Ever since the [Duel] with Sofia, I've been getting strange looks from my classmates. Well, I've always had been looked down upon by them, but now its even stranger. 

Although it was a mock battle between me and Sofia, people still believed that I had pulled some shady things behind the scenes, as they could not accept the result. They completely believed in the downfall of the F-rank boy, the [Worst One]. Yet, I was the one that came on top. Alas, they seemed to not understand that Sofia simply didn't win because she was handicapped, but it's not my business to correct their misunderstanding or/and complete obsession with Sofia.

But anyways, apart from that, everything was normal. 

Well, it was supposed to be normal but... recently, I have an annoying fly that keeps buzzing around me.

"So, why do you keep following me around?"

I clicked my tongue, as I watched the young European girl twirl around on her heels and give me a bewildered expression.

"Because I'm your personal servant am I not?"

"I told you to forget it-"

"No, I couldn't possibly break the [Duel] rules. It would be dishonourable for me to not abher to my punishment."

"And I'm telling you that there's nothing dishonourable about it if the person who won says that it's fine-"

"Still, I can't break-

"Fuck- Fine! Just stop yabbering about "honour" and "personal servant" around me anymore, okay!?"

"As you wish, master-"

"And don't fucking call me master either, it's disgusting as fuck!"

"Well, what should I call you then?"

"Are you stupi- Just call me by my normal name."

"Hmm. Is "Sa" your first name, and is "Dae" your middle name, and is "Hyun" your last name?"

"No, I don't have a middle name. Sa is my surname, and Dae-hyun is my first name."

Tilting her head slightly, she adorably placed her finger on her cheeks.

"...How does that make sense?"

"Its just how it is."

"Is... that so? Well, Dae-hyun, I'm glad we're friends now."

"I told you- ...Gahhhh.... Fuck this. I give up."

The biggest sigh of my life exited my mouth, as I slumped across the hallway with this crazy russian girl trailing beside me.

"Huh? What is Sofia-sama doing with that piece of shit?"

"No... my Sofia-chan... sniff..."

I could hear the grinding of teeth against teeth, the sounds of pens being broken, and the malicious whispering of classmates conspiring of ways to torture me.

One day... I'm really going to get killed, aren't I?

-----

Sitting down at my bench, people continued to flood in one by one, as everyone started getting ready for class. Well, it was more like lying around and talking with each other, but that's pretty normal.

Soon, a particular boy came in. Ash black hair, obsidian eyes with an impressive body frame, with a sharp jawline and a face that could be considered photoshopped- one that would immediately swoon any girl that laid their eyes on him.

[Iwasaki Mitsuo], a handsome first-year, my classmate, and the protagonist of [The Fractured Heavens]. A typical protagonist: A naive, kind and hard-working charcter that saved many heroines with his spectacular smile of his. Oh, plus the additional busted skills that he carries.

As he sat down, many girls eyed him, before looking away with a slight blush.

Right... even though he was an D-rank in this point and time... all the girls still liked him.

Ah... I love how the world revolves around looks and beauty.

Glancing beside me, Sofia did not seem to care all that much.

Sofia was supposed to have interacted with him in this moment, with Sofia garnering some interest in him due to the dense magic that wafted from his body.

However, now that event had been broken, for some reason.

Noticing my stare, Sofia looked at me with a slight smile as she opened her mouth.

"Hmm? What's the matter? Are you finally engrossed in my stunning looks?"

"Right. Yup, I'm definitely engrossed in your face. Ah~ so beautiful."

I half-closed my eyes, as I dead stared at her face before looking away in a monotone voice.

"Eh? Um... thanks for the compliment."

"..."

This girl did not understand one bit of my sarcasm. And why are you slightly blushing- stop.

Surely I can get the plot back to normal. Racking my head, I talked to Sofia again.

"...Don't you think that guy there seems kinda special? Like, strong or something? He also has a good face. Why don't you become friends with him instead?"

Sofia gazed at Mitsuo, before looking at me again, before glancing back and forth.

As her eyes landed on Mitsuo, her face scrunched up, before taking a glance back at me, in which she then nodded slightly and grinned.

"What?" I asked, as my eyebrows furrowed.

"Nothing. I just think that one is definitely better than the other."

"Mitsuo right?"

"...You're an idiot."

"Whatever you say, woman."

Drat. My plan failed. Isn't this weird? It should of been bullet proof! Sofia should've immediately been entranced by him... but why didn't it happen this time? Shit, I must of altered the plotline. 

The classroom teacher walked in, as the whole class scrambled back to their seats. 

"Hello everyone! Today, we'll be evaluating everyone's [Status]! Please come forward one by one when I call your names."

Sitting in the front of the classroom was a gigantic crystal-like green orb, about the size of a human child. 

Right, I think I should explain the [Status] in this world.

[Status] was the term used to display all the [Talents], [Skills] and [Stats] of a person. A status board did not appear when you yelled status, so what they did instead was create an orb that basically does the same thing. Alas, this was a monthly event, where you were able to see your current stats, and allowed you to judge where you stood at that point in time.

"Sa Dae-hyun!"

As my name was called, I walked up to the giant orb, and placed my hand on it.

The orb blasted with an impressive jade hue, as it sprung to life. A magical circle exited the orb as it ran along my arm, scanning.

The magical circle disappeared, and in place arrived my [Status], printed on the orb.

-----

Name: [Sa Dae-hyun]

Age: [16 years old]

Rank: [F]

Talent: [Marksmanship] (NEW), [Mana Manipulation] (NEW)

Skills: [Multitasking] Rank E-, [Stereoscopic Vision] Rank C+, [Sleight of Hand] Rank B-, [Swordsmanship] Rank F, [Mana] Rank F-, [Physical Aptitude] Rank E+, [Perseverance] Rank A+, [Pain Tolerance] Rank C+

[STATS]

-----

Hmm. I've got some new [Talents] and [Skills]. My [Stats] still look shit as fuck.

[Talent] was the term used to describe someone's innate aptitude. Most of the time, you were born with these [Talent] in place already, but sometimes rarely, you would awaken one. In my case, it seems that reincarnating into this body had awakened two new talents.

[Marksmanship] is pretty self explanatory, but the [Mana Manipulation] was different.

In [The Fractured Heavens], Sa Dae-hyun would awaken this talent after discovering a new way to fight near the end of the novel, or where I had left off before I gave up reading it. Alas, it didn't help his situation too much - He was still outclassed by the geniuses around him, and lost to his feelings of inferiority, causing him to aim at the heroines, blah blah blah. You get it.

However, since I had already read the novel and knew that this system could be established and used, I basically forcefully utilised it, causing him to acquire the new talent way ahead of time than usual.

As you can see from my skills, it was nothing noteworthy. 

Sa Dae-hyun had F-tier skills, which consisted of the [Swordsmanship] and [Mana], which again goes to show how absolutely dogshit stats he had. Before I reincarnated into this body, this guy didn't even have any [Talents] listed under his status! Truly tragic.

For my stats, it was displayed in a radar chart, where I surprisingly had somewhat of a good [Dexterity] stat, as well as really good [Endurance], probably from the original Sa Dae-hyun from slicing at that wooden dummy until his arms couldn't swing anymore. Apart from that, however, was just too sad to look at.

"Pff... His status is the worst, as usual."

"I mean he did recieve two new [Talents], but..."

"Yeah. Marksmanship isn't really... impressive."

Honestly, I was pretty happy with my status.

Compared to the past Sa Daehyun, I actually had increased stats, albeit only a small amount. 

"Sofia Elena Petrov!"

-----

Name: [Sofia Elena Petrov]

Age: [16 years old]

Rank: [A]

Talent: [Magic], [Swordsmanship], [Agility]

Skills: [Mana] Rank S-, [Swordsmanship] Rank A+, [Frost Aptitude] Rank S-: {Frost Shards}, {Glacier}, {Frost Wall}, {Frost Hailstorm}, {Frost Avalanche}

[STATS]

-----

As you can... Sofia is fucking overpowered. Like what the fuck is with all those S-Tier skills!? And maxed out in [Mana] is absolutely crazy... Why is life so unfair...

The "skills" that was listed under the [Frost Aptitude] was basically Sofia's skillset in spewing out Ice Magic. 

Christ, I'm getting chills remembering the shit Sofia could do. I remember one chapter where the author described {Glacier}, which was a massive ass piece of ice the size of a building that would fall towards the opponent. 

...Isn't that way too op?

Anyways, while I was clammering on inside my head, Sofia sat back down, gazed at me, then gave me a wink.

This woman is too full of herself...

"Iwasaki Mitsuo!"

Ah. Here comes the MC. 

-----

Name: [Mitsuo Iwasaki]

Age: [16 years old]

Rank: [D]

Talent: [Mana], [Swordsmanship], [Perserverance], [Accelerated Growth]

Skills: [Longsword] Rank D+, [Mana] Rank D+, [Light Aptitude] Rank S-: {Ablaze}, {Beam}, {Expel}, {Blinding Light}, {Holy Slice}, {Holy Dash}, {Holy Aura}

[STATS]

-----

...This bitch and his [Accelerated Growth]. This one talent of his singlehandedly is what allowed his stats to soar to the sky.

While poor plebians like me had to work extremely hard to gain our stats, this son of a bitch Mitsuo could easily grow, and super fast.

For example, if I was to kill a monster 100 times, Mitsuo only had to do it 5 times in order to gain a random [Stat] point. 

Urgh...

-----

Well then. Seeing Mitsuo's and Sofia's [Status] fired a flame inside of me.

I stepped into the construction yard. There were poles and scaffolding lying around, with a giant blue portal that hovered in the middle of the yard.

That's right, I was going to the [Dungeon].

Obviously, the best way to increase my stats were to enter a dungeon. It contained valuables and "exp" from the monsters that came from within.

The reason why I had quotation marks around "exp," was because there wasn't really an "Experience Bar" that you would see in typical RPG games. Instead, it was more abstract, as we did not have a "Level." It was more like the profiency level of the skills you used. If you fired off a bunch of [Fireballs], the profiency level wouldn't really increase. I'm not saying it would never increase, but it would just take an extremely long time for such a thing to happen. As such, you can imagine the [Stats] would not really increase either, as that was really just dependant on your fitness level. Just like how it takes countless hours in the thousands to become good at a game, or a year working out in a gym to produce great results, [Stats] also worked in this way.

It wouldn't magically increase in a day or two, and required many long hours of effort and consistency. That is the reason why the people born with innate [Talent] were blessed from the start. If you recieved a [Talent], your life would be smooth-sailing. It was basically a form of accelerated growth for [Gaia], where your [Skills] and [Stats] would immediately have a high rank. For example, if a person had the talent [Swordsmanship], their skill with the sword would already be high, and "leveling" up their swordsmanship would be extremely fast compared to someone who did not have the talent. 

That being said, you can see why the original Sa Dae-hyun was considered [The Worst One]. He had no [Talent], which was extremely rare in this day and age, where essentially 99.9% of people had at least one [Talent]. Like I had said before, it was extraodinarily difficult to "awaken" a new talent. It was a miracle that I even awakened two.

[Skills] were quite abstract: you wouldn't recieve a new skill whenever you passed a "level" threshold. Instead, it was more like a deep understanding of one's magic, and the creative ways that you would use to manipulate it. For example, instead of just a simple [Fireball], you could make it burn intensely just by imagining a combustion reaction between the hydrocarbon and oxygen gas, which would result in emitting a blue blaze comparable to a torch cutter.

Consequently, this was the reason why it was incomparablely hard to increase one's rank. Since it was difficult to acquire new skills, increase one's stats, and basically impossible to awaken a new talent, it was an arduous journey for a [Gaia] to increase their rank.

If you were given a F-rank, it would take at least a year for it to increase to E-rank. The higher rank you were, the harder it was for one to break through the threshold of increasing one's rank. That being said, S-ranks were pretty scarce, and revered by their home countries like [Gods].

Currently, I was stronger than an ordinary human, but drastically trash when compared to the rest of the [Gaia]. 

Sigh...

Taking a deep breath, I stepped towards the dungeon, as I became enveloped in a bright and warm light. 

The environment around me twisted and churned, before everything faded to a black and deep abyss. 

As my eyes became adjusted to the light, I was met with a long dusty hallway, caved in with rocks and stones. Dim torches burned quietly on the side of the walls, and a dark shadow loomed from the end of the hallway. 

Gripping my Glock 17, I held it close to my body in a ready position, as I slowly walked across the hallway.

The crushing pressure from the deep corners weighed on my mind. There were faint screams echoing down the hallway, and a murky feeling writhed from the walls within.

The longer I walked around, the more my gut was telling me to immediately run away and escape.

It didn't matter. 

Unconciously, my teeth began showing, as a smile crept up from my lips.

It's time to [Grind].

-----

A/N: This chapter was more of an explanation chapter, as you can see. I hope it wasn't too much of an info dump for the readers. As always, thanks for supporting my novel, and reading this chapter.