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Student #000001

Through our judgement criteria, you have been placed in Batch 101 - The Golden Batch.

To compensate for your significant talents, we have given you a 0.5x debuff to ALL point collection. Director Kay Takamiya has personally reviewed your profile and found this to be necessary in order to balance your ability with the rest of the students.

We expect only the best from you. After all, you were the Ideal Human Project’s greatest success.

Good luck, student #000001.

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Bullshit.

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Welcome to The Academy of Grinding.

—Numbers are everything.

“That’s a pretty funny motto, don’t you think, Akira?”

Despite the fact that we were each assigned our own dorm rooms, provided instructions to ‘please stay in them’ and the fact that the girls’ dorms were in a separate area of the school, this strawberry-blonde girl was still sitting on my academy-issued desk, nonchalantly, as if it were hers. She was dangling her legs off of my table (something which shouldn’t be sat on in the first place), looking down at me with a godforsaken empty smile.

Sigh.

“We’re getting our instructions soon, shouldn’t you go back to your room, Sumire?”

“I don’t see any difference? The message from the school was just a suggestion anyway.”

Could the wording of the message really be interpreted as a suggestion? In my eyes, it seemed much more like an instruction than something just to take mere inspiration from.

Our phones flashed once again—a new notification.

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From: TAG Administration

The POINTS and GATHER Apps have been unlocked on your phones. Please promptly open them and identify what you have to do. This will determine your standing in the school.

These will be the most important apps of your life. Everything from your living conditions, treatment, food, water, strength, opportunities and future will be determined by this. Focus right now, or regret it for the rest of your life.

Population of The Academy of Grinding: 100,000 students.

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There was another ‘please’ sentence in the same vain that it could be inferred to be a  suggestion’, but it seemed even Sumire was actually focussing on the task given by the school. It was definitely eerie for sure—but having 100,000 students from all over Andromedae B and other places around the galaxy transported into one school wasn’t exactly a normal occurrence.

It was supposedly a program from one of the planets, but who knows what they’re actually doing.

“Akira, you really should stop staring into space. This is actually important.”

I opened my academy-issued phone.

POINTS

Your current points: 0

Current Rank: #100,000

Well, that was pretty anticlimactic.

Still, the next app wasn’t quite as predictable, well, maybe not in the way I thought.

GATHER

[Tap]

It was certainly easy to understand. I could already hear the faint sound of Sumire tapping away at her phone. The sound was made especially noticeable due to her long, pink, artificial nails which scratched away at the screen as she clawed away like a little rat. Clickety clack.

Clickety clack indeed. I also pressed the incredible button which graced my screen.

POINTS

Your current points: 6.5

Current Rank: #98,421

I wasn’t exactly an avid gamer, but my finger speed wasn’t that slow. There was definitely a limit to the speed at which you could tap the screen. I guess there’s a system to stop you from just jitter-clicking and racking up points with immaculate CPS. This was supposed to be the ‘greatest meritocratic academy in the world’ or something—I didn’t really care enough to read all their promotional posters.

Placing her hand on her lap while still tapping away at her phone, Sumire looked back up at me with her subtly-red eyes—something that matched almost religiously with her hair colour.

“I assume you have the 0.5x debuff as well, Akira.”

She really did love adding my name to the end of her sentences.

“Yeah, we’re probably from the same batch.”

I was still clicking on the GATHER App as well. I guess the school would introduce more intricacies later; this must just be an introduction of some sort. For something that took the cumulative efforts of several civilisations, this system was a bit more quirky than I would’ve expected. It was just a scaled-up, real-life version of a mobile game.

“You’d think that several civilisations would’ve come up with something a bit more intricate… Akira?”

I was certainly thinking the exact same thing.

What was with the gap before adding my name to the end of the sentence this time?

POINTS

Your current points: 21.5

Current Rank: #99,187

My rank seems to have fallen since I last checked. I guess the debuff was really hurting me, especially now that most of the other students have probably caught on to what was happening.

Sumire stretched her arms a little.

“Do you want to have a look around the school with me? We might as well learn as much as we can while we tap,” she asked.

I wasn’t sure if the school was going to add anything in the meantime, but just based on the click delay, there wasn’t much of a reason to just stay holed up in my room all day. This academy was really big, so there’d definitely be much to get used to.

“I suppose so.”

Leading the way, with her thumb still tapping the phone, Sumire hopped off my desk and walked over to the door. Begrudgingly, I followed behind.

Suddenly, a notification popped up on our phones.

Surprise Question

What’s the integral of 𝑡𝑎𝑛^3(𝑙𝑛(𝑥))/𝑥 ?

Write your answer here in standard notation: _________________

It was a simple high-school level calculus question. I guess most of the difficulty lay in actually typing in the answer in standard notation using the virtual keyboard they provided which clearly wasn’t built for math. Assuming that budget wasn’t an issue, the school likely did that on purpose.

Still, it wasn’t hard per se.

Correct!

You were the 15^th student to answer that correctly. (5.65s elapsed)

You have been awarded 30 points

“Looks like I beat you, Akira.”

I looked over at Sumire’s phone which showed that she was the 6^th student to answer the question, taking only 4.32 seconds. I blame it on her more slender fingers which would’ve made it easier for her to type the answer in.

To be fair, both of us wasted a second or two since we were in the middle of walking and had to lift up our phones. I guess that’s a lesson to us to pay more attention.

POINTS

Your current points: 71

Current Rank: #51,893

My rank didn’t rise very high, likely due to the fact that my reward was probably cut in half due to my debuff. It wouldn’t be long until my slight boost would get overtaken by others just from clicking.

We walked to the elevator.

“Sumire, how did you even know where my room was?”

She laughed a little.

“I had a look around and figured out the pattern to the room arrangements. They based it off of your students numbers and place of habitat prior.”

“How do you know my student number?”

Sumire glared at me with a subtle sense of disappointment.

“Did you not look at any of the pre-installed apps on your phone? You can look at everyone’s student number and phone numbers.”

Ah, I think I was too busy pondering about the unexpected softness of the bed. It was the first thing that convinced me that this school was rich rich, despite providing overly minimalistic interior design. Everything was white—normally that’s a red flag.

Regardless, I guess the school couldn’t give a rat’s ass about privacy. To be fair, a meritocracy which was supposed to ‘create humanity’s strongest warriors’ isn’t expected to be the forefront of ethical advancements.

“With all these rooms, how did you even manage to get to mine so quickly?”

“I was the fastest runner of my generation in the Ideal Human Project, you know?”

“Surely you have more social awareness than that.”

Sprinting down dormitory halls wasn’t exactly something that was seen as good etiquette.

“I’m kidding. It was a bit of luck, your student number was #000001, after all.”

I guess that was fair.

POINTS

Your current points: 92

Current Rank: #67,153

Looks like my rank was dropping again. That was to be expected. The school still hasn’t given us something to spend our points on. I assumed that they weren’t just there to be a cosmetic addition to our conventional schooling.

We took the elevator down to the 150^th floor—the first one which had a label other than ‘residential dormitory’. Making our way out, we were greeted by the overly modern architecture of the school, seeing large centre with quite a number of restaurants.

There was something on the entrance to the food court.

—[Min Rank: #75,000]

Despite looking like the inside of an expensive mall, there were no other students. The only thing that populated the area were the Servant Robots™ which frequented lots of high-end places around the planet.

The two of us walked around and observed the various storefronts. There were all decorated as you would expect from a free market, with bright signage and colourful surfaces. Making our way to Crown Curry, we looked at the prices which sat in front of the large pots of curry behind a glass barrier.

Large (Two Curries + Large Rice)—13.5k points

Medium (One Curry + Medium Rice)—12k points

Small (One Curry + Small Rice)—10k points

At this rate, we’d have to be clicking this button the whole day before we saved up enough to buy a curry meal. It looked like the prices of an underdeveloped third-world country with a massive inflation problem. It’d be even longer for Sumire and I since we had a debuff. The delay on button presses was around two seconds, so I could only earn a point every four seconds approximately.

“Maybe there’s cheaper food?”

Sumire looked at me.

“I’m pretty sure that this is the cheap food,” she responded.

Well, let’s hope that the school gives us some more way to earn points at least.

“What’s your rank, Akira?”

POINTS

Your current points: 143

Current Rank: #71,465

“It’s not very good. I’m going to get kicked out of this food court soon enough.”

“Ah, same here.”

We’d probably get dragged out by the Servant Robots if we didn’t leave soon, so the two of us began to make our way back over to the elevator.

Surprise Question

Unscramble the word: CELEOLMU

Write your answer here: _________________

We were once again caught off-guard by the surprise question. Sumire’s spare hand was in the process of reaching for the elevator opening button and I was looking off into the distance.

Correct!

You were the #196^th student to answer that correctly. (9.12s elapsed)

You have been awarded 100 points

The prize was a bit bigger this time at least. The word was honestly a bit harder than I thought. The structure of the scrambled word made it somewhat unexpected.

“There doesn’t seem to be a benefit to solving it quickly,” Sumire commented.

Despite us taking different amounts of time, our reward was still the same. Still, judging by the changing of ranks, I assumed the total time given to solve the questions wasn’t that much. I’m guessing maybe 20 or 30 seconds at most.

“I guess it’s just to feed people’s egos.”

“We’re getting beat quite a bit, Akira.”

“Isn’t that to be expected? There’s a lot of students.”

I guess Sumire had a pretty big ego.

POINTS

Your current points: 256

Current Rank: #34,187

The elevator door opened and the two of us made our way inside. I pressed the button for my floor and Sumire simply pressed nothing.

“Sumire, you don’t feel like going back to your own room?”

“Nope, it’s boring in there.”

Sigh. I guess it didn’t matter that much.

Suddenly, another notification appeared on our phones.

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From: TAG Administration

We hope that you have managed to get the hang of the mechanics of our TAG system. The SHOP App has been unlocked on your phones now.

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