Hello everyone!

Rough times in my house right now. I want to keep typing for you all to enjoy no matter how tough the situation is!

Most people let real life problems drag them down! Not me! No! I keep on going! I drag real life down! In order to properly kick real life back into its corner. I decided to start writing a side story! It has no relevance whatsoever to DE. It is titled, "Win to Live". As of this post it is still awaiting approval from the mystical gods that govern Royal Road. Go read it if you want, don't if you don't. I won't force anyone. Huge thanks to all of you who have supported me thus far and I hope you continue to do so!

I feel a bit cheap doing a self plug here, but no worries! This chapter is where things finally start to heat up!

Enjoy the chapter!

And remember: Don't let life kick you into a corner! Kick it into its corner first!

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Chapter 12: Ranking

I slowly open my eyes. A bright light shines into them.

I let my eyes slowly adjust to the light. How long was I out for?

Once my eyes finally adjust I look around. Wait! I look around quickly once again.

It is the throne room from the other world! Why am I here!?

I look around the room. I realize that I am already standing.

There is no way this is anything but an illusion! What is going on!?

“Looks like you have already realized it.” A voice that sounds close yet so far away comes from everywhere within the room.

I nod slowly, “Who are you?”

It laughs, “’What’ would be a better word for that question you know.”

I tilt my head, “What are you?”

A shadowy figure of a human forms in front of me, “Pleasure to meet you… Well, you have two names, so I shall call you your current name. Let me try this again.” The shadowy figure coughs, “Pleasure to meet you Ryu. I have been watching your progress as of late and I would like to congratulate you. I have approved of you. You are not the first, but I will tell you that it is few. My favor is not easy to gain you should know.”

I frown, “I’m sorry. I have no idea what is going on right now. I was in the middle of eating dinner with a girl when BAM! I black out.”

He scratches his head, “Well, since you were able to gain my favor, I thought I would let you show off in front of the girl… but who knew that you were able to gain my favor while you were still at the first realm still? Your body was unable to handle it. However, I will tell you that in your world, no more than a couple of hours have passed.”

I tilt my head, “Then what was out the window?”

The shadowy figure laughs, “Not a thing. That girl will probably tell you when you return.”

I sigh, “What a confusing woman.” I look at the shadowy figure and try to figure out his identity.

“You won’t be able to tell by looking.”

“You can read my mind?”

The shadow shrugs, “I have existed for as long as the universe is old.”

I frown, “I am sorry. I have no idea. May you please tell me?”

The shadow laughs, “Of course!” The shadowy figure holds out its hand. A large amount of energy is coming from the palm of its hand.

Spatial energy!

I can tell the shadowy figure is grinning, “Looks like you figured it out. I am spatial energy. I have existed for so long I have formed a conscience. You are now able to safely absorb as much spatial energy as you see fit. Make new techniques or copy old ones. Walk an untraveled path or follow the paved road. From here on, those decisions are for you to make. Well, I say all this, but what does it matter if you don’t make it to the ninth realm soon?” My vision starts to fade, “Don’t disappoint me!”

My vision once again fades to black.

I can feel my body now. I feel oddly warm…

I slowly open my eyes. This is my room. Wait!

What the Fuck!?

I turn my head to the left, I see Kelly’s face extremely close. This is a one person bed.

I turn my head to the right, I see Sayaka’s face less than an inch from mine. This is only a one person bed!

I feel movement from on top of me.

I look under the blanket and see that Claire has curled up in a ball on my stomach. How little does she weigh!?

Wait! That’s not the issue! Why are the three of them in my room and in the same bed!?

I quickly jump out of bed. Everyone but Kelly falls off because she was against a wall. They all wake up though.

“RYU!!!” All the girls shout at the same time.

I cover my ears, “So loud! Just calm down for now! Everything is okay!”

Kelly jumps onto me and hugs me, “I’m sorry!”

I peel her off of me, “There is no reason for you to be sorry. I just… uh… didn’t sleep enough so I passed out.”

Claire jumps at me, knocking me over. So strong despite her small appearance! She frowns while looking into my eyes, “Why did you take Kelly on a date? It seemed like you hated her!”

“I don’t remember saying that.”

“Then you like her?”

“I never said that either!”

“Then why did you go on a date with her!?”

“I owed her a favor and decided I would take her out to dinner! That is all it is! You may not have heard this yet so I will tell you now! I had a wife in the other world, I will stop at nothing to find her in this world! I will not go near any woman in that manner other than my wife!”

Sayaka has tears in her eyes, “You never told me you had three years left to live…”

How’d she find out? I push Claire off of me, “Now is not the time to panic or burst into tears. I have to go do something!” I quickly run out of the room.

I was still wearing the clothes I was yesterday. It was now the next morning.

I run towards Damion’s office at full speed. I use the power of heaven and earth to make my sprinting faster.

I arrive in front of his office and go in without knocking. I close the door behind me.

I turn to look, there was a young looking woman standing in the middle of the room.

The principal sees me and frowns, “I’m sorry for this interruption Ms. Frizen.” He looks to me, “What is wrong now Ryu?”

That name seems familiar.

I am panting so my sentence doesn’t come out quite right, “Girls… chasing… me… after… I… ran.” I fall to my knees out of breath.

The woman… Ms. Frizen scowls at me, “What is a lowly first realm student doing here?”

I quickly catch my breath. I take out my gold card that was miraculously still in my pocket, “I am not as simple as you think…” I smile widely as I remember why her name sounds familiar, “Dr. Frizen.”

She turns to Damion, “This kid?”

Damion frowns, “I am sorry. His identity is strictly confidential. Even I barely have enough access to know his name.”

I bow slightly, “Hello, My name is Ryu. I am a student at this school. I have read your theory on ‘Spatial Energy’ and I found it to be quite… conclusive.”

She jumps at me much faster than I can react and grabs onto my shoulders, “Can you sense it at only the first realm!?”

My eyes widen in extreme surprise. I quickly talk within my mind, ‘Hey! Mr. Spatial energy! Am I allowed to show this woman?’ No response…

The woman starts to shake me violently, “Can you sense it!?”

“Stop shaking me!”

She quickly stops shaking me, “So can you? Can you sense it?”

I close my eyes and focus. I sense the spatial energy near me, and I bring it to me. I move it to just in front of my face, “I can do a bit more than sense it. Do you want to know what the correct parts of your theory are?”

She drops to her knees and puts her head on the ground, “I am not worthy enough to know my faults!”

Damion’s jaw drops. He shakes his head to recover, “Ryu. When did you read Ms. Frizen’s theory? She came here today to ask for it back...”

I think about it, “I read it about two days ago and was able to sense spatial energy after reading the book. I lost consciousness in the moment after being able to sense it for the first time, and then I was out for dinner and BAM! I wake up talking to Mr. Spatial Energy himself.” I look towards the woman bowing down to me… a nostalgic feeling arises in me but I shoot it back down, “Raise your head. It is I who is not worthy. If I didn’t read your theory I probably never would have come across this.”

She looks up at me from the floor, “Have you absorbed any of it yet?”

I shake my head, “No. I really… REALLY want to though. But I fear that it may conflict with my method if I start to absorb it before I am able to use my cultivation method. I feel no harm in telling you, since I owe you quite a bit for making that theory, my cultivation method is a special method where I have to be at the second realm without using any other method. I fear spatial energy will lock my method if I try to absorb it before I can use my method.”

She quickly glances to Damion, “How special is he?”

Damion frowns, “I cannot personally tell you. If you want to know, ask him, not me.”

I smile as Dr. Frizen slowly stands up. She coughs, “Excuse my earlier performance, I am Dr. Frizen it is nice to meet you erm... Ryu. I would like to ask who you were in the other world if you don’t mind.”

I nod slowly, “Since you won’t know of the position I had, mainly because I created it. But, I was able to defeat my generation’s martial emperor in under five seconds. The mage emperor could not even touch me. So I crushed them both, creating the position of Supreme emperor.”

Her jaw drops, “Y-you mean. B-b-both!?”

I nod, “Well… Yeah.”

She looks towards Damion, “Did you know about this?”

He nods. Dr. Frizen goes to sit down on one of the couches that has been moved to the side of the room. She stares blankly at the ceiling.

Damion looks towards me, “I think you broke her.”

I tilt my head, “I didn’t know that it was so easy to break people.”

Dr. Frizen looks at me with tears in her eyes, “My descendants are so worthless! I was a mage emperor! Did you know it was our bloodline that was powerful in the arts of magic! Spells that would normally take a minute to cast could be instant cast by us. How can you dodge instant casting!?”

I shrug my shoulders, “I used my skills to his disadvantage. He was just unlucky to have met me. He was probably quite powerful against other people, but I don’t know those kinds of things. My wife took care of paperwork and important events.”

Dr. Frizen falls to her hands and knees on the ground, “I have to wait until you get to my realm to fairly challenge you to a duel properly. Just you wait! Once you get to the ninth realm, I will find you and fight you!” Dr. Frizen runs out of the door.

I look towards Damion with a confused look on my face, “Is she normally like that?”

He sits at his desk and slams his head on it, “Yes. She’s my wife.”

I pat his shoulder, “There, there. At least you don’t have three girls who are crazy and stick to you.”

Damion raises his head and looks at me, “So. What did you need before you got on that tangent with my wife?” He slams his head on the desk again.

I tilt my head. “Oh yeah!” I remember what I needed, “Damion you have to help me. Kelly, Sayaka and Claire were all in my bed when I woke up from passing out. Also. Spatial energy is sentient to the point where it can have a fluent conversation with me. It also has its own weird sense of humor.”

Damion raises his head, “It had a sense of humor?”

I sigh, “While I was out with Kelly last night, I was going to look out a window when I suddenly blacked out. At that point Mr. Spatial Energy decided to give me access to spatial energy, which caused me to lose consciousness immediately.”

Damion frowns, “I didn’t know it had that kind of property. I should tell my wife once she calms down. Maybe she will be able to use it if she talks to it enough.”

I shrug my shoulders, “So what are we going to do about those three girls?”

He smiles, “Just leave it to me. You should head onto class without Kelly, and she probably won’t be there until the afternoon classes, and maybe not even then.”

I nod, “I can work with that.”

I leave Damion’s office and head towards class. I don’t have a watch on my so I guess the time by looking at the sky. It looks like there is about an hour and a half until class starts. I guess I can just have a nap on the desk until class starts.

I feel like I’m forgetting something… Nah, I don’t think I would forget anything if it was important.

I walk towards the classroom. Very few students were moving around. I guess there are a lot of last minute kind of people around here.

I walk into the classroom and see a couple of female students huddling in a circle. As soon as they see me they sit down into various chairs.

I ignore it as random girl talk being interrupted and go to my seat. I lay my head on the table and just rest there unmoving. I decided not to sleep because there are other people here already.

I glance at the clock on the wall. Two hours until class starts… Was I really that off by guessing from the brightness of the sky? Well, with a blood red sky, it is kind of hard to tell.

I hear the girls start talking again, “Is he asleep?”

“Yeah.” Um, no he isn’t. I think for sake of convenience I will label them in my head while they talk.

Girl A: “Okay, then we can continue the meeting.”

I was about to speak up and say I wasn’t sleeping when I hear the next sentence, Girl B: “The meeting on how to rid of the filth within this class will now start.” Shouldn’t you girls use a codename for something that severe?

Girl A: “Okay. We will have two major chances to get away with this. The first: The class ranking tournament. The second: The group test in the forest of a thousand trials.”

Girl C: “The forest of a thousand trials?”

Girl D: “I stole the teacher notes temporarily and found out that there will be a test that stresses teamwork. The forest it designed to be done at any realm, but only the first few trials can be done at the first realm though. As a person’s realm gets higher, they are able to challenge more trials.”

Girl A: “That being that. We need to get Ryu to fight one of us during the ranking tournament. If not, he may be able to get to a higher realm and defeat us. We need to crush him while he is still weak.”

Girl C: “Why do we need to do this?”

Girl A: “There are two great reasons! First! He has too many girls by his side, and he isn’t faithful to ‘Queen’! Second! He is a cripple. We cannot allow a cripple to taint our school’s name! We have to-“

“I’ve had just about enough of this!” As I was just about to ‘wake up’ Mr. Grey walks into the classroom. “Ryu, stop fake sleeping and just confront them already!”

I sit up slowly, “Well, this is kind of awkward for me.”

Mr. Grey walks to me, “Why did you let them talk like that about you? You of all people should be yelling to high heavens right now!”

I smile, “I was actually about to go on my patent pending rant. You’ve heard it already, it is a work of art if I do say so myself.”

Mr. Grey laughs, “Come on let them have it! I want to see their reaction!”

I laugh with him, “Some kind of teacher you are. I’ll shorten it so no one walks in while I’m ranting.” I take a deep breath and start to yell in the direction of the girls, “You think you are better than me! You think just because I came to this world from the other one I wanted to be missing my dominant arm!? In the other world I died in my wife’s arms after an intense battle! You think that because this body was hit by a train saving someone’s life! I currently have a little less than three years left on my life if I can’t make it to the ninth realm!” I walk towards the girls and spread my arms, “You want to get rid of me now!? Go ahead! I won’t resist for a second.”

The girls look at me dumbfounded. One of the girls breaks down and starts to cry.

I look to Mr. Grey, “I even shortened it. Are they all going to break down because of a small sob story?”

He frowns, “I didn’t know about you saving the person from a train.”

I nod, “Yeah, do you know a girl named Sayaka? Yeah, it was her.”

He makes a complicated expression, “Oh my. She must feel horrible about doing that to you.”

I shrug my shoulders, “I’m not angry at her, in fact I want to thank her for leaving me another reason to be strong.”

By this point all the girls had registered the story and were crying. The one was clearly not feeling remorseful. Girl A: “I’m so very sorry about plotting against you.”

The rest of the girls are legitimately crying so when they try to talk it almost sounds like choking.

I sigh. What is wrong with this Girl A? She really wants me dead?

I walk back to my seat and set my head down on the desk, “Now if that is all you need, I am trying to rest. I won’t be sleeping so please don’t try to talk about me in the open, mkay?”

Mr. Grey sighs as he sits beside me, “So, Why are you here so early?”

The girls started to leave the room quickly. I look towards Mr. Grey with my head still on the desk, “I had a run in with three girls, then Dr. Frizen. Then I was here.”

He frowns, “I won’t ask any more details… mainly for my own safety. But, do you want to know about the class ranking tournament?”

I shrug my shoulders, “Sure, why not.”

Mr. Grey smiles. He takes a deep breath and begins, “The class ranking tournament is used to decide the class ranking. There are five first round fights that are one on one, continuing until there are six people left. After that they will be put into a larger arena for a six way fight. Free for all style. The winner, no matter how it is done, is the last person left standing. The class rankings are not done individually. There are the top six, first rank, second rank, all the way to sixth rank. Rank will be decided by fighting style, victory speed, and placing in the tournament. For example, someone who loses in the second round, can still be first rank. But only the top six in the tournament can be put in the top six ranks.”

I nod, “That makes a lot of sense. So what happens if you are in the lowest rank?”

He smiles, “Absolutely nothing. However, there are rewards for those who make it into higher ranks. For example a fifth rank can get a bonus of money weekly or one technique book a month. Fourth rank can get two a month, third rank can get three, second rank can get four, and first rank can get up to five technique books a month. Of course the can choose money if they would rather have that. Technique books will vary in cost depending on the quality so most people choose to use technique books as their reward.”

I frown, “What about the top six?”

He shakes his head, “If only I could have made it to the tops six when I was in school, I don’t think I would be here right now. Anyways, the top six get to choose a new cultivation method to practice for free. Compatibility is chosen by the principal himself.”

The top six eh? I don’t really need anything though. I’ll just lose the first fight on purpose. Well, not like I can really win with the method I currently use. I can’t use techniques until I start using my cultivation method.

Seriously. I can’t help but think I’m forgetting something important.