Hannah Neal slapped a nearby desk with her hand to get everyone’s attention, before continuing her lecture. Her students’ attention had already been derailed more than enough, and it was time to actually get the show on the road.

Kai snapped out of his own daydreams and internal lamentations at the sound, pushed back into a state of attention out of reflex.

“Alright, the next thing I wanted to point out to you today was the World chart I’m sure you noticed plastered on the wall up there, and after that I’ll go over where everything is around TOAL. I don’t want you to accidentally walk into a portal to hell, like I said earlier. And we have our own ranking system just to avoid scenarios like that.”

The four students looked up at the poster in question, observing the simplistic design of 5 differently colored rows stacked on top of each other with an accompanying smiley or frowny face.

“We’ve decided to categorize Worlds based on how kind and innocent the place is, from their people to the environment. At the top are Fairytale Worlds, where everyone is super nice and the danger is at a minimum. Sure, a Dark Lord might pop up once a century, but any kid from Earth could take them down with the help of a System. You three got sent to one, in fact.”

The implications of her last two sentences flew over their heads, leaving Kai with a silent schadenfreude-fueled snicker.

“Next up are Heroic Worlds. They’re not as good as Fairytales, but are still very much habitable. The people in general are just as nice, but there happen to be a few more assholes around who are willing to make life harder for everyone else. But they’re rare enough that they’re usually on the fringes of society or outside of it altogether.”

Everyone nodded again.

“And after that, we’ve got Noblebright.” While the last two categories were denoted by dark and light green with a pair of smiley faces, this one was yellow and contained a face with a horizontal line for its mouth.

“These Worlds aren’t really that fun. Usually they’re middle of the line when it comes to innocence and morality. Everyone there’s seen and experienced a lot of awful things, but they usually still have hope. And that means there are a lot of both jerks and decent people, all just trying to make a living for themselves. Usually after a while, the Worlds can go either way; back towards Heroic or to the next rank.”

The soldiers in the back of the room looked on and sighed. They had plenty of experience with what was coming up.

“Now we have Gilded Worlds. Let me be honest, these places suck. Almost everyone there is an asshole, and only a thin veneer of civility keeps things from crashing down into a slugfest for survival. Though that kind of anarchy usually happens after an army wipes out half a town and takes all of their food. Anyway, this is usually where TOAL deploys their troops the most, since the people from these Worlds tend to abuse summoning rituals more than anyone else.”

“And I’m guessing that’s where you picked me up from?” asked Kai. “It could’ve been a Fairytale or Heroic World, though,” he thought to himself.

“On the money!” chimed Ms. Neal. “Now onto our last category, Grimdark. Thank god these places are rare, because they’re utterly horrific. Usually they’re Gilded Worlds where that veneer I was talking about gets completely stripped away and something really bad is happening across the whole world. Something like a worldwide genocide, all out war with invading demons turning the entire planet into a literal hellscape, and what else…”

“Or Carnicula,” replied one of the soldiers in the back, sounding out the word like “carni-cool-uh.” One of the other guards nudged him on the shoulder. Hard.

“What’s Carnicula?” asked one of the children.

“Something really terrible that happened a long time ago that we’re apparently not allowed to talk about because of how nasty it was.” said Ms. Neal in a frantic yet forceful sputtering of words. “Just know that discussing it might bring up some really bad memories for some of the people here, so please let’s just leave it at that. Ok? We might cover it later once you get your feet wet and we find someone with enough nerve to talk more about it.”

“Mmh, fine,” grumbled the same kid. He looked upset, but soon settled down. Even he could read the room and see how big of a deal this was to everyone. But the curiosity still burned within him, within all of them.

The rest of the lesson continued on, with Hannah listing the basic amenities present in the headquarters and where to find each of them. Various bathrooms, living quarters, the cafeteria, and the medical bay. She also included an incredibly helpful set of instructions on how to read the signs that Kai passed by earlier that day, and how the arrows carved into the metal placards would actually point towards where the destination stamped on them was. How fascinating!

Eventually, the lesson ran its course and everyone was ready to get out of there, the teacher included.

“Alright, everyone! That’s it for today’s lecture. There’s not much else I can teach you here that you won’t learn by exploring the place for yourself. Tomorrow, I’ll be taking a look at what each of you knows from back on Earth and coming up with a syllabus based on that to follow.”

The three kids groaned again. The first one in particular gave Hannah an accusing stare and demanded an answer to the question burning within him.

“Oh come on, do we really need to learn anything more? We’re heroes for crying out loud! Everyone we rescued loves us, and we didn’t need to go to school to save the Kingdom then, so why do we have to go now? We can just live off of what they give us for being heroes!”

Ms. Neal took a deep breath and closed her eyes. She let it out all at once as she delivered an annoyed glare at the young boy in front of her. “That goodwill isn’t going to get you everything, you know. And a bunch of money alone isn’t enough to live a good life. You need to know how to use it too!”

“Eh, we made a ton of money,” replied the third child. “We’ll just buy a mansion or a castle, fill it with maids to clean up after us, and maybe even a chef who can make us pizza every day!”

The teacher lifted her finger and opened her mouth to respond, but was interrupted.

“Oh yeah, that sounds awesome! Maybe have them make tacos on Tuesdays?” opined the second one.

Ms. Neal was able to get out a sharp stutter this time, but once again had her voice edged out.

“Oh totally! We can take turns picking what we want them to make us on weekends!” exclaimed the first.

At that point, her eyes began to grow bleary and she relaxed the muscles in her arm, letting it fall limply to her side. She stared at the three bitterly as she let them continue their conversation unabated.

Kai looked at the scene, feeling a sense of pity for his teacher. He wasn’t the only one who had to deal with them grandstanding their accomplishments, and the poor lady looked like she had enough of them. He doubted she really wanted to be here either. Maybe just like him, she missed out on her promised adventure too, and has to look after brats all day instead? If Kai were in her shoes, he’d jump in front of the nearest truck to try and get a do-over of his isekai adventure.

Kai realized he felt more than just remorse; he was overwhelmed with empathy. On second thought, this probably was Ms. Neal’s adventure, or the closest thing she’d get to one. Guiding kids dragged far away from home through the start of their new lives. And she had the misfortune of dealing with a bunch of brats along the way. While Kai could just walk away from these kids, Hannah Neal was stuck with them. He thought he had it bad right now, but she really did have it much worse.

Kai sighed and turned towards the carefree children. “Hey, what do you three plan to do once that goodwill runs out?” he barked. “They’re not going to be showering you with money once they move on from what you did. There’ll be new threats and new heroes who’ll save the day.”

“Eh, we’re still strong while over there,” scoffed the first boy. “We can just go adventuring and make money that way! Or retire and buy a farm, I guess. A lot of adventurers do that, you know.”

“Well, do you know how to calculate the taxes you’ll owe on any found loot?” asked Kai with a cocked eyebrow. “Or if you do buy that farm, do you know how much to sell your produce for to turn a profit? How about reading a lease or property deed to make sure you’re not getting tricked by something in the fine print?”

The pubescent trio began to look amongst each other, the second even putting some of his fingernails in his mouth and biting down on them.

“Hey, we have a ton of levels!” finally shouted the first kid. “We don’t have to worry about any of those things!”

“Well, how about right now?” asked Kai with a smug grin. “Everyone just said you don’t have any levels here. And what if someone does something to get rid of your levels like with what’s happening now? Then what?”

“Well… no,” finally admitted their ringleader. “But we’re still strong! We’ve taken down really awful threats, we can take down anyone even without our levels!”

The other two jumped in with a series of confident nods.

“Oh please, you’re overly reliant on your levels, I doubt you have any skills yourselves.”

“In that case, prove it!” shouted the third child. “We could take you on, easy! Even if you are older than us. You’ve never even had a System or levels, so you’ve never had true power like us!”

Kai’s careful eyes passed over the three as he sized them up. They had puffed up chests and the swagger of braggarts. There was a very good chance that they were telling the truth and would beat his ass so hard that the trauma team would have trouble putting him back together again, even with magic!

He looked over to the soldiers in the back to see what they could’ve been thinking about their argument turning violent. All he could glean however were various looks of excitement and exasperation, along with whispers about money.

Wait a minute, those assholes were taking bets! Well, he could at least guarantee that someone’s ass was about to be beat.

Kai’s eyes narrowed as he took in the last of his surroundings. He’d jumped into fights he knew he’d lose before back home, but only to protect his friends. And right now, he was about to jump into a potential dumpster grease fire for the sake of Ms. Neal. Yeah, it was worth it, if only to protect her adventure.

With a final glance around the room to take everything else in and a final sigh, he looked towards the three with his most intimidating glare and uttered a single word. “Bet.”

Before they could register his response, Kai immediately jumped out of his seat, picked up his small chair, and threw it at their ringleader.

“Ok team, let’s- augh!” shouted the furniture’s victim. He was barely able to get out of his own seat before being struck to the floor.

“Chon, are you alright?” asked the second kid in response, completely distracted from what truly deserved his attention; the man who threw the chair in the first place.

Kai let out a scream as he jumped at the blond and kicked him square in the chest, sending him falling to the ground as well.

“What the hell?!” shouted the third kid. “We didn’t even say start yet!”

Kai simply let out another howl and performed a running gut punch in response, making the last of his victims fall to his knees in pain.

“Alright, alright! Everyone stop!” shouted their teacher.

“Ugh,” groaned the first kid. “Ms. Neal, Kai just beat us all up! Aren’t you going to punish him?”

“Hey, you’re the ones who goaded him into a fight in the first place,” she replied with her arms crossed. “If anything, you got exactly what you had coming to you. Kai was just doing as you all asked!”

“But we asked for a fight!” exclaimed the second kid. “He just threw a chair at us and used the shock to knock us down!”

“Yeah, a weakling who’s never had any levels did that to a team of level 63 adventurers,” one of the soldiers in the back chimed in. “No real fight’s ever fair, remember that. And Kai’s obviously been in enough of them to know it for himself.”

“H-he’s right,” replied the third child. “We got our butts kicked, and we’re supposed to be heroes!”

“We were all heroes once,” replied the same soldier. “But as Kai said, levels do all of the heavy lifting, so we’ve all learned how to fight without it. Our strongest weapon could probably take out your 1000 year old lich, but that’s only thanks to the mad scientists we’ve got working for us! And the amount of tech and magical knowledge they needed to put it all together is ridiculous. How do you think we figured out how to do all of that in the first place?”

“…School?” asked the first kid.

“Yup.”

“Hold on,” said the third, getting his friends’ attention. “Did you say magic? Do we get to learn magic here?!”

“Of course!” chimed in their teacher. “Oh my god, I completely forgot to mention that!”

“I changed my mind,” said the first child. “If we all get to learn more magic, I think it’s going to be great! I haven’t been able to cast a single spell since we got here, so I can finally be a wizard again!”

As the three continued to chat amongst themselves, Hannah Neal turned to face Kai. With a heartfelt smile on her face, she nodded in thanks and whispered, “and that’s why you’re my favorite student.”

Well, even if Kai wasn’t going to be going on the kind of adventure he expected anytime soon, he was now certain that he’d still be having plenty of fun. Especially if that meant he could continue beating up little kids.