The silence continued for a few seconds, until it was interrupted by the confused exclamation of Bobby.

“What, in the actual fuck, just happened?”

He was looking at me when he asked this ‘question’ but honestly I’m even more confused than he is. Why am I alive? How has my wound disappeared like nothing happened?

A slow bit of realization hit me. Hadn’t the prince and his retinue said something about getting powers through the summoning?

Bobby’s question broke the damn of silence and stillness and someone rushed out of the crowd and wrapped their arms around me. I would like to say it was May or some other pretty girl, but in reality it was Julian. My best friend was crying with a still pale face. He looked like he was in shock, with confusion on his face with a faint tint of relief.

“I…. I thought you were dead man…”

His tears continued to flow as he choked out some words. I wrapped my arms around his shoulders too and tried to comfort him as he broke down. Ironic right? I was the one who was just shot but I was comforting him. The situation brought a strained smile to my face as the tension of the moment ebbed away.

I let out a long, long sigh.

“Come on man you’re embarrassing me, I just had something really cool happen but I get a man clinging to me covered in snot and tears. Well that just doesn’t feel fair.”

Despite my words the smile never left my face and became less strained and more teasing. I heard Julian take a deep breath as he regained his calm.

At this point in time Kristen approached and gave me a weird look.

“Aren’t you way too calm about all of this Tony? You were just shot. Are you really all right?”

Well, she might be right. But no matter how many times I checked my stomach there was no wound, and all pain was gone. The discomforting feeling of flesh moving continued inside for a while after the hole closed up but even that had stopped. I was perfectly fine.

Altru came in and put a hand on Julian’s shoulder. He steadily managed to get Julian to peel off of me and we both stood up. Altru looked in my eyes again, like he was looking for something in them.

“Tony. First of all I would like to thank you for what you did; it was very brave and I’m shocked any of you would stand up for me.”

Ohhhh, now I’m getting praised by a prince. Despite mostly doing it for anyone BUT him it still gave a great feeling of accomplishment. But his next words were not what I expected at all.

“But really, you shouldn’t have done that. It’s not that I’m admonishing you, far from it. But well…”

He gave a pause and looked at me with some guilt.

“I already had a barrier up to stop the bullet, I knew he had a gun from the beginning but wanted to see if he would use it…”

Oh….. Oh my god.

Did I almost just die for literally, LITERALLY nothing?!

My ego took a massive hit. All the good feelings from earlier for my good deed evaporated.

Ah, hahahaha.

Fuck my life.

Maybe everyone saw my emotions on my face as I deflated like a balloon losing air because I saw looks of pity here and there.

I want to find a deep hole and bury myself there please. It’s way too much to make a lifesaving action for someone in danger, even dying in the process, for them to have turned out to never have been in danger in the first place.

Shanks looked over at prince Altru with a disgusted look. His deep rumbling voice came out as an admonishment of the prince.

“My prince, could you not have waited to tell him that? He did something that not even the soldiers in this room were able to. Could you not let him revel in his accomplishment longer? This would kill morale in my troops if he had been a soldier of mine.”

Even Shanks, the quiet mountain of a man who hardly spoke, was showing pity to me.

This isn’t fair. I feel like crying more now than when I was dying.

Ok… maybe that’s an exaggeration but this really is unfair. What kind of bullshit is it to have taken a bullet for a prince and feel like I was an idiot and not a hero.

I started to grumble at the unfairness of it all and somewhat ignored the conversation between Shanks and Altru for the moment. While I was grumbling more and more people came up to me slowly.

May looked at me sheepishly, and at everyone else suspiciously, from behind the crowd of oglers as if to make sure someone wouldn’t shoot me again. Bobby wanted a high five for some reason, like I just scored a goal for his team in a big game. A few others I knew offhand simply asked if I was really ok, and if they could help.

I sighed. Sighing seemed to be more common out of my mouth than breathing today. The embarrassment of what Altru said slid off a little and I felt better for the fact that at least I knew a few people would actually care if I died. Most people never really get to find that out till the end.

Oh boy, lucky me…

As another person was coming up to ask after my well being Altru clapped his hands loudly to gather attention to himself. Everyone turned to him almost immediately.

“All right, all right. With all of this excitement I almost forgot what we came here for. I feel like I need to answer some questions for you all…. But frankly I feel like it would be better to move on to a more fun topic to ease the tension.”

A few people naturally had their gazes pulled towards the blood stains on the floor from where their classmate’s head had been a few moments earlier.

“First, since it doesn’t look like you got your overview or…. blast it what do you call it in your world?

Ah yes! A tutorial! Since you didn’t get the tutorial you were supposed to we will need to have you evaluated to see what you got through the power of the transfer between worlds. Our world has a system similar to what you would call a ‘videa game’ in your world. A special type of wizard can show you your ‘stats’ and any special powers you might have.

As I mentioned before you should have gained some amazing powers. Most summoned get stats at least twice that of a normal citizen as a base and a nearly 100% chance to have a specialized power.”

The atmosphere was heating up the most since we got here. Everything still felt up in the air, but who wouldn’t want to have super powers? Most looked interested, and many glanced to where my wound had been with expectant eyes.

Altru chuckled.

“Yes, it usually lightens the mood to talk about the fun stuff. Let's go to the adjacent room where our wizards are prepared. I was going to do this after the meal but it should be easier to talk about what your roles will be after confirming your powers anyways.”

Altru turned on his heel and immediately headed for the door opposite the one we came in from.

There was still grumbling here and there but everyone followed.

I lagged behind a little with Julian but still went after them, I didn’t really want to be in this room anymore anyways, what with almost dying here.

I took one last look at the bloodstains on the floor, shook my head to clear my thoughts, and followed the others.

As stupid as it is to say, I was excited. Beyond excited, actually.

Powers, we had powers and I was a confirmed case! I was so excited to see my stats I could hardly contain it, urging Jullian to move faster.

Oh how naïve I was.