we heard anything about it since? I know we took all the research materials we found at the location.”

“What are you going to do now?” Zack asked, wincing as he shifted uncomfortably.

“I’m going to talk to the sergeant and the major as you suggested,” She said after a moment’s thought. A conflicted look crossed her face as she continued. “This attack, while it may have been a small student’s spat, is going to have lasting effects. Both on you and them. You understand what that means, right?”

“I know, and after I go through the portal next week, I’ll know how much I need to worry.” His voice was confident.

“I already said Rose may not let you go through in your condition,” Jean paced around the room, her eyes flicking back to the siblings after every step. “This is why you were so confident and cavalier on the carriage ride over that first day. After you go through the portal, either you regain your class and level, or you reawaken as a different class. In both cases, you still have all the personal, hard-earned experience you gained hunting monsters and beasts before. You would quickly be able to raise your level and prove your worth.”

“That was the basic plan, yeah,” He agreed readily, impressed with her deduction skills. It wasn’t the whole plan, or anything even close to that. He was holding too much information back for her to get a better picture than that. Still, she had gotten the general idea.